In Part 1 of this post, I pointed out that an economy is closely linked with the resources that underly it. Because of this, if there is really is a limit that prevents oil supply from rising endlessly, then there is also a limit that prevents debt from rising endlessly. I talked about seeing a two-way link between peak oil and peak debt:
1. Peak oil tends to cause peak debt. This is what I discussed in Part 1.
2. Once debt growth peaks (shifts from growth to decline), we can expect a feed-back loop that will tend to make post-peak oil supply decline even more rapidly than it would otherwise.
It is this second point I want to discuss today.
The basic issue is that more debt tends to cause more demand, and thus higher oil prices. At these higher oil prices, oil tends to get pumped out more quickly than it would otherwise. But once a shift occurs from increasing credit availability to reduced credit availability, as it does about the time peak oil production is reached, then prices for all types of commodities tend drop. At these lower prices, oil production drops off more quickly than it would have otherwise.
Let me elaborate a bit.
The Cheese-Slicer Model
We know that there is a cycle that permits oil production, that gradually changes over time. Professor Charles Hall has represented this cycle with his Cheese-Slicer Model. In 1970 he shows this view:
Figure 1. Professor Charles Hall's cheese slicer model of the economy, reflecting the energy needed to make energy, and other aspects of the economy at 1970
As of 2030, he shows the model:
Figure 2. Professor Charles Hall's cheese slicer model of the economy, reflecting the energy needed to make energy, and other aspects of the economy at 2030.
What happens is that as we extract oil, we use some of it for investment (top big arrow with purple and blue) and some of it for consumption (arrows straight to the right).
Over time, as the “easy to extract” resources are exhausted, we have to use a larger portion of the oil that is extracted oil (1) to obtain additional oil (top dark blue arrow) and also (2) to repair the infrastructure we have built up over the years, like highways and water supply and electric power transmission lines (medium blue arrow second from the top). Since these arrows get bigger, there is less oil available for discretionary investment in manufacturing facilities for things like cars and new iPods (top red arrow).
As the size of this investment arrow grows, the size of the square orange “consumption” box gets squeezed. The size of the green arrow pointed down, called “staples” stays relatively the same size, but the size of the red arrow, called “discretionary” (for things like new cars, and trips to restaurants, and vacation trips) gets smaller.
With this scenario, discretionary goods and services we get from oil energy goes down over time. This relationship holds on a percentage basis, relative to the oil in the system. We are likely not to notice this issue much when total oil supply is rising, because total supply available remains fairly adequate. Even if oil supply is flat, this downward drift may not be too noticeable, because a shift toward greater efficiency, or a switch of some users from oil to electricity, can help cover a small drift toward less available oil for consumption.
The biggest impact of the shift shown in Figures 1 and 2 is post-peak, when users are faced with a combination of (1) declining oil consumption and (2) greater percentages needed for non-discretionary items. Thus, it is likely to be something we experience more in the future than we have to date.
Impact of Rising Debt on the Model
The model is set up based on the amount of energy coming through the system. In the real world, though, there are monetary transactions involved. These monetary transactions involved consider not only the oil that has come through the system, but also considerable lending based on the expectation of future energy resources and the goods they will produce.
In a situation with rising debt, people have more money to spend. Consumers can take out an auto loan to buy an auto; investors can take out a loan to build a new manufacturing facility, or to drill for oil and gas. It is not necessary to wait and see how much really comes though the cheese slicer, in terms of the materials that are generated by the operation of the cheese slicer; it is possible to spend in advance.
Because of the availability of loans, the demand for new cars (and many other goods using oil) is higher than it would otherwise be, and the demand for oil to operate those new cars is higher than it would be. This keeps the price of oil higher than it otherwise would be, convincing marginal producers that prices are high enough for their operations. This keeps oil production higher than it would otherwise be, enabling the use of more oil for both investment and consumption. In a sense, what the additional debt does is make the world look like it is at an earlier year in Prof. Hall’s Cheese Slicer models than is really the case.
So suppose we are in 2011, but because of rising debt, it still feels like we are in the 1991 version of the cheese slicer model. What happens when instead of rising debt, the situation suddenly changes to falling debt? Then many people can no longer get loans to buy new cars, and they cannot afford to go on the vacation trips of their dreams. It becomes more difficult for businesses to invest in new plants and equipment.
Because there is less economic activity, the price of oil drops. Suddenly, investments in oil which previously looked profitable, no longer look profitable. We find ourselves moving out on the years of the cheese slicer. As long as there is some debt, it helps keep demand up. So maybe we move rather suddenly from 1991 to 2001 in the cheese slicer models, when we really are at 2011.
As debt declines, the cheese slicer model gets more and more “gummed up.” It becomes more and more difficult to make investments, because investment funds need to come from accumulated profits, rather than be borrowed in advance. Potential consumer find it more difficult to buy cars and houses and new appliances, because they have to wait until they have accumulated funds.
These reasons are the primary ones for my statement at the beginning of the post that the switch from increasing debt to decreasing debt will tend to make the downslope steeper.
I should mention that there may be some other reasons that will also tend to reduce people’s ability to buy oil, besides the cutback in debt. As you will recall, the reason for the cutback in lending was related to higher oil prices causing businesses to raise prices on many types of goods, and requiring people to cut back on discretionary goods of all kinds–the types of changes that go with recession (see Part 1). In a finite world, oil supply shortages are likely to get worse over time. Other non-renewable resource may also be in short supply, as limits are reached on other resources, such as fresh water from aquifers that replenish very slowly. These issues are likely to make the recessionary influences worse over time. If many people are without work because of recession, they will find it impossible to accumulate funds to afford expensive new consumer goods. This lack of income will tend to produce a similar effect, namely reduced demand for oil products, and a move to lower outputs of the type expected in a later year of the cheese slicer model.
I should also note that a major cutback in debt is likely to affect all aspects of the economy–not just oil and gas. I wrote a post in late 2008 called Impact of the Credit Crisis on the Energy Industry – Where Are We Now? In it, I surveyed all of the kinds of energy, from oil to gas to coal to uranium, and all of the prices were down, because of the credit contraction at that time. In retrospect, we find that even electricity use was down. US electricity generation showed a 5% dip between 2007 and 2009, instead of the 3.5% growth that might have been expected in that two-year period, in the absence of recession.
A Partial Offset
If we are moving from an expanding to a contracting resource base, saving and spending behaviors are likely also to change.
Figure 3. Two views of future growth
One reason for a change in savings and spending behavior is obvious–if there are more resources to buy now than later, it might be better to buy now while goods and services are available. Furthermore, if the economy is really declining, money will cease to be a store of value, in the way it is today, because less goods and services will be produced in the future than today. In this environment, it might make sense to spend money rather than save it, especially if it can be invested in something of long-term value to the person with excess funds.
There is a second reason for a change in savings patterns. There is a tie between debt and savings. The debt of one person is for the most part the savings of someone else. A bond sold by a company as financing for its debt may end up in someone’s pension fund, or on the balance sheet of an insurance company. To the extent that there is less in the way of debt, there is also going to be less in the way of savings.
With peak oil, what is likely to happen is that the default rate on existing debt will rise, so many people who own bonds (or other debt instruments) will discover that they are worth less than they thought, perhaps nothing. And banks and insurance companies and pension plans will discover that quite a few of their assets aren’t what they thought–they will never be repaid with interest.
In this environment, the world will change. Insurance companies are likely to stop selling annuities, because they really can’t make good on long-term promises any more, if there are too many debt defaults. Pension plans will become uncommon. People will figure out that they really can’t save very well for retirement–they will have to depend on their friends or relatives, or perhaps a government program funded by taxes.
In this environment, buying patterns will change. People with money may decide to take a vacation trip now, rather than waiting until later. They may make other choices as well–they may try to buy more land, for example. It may be that the price of land for farming is bid up. They may buy tools for working the land. With these new buying patterns, some of the demand for oil and other fuels may return.
The reason why this activity is not likely to completely offset the current bidding up of energy prices with debt is because quite a bit of current debt may ultimately vanish as worthless. It was created using assumptions that held at a different time–back when the economy was fueled with cheap oil–but are not valid any more. Prices of homes have dropped, so huge mortgages on them no longer make sense. Bonds from companies (and countries) in financial distress will not be paid back, especially if we stumble back into recession. We don’t know yet how this will play out, but we can see distress signs around the world, suggesting that more defaults are not far away.
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Once it becomes obvious that world oil output has begun to decline, the oil market will change radically from what it is today. Imagine that you are one of the few oil exporting countries. Would you keep producing as much oil as you could, knowing that, as time passes, it will become ever more valuable? (Remember that, unlike today, there will be no shut-in surplus oil production. Everyone is pumping full out. You cut back, and the price goes up within a few weeks.) I wouldn’t. I would start selling the stuff by the liter. As long as I kept my price a bit below what it cost you to make a liquid fuel from natural gas or coal (Good luck trying to make enough, and it won’t be cheap. I hope the Chinese will lend you the trillions you will need to build all those plants very quickly. You might want to start construction tomorrow because it takes 4 years to finish one big one. Ask Shell.) you would be forced to buy from greedy me. I would get incredibly rich. You would live at a subsistence level because the damage to your economy from demand destruction of just about everything, as the oil price keeps going up, will be profound.
Those people who believe that there will be a gentle ride down the right side of the oil production graph are in for a big surprise. (Kind of like that sub-prime real estate bubble thing.) We should be storing as much oil in salt domes as we can get, while we can still get it, not selling it in a doomed attempt to lower the price. All that is doing is jumping into the Thunderbird with Thelma & Louise.
I could be wrong. I hope so.
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With all due respect to the folks who took the trouble to find out how much coal and oil were left, I feel compelled to point out a few issues with the information.
As a coal, oil or gas company, your odds on obtaining financing are better if you:
A) Underestimate your findings
B) Overestimate your findings
I think we know the answer here, don’t we?
If you don’t need financing (e.g. BP), your stock price goes up on the announcement of new findings if you:
A) Underestimate your findings
B) Overestimate your findings
I think we know the answer here too.
But let’s say that the findings for coal and oil and gas are all correct. Does this get us out of the woods? Unfortunately, I’d have to say, “Probably not.”
No estimate I can find from *any* source really shows two things accurately.
1) Estimated price of refined products over time
2) Energy return over time
Oil, gas and coal look fungible because by the time they’re cleaned up and put on the market, they are fungible in terms of price. This hides a rather unpleasant truth. There’s a HUGE variation in both energy return and cost associated with locating, extracting, refining and distributing hydrocarbon fuels.
For example, heavy sour crude from the Orinoco basin is in no way comparable to light sweet crude from Saudi Arabia. Orinoco hydrocarbons are much more expensive to locate, extract (much of the field is in deep water) and refine (http://geology.com/usgs/venezuela-heavy-oil/). Energy return too, while still positive, is nowhere near the 100:1 ratio of Texas oilfields in the 50s and 60s.
Unfortunately, when it comes to exploiting hydrocarbons, the devil is in the details, and he remains quite comfortable there.
Thanks! After a while looking at these things, it is easy to see a pattern developing, isn’t there.
Newspapers like to have a happy story to tell. Economists have had the story wrong for so long, they can’t seem to get it straight now. It is embarrassing to admit a past complicated theory was wrong.
Along with all that has been said above, there remains the steady ticking of the world’s demographic clock. This year we’ll experience another 140 million births and another 60 million deaths, giving us a net gain of at least another 80 million people. Today demography is more critical than ever to a system in which most economists continue to use nineteenth century models to understand twenty-first century problems.
Hi Gary,
I think you know from past comments that I completely agree with your POV. However, with no overt intention to depress you, I heard a bit on Wisconsin Public Radio that should depress both of us. There is this guy, Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics, George Mason University who is advocating the merits of having more babies. He is the author of, “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think.”
As I was pretty much unable to escape the radio, I listened to some of his pitch and responses to call-in listener questions. His basic premise is that the world greatly benefits from having more humans. More humans (in his delusional mind) raises the odds that a new world-class genius will be born who will solve all of our energy, climate, environmental, etc problems. And besides which, having a big family is a happy thing.
Misguided characters like this, along with religious fundamentalists like the Quiver Full folks (http://www.quiverfull.com/ ) and the millions of “Right to Life” people, many of whom who now want to outlaw even birth control methods, are the reasons that the “demographic clock” will tick on.
What I would like to know: How can we better predict how the economy will respond to declining oil supplies? What clues are available that we are ignoring?
To put it another way: What questions would you like to find answers for that would enable you to refine your model? For example:
– When will a US President admit to the reality of Peak Oil? When will leaders of the opposition party do the same? We need mainstream admission in order to take bigger steps to adjust to it.
– Will we be fighting declining natural gas production at the same time?
– How fast will global oil production decline if the financial system doesn’t become an obstacle to new oil field development?
– Do the oil companies even need functional banks? Or just high oil prices?
– Will lack of auto financing become a major obstacle to downshifts into much smaller cars?
– Can apartment building construction reduce commuting distances? Or will insufficient construction loan credit be available?
Perhaps I am a worrier, but I worry about the financial situation, and how it will all work out. Perhaps the “can” can be kicked down the road another few months. There are huge problems right now–food prices too high, causing the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, governments around the world having problems with debt, underfunded pensions programs.
I don’t think the oil supply situation really has to deteriorate from where it is today, to run into big problems. It is just that the big problems have been mostly moved over to the governmental sector, where they are less obvious. Also, the “lack of demand” that economists talk about is really related to high oil prices. When people are paying the current price for oil, they have to cut back on discretionary spending, that this tends to cause recession and more debt defaults.
I talked about the ways I see that countries can get rid of debt defaults in How can a government fix its debt problem? I don’t see a good way out. Collapse of some major governments could take place, without a deterioration in the oil supply situation from where we are now. I don’t think that any major leaders have to admit to peak oil. The problems with debt are likely to make natural gas decline with oil.
Australia’s Steve Keen is one our best and most financially realistic economists. He is heavily critical of neoclassical economics and sees rising debt (and the financial deregulaton that caused it) as one of our keyproblem areas. He models the financial instability of the system and bases some his work on the insights of Hyman Minsky. Steve Keen was one of only about 13 economists to predict the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008. His predictions were based on the insupportable nature of exponential growth in debt.
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/
His June 11 post “Dude, Where is My Recovery!” has some excellent graphical analysis of the situation in Australia and the US. Essentially, his work backs up everything Gail says on the financial side. The thing about Keen’s work is that is meticulous, empirically sound and based on complex matehmatical modelling using differential equations. It is not ideologically driven. Keen has less to say about resource depletion as that is not his focus.
Andrew wrote “They will all continue to misinform, mislead, and run this ship into the ground, all the while professing how smart they all are.”
The point of Gail’s analysis and almost all the commenters is that the ship IS going to hit the iceberg regardless of leadership action. Our leadership institutions know this. As individuals, the worst thing we can do is complain about the captain and his crew. We must prepare for impact and community response.
Stop acquiring gadgets and services that won’t work without power, internet access or frequent replacement. Even if these inputs are available in the future, you may not be able to afford them.
Acquire the tools, materials, and skills that your grandparents had. Acquire the highest quality tools for generations of use.
Reduce, reuse, REPAIR, and finally recycle.
Plant a vegetable garden. Learn to can/preserve/dry/extract. Learn to cook.
Learn first-aid and folk medicine. Learn to safely forage for food or medicinal herbs. Start planting important plants in your landscaping now.
Get seriously fit.
Collect paper books. You will learn and the learning will be available to others.
Build community with neighbors. Even Rambo has it easier with a few trusted partners.
Finally, view these items as a lifestyle change rather than a checklist. As a checklist, these activities are too much to take on. But if you start changing the way you live you may find something peaceful, rewarding and reliable.
Sorry Ed,don’t know where you got your figures but our oil sands will barely supply Canada in the near future,not to mention the USA in 60 years!LOL!
Coal is no substitute for oil either but with exponential growth it doesn’t matter how much is left(hint not as much as they tell you)
You are in denial about the decline but that is not uncommon unfortunately.
And don’t start with the Thorium reactors.
The US has 218 GT of coal the current use rate is 1 GT per year. The energy in the 218 GT of coal is 4E21 joules. The US uses 1E19 joules per year. So that is 400 years if we do not take into account exponentially rising usage.
OK lets leave Canada out of it. The Orinoco tar sands hold 1200 billion barrel according to Wikipedia. If we have to use half of it to power the extraction of the other half that is still 600 billion barrels. The US uses 7 billion barrels per year so 85 years before we take into account exponential increase in usage.
Sorry math disaster. Make that 1E20 joules per year for the US. So 40 year if US run 100% on coal. No exponential growth due to uncontrolled immigration at 1% per year taken into account.
Gail, wonderful analysis. But as the wise people say, always look for negatives in your model. You can always find supporting data points but the presence of even one conflicting data point weakens your assumption severely.
What do you think are the conflicts in this model ? In which case would it fail ?
I think the danger is that things fall apart politically fairly quickly, when there is a downslope, because people cannot stand cutbacks in programs and rising taxes. I see the danger a central government either disappearing, or being taken over by something totally different from today. If the US “falls apart” into 50 states, some of whom regroup, we are very badly off, very quickly. See How Can a Government Fix its Debt Problem?
This is a realistic summation of how the economy works. That is only part of the real story. It is based on the presumption that civilization can plunder natural wealth without paying the ecological price. Society has got away with that unsustainable process until now because of the abundance of natural capital, including oil. That divestment of natural wealth cannot continue. Peak oil will have the type of impact mentioned but peak minerals, aquifer water and fertile top soil will accentuate the decline. So will the irreversible rapid climate change and degradation of the marine ecosystem. The combination of these factors will provide a powerful symptom of the malaise caused by the belief in money promoting economic growth – without paying for it.
You have summarized the other issues very well. It is not just oil, it is everything else. Somehow, we will have to live with this.
Gail, the sad thing about all of this to me is I would not be surprised if when this is all said and done humanity still hasn’t figured out why they went from living better than 15th century kings (even the poorest of the poor in America, excluding those with mental issues that end up on the streets by “choice”) to living like we did before the fossil fuel fueled industrial revolution. History will likely blame everything from bankers to politicians to outsourcing to wealth disparity so on and so on and never really accept or understand what really has happened. I think this is because:
1) people are somewhat delusional in their thinking and separated from the hard realities our ancestors had and refuse to believe that we could ever return to this
2) the combination of sciences and other various disciplines one has to have at least a basic knowledge in makes it really hard to understand this for most people…even with you simple explanations of it. Many people don’t even want to look at the data and are dismissive because there have been so many “doomer” theories out there that have ended up debunked or did not happen EXACTLY the way someone said they would (the danger of making ANY predictions)
Ultimately, this makes me question history as it is written. You have the elites leading and either ignorant of this or feigning ignorance, you have the masses who are content blaming speculators, the rich, oil companies and anyone else out there and their politicians who apparently have no clue either. They will all continue to misinform, mislead, and run this ship into the ground, all the while professing how smart they all are. Ug.
North America is investing in coal and Canadian tar sand oil. This should be enough to keep North America going for 60 years. China is investing in every energy source in sight. I am interested to see what the Germans choose to invest in after nuclear. The oil exports of the ME have plans for dozens of nuclear generators. True I see no sustainable solution yet but there are some acts being taken.
“Going” is an interesting term. If you mean, small amounts of burnable hydrocarbons that can at least be used locally, then you’re probably right. The USA, however, chews through about 40 exajoules of energy a year provided by oil. I’m skeptical that all of the gas and oil sands put together is going to be able to make up for that. Do you have sources available to show this in terms of total energy, independently generated reservoir recovery estimates and EROEI? Without these, I’m just not sure how those claims can be validated.
The answer is coal and gas
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,774203,00.html
using conservation dollars (efficiency) according to the article.
It will be fascinating world to have german engineers turn off their nukes and then have saudi/pakistani, omani, whatever engineers running newly designed nukes to the south of them. Should make for a much safer world……
Experts used to tell us that $14/barrel, would signal the end of oil, because that price alternatives would be cheaper and become more abundant. Year after year, that price has been adjusted upwards.
I think you’re making the assumption that investments always produce rewards. This is known as, “Counting your chickens before they hatch.”.
Tar sands have reached their limits in yearly production. There is now serious competition for water between the tar sands, agricultural, industrial and residential uses.
In the case of coal, we’ve already gotten all of the easy high quality coal. We’ll keep removing mountains to produce coal, but the costs will keep rising as the returns diminish.
I think human history is mostly a story of natural resource discovery, exploitation, exhaustion, and responding to changing natural forces like climate. Leaders, political beliefs, religion, and philosophy had very little to do with it. On the issues that matter we are not much different than yeast. This stands to reason since we are constructed from similar underlying replicators which have identical objectives: capture as much energy as possible to maximum reproduction.
You are right. It is quite possible that it will not really look like an oil supply /natural resource supply problem, unless people are looking that direction.
I overestimated the ability of mainstream commentators to catch on to Peak Oil. We are up around $100 per barrel for an extended period and we’ve been much higher. Yet Peak Oil is still very much an issue discussed on the fringe.
Will declining global annual oil production still get treated as a consequence rather than as a cause of economic contraction? Will even smarter people really remain that clueless?
I think we would have found much more responsive audiences if instead of talking about “peak oil,” we talked about high oil prices harming the economy, and the easy (low-priced) oil mostly being extracted.
I see the major issue as financial meltdown. Peak oil, as it is normally talked about, isn’t really the issue. What we are headed for is more of an overshoot and collapse scenario, when the financial system cannot deal with high oil prices. The story about 50% left at the time decline begins is simply a myth, based on the assumption that geology is the controlling factor for world extraction. It’s not–it is the fact that the economy cannot stand high oil prices / which is more or less equivalent to low EROI oil.
Hear, hear. Well put.
More or less, what’s in a symbol? People in the PO community seem to care about first movers, but most people relate to the world in a more direct, visceral manner.
You can’t make predictive equations (in order to plan for the future) from immediate stimulus, or economic data, however.
Since systems interrelate, you can’t make them from purely geologic factors, either so it’s like three columns, political-economic-geologic. A breakdown of any will drastically change the landscape.
I can see the points you are making, but it seems to me you are making an approximation which is neither necessarily accurate nor always justified: ‘The size of the green arrow pointed down, called “staples” stays relatively the same size, but the size of the red arrow, called “discretionary” (for things like new cars, and trips to restaurants, and vacation trips) gets smaller.’
Discretionary spending is not necessarily in lockstep with energy consumption. If I spend $1000 on a return flight to Orlando, a large part of my expenditure is paying for energy usage. On the other hand, if I spend the same amount of money to buy piano lessons from the musician who lives two blocks away, very little additional energy is used. But it is the same amount of discretionary expenditure.
Surely as the cost of energy increases more and more of discretionary expenditure will be directed at low energy (but not necessarily inexpensive) services. Perhaps we will see a revival of small traveling theatrical troupes performing in small local venues, rather than audiences of thousands converging on giant theaters from hundreds of miles away to watch famous performers.
There are many other examples I could give. If I enjoy being on the water, I could spend a day traveling in a new fast motorboat, burning twenty or thirty gallons of gasoline per hour and effectively using a significant amount of the embodied energy in the boat; or I could spend the day on a forty-year-old sailboat, using practically no fuel and a minute fraction of the embodied energy in the boat. But both of these activities are “a day on the water”.
All of the changes you suggest take energy in themselves. That is why it is not easy to move away from our energy usage. Also, there are things we don’t think of–airlines and banks and utility companies all have to stay solvent, for example. (Maybe governments can bail out banks, but then we still have the need for the governments to stay solvent. What looks like a fix to one part of the problem can easily cause difficulty elsewhere in the system.
Essentially correct, though I would have described it a little differently. I think what you’re seeing is what I call “oil price feedback.” As oil prices become less elastic, high oil prices increase the price of all oil-dependent products and activities, including the price of of locating, extracting, refining and distributing oil. At a certain point of inelasticity, high oil prices feed on themselves, crash the economy, go down (but never to their prior level in real terms), and eventually climb back up, in ever steeper and more frequent price spikes. The effects on a just-in-time manufacturing supply chain are disastrous, of course, and this is what will probably end the use of oil as a major energy player.
Well done Gail! Probably the best summary on this topic I’ve seen.
There is I think an additional important dimension to the puzzle. Governments are and will attempt to prevent the economy from deflating by quantitative easing (printing money). How will these additional claims on underlying resources affect the outcome? I think we will see falling incomes, falling prices and demand for discretionary items and items normally purchased with credit (housing, cars, equities), and rising prices for items you need to survive (food, energy).
Quantitative Easing consists of printing money (easy to understand) and undermining returns on new investments (e.g. depressing interest rates, raising the immediate prices of existing assets so futures returns are lower, etc.).
These outcomes can help institutional investors if they can participate in the mechanics of Quantitative Easing (viz. the “Primary Dealers” on Wall Street) but they hurt everyone else’s savings through decreased return and increased inflation.
Quantitative Easing is employment neutral unless there is a need for liquid cash in the broad economy. For example QE helps if I’d like to build a new factory (and hire more employees) but all of my cash is tied up in inventory, capital investments, or frozen MBS assets. But if companies are already flush with cash, QE doesn’t really help employment.
Quantitative Easing prevents prices from deflating, but may or may not stimulate economic activity. High prices and no employment change is a frightening possibility.
I am not sure that the governments will really be able to get away with QE for too long. Holders of the debt will become more and more worried about it quality, and interest rates will rise (unless all the country buys all of its own debt). Countries with huge amounts of debt will find these higher interest rates difficult to manage.
And as I said in the comment that “step back” quotes, “The problem is that we need real things, like food, and clothing, and shoes, healthcare, and gasoline for vehicles. Governments can’t print these.”
Gail:
What you describe is a world of increased leverage (a very large system, now supported by a smaller resource base, with increased concentration of the remaining resources) and increased volatility (fluctuating resource availability, fluctuating resource demand, and fluctuating currency values).
There are two ways to be successful in this world: (i) be a capital preserver, investing all of your currency in hard assets with assured utility; or (ii) be a volatility trader, reading the tea leaves and capitalizing on the suffering of others.
In any case this world is not conducive to saving in the traditional sense. And insurance is just pooled savings with specifically identified risks (like spending savings on a new house if yours burns down) spread out across the pool. All of this means increased risk to the individual and emphasizes the importance of making more “historical” investments in things like your children’s trade, arranged marriages, a generational family home, etc.
That is a good point. Some old values may come back.