Hello, everyone. Welcome to the last keynote event of the day. So the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world with over 2.2 million people behind bars in our prisons, jails, juvenile facilities, and detention centers. What do we do as software engineers to elaborate? We are joined by the amazing Jessica McKellan. So over to you. Thank you so much. Let me make sure I can get my screen sharing set up reasonably one second here. And then if I go ahead and which can I get some affirmation on what's what if any slides you see. Yeah, we see your place. Great. Okay. So welcome everyone. My name is Jessica McKellar and we're here today to talk about Python in prisons, how open source can change a criminal justice system. So the United States locks up more people per capita than any other country. I live in San Francisco in the state of California in the United States, and this is the country that I live in. I live in a country that still has the death penalty and routinely executes people at the federal level and in many states. I also live in a country where children serve life sentences without the possibility of parole.  My state California has the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere at San Quentin State Prison, which is just 45 minutes away from where I live in San Francisco. I live in a country where the criminal justice system is a direct successor to the control and labor economics of slavery. In some counties prisons are the single largest employer. Prisoners literally build and run the prisons that confine them, building construction and maintenance, meal preparation, laundry, janitorial services. Every California license plate is made by an incarcerated worker at Folsom State Prison. Incarcerated workers are paid 8 cents to 37 cents per hour for their work. By comparison, California's minimum wage is currently $12 per hour. One third of California's firefighters are incarcerated firefighters. California actually doesn't have enough firefighters to fight its fires right now because the prisons are on lockdown due to COVID-19. And so those incarcerated firefighters are not available and they've become part of the system. We rely on them. The system is extremely racist and it's also ineffective. Our prisons don't prevent crime. They actually increase it because incarceration produces a lifelong record and stigma that makes successful reentry with stable housing and employment extremely difficult. The system is ineffective and it's not even what survivors of crime want. This system persists not because it is a good one, but because it is an effective system of racial control and because it generates a lot of money. I talk about prison a lot because some of the most important people in my life are or used to be in prison. Friends, coworkers, I spend time every day with people who used to be in prison, people who were serving life sentences for serious violent crimes, but who despite the brutal circumstances of a prison system that is not sincerely interested in their rehabilitation, did the work to understand their own trauma and the harm they caused and became different people. I talk about prison because this brutal, ineffective, unjust system must be dismantled. And I talk about prison in forums like this one because it's a system that people like us, tech people, open source people, are actually disproportionately able to change. And that's what I'm here to talk about today. So as a quick reminder on who I am, my name is Jessica McKellar. I'm sort of a lifelong Python user and participant in the Python community. I helped build the Boston Python user group into the largest Python user group in the world. I was a director for the Python Software Foundation. I've been the diversity chair for Python North America for half a decade. My particular passions within the Python community are expanding access to programming and teaching new programmers. I also spend a lot of time in prison and supporting reentry for people getting out of prison. I actually teach a Python programming class in San Quentin State Prison in California. Every company that I've ever worked for has had a Python tech stack. I'm currently a founder in the CTO of a tech company in San Francisco called Pilot that of course uses Python and a bunch of Pilots employees are formerly incarcerated. One of the engineers at my company is named Simon. Simon was incarcerated as a child and grew up in the California prison system. He learned how to speak English in prison. Simon also learned how to program in prison through a nonprofit called The Last Mile, which is how I met him. The Last Mile was created to teach incarcerated people technology skills that align with modern labor markets so that when graduates get out of the prison, they can successfully get a job. Prior to The Last Mile, most of the work experience available in prisons was manual labor. You could learn how to cook in the prison kitchen. You could get certified as a janitor while working on the prison custodial staff. Perhaps you could learn something like carpentry through the prison industry authority. And these are all important jobs and skills, but in practice it can be difficult to secure a job in these areas of the labor market when you get out of prison. So The Last Mile took a new approach and decided to focus on one of the fastest growing labor markets in the United States and teach people how to program. The Last Mile's coding program was started in 2014 and is the first ever computer programming curriculum in the United States prison. In this program, students learn HTML, they learn JavaScript, they learn CSS, and of course they learn Python. There is no internet access in these programs. So everything is done through thumb drives and PDFs. And this was Simon's introduction to programming. After he got out of prison, he went through a coding boot camp called Hack Reactor and then interviewed for and accepted a full-time software engineering role with my company. But very few people have access to a program like The Last Mile. It's only running for a few dozen people in 11 prisons in the United States and we have a lot more than 11 prisons, unfortunately. And that's a problem because for most incarcerated people, becoming a programmer changes your life. It gives you access to the economics of being a programmer, the cash, the startup equity. More importantly, it connects you with other programmers. You become part of a group of people who have resources, who have power, and who are used to living in a world that we know we can change because we do it every day at work. Programmers fix stuff for a living. We are great at fixing broken systems. And I think it's worth dwelling on where that sense of empowerment and agency comes from. It is deeply ingrained in our open source culture in particular that we have the power to take things apart and change them and fix them and make them better and share those improvements with the world. That is an incredibly powerful mindset. And we mostly apply it to software systems. It's how Python exists. Guido saw a need for a new kind of language that was open source and intuitive and easy to learn and powerful, and he and many other people worked together to make it so. It's why we have this rich ecosystem of Python libraries and why we have this incredible international Python community. We have not just Python 2, but also Python 3. We believe that we can change things and make them better. So where I start getting really excited is when we take these tremendous capabilities, the collective resources and power and the confidence that we can change things and direct that not just towards software systems, but also to people systems. Because a programmer's mind is really an activist mind. We can't even help it. This is a video of Simon getting his ankle monitor removed. So for many months after he was released from prison, Simon was required to wear an ankle monitor at all times to track his location. While on parole after serving nearly two decades in prison, newly hired into his first software job, despite being under 24 hours surveillance by the state, Simon wasted no time leveraging his network, his new network of software engineers to help change a system that has brutalized him and so many other people. The first thing Simon did was bring more talented, formerly incarcerated people to pilot, changing the economic circumstances for several families. He led the creation of a mutual aid network, the Bay Area Freedom Collective, that has raised over $50,000 to provide reentry support, housing and employment to people getting out of prison. As a company inspired by Simon, we have organized around campaigns to change legislation in our state around incarceration. We have led campaigns to free vulnerable people from prison during the COVID-19 epidemics, and we have succeeded. We now run coding workshops to help last mile graduates prepare for software engineering interviews, and we're helping formerly incarcerated entrepreneurs start their own businesses. And this is just the beginning. And it's not just Simon. This is my friend Emile, who now works at Pilot 2 and is a prison abolitionist and community organizer. This is my friend Shaw, who now runs a media company centering the perspective of formerly incarcerated people in discussions of current events through videos and podcasts. There are so many talented people in our prisons. If they had the resources to change the world, they would. And we can help make that happen. So that brings us back to how we tech people can meaningfully change a criminal justice system. So inspired by Simon, as an exercise, let's talk concretely about what each of us can do to change a system like this. And the system in your country might look really different from mine. But I think it's still an interesting and useful exercise to practice thinking concretely about how we can engage with a big broken people system that must change. So when we get a large ambiguous engineering project, the first thing we do is a little planning and decomposition a breakdown of what problems we're trying to solve and approaches to solving them. So first things first, what is a non overwhelming way of thinking about criminal justice mass incarceration. What's a non overwhelming way of thinking about these topics and then some practical goals we could have together and as individuals within it. And here's a framing that I have found helpful for myself, breaking it down between opportunities for systemic impact and individual impact. And systemic impacts. My goal is decarceration changes to how we as a society think about crime and punishment that lead to legislative changes that lead to decarceration fewer people incarcerated for less time. For individual impact by the data two things that matter the most are housing and employment, a safe supportive stable place to live and a stable job that ensures that you'll have the money to take care of yourself and your family. And just should be great allies in the pursuit of these goals. We have the access to great jobs. Tech as a sector is perpetually hiring, which is not true everywhere else. We have skills that are useful. We are tech savvy, we have technical skills we can teach other people, we know how to make things go viral on the internet. We have money generally speaking. This is a financially privileged group. And so as technologists I'd frame up three categories of opportunities we have to affect systemic and individual impact as individuals as as any old human being who cares about this topic as technologists specifically and then also in partnership with our employers.  First and foremost, we can directly support people leaving prison, at least in California, at least in my country, many people who get out of prison, don't have any of the basic things that we used to get by in society today. You don't have a cell phone, you don't have a computer. Well, but it is literally true in California. It doesn't matter if you have been locked up for 40 years. The way that this works is when you get out you're given $200 and a ride to a bus stop. And that's the support that you get to make it on your own. So direct support for people leaving prison is a really, really important way that we can show up. Once people get out, bridging this huge gap left by the government, local reentry programs do the hard and important work of helping people with housing with job searches, staying sober, staying safe, and a lot of other things. And most of this work is done by volunteers. A lot of the work doesn't require a special background. This is work like helping people write resumes learn how to use a cell phone, learn how to use a computer. You know, we could all be one of these volunteers. And then finally, as individuals, we can't forget the reality that our criminal justice system is unfortunately a highly politicized system.  So it's really important that we vote, especially for positions that can impact the way that our prison systems are run. So that's the story as individuals. On top of what we can do as individuals, we have ways that we can uniquely contribute as technologists. And the first, which we've sort of already alluded to is the first is tech focused job training and reentry. Inside and outside of prisons. Inside of prisons in the United States, we can volunteer with programs like the last mile and maybe you have something similar in your country or maybe there's an opportunity to make something like this. Grow or come into existence, but you know, pre release job readiness skills, really, really important. And then outside of prisons, you know, a lot of reentry programming is about tech literacy, it's about how to use a cell phone, how to use the internet, how to write an email well. You know, how are you supposed to get a career building job, if you don't have a type, or if you don't know how to use a computer to complete an online application with confidence. So having enough support for these types of skill development is really, really important. And then I want to specifically call out another area of opportunity that is of exceptional relevance to this group of people, and that is programming boot camps. And this is really intersects with a lot of the work on diversity and inclusion that this community is already doing boot camps and more generally software engineering training for people who want to make a career transition are providing, are proving to be an important reentry opportunity for people coming out of prison. Regardless, potentially, of the of the prior career that you had prior to incarceration and the skills that you managed to develop in prison if you can get into a programming boot camp that can really change your life. So it's important that we're thoughtful about what opportunities folks have to engage with these types of programs. And finally, reentry and reform work is mostly done by small local nonprofits and these groups desperately need tech support, building and maintaining a website, migrating to modern cloud based collaboration tools, etc. They very much need our help. They, you know, we should help them so that they can spend all their time focusing on getting the actual message and the change out and not, you know, debugging whatever, you know, website configuration issue they're having. So this is another way we can really show up for these groups. Okay, and then finally, we have the last the third bucket and honestly the most important bucket and that is what can we do as employers. And I say that this is the most important thing because this is where the greatest economic impact lives. That's my belief at least. And that's a really simple thing it's just that we need to hire people with records. The number one thing that we can do is we need to hire people with records. We can highlight a couple of specific table stakes issues on this topic. And, you know, the details of this may change from country to country but I suspect that a lot of this is relatively universally true. The first thing we need to do is examine how our companies use background checks. Do our companies conduct background checks. And if they do, what do they do with the results. Do we automatically disqualify people who have felony convictions. If we don't have the answers to these questions we should find out and organize to make sure that our companies aren't blanket disqualifying talented candidates because of harmful stereotypes. The second thing that's really important is that people coming out of prison may have an educational and career background different from the candidate pools we typically focus on. If we are blanket disqualifying people based on having a particular type of degree attending a specific college experience with specific prior employers. We are throwing out resumes from qualified candidates including candidates coming out of prison. We need to take a hard look at what the true requirements are for entry level roles.  You know, probably not. You know, they need to be reliable, sharp problem solvers with good communication skills and we in turn need to have good training and mentorship programs to support entry level employees in their on the job skill development. So we need to take a real critical look at if our entry level roles are truly entry level and if they're really serving to build a diverse and inclusive workplace. And finally, if we want to hire people with records, we need to spend time with people with records who are looking for jobs. And this is the point that ties together all of the other activities we talked about making a difference usually requires building relationships. In the United States what I recommend doing is volunteering with job training and reentry programs inside or outside of prisons that's an easy way to meet and build relationships with people who have the skills and attitude for the roles you're working for. If you do an internet search for reentry programs in your city or in a nearby prison, you will find everything from academic classes to interview practice to resume building workshops to tech literacy training. All of these programs are trying to get people out and into good jobs, and all of these programs need volunteers like us. And when you start hiring people with records, you start hiring people like Simon.  Now, maybe prisons aren't your thing, and that's fine, but we've all got something in our country in our community, a big people system that is unjust and must change. And I hope this talk was a reminder that we have the power and we have the resources to change it. And more about prisons in the United States. I recommend listening to currently informally incarcerated community members. Here are some of the people leading the conversation on prisons in the US. There are some really talented community organizers on Twitter. And then I've linked to the Patreon pages for Shaw, who I had referenced earlier in this talk, and then also for the Bay Area Freedom Collective, Simon's organization, and I would love if you would check those out. That is Python in prison, how open source can change a criminal justice system. Thank you for listening. And I look forward to hearing about what big people system you are tackling in the year ahead. Thank you so much. All right, that was a very powerful talk. So, so do you want to answer some questions now. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. All right, so here's the first one. Are there any considerations regarding the box. Many companies include it on their application regarding felony convictions is a reassuring note. That's sent along with the telephone. I'm sure I understood that. Can you. Sorry, can you repeat the question. Are there any considerations regarding the box that many companies include on their application regarding felony convictions is a reassuring note along with the telephone. Perfect. Yes. So, at least in the United States and again I'm this is I'm sure various country to country in the United States. Depending on what state you're in employers or potential employers can ask you about your criminal history and can use that information to discriminate against you before they've really interviewed you. And in some states that's actually been made illegal because it has such consequences for people who have records but have served their time and, you know, have our back out in society and still need to be able to get a job and pay the bills and take care of themselves like anybody else. So some states like New York, for example, have passed legislation to ban the box where you can't ask about if people have a felony conviction, prior to making them an offer. That's really important. You know that it's a small piece of the bigger story but it's important that we are giving talented candidates a real shot during job interviews without prejudging them based on something from their past. That's really important. More states should adopt that legislation. In general, there are significant barriers to employment. It's not just that but the broader topic of how to. I mean if you don't want people to go back to prison they need to be able to get a good job right so like what if we had to envision from the ground up what kind of system would facilitate that, and that's a win when that's about reducing crime rates and improving, you know, sort of building successful communities. If we could start from the ground up and invent a system that really ensured that everybody was able to get a good job that could pay the bills. What would that system look like because it definitely wouldn't look like our current system. I see a question in the Q&A box should I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's the next question. Have there been studies done comparing the recidivism rates among those that have been through programs such as the last mile and those who are without such programs. If so, do people and politicians listen to that data. Yeah, it's a great question and there's a bunch to unpack in this. So first recidivism rates are, that's a, you know, a specific quantification of people who get out of prison and then return to prison for some reason. And there's a lot that there's a whole separate conversation about how to do that in a way that is useful because what timeline we're talking about matters, what was the nature of the activity that caused a return to prison? Was it similar or different from the original offense? There's a bunch of stuff that we could break down on recidivism, but the long and short of it is that in the United States recidivism rates are very high. In general, it like, you know, for the total sort of prison population, a lot of people return to prison. And that's not because they're bad people or because they, there's something sort of inherently criminal about them. It's because the system is set up to cause people to return to prison. In particular, the most common reason why somebody who is in prison might get out and return to prison is because the underlying issue that drove their original criminal behavior was a drug problem. So a prison is not a good place to address addiction. It's a terrible place to address addiction. And so it's no wonder that if you were an addict going into a prison that in many cases it's very difficult to get the support you need for that to really materially change by the time you get out. So we could imagine a totally different way of handling addiction in our country that does not involve shoving people into a prison system that's not going to take good care of them, right? So that's like one example of a sort of obvious reason why recidivism rates for one particular population are high.  The question was originally about, you know, do folks who go through the last mile, do they have better outcomes? And the answer is definitely yes, because it's all about being able to get a job. Like if you can get a good job after you get out, you're not going to, you're not going to, like there's no, the underlying circumstances that might cause like a need to try to take care of yourself in some way that could cause you to end up back in prison. So if you can go away, if you can take, if you have a good job. So folks who are, and it's not just the last mile, but if you, you know, if you have like job skills that you can actually get hired for, if you were able to get a college degree while you're in prison, all of these things are like highly correlated with successful outcomes.  But the other thing that's important to highlight though is that a lot of folks, if we just did a reasonable job of taking care of people, you got to remember this is the United States, like we don't have universal health care. We don't, we have, we have like a very weak social safety now. So this is true of anybody, not just people coming out of prison. Like if you fall on hard times, if you can't get a job, you're in a really tough spot. And so if we, you know, this is part of why I care so much about talking about prisons is it's a lens for talking about broader social change. It's a problem that people don't aren't guaranteed shelter and food and health care in this country. And one way that we see this manifest is in poor outcomes for people coming out of prison. But so yes, the last mile helps education helps. It's also the case that though criminality is something that is basically a thing that young people do people age out of criminality. Like the fact that we have people, you know, spending their entire lives or many decades in prison in the United States is is purely the result of sentencing policies that were set not by criminology experts they were set by politicians looking to be tough on crime so that they would get elected. Like the whole system. The system was not designed to be effective. This is not an optimized system. It's one that is simply excessively punitive and is not effective. So there's a whole I mean we could we could talk about prison for for days, but to answer this specific question.  Okay, another question. Do I work in women's prisons as well. I do. So actually the last mile is in several women's prisons. I'm actually fun story. A wonderful talented woman named Linda, who went through the last mile. Is I have gone through some interview prep with her. And she's actually going to start interviewing for software engineering jobs in the Bay Area starting next week she's like ready to go she's I'm confident that she's going to pass these interviews is super sharp. She's a great. She's a great programmer. She's a great example of someone who you know she she was in a different career prior to incarceration. She is. I think she's in her 40s now. So this is in many ways like a classic example of someone who is making a career pivot to software, you know after doing something for the earlier parts of her life. And she's going to be great. She's going to be great. I just got yeah I just got worried about some interview prep for her and I'm really excited about that. So yes the last mile is in is in some women's prisons again is a very small program though the vast majority of people 2.3 million people in California and sorry in the United States are incarcerated. You know the couple of dozens of people who get to benefit from the last mile are very fortunate individuals, but to me that's a testament to success and it works. So how do we expand it how do we get more people access to more opportunities like this that set them up for real success when they get out. Great.


The military training instructor hat that I wear is a symbol of honor, professionalism, integrity, service, and excellence in all I do. My job is one of the most important to the Air Force, and I will spare no effort to properly prepare men and women for military service. I am dedicated to the principles of fairness, firmness, and honesty. I strive for perfection and reject mediocrity, both in my own personal behavior and in the performance of those I lead. I am an Air Force military training instructor, and above all, I am an American Airman. I remember my MTI as a great leader. He was the epitome of what an MTI or military training instructor was supposed to be. Being a military training instructor is like any other job that you can ever have.  When they think of Air Force, you are the first thing that they see.  You are the person who teaches them how to exhibit those core values. You teach them the basics of being in the military. For them, you are what bright looks like. I am actually a two-hour zero maintenance management analyst. We do a lot of public speaking, so being a military training instructor, you speak in front of 40 to 50 to 60 people on a daily basis. So it definitely helped me with my public speaking. A lot of things get done every day. Being a military training instructor, you try to plan it out, but there are so many different variables that you can't control. So being able to take those tools and go back to my job and my AFSC, it was definitely something that enhanced me as a leader. This is actually my second time. The first time I came back, I did like four years. When opportunity arose, I definitely said I wanted to do it, so definitely came back and I'm enjoying it. For anyone that's thinking about being an MTI, if you want to do it, I say go for it. If you're definitely a people person and you care about pouring into people and helping others, that is definitely something that you have to have before you come down here to be a military training instructor. This is a life-changing experience because everyone remembers their military training instructor. Everybody remembers basic military training, whether it was good or bad, how they can help the new generation moving forward.


Our next speaker coming up is... Oh, I haven't practiced this and I haven't discussed it with him. You can say Diego Aranja, that's fine. Oh, don't tell me, don't tell me. Diego Aranja. Like Lasagna. Lasagna? I don't even have that on me. Aganya like Lasagna, the pronunciation. Lasagna? Yeah, pronounced the same. Okay, but it's spelled Aranja. Long story, long story. Okay, with a silent S. Okay, thank you. Diego from the Department of Engineering owns a university. Can blockchain make voting more secure? Let's hear about that. Thank you. So my main research is in cryptographic engineering, which means developing techniques to deploy cryptography securely in practice. But I have this weird research topic and disturbing hobby of studying elections or electronic elections in particular. And today I'll try to give information to Sol or to answer this question. Can blockchains make voting more secure? And by voting here, I mean races for public positions. So official elections conducted by governments. Of course, private companies and other enterprises can choose different ways to vote because they have different threat models, right? So let's start with the basics of election security. All elections, to be fair and reasonable, they need to satisfy some requirements, some security properties. And some of these are fairly intuitive to us. First of all, only eligible voters should be able to vote. You don't want to allow people who are not allowed to vote to cast their choices. Votes should be secret, so voters can freely express their will towards their candidates no matter how horrible those candidates can be. Votes shouldn't be changed after the fact. So there is an integrity property also that's important. And all of this is just to basically convince the losers that they actually lost. This is the ultimate goal of elections, to convince the losers that they lost so that the election is legitimate. This is fairly easy. It's fairly easy to see how this is accomplished by a paper ballot election. Basically ballot secrecy is guaranteed by a voting booth, so you can pick your choices on the ballot without anyone seeing. The integrity property is basically everyone looking at the ballot box for the whole day to see that no one is messing with the contents. And eligibility can be solved by just government issue documents. But humans, you know, they have this tendency of automating everything. And the effort of automating elections started in the 1920s with the first lever machines. These are basically giant contraptions to help in some way a voter to cast their ballots. They were introduced in the US at first, and they were used for decades. I don't know exactly from looking at the picture how this could help someone to vote, but not get into that. And for decades, these were the main voting interfaces for several states in the US. With the down of the electronic age, of course, the effort continued to the development of electronic voting machines, especially at the end of the 90s and beginning of the 2000s. And in the US in particular, towards that was the election of Bush. You probably remember the situation in Florida with the recounts and the Supreme Court mandating recounts to be stopped, and all of that. So several countries have adopted the electronic voting machines in the end of the new century and the end of the 90s already. I have pictures there from the clock. A counter-wise order from India, the Netherlands, the US, and Brazil. And I have to admit that these machines helped voters vote in some ways. In several cases, they provided better interfaces than in the paper ballot for poor voters or voters dealing with accessibility problems. But from the point of view of security, I have to say these machines were a huge step back. So if you take a look at the analysis, the security analysis of how these machines operate, how the software is written, how the security measures are implemented, they are a textbook of what not to do. Actually, they are great textbooks for anyone willing to learn how to protect computer systems because you get all the counter-examples from those security analysis. I've participated in two different hacking challenges of the Brazilian voting system where we could find ways for external attackers to break both ballot secrecy using only public information and also to manipulate the software installed in the machines so it would manipulate the count. So I still have nightmares about this after all these years. So if voting machines do not help or do not solve the problem after all, maybe we should look for alternatives. And some countries have done by thinking of deploying internet voting, which in my opinion makes everything worse. Due to just a larger attack surface in which now, first of all, other countries can participate in your elections, not in the nicest way possible, but they surely can. Either by preventing elections to be held with denial of service attacks or just hacking infrastructure and casting votes. But there are other not as scary ways of manipulating elections conducted through the internet. Now it's much harder to protect voters from coercion because they are voting remotely. How can you prevent an employer from collecting everyone for the big voting day so everyone needs to vote following certain instructions? You also need to worry about malware installed in the computers belonging to the voters so that these computers do not cast votes in place of the voters. You now have to worry about insiders because these usually are centralized systems. So you need to worry about insiders operating the system and maybe manipulating how votes are being counted. No matter all these risks, at least one country got this mostly functioning. This is Estonia. So in Estonia you have the option to vote either by paper or using the internet voting system. And they have additional protections to prevent voter coercion in which you can vote multiple times and the latest vote is the one which counts. And you can also, if you were coercive, to vote online you can also vote by paper after the online voting is closed to make sure that your vote is really the way you intend to. But a security index of the Estonian voting system was not very inspiring also to read so it's triggered with problems. A recent example was the Swiss experience. So the Swiss government did a hacking challenge in the last month where it opened the source code of their voting system. They purchased this system from Saito, it's a Spanish company. And researchers could take a look at how security measures were implemented and if all those sorts of problems which would allow, in the cases demonstrated so far, insiders to manipulate individual votes a fraction of the votes and still this would be undetected due to the problems of how the commitment schemes and zero-knowledge proofs were implemented. Go read the details, it's fairly interesting research. So okay, internet voting also has all sorts of problems so we may have to look for more alternatives and if you remember the first slide I told you that we need both integrity and secrecy here and blockchains from the session you learn that they can't provide you actually with storage for private data encrypted data that cannot be changed afterwards. So it seems these properties match what we expect from elections really well so maybe blockchains are really what we were looking for we are into something here so maybe blockchains can solve all problems with elections after all probably not I have to say sorry for being pessimistic the limitations here are clear blockchain voting in the case that someone will cast an individual vote to be stored in the blockchain basically implies internet voting the natural interface to cast the vote on the blockchain and the individual vote in the blockchain would be exactly using some internet service to do that so all those risks they just come back and in some cases they come back amplified so for the voter to verify that the system is behaving correctly this can be harder for insiders because to use this interface before the vote is stored in the blockchain we still need to run software developed by humans who could have malicious intentions you still need to protect the voters computers from malware and other problems we still have the problem with nation state attackers and there is the additional risk of everlasting security since all these encrypted votes will be stored in the blockchain essentially forever what happens if after the election someone finds a way to recover critical information about those votes to try to break ballot secrecy what if a key leak or something is discovered afterwards so blockchains actually do not solve the most relevant problems with electronic elections but they may help in some way so this is the basic workflow of any election you start with a voting session where people will go to the polling place cast their votes either through paper ballots or voting machines with paper records for transparency increase transparency at some point the voting session will end and you do a local tally of just that voting session so either count votes by hand or softening the voting machine prints you a result of that polling place and you can do a recount with paper to match that electronic result is correct so you have a local tally already done and this result can be made public in several countries so it's really mandatory to make that result public so now the problem is just transferring this public result to the central tabulator which will basically collect all the partial results from all over the country and then publish the global outcome who gets to be elected on this preferably this should be done in a way that the voters, political parties and any other stakeholders in the election which is the entire society by the way can check that partial results were transmitted correctly without manipulation blockchains may be very useful for transmitting those results because they can store public information essentially forever or as long as they are being kept or maintained in a way that the voters and other parties can check that the partial results were transmitted correctly and you can do recounts in other tasks audits on the blockchain itself we did a similar effort in 2014 when I was still living in Brazil without using a blockchain of course it was too early for that but in 2014 we conducted a crowdsourced project in which we told voters to go to the polling places and stick to the very end and take pictures of the poll tapes with the partial results for those places and send them to internet service we deployed so we collected all these pictures we extracted information from all these pictures to match with the electronic records published by the electoral authority three days after the election and we managed to do this for 4.1% of the vote which is quite significant for a country as large as Brazil with 140 million voters and this at the time was done using a cloud-based service but I don't see any technical problem of running this in a blockchain platform and it would actually make some things easier because it would be decentralized and easier to scale so I think my main takeaway here is elections are not a playground for your latest technology if a country already has functional and transparent elections that public will trust that they can be audited using paper ballots or voting machines with paper records, congratulations you have sorted out the problem with elections they are good enough already and this is more important than ever we have seen the world increasing political polarization and many of the populists being elected in several countries are just playing this card elections are rigid and you need really independently verifiable elections so that our democracies become as robust as we envision them to be so you can find some references of work we did before improving the security of voting systems especially in Brazil and I thank you for your attention thanks radio show on the radio 24-7 and it's a tech radio show and I have a colleague and we are a little bit like Yang Yang even though we are getting closer because he has a show about surveillance and data and all this stuff and he tells me all the time with voting there is only one thing that works analog he says it's the only secure way and it's a big sort of claim and think he always talks about would you agree with this the systems that you know of so I would say it depends a little bit on the scale you are doing the election I claim that while any country in the world it should be possible to do a decentralized transparent paper-based election of course this is easier in some countries than others if your country is small for example if not that large population or without too much of their identity in terms of how can I say that I'm trying to pick the nice words so you have an average level of instruction that's good enough people understand how the system works and I can expect that the system is working I would say this is great for paper-based elections this is a great setting for other countries in which this is not true in Brazil for example you have the problem that someone will cast votes in the middle of the Amazon forest and you need to transport those at some point to the central government in the capital right how can you make sure that these votes will still survive the trip to be audited and so on this is a stick to paper ballots for larger countries with problems in logistics and level of instruction and inequality even these are the places where you can perhaps experiment with other technologies as they have been doing in the past one thing I can add is electronic voting is not for itself insecure it's just that efforts done in the past decades in that direction were too isolated from the experts were too usually conducted by governments which were not very democratic in the first place and this of course leads to horrible outcomes such as horribly insecure systems being used in practice and what exactly is it that goes wrong if something goes wrong so you can break for example ballot secrecy so in Brazil I will stick to the evidence we collected from Brazil you could actually after the election figure out how the Supreme Court judge voted based on the public information this was one of the main results of the hacking challenge organized in 2012 we never managed to do that of course because we would end up in jail as an example but the conditions the technical conditions were there and they are still there and voter coercion in particular is extremely important in Brazil it's a constitutional requirement there for the voting system to preserve ballot secrecy so it's one of the few ways where things can go horribly wrong maybe you can have an insider also manipulating the software so it miscounts votes for certain candidates so all of many things can go wrong for electronic elections not conducted properly or in the most transparent way Brazil is quite advanced in fintech as I remember the banking infrastructure it's quite advanced because it had to survive many fraud attempts along the years yeah so does that mean that Brazil is moving forward with blockchain or so the government already has some official position for blockchains so Bitcoin at least there's a real commodity there and you actually need to declare if you own Bitcoin or at least if you got money out of Bitcoin transactions in your tax return and so the government at least understands something and I know that the central bank has a special group understanding the technology and trying to think of regulation around it but we don't see as much adoption on daily life as in other countries like Switzerland for example you may get there it's like a case country where they're doing most things around blockchain I may not be the best person to respond to that question but it seems Switzerland is doing some things right in that way I see the example of Venezuela coming up from time to time but of course this for very different reasons right if your financial system breaks down maybe you still can use a blockchain or Bitcoin to do transactions but this is a different story thank you very much thank you very much


I'd just like to ask for your help a little bit as I get started. If you would be so kind as to pray for me, pray that I can speak the Lord's words to you and I'll pray that you're able to hear what he wants you to hear. If we could just pray for each other in a moment. And let's also ask for a lady's intercession.  Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death, amen. Jesus tells us in the gospel to be perfect. This is often a justification that people use for perfectionism, to justify striving, to justify comparisons. And Matt described it so beautifully this morning, what happens when our insecurities get flared up and then we retreat to those places where we feel confident, we cling to our successes, we cling to our own abilities. So I also suffer from insecurities and especially being with so many of my brother priests. It's easy to get a little bit insecure about what I can offer you. So I cling to my own areas of where I can be better than somebody else and I sized up the whole crowd and determined definitively that nobody has a longer beard than I do. So I found some security in that. When Jesus says be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, we have to take that in together with the parallel verses from the Old Testament in Leviticus. Moses says be holy for the Lord your God is holy and in Luke's gospel we hear a parallel verse, be merciful as your heavenly father is merciful. The kind of perfection that Jesus is talking about is related to the verses that came just before it, which are a perfection in love, universal love, even to the point of loving our enemies, to love as the father loves, to be merciful as the father is merciful. And whenever we talk about holiness in Christianity, we always talk about holiness in terms of love because holiness is to be one with God and God is love. Perfect is perfect in love and that challenges us. It's a good way of making an examination even for preparing for an unbound session what prevents me from loving? What gets in the way of my love? Who do I find difficult to love? Where is my heart held back from loving? Because Jesus assured us of his love and he calls us to love with his love. In John's gospel, love one another, sometimes the translation rightly so is as I have loved you but the translation is also accurately as I love you. And so we look back on the ways that he has loved us and we allow his love flowing into us right now also to fill us and to flow over unless there is something that holds back that love, something that makes us afraid of loving as he loves us or resistant to loving those who have hurt us. It's a good way to examine our hearts. Where am I being bound, held back from loving with the father's love, from being perfect as the father is perfect? We can also look at the two readings together. Of course the father is perfect and Jesus is also perfect but that doesn't mean that he's perfect at everything. Even Jesus is not perfect at everything. For example, Jesus is not perfect at being a woman. It's fairly obvious right? He's not perfect at everything. Sometimes we have this idea that we're supposed to be perfect at everything but we actually heard in the first reading that definitive of Jesus is that he became poor. He wasn't afraid of his poverty. Jesus became poor. He emptied himself of his divinity. He emptied himself of divine privilege. We don't know all of the details of the inner consciousness of Jesus but apparently he made himself unable to know certain things, emptied himself of the divine prerogatives of knowledge and power in order to become poor so that he could be really human because to be human is also to be poor. We have some gifts that the father has entrusted to us that he places in the hand of his little child to use for a time but they remain always his gifts as Saint Therese said it. He gives us gifts to use but the way we began our life as a single-celled human being and the way that we will end our lives unable even to breathe until our heart stops and we make that passage to the father. The way that we begin and end is definitive of who we are in our human poverty but the fact that we are so poor means that we can also constantly receive. I love what Neil says and I quote it all the time. Unbound leads us from bondage to weakness because the danger is that we depend on ourselves too much and then we limit ourselves only to our human powers. When we know how poor we are we start to depend on God's power. When we depend on ourselves we lock ourselves into that small story but when we start to depend on God we allow him to do in us things that we could never do on our own. We've all taken this for granted too many times maybe even on a daily basis but as priests especially who can make Jesus present in his body and blood? None of us can do that by our own power. We need to own our poverty and we can only do that by his power and so many other things as well and we all know the experience from the confessional. Someone dumps out, pours out pain, suffering, experiences and we feel so poor in the face of that. What can we possibly say to this person? What could we say to communicate Jesus love to this person? We feel the depths of our poverty and in that moment a word comes or maybe just love fills our hearts and we're able to communicate that love by our presence. Our affirmation, being empathetic, just sitting with someone in the darkness for a moment and then giving them a hand to help them take a step up and make an active hope in the Father. But it's from our poverty that the Lord does the most beautiful things. The riches that Jesus has the great treasure is his trust in the Father and we only really learn how to trust in the Father when we get in touch with own and stay in our own poverty. So Jesus enters into all of our poverty to teach us the way of trust in the Father and helps us to call out, to cry out in that trust in the Father. The word in the gospel, be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect is from the word telos in Greek, teleo is to perfect. Telos is a goal, it's a destination and so the perfection that Jesus is talking about is really being complete and in our completeness we are not self-sufficient. Even what God reveals to us in the completeness of Father's Son and Holy Spirit, his completeness is in divine relationship and so the perfection of Father is not in becoming the Son, the Father never becomes the Son. The Father always remains, he always maintains his distinction as Father and remains in relationship with the Son. The perfection of the Father is to be Father, the perfection of the Son is to be Son. The perfection of our humanity is to be poor and that's why Jesus makes the proclamation, it has been perfected in his last breath on the cross. It's the same word, it is consummated, it is finished, it is perfected when Jesus has become totally poor even in pouring out his last breath and so unbound moves us from a place of self-sufficiency and a place of pride, a place of depending on ourselves, on our human powers, into a place of poverty where we have a deeper dependence on the heavenly Father and what a joy it is to help people step into that trust, to be able to trust again, to be able to open their hearts because without trust, without poverty it's not possible to have relationship and it's not possible to have love. So the Lord invites us in the context of this youth grist to open our hearts to our deepest need, to get in touch with our own poverty and we feel that in different places. The Lord has entrusted us with certain gifts and we use those with confidence but there are also places of our poverty where we know deeply how much we need him and that's the best place to receive him. It's a hungry man that enjoys food the most. It's a homeless man that loves to have any kind of shelter over his head and it's a poor man who loves to have even a dollar to his name and as we open up that poverty, our deepest hunger, the hunger for love, the hunger to be seen, to be known, to be affirmed, to be strengthened by his presence and to be loved especially in our poverty. As we open up that poverty to him now let us make a space for him to fill us with his body and blood in the Eucharist.


The following is a presentation of TFNN. Trade what you see with Larry Pezzavento. Toll free at 1-877-927-6648 or internationally at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Now, Larry Pezzavento. Okay, looking good. Billy Ray feeling good, Lewis folks. We're going to take a look at the German Dax this morning. As you can see, we've had a little bit of a bounce in here. And if we move over to the FTSE after the election results with our Boris Johnson, those of you that might not know this, but Boris was born in New York City and was a U.S. citizen, but he renounced his citizenship and now he is running the U.K. So may God bless and all the best of luck to him because you'll probably be like everybody else. Last about three to four months, maybe a year. I am just guessing. Hey, folks, here in the desert, we have a thing called the Monson Reigns. They start on July 15th. They go through July and August sometime into early September, about two full months that we have it. But yesterday we had one. You wouldn't believe what happened in 10 minutes. It was raining so hard that you could not hear anything in the house. I mean, I was watching a little bit of news and it was unbelievable the rain that we got. And well, about two hours later, it hit the old Casa here because everything backed up. All the sewers started backing up and to try to get a plumber when everybody else wants a plumber is really difficult. So this is going to be interesting here today to get the guy to come in and try to fix everything because boy, it was a lot of rain. I mean, I had not seen that much rain in the 27 years I've lived here in that intense period of about 10 or 15 minutes. I don't know how many inches it was, but it literally looked like the sky had opened up and dumped it. We have fountains in the front and the back and they were overflowing. And it was really quite amazing. Let's take a look at what's really happening today. Oh, by the way, we have Stan Harley as our guest today and we have a special program folks. I want to let you know on Friday, the 26th of July, which is a very important day down there in Longbow Key. So we'll have as a special guest for the whole program, we're going to have Bill Meridian on. Bill asked me last night while I was in fact, I've been up all night fighting all this stuff and I was chatting with him a couple hours ago and he would like to spend a little extra time because he has something that important to tell us and he's been doing this for me for quite a while. He's never asked for that. So Shane did it last week and Bill's doing again. So this is something that we'd like to do. So there'll be a special show on Friday with Bill Meridian doing most of the stuff. I'll probably do five minutes and then let him do the rest. So those are the things that we've got planned tomorrow. We're going to have, let me see, tomorrow is Rich Anderson and then we will have Tim Boss on Thursday and then Bill Meridian on Friday, Stan Harley today at the break. The Euro folks, there's the key. That's what people are talking about today. It is breaking badly. We're expecting this break. If you'll give me one second here to take a quick look at it. Give me a second here. Hold on.  Just a minute here. Okay. Okay. You got me. All right. All right. All right. Let's take a look here. This is the Euro. This is what we were looking at this weekend. We were expecting it to break down through here. We did that last night at 1190 trading around 1160. The key support here folks is going to be down here at 1100. It's going to be a double bottom. And you'll notice the ABCD structure that takes you there. That's where these traps occur.  And it might. But it might also hold just because of that ABCD pattern. That is there to show you that that could take out those lows and take out those lows and take out those lows. And you'll notice the ABCD structure that takes you there. That's where these traps occur. That could take out those lows and then reverse. How much it reverses?  But that's one of the things that I'm watching because if you remember back on May 20th when it was making new lows, we were highlighting the fact that those little red boxes, one of them that said 1.618 and the other one that said 1.27 were numbers that went all the way back eight or nine months ago. So that's really important. And those numbers, if you move them over to the right, the same price again. And of course, if you go below it, you can see the other numbers. If we get below 11090, you'd be looking at 109 and change. And of course, on the long term, you could be looking at 105 without any trouble in the euro. So sort of keep an eye on that. That's a very, very important one to look at. If we look at the reverse of this, which is the US dollar index, we're trading. Basel was telling us we were trading. We're at that 97.20 level now, which is certainly breaking out. We had a beautiful ABCD pattern last week down there at 96.25. We've exploded to the upside. And if we ever get above that 98.25 folks, it's going to be all about the Benjamins because the dollar will be extremely strong. And that means you could be looking at big moves in some of these other markets like crude oil, gold, silver, you know, possibly, but look at each one separately because sometimes, you know, just because the dollar is strong doesn't mean it's going to be affected by other currencies because, you know, you got to do each one separately. But it is holding up relatively well. We've had several questions about the sugar market and that wasn't even with Ruby in the room and I don't know what happened to her, but we're still trying to hold that support in the sugar at the 1160 level folks. The problem is it doesn't look, we're below there right now. Let's just take a look. You'll see we're down here again at that same thing. You'll see it right there. You'll notice the big ABCD structure to the downside. We're looking at those lows from October, which come in at around 1155. We took those out by just a little bit. So if we don't collapse from here, this area around 1140 could be really strong support in the October sugar. Now when we got up to, when we were trading up that 1290 area, you know, that's where we were, when we started talking about the potential for this market to have some type of correction and that's exactly what's happened. Now that we're having it, yeah, now that we're having it, you know, you have to decide, you know, how much risk do you have to take to see if you're going to be right? And this is a, you know, sugar trades at $11.25 a pound. That's world number 11 sugar and very low margin. So it's a good thing to trade. You know, we haven't seen limit moves in sugar. I think since the Cuban Missile Crisis, but that there's a, you know, very, I just thought of something, one of my most famous quotes from Winston Churchill is when we were having trouble with the Bay of Pigs and stuff, Churchill sent a note to President Kennedy saying, why don't you fly your planes over Cuba, blot out the sun and destroy the sugar crop? Oh, well, who knows? Okay, let's, oh, by the way, folks, I wanted to mention one other thing about Switzerland that I heard on the news this morning. 96% of the Swiss debt that is out there is related to the, oh, wow. Oh, shucks. Is that, that's the plumber, shucks. Oh, dear. Well, I'm not going to work that. We'll be right back. If you're not currently using the TAS Profile Scanner when looking at setting up your trading opportunities, then your arsenal is short a mighty weapon. 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Tiger Real Estate LLC is a firm that has extensive experience in the Tampa Bay Area. Whether you're looking to sell your current property for maximum value, or you're in the market for a second home or investment property, Tiger Realty has the experience across all areas of real estate in the Tampa Bay Area to help buyers and sellers make the most informed decisions across all price levels. From the price you should be paying per square foot in certain up-and-coming areas to the type of cash flow investment properties are capable of creating, Tiger Real Estate can help you make the best decision when it comes to all areas of the market. Before you make one of the biggest decisions of your financial future, call Tiger Real Estate LLC today at<PHONE_NUMBER> or email us at tiger at TFNN.com. That's<PHONE_NUMBER>. Call us today. Many of our new listeners have heard about the Tiger's Den. The Tiger's Den is a lively community where professional traders and investors can meet, exchange ideas and information in a comfortable, moderated atmosphere. Hear all of the TFNN shows. Plus, see all of the charts as they happen live and have access to archives of all of those charts. You can test drive the Tiger's Den absolutely free for 30 days and greatly enrich your knowledge of these markets and how to make your money work for you. Visit the Tiger's Den or on the front page of TFNN.com. Educating investors. Call now. Toll free. At 1-877-927-6648. Internationally. At<PHONE_NUMBER>. Okay, folks, I've had two people ask me about this book. This is a book written by Larry Pesevento. Have no idea who the dude is. But it's on Amazon. I was a surprise when someone brought it to my attention. But I think anybody that knows me that I would never write anything about into the wilderness of the soul. That's a little pill in my pay grade. But I don't know anything about it. I'm going to try to find out about it if I can. But I don't know. I know there are two Larry Peseventos living down in Kentucky. And they were bootleggers. They actually made moonshine. And they were in the guests of the U.S. government for a while. But those are the only ones. There's got to be quite a few of them and Larry Pesevento is relatively common, especially in New Mexico, where the coal mines are. A lot of the folks from Italy came over to work the coal mines back in the early 1900s and stuff. Okay, let's move on. No, it's, you know, Marshall, I don't know anything about the dude. I really don't, you know, I had two people ask me about it yesterday. And folks, there are some other things that are out there on the Internet about me. They're both false, but I don't want to take the effort to even try to correct it. But because it's some of it so ridiculous. Anyway, let's move on to take a look at a couple other things. This British pound is breaking down again, folks. We've now broken through or broken through. Boy, that's really good this morning. That's what happens when you don't have any sleep. By the way, it was the plumber and he's bringing his boys over to fix the thing in about 8.30. Okay, here is the weekly British pound chart. You'll notice now that we're trading substantially below the 125 level. That important support that is here doesn't look like it's going to hold. We've taken it out already. We rallied 130 pips and then completely rolled back again. This tells you that the US dollar is strengthening and that means a euro is going down. I'm expecting that you're looking at the chart to at least test the 111.10 level. We're trading 111.60 right now. So we could easily drop another 50 pips down into that area to see if it's going to hold that particular area. Now, I had a couple questions because I mentioned there was a strong probability that gold has made a major top. And the reason for that was what we talked about yesterday and we'll be able to take a look up here. The key level is if gold gets above 11, excuse me, 1435, that tells you that this trend is most likely to continue to the upside and you have to look at silver and gold totally separately, folks, because they are different and they have different chart patterns. So you've got to look at each one separately. Silver is still acting pretty good. It's only 10 or 15 cents away from its high whereas gold is a good $30 away. So those are the keys. But this long-term weekly chart on gold, you had several numbers coming up there. It was also 382 of the high from 2012. That was the big one in August 1932. And remember, we did mention that we had a drop in open interest on gold and silver on that last run up into those big highs, I believe on the Thursday, last Thursday. So that's what we're looking at. But above 1435, that would probably mean that you're going to be looking at it. Platinum is holding up relatively well. A dollar bill, we'll get it up here and let you take a look at it. It's still trading above that 850 level. That tells you that it does have some strength. It didn't even back off more than about $25, which is a good spot. But Platinum's got to get above that old high at that 875 level based on October Platinum. And then you'd be looking at some more movement to the upside the way it looks right now. The key level, gold is already pulled back, folks. We got down to 1414, so it's dropped $42 from its high so that's a pretty big drop. We had dropped down to $34 and then it rallied, stayed a little bit quiet and then once we went below 26 last night, 1426, we went down to 1414 and now when the market rallied back, it touched those old highs. So far we're looking at 1427.50 and if that doesn't get any higher than that, we're still looking at lower prices in gold. We need gold to get above 1435. If it does that, then you'll be able to see that. Terry's asking a question, does my futures platform sync with Ensign? Ensign is a charting package, Terry. They just give you the chart. You can put your own data source in there, CQG, whatever you want and they'll do the charts for you, but they don't provide the data. They just provide the platform for doing the charts. When I first met the Ensign people, oh my gosh, 37, 35 years ago, I guess, they came down to Pismo Beach from Idaho Falls, Idaho and spent a day with me that ended up being five days and they looked at the patterns and stuff that I was doing and they built that into those patterns and they built the whole business, not just around my stuff, but there was other stuff too, but it's all a charting package. Interacting brokers or any of the others, so it's good. It's a very simple program and it's easy to use. I still pay 50 bucks a month. I don't even get it free. Sarah does, but I don't. Anyway, that's all it is is a charting package. There's others out there. Folks, if you're just getting started, there's one called Trading View. It's a free one. If you want to practice with charts and stuff, look at Trading View. That's a very good one. It's a very good charting package that's free and it puts the patterns in and puts the ratios in and all the things that you might like to have happen. The news this morning, of course, is very bullish because the US government was able to increase their credit card by another $1.7 trillion. They passed the budget, and the fact that the two parties could come together and agree on anything was a major surprise. That would be worth 100 points in the Dow. I would think so. We'll see. We've gone above the 78% level in the NASDAQ in just two days. That's mainly because stocks like Facebook and Apple and some of these Amazon, they've all exploded to the upside and that's what's causing them this big move. The New York Stock Exchange Index was lagging yesterday as was the Russell a little bit, but they're going to be catching up this morning given the fact that we should be up about 100 points this morning when the market starts to go on. As a reminder, in another five minutes we're going to have Stan Harleon to talk to us about some of the things that he's looking at. We haven't had him on for several weeks, so it'll be good to have him on. Tomorrow will be Rich Anderson, Tim Boss, Financial Cycles Weekly and Bill Meridian for a full show on Friday at his request talking about the different cycles, some cycles research out of Vienna, Austria. We're going to have a break coming up pretty soon. Before that break comes, I wanted to bring to your attention one more time and that is the Australian dollar because it is still trying to make this target up here. We're very, very close folks up to that 70 or 140 level. We're trading around 70-50 right now and it looks like it wants to get to that level and at that level it would be a sale because it's a downtrend, ABCD.<PHONE_NUMBER> This week Larry sends out and throughout the week when warranted Larry will send out via charts or videos or both the key markets that he is watching during the day. This will be up to the date active trading information that will help you in your daily trading. In Larry's first week alone he sent out 25 charts, 6 videos and a full report to his subscribers in just one week. If you're a technical trader that uses patterns and retracements to trade then just try. Right now new subscribers can get a full 30-day money back guarantee. With nothing to risk sign up now to Larry Pezzavento's Fibonacci 24-7 by visiting the front page of TFNN.com under Trading Newsletters. 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Don't miss out on this incredible new piece of software get your copy of the Art of Timing the Trade Charts today by visiting TFNN.com This segment is brought to you by Think or Swim. For more information just click the link in the bottom banner on the front page of TFNN.com Okay we're back folks and I believe we have Stan Harley of the Harley Market Letter on the lines. How are you doing Stan? Good morning Larry from Scottsdale, Arizona. Yeah well did you get a monsoon up there yesterday? We did we did. They knocked me out here they have my whole plumbing system is screwed up they're going to fix it and it rained so much Stan that I couldn't even hear anything for about 15 minutes it was just like the sky it opened up on top of the house and anyway let's talk about the markets Stan you focused on your letter this week about 27,000 373 in the Dow Jones can you tell us what you're looking at there? Well I saw the market had bumped up against resistance I thought we would hesitate a bit and make what I would say a little bit about the trading cycle low Larry we tend to make and you and I discussed this in the past we tend to make lows on the charts about every 40 trading days the last couple of years that trading cycle is on the low end has been 23 trading days on the high end it's been 59 that that computes a median of 41 trading days and I've I've looked at this for years so 4041 trading days we tend to make lows we are right now 34 trading days from the June 3rd low so we're right in zone for the next cycle low I think there's a good chance we saw it yesterday the futures are up this morning we should get a nice pop I see Europe is up 1% plus across the board generally speaking the US tends to follow Europe so that would suggest we should be up in the neighborhood of 1% today as well I think yesterday was probably the latest trading cycle low and I think from this point we're going to power higher and in the blink of an eye we're going to be back in record high territory well we're really close that's for sure we're within a heartbeat of just about everything this morning with the budget you know you don't follow any fundamental news I'm pretty sure right I mean you don't really care about that kind of stuff is that correct well well no I follow the news very I watch the news every night and weekends you know I watch it very very closely of course the United Kingdom just elected a new Prime Minister overnight Boris Johnson and here on the side of the pond the US Congress reached a resolution basically suspending the debt ceiling for the next couple of years so hey the party goes on borrow, borrow, spend, spend and give the bill to our grandkids I just don't understand you know we stop and think how much debt that's out there it's just really totally amazing I mean when you look at student debt not alone and you know houses and everything else and credit cards boy it's it's really a debt society boy that's for sure Stan when you when you're watching the news do you watch how the market reacts to the news is that what you're really you're not looking for fundamentals I don't know that but you're watching basically to see how the market reacts to news is that correct well Larry yeah I watch the news that always have I'm a former naval officer and you know that's my I have a worldly outlook on things but in terms of my market analysis I'm a 100% technician my undergraduate degree is in aerospace engineering so I look at the market as an engineer I crunch numbers I try to be forward-looking I try to be predictive and not reactive and that's why I do technical analysis like you and all our viewers I do a lot of work with market cycles try to model them mathematically use them as a forward predictive tool and try to stay ahead of the game I think we first met in I believe 1979 or 80 wasn't it Stan do you remember we were having those meetings down in the LA area you and I were back in the Los Angeles area eons ago we were both the foundation for the study cycles for years I was the president of the market analysts of Southern California I invited you a couple of times to speak to our group we had a great meeting there that's where you and I got to know each other pretty well I remember that Joe DiNapoli was part of that group he had some of those guys man it's been a lot of some of them are still around still able to take nourishment Stan what about the market internals are really holding up well aren't they really solid Larry I look at advances in the clients new highs, new lows, unchanged issues I put them into several spreadsheets plot them, graph them analyze them the advanced decline line which is probably the most common technical indicator which tracks each day's net difference between advancing issues and declining issues and by making a running summation of that computation one can construct the advanced decline line that indicator just made a new all-time high and as a general precept if the AD line is making new highs and that bodes well that suggests that the market is live and well we have no divergences there at all that AD lines and record high territory that tells me the popular averages are going to be following very very closely I also take the same data and massage it a little differently I do a 10 day 30 day advanced decline oscillator where I compute a 10 day and 30 day moving average of that same data plot that on the graph and it goes up above and below the zero line it has been coming down hill the last several days while the popular averages have been going sideways boy as a bull that's exactly what I want to see the averages going sideways indicators coming downhill what that does it looks off the technical overbought condition and it sets the stage for the next push northbound and that's what we're about to see here I think new highs new lows new highs new lows look very positive and the last indicator I compute from that series is what I call my unchanged issues index or I look at the unchanged issues and compute a 10 and 30 day moving average of that data and it is poking up moving higher moving higher and that means the market's moving up so everything looks well for the bull market express I think we're going to power higher how about the gold Stan what are you seeing I am not positive on the gold market I share your views I heard you talking about a half hour ago your your feelings are the metals the gold may have made a top I believe gold has probably peaked out as well if it hasn't it's awfully dug on close we tend to make cycle highs about every 94 months 94 96 months in that range plus or minus and we are right now 94 months from the September 2011 high we're in zone cyclically for the next high in the metals complex and I think we should stall out here shortly and start heading south I just don't see a good reason to be positive on the metals complex silver has lag gold considerably in this latest move up and and the last well gold tends to make spike tops and rounded bottoms which is just the opposite of what the stock market does the stock market tends to make rounded tops and spike bottoms and we've had a blow off move in the metals here the last several days it's reminds me of your typical spike top in the metals complex so whether the high is in or not I can't say definitively I need to see the metals complex break down I'll be watching that very closely Stan thanks for joining us buddy we really appreciate it Stan Harley the Harley market letter all you have to do is just Google that Stan we'll have you on again soon okay my friend terrific look forward to it thank you we'll be right back folks<PHONE_NUMBER> if you're in the CD market and looking for a secure investment the Tiger First Mortgage Program may work for you the security for these first mortgages of the tax free zone in St. Petersburg, Florida the 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only $252 to celebrate we're having a special Tiger Dollar sale right now you can spend only $495 and we'll give you 200 extra Tiger Dollars so you'll end up with $695 Tiger Dollars which is the yearly price of The Gold Report Tiger Dollars can be used for any TfN newsletter or service this offer is open to new and current subscribers with gold making 6 year highs and gold mining equities trading higher this is a great time to sign up for The Gold Report at a dramatic savings for all the details visit the front page of TFNN.com this deal ends July 31st so don't miss out get your Tiger Dollars and sign up today for The Gold Report 900th issue sale will the S&P 500 continue to climb on US large cap stocks in either direction trade SPXL SPUU or SPXS directions daily S&P 500 bull and bear leveraged ETFs direction leveraged ETFs an investor should carefully consider a funds investment objective risks charges and expenses before investing a funds prospectus and summary prospectus contain 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butterfly pattern you know it's below the 78% level that's one of the negatives behind it but it is a it is a valid pattern and that's was taken two weeks to complete now excuse me it's a weekly chart so it's taken three months to complete so it's something to really kind of keep an eye on I haven't traded cotton in a long time but I'm certainly watching it just for the fact that it held this level of 62 cents a pound and that that was a very very important level remember back in 2016 cotton got down to 56 cents a pound before rallying to 96 cents a pound with that big ABCD pattern that's there and so keep an eye on the cotton it looks very interesting now one second please if we take a look someone's asking about copper you know I don't let's just take a quick look at the copper we got time to do that let's just get it up here and we'll bring it up here to take a quick look at the old red metal and I believe we had a buy in that and then would run up to a sell as I remember Mr. Z was trading both sides here we go HG let's get the daily up here it'll only take me one second to do this and yep it did complete a perfect ABCD well you'll be able to see this easy enough just to be just to be safe because it's a really nice one coming in it looks like exactly at the at the 50 percent level that's in fact exactly what it did so we'll take a look at the take a look at the copper here you'll see now that we're coming down there should be really strong support folks that we're 270 right now in the copper a two cents lower will be a very important spot that's going to be the 61 percent retracement from the low of June 8 where we went up and completed the ABCD we've dropped we've dropped ten cents in three days in the copper part of that was the fact that you know we had that high last Thursday in the metals that was gold silver everything was going nuts with the drop in open interest I might add and now we're backing off a little bit folks if we ever get below 255 that is going to be a very negative sign for copper on the long term charts because that would mean you're going to get down into that 230 level let me just bring this to your attention so you can see it a little bit easier just give me a second here to get it up here you'll see here on this weekly copper chart if we get below that 262 level you're looking at an ABCD structure that's going to take you back to the 2016 lows at $2.10 a pound and remember cotton excuse me copper moves a lot you can see what's happened from 2011 we went from 460 a pound down to 210 up to 330 and you know now we're in the midst of that range right now holding pretty good support at that 262 level but it must hold that 262 otherwise there's trouble in river city and you're going to be looking at something you know really really negative keep another one to watch is the crude oil folks because we're having problems with the stuff about all this thing that's going on with the UK tankers in Iran and the straits of our moves and all that stuff but the market's not acting very bullish given that bullish type news you know when crude oil is moving up strongly an event like that will send crude oil $2 a barrel in a heartbeat and crude oil moves $1,000 a day like nothing it's just like breathing for crude oil because it jumps around so much so it's a great thing for trading because it follows the patterns and the ratio is quite nicely but you got to know what you're doing in that market and we're running up to some pretty significant correction areas here at 5560 that was a low last night that was a major Fibonacci number coming off of last Thursday's low anything below that would suggest lower prices and the other one would be the downside several people have asked me here just chatting this morning about what I mentioned about the gold why I thought 11 excuse me 1430 was so important folks that's part of the you know the number of sequences that I look at if it gets above that number it's telling me that the market has changed direction as long as we don't get above 1430 that's telling me that we're still heading down we're trading at 1425 and a half right now in the August gold and so as long as we don't get above that 1431 level we have a bias to the downside in the gold market so that's what it looks like I'm just a technician I know anything about the fundamentals don't want to know trying not to follow them because I don't understand them so that's the main thing now we're getting the bonds breaking really badly this morning we're getting down to very very significant support here on a short term basis at this 114.07 level we just hit 114.08 watch that 114.06 that's a really important number there's an ABCD structure I can put this up and let you folks take a look at it shut the front door and raise the rent we'll be able to take a look here and you'll be able to see it really easy easy breezy hold on we'll get it up here time out take a little time out here this isn't a Bradley turn date Tucker I do not believe if you give me a second I can I can post that because I did that over the weekend I believe I did oh no by golly I didn't did I shut the front door I'll be darned I thought that I did that for the Bradley no the key date in the Bradley is August the 11th and August the 25th Tucker those are the key dates I had those written down here that those are the ones and I think the 11th well that was a big one here that's August I'm still in July so I don't have those numbers in front of me right now but it's August the 11th and the 25th August 25th is very important because that's a big anniversary date that was the high of the market in 1987 that was harmonic convergence we had five planets in the sign of Leo and no no in the sign of the cancer I believe the one after cancer I don't even understand which one of these of the zodiac which one we're looking at it's the one right after which one is it what's the one right after Leo it is can't no cancer is the one before I'll never mind anyway it's August 25th big anniversary date that was the high of the market that was also the day that the fellow that did the three peaks in a domed house George Lindsay he passed away on that day the high of the market and he this only fitting to be on a high day like that because he was a really a great technician he was on Louis Ruegeiser quite a bit and really a very flamboyant but he certainly understood the markets with a great deal of depth folks pay very close attention here to this British pound because it's could break really really badly here just like the Euro we get that Euro below 111 folks it's going to have 109 108 105 written all over it because that's going to break long term weekly stuff that we've talked about here on the show quite a bit so those are the key ones today to look at I know the stock markets up with all the news and things but pay attention to those currencies because follow the money<PHONE_NUMBER> I'm certain you are or strive to be one of the best of the best at everything you do in life it's the most common trait that we tigers and tigers share if you're looking to become the best of the best when it comes to managing your money let me teach you to do what most wealth managers tell you can't be done which is how to time the markets I'm Steve Rhodes author of Mastering Probability and for the last 12 months Timer Digest has been tracking my newsletter signals which have earned me the ranking as their number one market timer in the nation for the S&P 500 for the last 12, 6 and 3 months Timer Digest also ranks me as the number one market timer for gold as well the fact is markets can be timed and I'll teach you the exact set of tools that I use that has transformed me into one of the best at what I do sign up for Mastering Probability today by clicking on the newsletter tab on the homepage of TFNN.com and get immediate access to workshops where I take you step by step how to use an extraordinary set of tools as well as provide great market calls too sign up today looking to gain a competitive informational edge in today's markets TFNN newsletters cover every aspect of the markets to offer you the very latest in market news plus new subscribers get to test drive our newsletters risk free for 30 days from all aspects of the markets including stocks, bonds, metals, commodities and tech there's a newsletter to fit your needs exclusively from TFNN stay informed each day you trade and get the competitive edge that will help you stay ahead of the game visit our newsletters page by going to TFNN.com and click the newsletters button near the top of the page TFNN.com educating investors since 1984 Basil Chapman has been using the Chapman Wave methodology to advise traders of his expert market opinion while originally hand drawing charts from the late 1970s into the 1980s Basil noticed that prices under most circumstances virtually always had a certain number of legs to the upside before declining sharply later Basil found that computer software which included the standard market technical indicators enhanced the degree of accuracy in calling price turns as well as market trend calls thus was born the Chapman Wave sequence using the Chapman Wave methodology along with other indicators Basil Chapman advises his subscribers of his expert market opinion and he also helps to encourage market day with his opening call newsletter right now you can get a 2 week free trial to the opening call Basil's daily trading newsletter by visiting the front page of TFNN.com cancel it any time during that trial and pay absolutely nothing get your 2 week free trial to Basil's newsletter the opening call today by visiting TFNN.com this segment is brought to you by Think or Swim for more information just click on the link in the description below and then .com Okay folks we're winding up the show here today remember we have Rich Anderson on tomorrow on Thursday we have Tim boss and on Friday we have a special program with Bill Meridian cycles research Vienna Austria he's going to be on for both segments he feels it's that important he asked if he could do that and when Bill asked for something like that he must know what he's talking about because he really knows what he's what he's talking about okay regarding the grain markets folks you know we're down a little bit again the grains are starting to sell off we got such an incredible signal coming here in the corn here so pay close attention those of you that are in the 24-7 family which we really thank you very much for supporting us this is how we keep these doors open here at TFNN so the support is really great but watch the corn in here the bond position is working very very well so let's keep short those bonds I think we still got a little bit more to go to the downside even though we've had major resistance this more support here at that 15407 level below 154 folks is not good that's what it looks like of course but these are the things that we've got moving forward this week going to be very very active the volatile index that we talked about is going to get more and more volatile so start to begin to look at that the British pound I'll remember one more time folks we're down here at this level of this 124 and change level anything below 124 even we're trading 124 44 right now signals that we're going to be heading down even a lot lower much like we're looking at with the euro we're trading at 111 60 111 60 in the euro and it appears that we are heading lower but the key level in the euro is 111 0000 111 below that that's where the real problem lies that's where that double bottom is that's where the 1.618 expansion where the 1.27 all lines up that's what we're looking at so live every day in an attitude of gratitude and may god bless