The traditional understanding of supply and demand works in some limited cases–will a manufacturer make red dresses or blue dresses? The manufacturer’s choice doesn’t make much difference to the economic system as a whole, except perhaps in the amount of red and blue dye sold, so it is easy to accommodate.
Figure 1. From Wikipedia: The price P of a product is determined by a balance between production at each price (supply S) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand D). The diagram shows a positive shift in demand from D1 to D2, resulting in an increase in price (P) and quantity sold (Q) of the product.
A gradual switch in consumer preferences from beef to chicken is also fairly easy to accommodate within the system, as more chicken producers are added and the number of beef producers is reduced. The transition is generally helped by the fact that it takes fewer resources to produce a pound of chicken meat than a pound of beef, so that the spendable income of consumers tends to go farther. Thus, while supply and demand are not independent in this example, a rising percentage of chicken consumption tends to be helpful in increasing the “quantity demanded,” because chicken is more affordable than beef. The lack of independence between supply and demand is in the “helpful” direction. It would be different if chicken were a lot more expensive to produce than beef. Then the quantity demanded would tend to decrease as the shift was increasingly made, putting a fairly quick end to the transition to the higher-priced substitute.
A gradual switch to higher-cost energy products, in a sense, works in the opposite direction to a switch from beef to chicken. Instead of taking fewer resources, it takes more resources, because we extracted the cheapest-to-extract energy products first. It takes more and more humans working in these industries to produce a given number of barrels of oil equivalent, or Btus of energy. The workers are becoming less efficient, but not because of any fault of their own. It is really the processes that are being used that are becoming less efficient–deeper wells, locations in the Arctic and other inhospitable climates, use of new procedures like hydraulic fracturing, use of chemicals for extraction that wouldn’t have been used in the past. The workers may be becoming more efficient at drilling one foot of pipe used for extraction; the problem is that so many more feet need to be drilled for extraction to take place. In addition, so many other steps need to take place that the overall process is becoming less efficient. The return on any kind of investment (human labor, US dollars of investment, steel invested, energy invested) is falling.
For a time, these increasing inefficiencies can be hidden from the system, and the prices of commodities can rise. At some point, however, the price rise becomes too great, and the system can no longer accommodate it. This is the situation we have been running into, most severely since mid-2014 for oil, but also for other commodities, dating back to 2011.
Figure 2. Bloomberg Commodity Index from Bloomberg, reflecting a combination of 22 ETFs in Energy (35%), Agriculture (29%), Industrial Metal (15%), Precious Metals (16%) and Livestock (5%)
The higher cost of producing oil and other energy products affects the economy more than a shift from chicken to beef.
The economy is in a sense more dependent on energy products than it is on our decision whether to eat chicken or beef. If the cost of producing oil rises, and that higher cost is carried through to prices, it affects the prices of many things. It affects the cost of food production because oil is used in the production and transport of food. The higher cost of oil also affects nearly all transported goods, since oil is our primary transportation fuel.
Some of the impacts of higher oil prices are clearly adverse for the economy.
If higher oil costs are passed on to consumers as higher prices, these higher prices make goods less affordable for consumers. As a result, they cut back on purchases, often leading to layoffs in discretionary sectors, and recession.
The higher cost of oil products (or of other energy products) also tends to reduce profits for businesses, unless they can find workarounds to keep costs down. Otherwise, businesses find themselves in a situation where customers cut back on purchasing their products. As we will discuss in a later section, this tends to lead to reduced wages.
Some of the impacts of higher oil prices are somewhat positive.
Rising oil prices clearly encourage rising oil production. With this, more jobs are added, both in the United States and elsewhere. More debt is added to extract this oil, and more equipment is purchased, thus stimulating industries that support oil production. The value of oil leases and oil properties tends to rise.
As noted previously, the cost of food supply depends on oil prices. The cost of producing metals also depends on oil prices, because oil is used in extracting metal ores. As the prices of metals and foods rise, these industries are stimulated as well. Values of mines rise, as do values of agricultural land. More debt is taken out, and more workers are hired. More equipment is purchased for producing these products, adding yet more stimulation to the economy.
The higher price of oil also favorably affects the many countries that extract oil. Part of this effect comes from the wages that the workers receive, and the impact these wages have, as they cycle through the economy. For example, workers will often want new homes, and the purchase of these new homes will add jobs as well. Part of the effect comes through taxes on oil production. Oil production tends to be very highly taxed, especially in parts of the world where oil extraction can be performed cheaply. This tax money can be put to work in public works programs, providing better schools and hospitals, and more jobs for citizens.
It is inevitable that the price of oil must stop rising at some point because of the adverse impact on spendable income of consumers.
The adverse impact of higher oil prices on the spendable income of consumers comes in many ways. Perhaps one of the biggest impacts, but the least obvious, is the “push” the higher cost of oil gives to moving manufacturing to locations with lower costs (cheaper fuel, such as coal, and lower wages), because without such a change, higher oil prices tend to lead to lower profits for many makers of goods and services, as mentioned previously.
The competition with lower-wage areas tends to reduce wages in the US and parts of Europe. This push is especially great for jobs that are easily transferred to other countries, such as jobs in manufacturing, “call-centers,” and computer tech support.
Another way businesses can maintain their profit levels, despite higher oil costs, is through greater automation. This automation reduces the number of jobs directly. Automation may use some oil, but because the cost of human labor is so high, it still reduces costs overall.
All of these effects lead to fewer jobs and lower wages, especially in the traditionally higher-wage countries. In a sense, what we are seeing is lower productivity of human labor feeding back as lower wages, if we think of the distribution of wages as being a worldwide wage distribution, including workers in places such as China and India.
Normally, greater productivity feeds back as higher wages, and higher wages help stimulate higher economic growth. Lower wages unfortunately seem to feed back in the reverse direction–less demand for goods that use energy in their production, such as new homes and cars. Ultimately, this seems to lead to economic contraction, and lower commodity prices. This is especially the case in the countries with the most wage loss.
The drop in oil prices doesn’t do very much to stop oil production.
Oil exporting countries typically have relatively low costs of production, but very high taxes. These taxes are necessary, because governments of oil exporters tend to be very dependent on oil companies for tax revenue. If the price of oil drops, the most adverse impact may be on tax revenue. As long as the price is high enough that it leads to the collection of some tax revenue, production will take place–in fact, production may even be increased. The government desperately needs the tax revenue.
Even oil companies in oil-importing countries have a need for revenue to pay back debt and to continue to pay their trained workers. Thus, these companies will continue to extract oil to the best of their ability. They will aim for the “sweet spots”–places that have better than average prospects for production. In some cases, companies will have derivative contracts that assure them of a high oil price for several months after the price drops, so there is no need to reduce production very quickly.
The drop in oil prices, and of commodity prices in general, makes debt harder to repay and discourages adding new debt.
We earlier noted that a rise in the price of commodities tends to make asset prices rise, making it easier to take out more debt, and thus stimulates the economy. A drop in the price of oil or other commodities does the opposite: it reduces asset prices, such as the price of the property containing the oil, or the farmland now producing less-expensive food. The amount of outstanding debt does not decline. Because of this mismatch, companies quickly find themselves with debt problems, especially if they need to take out additional loans for production to continue.
Another part of the problem is that on the way up, rising prices of oil and other commodities helped lift inflation rates, making debt easier to repay. On the way down, we get exactly the opposite effect–falling oil and other commodity prices lead to falling inflation rates, making debt more difficult to repay. Commodity prices in general have been falling since early 2011, leading to the situation where interest rates are now negative in some European countries.
The costs of producing commodities continue to rise, as a result of diminishing returns, so this fall in prices is clearly a problem. Low prices make future production unprofitable; it also leads to an increasing number of debt defaults. There are many examples of companies in financial difficulty; Chesapeake Energy is an example in the oil and gas industry.
Where oil supply and demand goes from here
The traditional view of the impact of low oil prices seems to be, “It is just another cycle.” Or, “The cure for low prices is low prices.”
I am doubtful that either of these views is right. Falling prices have been a problem for a wide range of commodities since 2011 (Figure 2, above). The Wall Street Journal reported that as early as 2013, when oil prices were still above $100 per barrel, none of the world’s “super major” oil companies covered its dividends with cash flow. Thus, if prices are to be sufficiently high that oil companies don’t need to keep going deeper into debt, a price of well over $100 per barrel is needed. We would need an oil price close to triple its current level. This would be a major challenge, especially if prices of other commodities also need to rise because production costs are higher than current prices.
We are familiar with illnesses: sometimes people bounce back; sometimes they don’t. Instead of expecting oil prices to bounce back, we should think of the current cycle as being different from past cycles because it relates to diminishing returns–in other words, the rising cost of production, because we extracted the cheapest-to-extract oil first. Trying to substitute oil that is high in cost to produce, for oil that is low in cost to produce, seems to bring on a fatal illness for the economy.
Because of the differing underlying cause compared to prior low-price cycles, we should expect oil prices to fall, perhaps to $20 per barrel or below, without much of a price recovery. We are now encountering the feared “Peak Oil,” because much of the cheap oil has already been extracted. Peak Oil doesn’t behave the way most people expected, though. The economy is a networked system, with high oil prices adversely affecting both wages and economic growth. Because of this, the symptoms of Peak Oil are the opposite of what most people have imagined: they are falling demand and prices below the cost of production.
If low prices don’t rise sufficiently, they can cut off oil production quite quickly–more quickly than high prices. The strategy of selling assets at depressed prices to new operators will have limited success, because much higher prices are needed to allow new operators to be successful.
Perhaps the most serious near-term problem from continued low prices is the likelihood of rising debt defaults. These debt defaults can be expected to have a very adverse impact on banks, pension plans, and insurance companies. Governments would likely have little ability to bail out these organizations because of the widespread nature of the problem and also because of their own high debt levels. As a result, the losses incurred by financial institutions seem likely be passed on to businesses and individual citizens, in one way or another.
I personally think America has become ungovernable. I reflected on this today.
America has become infuriating, and has become an all out assault on human decency. It’s totally out of control. Nobody who has taken a good long look at the situation can believe otherwise.
This doesn’t bode well for post peak dynamics. The rest of the world is scared out of their minds what an American implosion would mean, but that’s where we are headed. I personally think this is very serious, folks. Americans have become insane and stupid, and insane and stupid people cannot run the world. Somebody else is going to have to step up.
I think that those who believe that America survives, and the rest of the world can go to pot, are dead wrong. Maybe in the short term, but that’s it.
If it is true, that the power of QE and ZIRP tends to zero and low oil prices are resulting in less drilling, there will be a showdown in Syria within short time.
All the big players (except China) are involved now or will be involved within the next weeks. Also we germans attend to the conflict and we are in a hurry.
All parties have their backs up against a wall.
Global economy moves to a brink, war may be the result.
Am I to pessimistic? Alternatives?
Saludos
el mar
As always with the real world, there seems to be many things unfolding simultaneously.
The Russian strikes in Syria seemed to have been very effective. But even worse, there are rumors of Russia having a new weapon http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/10/russias-new-ray-gun-to-blind-enemies-in-syria/ if Russia is capable of blinding enemy radiocommunication and satellite visibility on a battlefield, then US seriously feels threatened. US hegemony relies on air supremacy, which could now be lost.
Turkey seems to be getting less stolen oil. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/russian-media-turkey-shot-down-warplane-protect-its-isis-oil Making president Erdogan very unhappy.
That would also mean that the big bad guys in the caves with the turbans aren´t getting money, which will probably decimate the so-called terrorist organization.
Now US seems to have one Nato member whose presidential family gets less stolen oil profits. One more superpower in the world, which US has not seen since 1992. And the bloody terrorists that everybody should supposedly be fighting, are running out of money, making the men in the caves run for the hills.
Extremely interesting to see what the crazy US neocons will think up next, they have been so used to solving everything with excessive use of money and force, but the darned economy seems to be failing also. And Russia will not tolerate excessive use of force. Since the guys in charge at the neocons have read too many comic books as teens, the reactions will probably be comical. Unfortunately probably pure hell for the most of us.
Majority of the sheeple still think that two guys who couldn’t even fly a Cessna could fly a 767 at ground level and at full throttle into the Pentagon and leave no entry scar well I’m sure the neocons believe anything possible.
But… but… they had hours of training on simulators that negates any doubt that they were able to pull off those high g force manouvres that licensed airline pilots say are impossible for a modern airliner and that the wings would be ripped off long before the ground effect had a chance to suck the low flying plane with no speed reduction or flaps down into the ground.
But hey, Homeland Security could release the conclusive cctv images and settle this once and for all. Maybe it’s better to let people forget about it as a huge sign of respect to the victims…
Anybody within US who still has some common sense left, fears the crazed neocons, including one former Secretary of Defense. http://m.sputniknews.com/us/20151203/1031214466/william-perry-nuclear-arms-race.html
Isn’t it clear enough that in nuclear war, we would all end up dead–there would be no winners?
If the alternative is 7.5 B people without much in the way of food…. one might consider all out nuclear war a positive…. kinda like euthanasia for very old, very diseased dying dog….
Here’s an interesting site with a neat infographic:
http://www.howmanybombs.com/
If all the bombs hit their targets, and everyone was in urban areas, there is enough nuclear arms to kill 8 billion+ people. However, a lot of the nuclear weapons would be used to try to prevent or intercept other nuclear weapons, so it probably wouldn’t be so bad. If it weren’t for the reactors and spent fuel ponds, things would probably be fine. Nuclear Winter is not a likely scenario. Plus they are assuming that the majority of weapons are thermonuclear, when in fact many are smaller tactical nukes and bunker busters.
War always seems to be some form of Middle Eastern war.
China dispatched some naval hardware to Syrian theatre as well. But it is more or less a symbolic token of their alliance with Russia and Iran at this point. They are being pushed to act (also in Pacific), and they don’t like it, since they need at least a decade to finalize some projects be it in military, finance, energy, international trade and defense alliances etc.
It’s a freak world today indeed, US and China issue fraudolent amounts od debts, Russia less so, Europe is in desintegration mode, and even the oil sheiks are burning like 20% of their money reservers y/y. Something will/must snap soon and drag us all into new even crazier reality..
Shift the stimulus from ghost towns – that nobody needs — to building the mother of all military machines….
Paul, with respect to the Protocols, you are perhaps missing the most important question: if the work is a fraud, how did those committing the forgery get “it” so perfectly right? Could it be that czarist agents were simply exercising the age old game of projection? That is, they had access to the same cookbook of human control every PTB owns & cherishes, and simply changed a few names & labels.
This is the main message I constantly try to impart here: if you move to a higher level of abstraction, and view both historical & currents events within a macro-scope, the same exact players, principles and outcomes keep repeating. This suggests that the game of command and control isn’t that clever or sophisticated, since the same patterns repeat over & over again.
Control the media? Check. When Voltaire said “if god didn’t exist, he’d have to be invented”, he wasn’t just referring to the tendency of the masses to embrace the notion of a benevolent imaginary friend. No, he also meant that it’s imperative for the PTB to control the message, which is why they are always aligned with priests/shamans/prophets.
What is perhaps unique about our current situation is the one-time presence of central banking as yet another control mechanism. But it’s an historical anomaly, one born only 300+ years ago with the advent of industry and fossil fuels. As has been discussed endlessly, take away FFs and you eliminate both industry and banking.
But was we collectively regress back to the mean that will treat the 300 year bubble of the middle class/republican democratic self governance, etc as a mere blip, it doesn’t mean the the principles espoused in the Protocols will be rendered obsolete.
That’s why it’s tough for those wedded to the notion of a fast collapse to get their heads around the permanence of the 2%. It doesn’t matter what the specific conditions are, every point made is still valid and critical for the continuity of state apparatus. And once you understand that, then playing and gaming the system is child’s play.
PS I see that InAlaska is back to trolling; please don’t embarrass yourself and take the bait.
When Niccolò Machiavelli was writing Il Principe, I think he just had years of observations in the inner circle of the ruling families, and while being exiled, trying to make himself needed again, wrote Il Principe as some sort of Curriculum Vitae for the Florence rulers. Some may deem Il Principe as immoral, but I just see it as an intellectual exercise in reality.
Sun Tzus true identity remains unknown, but the insights in Art of War reveal years of observation in to a rulers tactics, strategy and command challenges. Sun Tzu appears either to be a ruler, or as someone with access to decades of inner circle information.
It would indeed be interesting to be able to listen to Aristotles lessions to Alexander the prince of Macedon. For Alexander was able to use both spin doctors of propaganda and hard cold facts most efficiently. We still have trouble understanding all the achievements of Alexander, therefore he had an excellent grasp of facts and reality.
When Julius Caesar was able to do the impossible at the double siege of Alesia and when you realize nobody remembers young Gaius was called “the Queen of Bithynia” (homosexual rumors), also Caesar had good grasp of both spin doctors of propaganda, and cold hard facts of reality.
George Soros wrote in some of his books about his reflexivity theory, where things are something, but appear as something else. Seems like a good grasp of both spin doctors of propaganda, and cold hard facts. Though I see a lot of Karl Poppers “critical rationalism” in Soros theory, and also Thomas Kuhns paradigms thinking. Probably because Popper was Soros teacher at one time.
von Clausewitz: “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” saw the “fog of war” and “friction” of real world events. von Clausewitz was trying to describe the chaos of using force and power, and it is a bit difficult, both the describing part and the using part.
I can see why you guys like the Protocols, I can also see Aristotle giving young Alexander even better lessions than those written in the Protocols.
Why does power seem to be the same through the ages? Well, because it is. The lowest common feature of persuasion is violence, torture and murder. Power comes down to paraphrasing von Clausewitz; “forcing someone to do your will”. And while that is reality, you need spin doctors to appear moral while you are doing it. I bet that anyone wanting to make the Protocols better, would just hire Umberto Eco to read Michel Foucault , David Ogilvy, Immanuel Kant and David Icke carefully and write something with a little more punch and definitely throughly written in doublespeak. True power, through the ages, have always mastered doublespeak. That is how you can identify true power. Who uses doublespeak and who are you not allowed to criticise.
If I were in the disinformation, misinformation and propaganda business, the Protocols would be just extra “noise” that make it harder for people to see the real world cold hard facts, such guys (Gails) would be dangerous.
Nice insights & comments. When Socrates took that poisonous vial, he did so because he had violated the central memes of his era, and thus was convicted of impiety. Today, sanctioned political executions aren’t so “poetic”, as Michael Hastings and others who went snooping into state affairs found out the hard way.
As far as The Prince being “immoral”, anyone who attempts to utilize ethics and other invented control mechanisms developed to regulate human behavior earns my instant dismissal as a serious person. (Well, unless she is either cute or has big tits; if it’s a guy, maybe he’s paying the bill and needs someone to smile & nod in agreement.)
The whole category of law, justice & morality was developed to control the 98%. As anyone with even the slightest curiosity can confirm, the 2% simply operate without any legal constraint. How else can someone like Hussein sign-off on remote drone kills, or the MIC excuse away the bombing of a field hospital in Afghanistan?
To get tangled up in either outrage or dissembling puts one off the main trail of life, which is to experience the highest standard of living for the least amount of “work”. That means you need to be smart – you need to be able to see things as they actually are, and make the appropriate life choices to be able to maximize reality while others get entrapped in the matrix of lies that makes the game work for those in the know.
The Prince is a satire. Unfortunately, it is such good satire that many take it as actual advice.
Great comment. Exposing the historical thread of “necessary evil” machinations by elite manipulators as prescribed by their high priest “advisors” once again displays how humans are not that far removed from their animal origins.
Silver back gorillas rule by ruthless display of violence and other status signals and are “rewarded” accordingly.
Queen ants drug the rest of the ant colony to keep them submissive and toeing the party line otherwise chaos would reign. Very close “advisor” female rivals plot and scheme to replace the ageing queen with one of their own group.
Parasites will infect a host’s brain making it drown itself because the parasite needs water to reproduce.
It doesn’t matter who writes the protocols or other such blueprints for global dominion or that there may be multiple parties all chasing the same goal. It only matters that the intention exists in some form and that there are determined groups of mostly men throughout the ages that are hell bent on seeing their project come to fruition.
If you fall for the “anything goes” approach or “the goal justifies the means” or “the lesser of two evils” etc. you have already traded in your “humanity” for something far murkier and destructive.
The goal of some of the darker factions of the global elite is to do away with the pretenses, “the propaganda business”, the mind control so that they can rule in the full light of day with not a single serf questioning their psychopathic behaviour. That would be paradise on earth from their perspective. The only way such a minority group can achieve this level of support is to bring the rest of the world down to their level, to debase and corrupt everything positive about the human spirit, and to make sure the doting sychophants are well fed and entertained.
Beware Albright syndrome at all cost lest you become a wraith too…
The thing is…
If it were not for the likes of Albright… the other side’s Albright would be pillaging the world … would be pillaging us… taking our big chunk in the zero sum resource game
You and I are on the winning team…. because our dogs are the meanest, smartest in the junk yard… it is not a good idea to try to keep our dogs on the leash …. that gives the other dogs an advantage
The Elders run the show — someone has to — we are fortunate that they need us to administrate things… even court jesters like the Karadashians get over ….most of us do quite well for ourselves in the roles we play .. if Putin’s or China’s crew were to unseat the Elders….we might become superfluous….
I find it quite amusing that a lot of people are actually cheering for Putin in Syria … as if a victory by Russia against the Elders would bring a fairer world… as if there are good guys and bad guys…
There are only interests… no good … no bad…
I would add to that — the world’s resources are limited… there are far too many people…. all of them demanding to live large…. you fight like a vicious dog to get your share … if you lose the fight… you get to live like a Somalian… or a Syrian… or an Iraqi….
Time for Obama to shoot down some more civilian airliners — send the message across that ‘The Jesus is not to be %^%$#@ with’
For a long time Linux was a better OS then Windows, probably still is. Not because Linux makes money, or Linus Torvalds is the richest man in the world. But because young Linus just wanted to make the best OS, available for all. Young Linus, while studying in the University of Helsinki, was thinking how to make the world in to a better place and gathered a group of likeminded people and just started doing it, the world in to a better place, the only way he knew how.
Once upon a time Microsoft wanted to make the worlds best encyclopedia. They started Encarta in 1993. Finally in 2009 Microsoft decided to close it down, because the darned Wikipedia was so popular. There was tons of skilled people who just wanted to make the world in to a better place, for free, and they made Wikipedia better then Microsoft could ever hope to make Encarta, with all its endless resources.
In the early 2000:s a guy from Sweden, one from Norway and a bunch of Estonians wanted to share music for free and make free calls with highly secure end-to-end encryption. Some years later we have Skype.
By the actions of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden we have evidence NSA has big brother tech and that it uses it without scruples. Without Snowden we would not have evidence, NSA would still have plausible deniability. And they just wanted to make the world in to a better place..
When I look at the works from Alan Turing, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, ah, well, scientists too numerous to mention, I see men and women who just wanted to discover truth, beauty and make the world in to a better place. I am not ready to go sing Koombaya, I can see the harsh cold reality of dog eat dog world, but simultaneously I have to say, that modern science with all its plentifull fruits we enjoy daily, would have been lost, if not for these men and women wanting to make the world in to a better place.
Its a funny thing, if you want the best quality possible, it seems you must envoke people to do the work because of higher ideals. Greed and fear seems to work as an motivational force for the masses, in simple tasks. But true quality seems to require the masses to be reformed in to individuals with ideals.
If we are going to have any sort of civilization in the future, we simply need men and women wanting to make the world in to a better place, because if not, I sincerely fear for the survival of our species. The adaptation, ingenuity, creativity and sheer will to survive, that will be required, we simply must be individuals. Or we could theorize, that we are about to enter a evolutionary bottleneck like never before. And what ever comes out the other side of that bottleneck, if anything comes out, will be even stronger individuals with even stronger ideals.
The thing is…
For every do-gooder there are thousands who are more than happy to steal their idea and monetize it…
For every do-gooder there are thousands who would cave that person’s head in with a rock if it meant ‘more’ for them…
Compete – or die.
Or get on the side of someone who is willing to compete for you — kiss that person’s ring — otherwise die….
And yet we have Linux and Wikipedia. Strange..
It would seem that when quality is required, do-gooders can deliver.
In competition, which would you want to be a part of, a horde of dogs with sticks and stones, or a community that has incorporated do-gooders and have napalm, cannons and polycarbonate riotshields?
Unfortunately, when the SHTF, the do-gooders and the “other lot” will be in the same boat competing on equal terms. Now that’s a level playing field that I don’t particularly fancy my chances in. That’s when ruthlessness combined with large scale cooperation gets very scary indeed. And I’m not very partial to “kissing the ring” as FE put it.
You win. You’re absolutely right. Our comfortable lives depend on the uncomfortable actions of others as I pointed out with my animal analogies. What I was pointing out was that we don’t all have to adopt that position. That reality would be unbearable. The ruthless actions of the few allow the rest of us to develop other ideals which are worth pursuing. If a rival group became dominant I would expect a similar end result as things balanced out. All activity tends toward equilibrium in the end, even after a sudden collapse.
By the way… I think he ordered the code red.
My friend recommended me this very good interview made by the journalist of the Czech state TV with Bashar al-Assad. The message of Bashar al-Assad is quite clear: We need to preserve the secularism of Syria, no weapons in the hands of the opposite political movements. And when the flow of weapons to terrorists supported by other countries stops, there will be peace in Syria in a few months time.
http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/svet/1628732-asad-az-ostatni-zeme-prestanou-podporovat-teroristy-do-par-mesicu-bude-v-syrii-mir
It must suck to be caught up in the middle of a vicious dog fight….
Hey now B9. Be nice. I almost always agree with what you post.
Very good discussion so far, and bellow.
I’d only slightly differ on the question of the recent 300+ yrs history of banking as something unique. I’d argue for the most part this “exceptional factor” stems from our current viewpoint, because only the depth, volume, and speed of processing achievable with the leverage of fossil fuels and science, the structural element is almost the same. in fact the late feudal period, lets say from about papal schisma of late 14th, early 15th century shows many similar systemic stuff. Namely, the wide reaching “corruption” of the system was similarly breathtaking, in particular they had something similar to “futures market” as you could enter a prepaid scheme of future money generating enterprise such as taking part in the vast hierarchy of clerical office post, which were indeed for sale. And mind you at that time it was huge, although it varied according to location ~30-70% of every possible asset out there (entire countries, cities, villages, land, mining operation, water rights,..) was under ownership and management of this clerical clique, the remainder belonging to the king, nobility and independent cities/merchants. So basically, in that scheme you could for example engage in monthly pre-paying your future spot in the system of governance money machine, the price and conditions depending obviously on the prospect of making money from that particular office position. Plus there was a huge “risk factor” of death, war, gov reshuffle etc. There was also multigenerational debt scheme, usually for the lowest classes, e.g. you bought a cow on monthly installments, if the the cattle died soon afterwards and you were poor, quite likely even your kids and grandkids were forced to pay it up, i.e. model of working harder on paying up no longer yielding / existing asset
As new expansion opened up with all those successfull voyages to NA, Asia and Africa, the system only smoothed it up and developed into todays form. So, now any finite world issues induced plateauing and eventual scaling back might reintroduce some of the old “banking” schemes as well.
Points taken. When I refer to 300 years, I should be more explicit in defining it as ‘central banking’. All kinds of commercial banking and futures trading activities existed long before (and will remain extant during the decline).
The concept of central banking is fairly narrow & specific: using sovereign notes guaranteed by taxation as the fundamental bank asset for currency issuance, with gold only a small(er) subsidiary component. Taxation turns national debt into generational debt, while compounding debt loads & interest requirements drive the need for economic growth. For 300 years, continuous population/technological growth (which made possible the inception of central banking), has been generated by industry driven by FFs.
Since there is no practical upward bound on the value/volume of notes issued by the state, inflation is the resulting necessary condition. Only in times of losing a war – economic or otherwise – does a sovereign’s ability to pay come into question. That means, as Dolph, myself and others keep pointing out, that if every CB is coordinating their activities and there isn’t any fear of systemic default, then deflation is essentially impossible.
To repeat, I use 300 years as short-hand for “central” banking, not banking in general.
Thanks for the great clarification, I do see it similarly.
Since the hyper/inflation already started in some sectors of real estate, trophy art, financial instruments etc., now the rest of the joke remains to be put on the “little people” as well – I’m looking forward how they will play such inflation card this time, global war, environutopia, domestic uprisings vs. COG, preferential direction of resources (openly totalitarian redistribution), all of the above and more?
Sometimes just better to watch the body language, as few days ago the chinese chieftain guy looked shifty at Obama as way less than inferior sparing partner, lolz.
If most of Japan’s debt was not held internally i.e. if they borrowed from overseas entities …. their ability to pay would most definitely be called into question. Default would definitely be possible (see Argentina)
Nobody would accept freshly printed trillions of yen payments on USD denominated debt… and the more yen printed … the less willing they would be to accept it.
Fortunately Japan does not have that problem — otherwise we’d not be having this discussion.
As redemptions of Japanese debt increase because the population is aging…. Japan will no longer be able to fund their debt through the savings of its people
They will – as we are seeing – completely monetize debts at some point
Default is not possible because you just print more yen to pay pensions — but total collapse is a certainty at some point.
If it was as simple as just printing your own currency — there would be no poor countries.
A big difference now is how the debt is being recycled through pension plans, insurance companies, and other approaches. Before, debt could easily be forgiven, because it was primarily owed to the government/temples. In its recycled form, it is a lot harder to forgive. Michael Hudson writes about this.http://www.alternet.org/economy/my-education-economist-how-i-learned-reject-market-dogma-dominates-profession
We need to have a feeling that someone is in charge. Thus, I agree with Voltaire: If god didn’t exist, he’d have to be invented.” We need a feeling that there is a purpose to life, and we need to get together with others who feel the same way. It is more or less irrelevant whether or not god really exists.
This same need to have a feeling that someone is in charge carries over to government. We like to believe that our leaders know what is going on, and have the powers to fix what is going on. We like to believe that there are higher-ups that are truly in charge. So we make up stories in our minds, whether or not they are true.
A long time ago, at the time of the Savings and Loans Crisis about 1989, I went with a group of other actuaries to meet with Washington DC officials about the problem, and the possibility that we as actuaries could help them solve the problem. As I recall, the way the problem was described to me, savings and loans (and banks, too, probably) were prone to taking on risky investments, because the automatic insurance of individual savings accounts gave the institutions a< "Heads I win, tails you lose," view of the world. If their risky investments succeeded, the shareholders of the bank made money; if the risky investments failed, the federal insurance program paid depositors. Thus, the depositors didn't care about the risks of the institution, so that any kind of impediment to the risk had to come from regulators. They wanted us to design a rate structure for the federal insurance program that would surcharge the banks with risky investments sufficiently that they wouldn't do it. Our conclusion was that such a program couldn't be done, for various reasons–the amount of the insurance charge was very small to begin with. Even if it were raised by a factor of, say, five, it would not have the desired impact. We could not design a program that would really work.
Several struck me at the time:
1. How much the regulators knew, and how cavalier they were about discussing the situation.
2. How young the people were that we were meeting with. The government was clearly hiring people right out of school, to keep costs down.
3. The problem was essentially unfixable.
Of course, we are still dealing with versions of this problem today. The Basel III accord provides for rules regarding capital and investment rule. If we need ever-rising debt to prevent collapse, the rules work in the direction of holding down lending.
I don’t think the regulators then, or now, understand that on a systemwide basis, we have a “Heads I win, tails you lose” situation. If we succeed in making individual banks less risky by reining in lending, then the whole system will fail, because the system requires ever-rising debt.
Very interesting insights. A ponzi sheme is a ponzi scheme whichever way you look at it.
Right!
There Better Be a Miracle for Retailers
They tried to spin it in the most favorable light, and even then it was ugly.
It’s early in the shopping season, and Americans might still come out and head to the mall in massive numbers and do their patriotic duty and buy things that ideally no one needs made in countries they don’t know with money they don’t have to prop up manufactures, middlemen, transportation companies, oil companies, the entire supply chain, and finally US retailers that have hired hundreds of thousands of part-timers just for this sacred period of the year.
The hope is that these consumers will get their act together to relieve the enormous pressures that have built up behind the scenes: ballooning inventories. But it doesn’t look like it.
After months of crummy retail sales across the nation, followed up by earnings warnings and lousy results from big retailers, the first numbers are in for the Thanksgiving Weekend. And they support ugly anecdotal evidence of less crowded malls and parking lots: Brick-and-mortar retailers are having a hard time.
The results of the National Retail Federation’s Thanksgiving Weekend Survey were painfully – some might say willfully – murky: It said nearly 102 million people shopped in stores over the Thanksgiving weekend, while over 103 million shopped online, including via mobile devices. Given the overlap, over 151 million people did at least some shopping over the weekend. That’s 47% of the entire US population of 319 million. This would be a good sign, at least the surge in online shopping would be. But average spending over the weekend was a measly $299.60 per person.
That’s where it gets murky. This year, NRF refuses to provide comparisons to prior years. The results are “not comparable to the 2014 results,” it says, since it changed the methodology of its questions. So it refuses to answer the single most important question that it had answered before: are retail sales up or down?
But Bloomberg compared the numbers that were “not comparable” and found that the average spent per person over the weekend had been $380.95 in 2014 and $407.02 in 2013. So this year’s sales would represent a 26% and 27% plunge!
More http://wolfstreet.com/2015/11/30/there-better-be-a-miracle-for-retailers/
The sale of guns was up–set a record–according to some reports. Hard to see guns as a Christmas gift, but I guess I don’t think like quite a few people.
http://thehealthybear.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/gun-for-christmas.jpg
The New Economy!
Let’s revisit another ‘conspiracy theory’
Operation Gladio Reborn: The Paris Attacks Have Unleashed A New Wave Of Emergency Laws
“… Gladio, amongst others, is just a perfect example of how governments used oppression against their own citizens to shape the mindset of the public to unify them towards a common goal and objective, which in our case is: counter-terrorism. The problem, however, is that by giving this support, the public indirectly relinquishes many freedoms and liberties.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-01/operation-gladio-20-paris-attacks-have-unleashed-new-wave-emergency-laws
About state terrorism and the sort of psy-operations that the gullible people consider “conspiracy theories”, Gianfranco Sanguinetti explained everything as early as 1979, in his book “On the Terrorism and the State”. It is no accident that he is italian, as its no accident that you can’t find is book in any bookshop. Fortunately, there’s internet:
http://www.notbored.org/on-terrorism.html
About state sponsored terrorism and its kind of psy-operations, Gianfranco Sanguinetti explained everything as soon as 1979, in his book “On The Terrorism and the State”. It’s no coincidence that the author is italian, and it’s also no coincidence that you can’t find his book in any regular bookstore or library.. Fortunately we have internet:
http://www.notbored.org/on-terrorism.html
Lolz. The white mandarins degenerates are getting a bit desperate, we are only into second decade of the EUR, and it’s all falling apart, psychotic Merkel has been now publicly humilated and abandoned even by the nobodies of the century like Holland and Tusk. There will be no European union at all or very different loose cooperation block pretty soon..
It’s nothing new and no different to mafia protection rackets and other such extorsion scams…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket
Ancient tribes would dress up real scary and spook the neighbouring tribe by night so that the next day they could demand “payment” to keep the “evil spirits” away.
At least we’re not up against the Liberian soldiers’ cross dressing scare tactics…
“According to the soldiers themselves, cross-dressing is a military mind game, a tactic that instills fear in their rivals. It also makes the soldiers feel more invincible. This belief is founded on a regional superstition which holds that soldiers can “confuse the enemy’s bullets” by assuming two identities simultaneously. Though the accoutrements and garb look bizarre to Western eyes, they are, in a sense, variations on the camouflage uniforms and face paint American soldiers use to bolster their sense of invisibility (and, therefore, immunity) during combat. Since flak jackets or infrared goggles aren’t available to the destitute Liberian fighters, they opt for evening gowns and frilly blouses.
The cross-dressing “dual identity” isn’t just a source of battlefield bravado, though. Cross-dressing has deep historical roots in West African rites-of-passage rituals involving “medicine men” who would recommend wearing masks, talismans, and bush attire as a means of obtaining mystical powers. Rebels dressed in gowns and wigs and adorned with bones, leaves, and other “forest culture” trappings are practicing a modern variation on this technique of using symbolic “clothing” to access sources of power far stronger than their own. And in common Liberian initiation rituals—which exist in memory throughout the country, if not always in practice—a boy’s passage to adulthood is symbolically represented by the donning of female garb. He must first pass through a dangerous indeterminate zone between male and female identity before finally becoming a man. A soldier dressed in women’s clothes—or Halloween masks, or shower caps, etc.—on the battlefield is essentially asserting that he’s in a volatile in-between state. The message it sends to other soldiers is, “Don’t mess with me, I’m dangerous.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_gist/2003/08/scare_tactics.html
Banks Raise Dams, Fend Off Toxic Debt Crisis
Today’s banks are successfully managing 1.92 trillion yuan worth of non-performing loans, but tomorrow could bring a flood of bad debt
http://english.caixin.com/2015-12-01/100880340.html
FE or anybody, what does “managing non-performing loans” mean? They stick them in a box and forget about them?
In China it is my understanding that when a company is insolvent — if it is big enough — the PBOC will make funds available to that entity — so that it can continue to make payments on loans it will never repay…
I suspect that is what they mean by managing non-performing loans…
You can also be sure that this figure is understated, given the repercussions.
Quote from article:
A person wonders what is really happening. The 3% rate only applies to banks, and banks can’t really write off loans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrqX4rhBUpk
That’s an interesting video explaining the dropping velocity of money. You have to wait or skip ahead to get the graph a few minutes into the video. He says velocity of money is how fast it changes hands and is one of the only metrics which we can rely on as being truthful. He also explains how the money on Main Street is slowing down, but is speeding up on Wall Street as Ferrari’s, Art and property in Manhattan keep going up. He suggests this will lead to the economy stalling out at 50,000 feet so to speak.
50,000 feet? That’s a long way down at free fall velocity. Does this mean that the higher you go, the longer the stall period and the more time you have pulling tricks on the way down with no parachute on your back?
Somehow, I get the feeling it doesn’t work like that…
“Somehow, I get the feeling it doesn’t work like that…”
I posted the article but that doesn’t mean I endorse the metaphor. I really don’t know what will happen or exactly how, but thought the video was decent at showing how much the velocity of money had slowed.
But I’m curious now since you state you don’t have the feeling it works like that. How do you think it will work?
Don’t worry, I didn’t mean anything by it – just a turn of phrase. I was referring to my own twist on the analogy which is just a way of nit picking about the stall out altitude, whether the occupants of the plane have parachutes or not, whether the aircraft and pilot can recover from the stall, and other factors that would make the analogy not very suitable.
In other words, I don’t endorse the metaphor either. I also don’t really know what will happen or exactly how – it’s all speculation based on available data which may not be overly reliable. But a collapse is what you can logically expect given the current panorama.
I will add that from an individual point of view, it all depends on your personal circumstances and ability to execute contingency plans in a possibly chaotic environment. Those living in “quiet zones” without a mortgage or monthly car payments and grow some of their own food may be better positioned for what is to come. Subsistence farmers in poorer regions may not notice much difference in their standard of living – unless sudden climate change ruins their day. Others may have a lot more to lose and will therefore suffer greatly in comparison. Some will have other properties to move to, others will find themselves homeless and destitute, but there is no way of predicting exactly how this will pan out despite all the strong speculation taking place.
It may actually be the case that as some have insinuated none of us are wearing parachutes and therefore we are all facing the same fate.
Of course, some people may try to jump out of the plane just before it hits the ground. They should be OK. 😉
I didn’t watch the video but I have wondered how reliable the metric of “velocity of money” is anymore.
My thoughts are that as the Fed created trillions of dollars in QE etc. (the M2 money supply), this mostly escaped into black holes of debt and shadow banking and never actually reached the real economy to get spent.
In other words, the M2 supply (that arrow that goes straight up in the St. Louis Fed chart) was inflated but never got spent into use for the most part. Some oligarchs and bankers were enriched, but they don’t spend much more than usual. The bottom bulk of the population never got their hands on much of it to spend.
So, if the velocity of money is a ratio based on total supply versus money spent, it would seem to be slowing but in reality most people are spending close to what they always were.
lol….I’m not sure if this makes sense to you or not as I sometimes have a difficult time converting my thoughts into actual sensible comments…
https://youtu.be/8GP87dgTqF8
Rollercoaster Crash: Top 4 Reasons For Deflation – Hidden Secrets Of Money 6
Saludos
el mar
I really think he’s missed the boat…. it’s not a demographic problem that’s the main threat …its a debt problem. Strange how so many people realize we’re screwed but refuse to accept the role debt plays in what’s coming
He does talk about the debt bubble needing to pop at some point, but I would say he misses the diminishing returns as it relates to energy problem.
What about the medical bubble? When will it burst?
Amen to that! Medical expenses are really plain unaffordable in the US.
That’s a good question, Ed. I thought it would occur a long time ago, but evidently we 99%ers are gluttons for financial punishment. About a year ago I had a hernia operation – thank god I had insurance that restricted how much they could charge and my share ended up fairly low. But if I hadn’t had insurance, it would have cost – get this…drum roll… over $90,000 dollars!!! For an outpatient procedure with no overnight stay or meals or anything special. Just an anestethic to put me under, a small slice, slip in a mesh, a few staples to hold it in place, snap the patient out of it and that’s 90K. I cannot understand how this country survives the increasing cost of medical. We work our tails off to make them millionaires and billionaires.
You understand the problem.
If you can’t afford American healthcare, hop over to Mexico and have a robot surgeon do the job with 90% fewer mistakes than a human. Robots can / soon will be able to do any job for much lower cost, less errors, faster. As long as BAU persists.
Robots don’t respond well to unusual conditions. I don’t think I would want a robot to do surgery on my. (I am not sure I would want a surgeon to do surgery, either.)
Oh, here’s another example. We know of a couple whose 19 yr. old son got a brain tumor. The hospital tried different procedures, none of which worked, the young guy passed away and they got the medical bill in the mail: $958,000. huh?
Think how much these activities helped GDP!
Just paid my monthly bill for our complete medical coverage we enjoy here in Canada ….$50USD or $65 Canadian. Socialized medicine .. try it you might like it!
Some US senators seem to be willing to have a more accurate look at that, but can they really fight?
“Wyden-Grassley Sovaldi Investigation Finds Revenue-Driven Pricing Strategy Behind $84,000 Hepatitis Drug”
http://www.finance.senate.gov/newsroom/ranking/release/?id=3f693c73-0fc2-4a4c-ba92-562723ba5255
We have several problems converging. Debt is one of them; demographics is another.
There will be no hyperinflation, as the purchasing ability of the population falls. The rising debt prevents the hyperinflation. With our diminishing ability to get the cheap energy, there will be less things needed, as the people realize, that the production of the things without the corresponding energy for their operation makes no sense. We can still produce things, but we are losing our ability to produce energy for the operation of these things. That is what the quest for the energy efficiency is about.
The existence and ownership of more and more man-made things requires more and more energy. The value of the homes and cars is diminishing and that is the cause of the deflation: we produce things that lose their value.
The healthcare system is a bigger problem than food production. The crash of the healthcare system can bring the population down sooner that major food shortages, as the spread of the disaeses will be uncontrolled.
“There will be no hyperinflation, as the purchasing ability of the population falls. ”
Perhaps you misunderstand hyperinflation. Inflation is caused by growth. Hyperinflation is not caused by suddenly too much growth. Hyperinflation is a side-effect of governments and banks trying to fight runaway deflation. Deflation itself seems to come in two different flavours – increased purchasing power, which is good, and runaway defaults, which is bad. Hyperinflation is a rapid loss of purchasing power, as currency units rapidly lose value, as government runs obscene debts or prints money to paper over the defaults and loss of tax revenues.
“Perhaps you misunderstand hyperinflation. Inflation is caused by growth.”
You have said the same: when there is no growth, there is no inflation. Maybe I should put it more precisely: not only purchasing ability falls, but also the trust in the profitable investments falls, which prevents people from spending and investing money.
In my opinion, the deflationary forces are so strong due to the lack of the cheap energy, that no money creation can create hyperinflation. The elements of the system implode, which in the reality means, that I know that you implode and therefore I will not lend you or invest into you. That is the basic logic behind the current situation.
‘The elements of the system implode’
100% agree with that. Look at Japan – they are printing enormous volumes of Yen – not only are they not seeing hyperinflation they are sinking back into deflation again and again…
At some point they will print such a massive amount of yen they will just implode their economy and take the rest of us down with them
Money printing is not a perpetual economic motion machine…. what cannot continue … will stop…. it has to.
Hyperinflation – Stagflation – Deflation … I am in the deflation camp…
But really — what does it matter…. they would all result in total collapse of BAU.
They will not solve the problems, but their conversation is very interesting.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/28/conversation-brian-eno-yanis-varoufakis-interview
Saludos
el mar
Hey, how about this one! Fed votes to restrict themselves the next time bailouts are cried for by self serving politicians.
http://www.omaha.com/money/fed-votes-to-restrict-its-bailout-authority/article_e4ab74eb-4004-568f-af13-ced0db12d688.html
Fed votes to restrict its bailout authority
WASHINGTON (AP) — “Federal Reserve officials have moved to prevent the central bank from bailing out failing companies, a power it exercised during the 2008 financial crisis.
The Fed governors voted 5-0 Monday at a public meeting to downsize the Fed’s emergency lending powers.
Only broad lending programs designed to revive frozen markets — not loans to individual firms — will be allowed. The Fed spent about $2 trillion on such a program to ease a credit crunch during the financial meltdown, aiming to spark lending to consumers and small businesses.”
This is an interesting tidbit so I went ahead and read the article. Basically, they are getting prepared for the next round.
What did I tell people here over and over? That it’s all a question of distribution of the remaining resources. If they can’t do it all, then TPTB will have to be selective. They won’t bailout everyone, and they don’t have to. Just the key players. The Fed is doing what it needs to do, which is to prepare itself for this.
Yep, it will be something to ponder. Interestingly enough, the “skyfalling next day” doomers can’t see it in front of their eyes. Lets say for the first decade/s of plateau/downfall crisis in the west:
fewer supermarkets filled with 1/3-1/5th of the current variancy of products and restocked unregularly, while swat type goons patrolling some of the core street infrustructure, beggars almost everywhere (although pushed out of posh streets) and mil jets still in the sky..
Worldof agreed. Mil jets still in the sky but mostly the fuel efficient drone type.
Excuse me, but this is happening now. What I notice is major supermarkets like Safeway feature fewer product lines and stocking is less regular, with barren shelves, especially where an item on sale has formerly been. The same markets a few years to decades ago prided themselves on their abundance. Armed SWAT-type goons are now regularly patrolling the parking areas, and most banks have guards posted. This activity was formerly found in places like the larger cities in Central and South America. There is now a constant struggle between street people occupying public areas and the local police charged with their periodic removal. Also, plenty of military jets in the air just about everywhere, practicing for WWW3, I guess.
Perhaps it has already started in some places, and people are getting accustomed to it..
In my current neck of the woods place it’s all rather tranquile so far.
Good insight, we are all going to look more like SAmerica soon..
It’s basically the first baby steps towards the renewal of feudal ages.
I think it depends on where you are. Inner cities are no doubt worse than suburban areas.
Are you kidding? The masses get one whiff of 1/3-1/5 of the current food supply and they’ll go into panic mode not knowing if there will be “any more”. No amount of extra cops on the streets will be able to cope with the looting, rioting and general disorder, and they are fully aware of this. Militarisation of local cops is deterence strategy not realistic projection of competence when things break down. Same goes for any nation that reaches this point. We’re talking lack of food here not some throwaway run o the mill protest.
Same total amount. Less variety (and quality).
Guys and Gals, this is just political cover for what’s going to happen – the new “requirements” are even-handed and don’t favor particular companies – in form. However, the markets the Fed would be bailing out are so are so concentrated among a small handful of TBTF institutions that the effect of bailing out a “market” – think, e.g., the derivatives “market” – is de facto to bail out these institutions while leaving everyone outside of those markets behind.
Why do you guys even bother reading this crap and extrapolating from it? Every lawyer and regulator worth his salt knows that it is the easiest thing in the world to draft a law or regulation that is general in form and appears fair and even-handed on its face but which in practice is pure unadulterated favoritism to a single company r a small handful of companies.
As an aside, I have to stop visiting this site on a regular basis, it hurts my head to see all the discussion about what the elites are doing or planning, how they will be affected, how they will react, what they will do to save themselves and preserve their wealth and power, etc., etc. Uggh! To me it’s the Doomer equivalent of the lower class fascination with the lives of celebrities, the equivalent of reading celebrity magazines in the checkout line. Freaking get a life already; deal with what’s in your own wheelhouse FCS. Gail, FTLoG, please create a forum or two for your readers who just can’t seem to get enough of that, so that the rest of us can read comments germane to your actual articles instead of uninterrupted “input” about the “Games Elites Play” or my other favorite topic, “How Collapse Is Really, Actually Going to Go Down; We Already Know.” Maybe two forums, the “Games Elites Play” forum and the “Soothsayer” forum.
“To me it’s the Doomer equivalent of the lower class fascination with the lives of celebrities, the equivalent of reading celebrity magazines in the checkout line.”
tagio, If you don’t like the view then find another vista. There are plenty of choices in the world right now, at least if you have some bucks. For goodness sakes don’t punish yourself engaging in a topic that stresses you out, but also I would suggest do not pass judgment on it either, because it’s frickin’ fascinating to watch this situation in the myriad ways it is unfolding. Nobody is deluding themselves that anyone other than TPTB are steering the ship, but the sheer desperation and convoluted manner in which it is being steered makes for extremely interesting observation and discussion (at least for the others here on the message board).
So go do something that does interests you. If you are so sure how things are unfolding and maybe even the timing, then cash in all your chips and have a whale of a final vacation. Bon Voyage!
There are no all-powerful “Powers that Be.” The world is caught in the currents of randomness, chaos, stochastic events and chance. Occasionally, there are attempts to establish Powers that Be which may or may not last a century or two, but then Entropy and human incompetence returns the world to randomness. It has always been a wish fulfillment fantasy that the world is being guided by the “Powers that Be.”
So I was wrong — you don’t think your elected officials run the show….
Rather you believe nobody is in charge – things just happen.
QE … ZIRP … Ghost Cities… subprime mortgages and autos … bail outs….
Just happened…
Given that all these policies have bought us 8 years of BU …. that takes serendipity to another level.
It’s a difference between incompetence, lack of options and conspiracy.
Yes, you are wrong.
The problem is that both the learned practice and literature how to operate the human farm according to ones advantage has been out there for millennia and centuries. The only game in town is firstly to learn about it/accept the reality at all. And secondly, if one wants to play then apply the “knowhow” to a certain practical degree according to current real world situation and abilities of given individual.
I’d agree there are cycles, but I’d extend the time scale a bit, plus there are many level/layers of the perceived acting and surfing elite. So, people who made the real money and power since say at least the 17th century as banksters to the state entities, the top guys and I’d argue pretty much invisible entities, the lower layers like big tycoons controling %dozens stakes in various global corporations, those are the usual 2-3 generations wonders only. Not precise but we can lump them into one group with the niveau of oil sheiks, family/party clan operated state entities etc. Down from them you have various rich and famous, top political leaders of the time, that’s even lower level, often times these are the rich-trash just burning money of previous generations who accumulated or for some reasons dropped from TPTB circles. Bellow that you have “independently rich” professionals and “top middle class” , and lets not forget few more lower levels down there, depending on the development status in that particular country/region.
Given all these large stresses and cracks as of now we are very likely pretty close to a large mutli centuries long cycle change threshold, but in fact we might get instead some more can kicking for 1-2decades before the real blow up. Read history, it’s hazy and relative process, sometimes it’s painfully slow in decades, other times the pendulum shifts in weeks and months. This time it will be a big one, given the level of recent resource buildup phase.
I will have to admit I am getting pretty tired to the “Games Elites Play” discussion. There are quite a few posts that you haven’t seen along that line (because I put them in the trash). To me, the whole discussion is basically irrelevant, if nothing else.
Thank you, Gail. I am often caricatured as a “troll” by a few virulent posters because I just don’t find the endless discussion of a grand illuminati conspiracy running the world to be very compelling. I’d rather focus on issues of depletion and collapse of our finite world and the various strategies that we might attempt in order to influence or delay the outcome.
Thank you, Gail. I am often caricatured here as a “troll” by a few virulent posters because I don’t find the endless discussion of a vast world-controlling illuminati very compelling. I would rather focus on the issues of depletion and collapse on a finite world and the measures we might take to delay or mitigate the outcome.
He must be like 110.
She’s earning every penny….
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/08/11/article-2024790-0D64505F00000578-729_634x614.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/08/11/article-2024790-0D63598400000578-501_634x460.jpg
Guaranteed he’s super wealthy, but that still can’t buy love, just her love of money.
maybe she’s killing him slowly
way to go!!!!
George Soros’ ex-girlfriend goes berserk during deposition and smacks the 83-year-old billionaire in the head: court papers
Adriana Ferreyr, 30, got violent during Tuesday’s deposition and struck Soros, 83, in the head and was about to slap him again but his lawyer was able to grab her arm before she landed another blow, Manhattan Supemre Court papers alleged.
George Soros’ ex girlfriend, Adriana Ferreyr, lost her temper at her former flame during Tuesday’s deposition, according to court papers.
George Soros’ former girlfriend came out swinging at her billionaire ex during a private deposition for her multi-million dollar lawsuit against the octogenarian, newly filed court papers allege.
Adriana Ferreyr, a South American soap actress, clocked Soros in the head, knocked the glasses off his California lawyer Martin Singer, cursed his other prominent lawyer William Zabel and even screamed at her own high powered attorney William Beslow, according to papers filed Friday by Singer.
“A–h–le! You piece of s–t!” Ferreyr, 30, allegedly screamed at Soros, 83, when he passed her in the hallway on the way to the restroom.
Ferreyr is suing Soros for breaking his promise to give her a $1.9 million Upper East Side condo. Instead, he gave it to the woman he married last fall, Tamiko Bolton.
More… much more…. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/george-soros-ex-girlfriend-berserk-deposition-court-papers-article-1.1606326
Hard to blame her… if you had to do THAT …. and you didn’t get paid…. well….
Sounds like Fast Eddy wishes his was an “elder”, instead a prole,
Jealous….I like the list….read the book “Superclass”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superclass_(book)
Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making is a controversial book about global governance by American author David Rothkopf, released in March 2008 by publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book claims that the world population of 6 billion people is subject to the immense influence of an elite (i.e. The Superclass) of six thousand individuals
Not possible to be an elder…. and no … I have no ambition to be in the ‘super class’…
I have enough.
“Another major UN conference on climate change is underway in Paris. And already it is showing signs that times have changed. US President Barack Obama said during a speech on Monday that the United States was partly to blame for climate change.
That might seem like an obvious statement. But it’s actually a big deal. For decades the United States was one of the biggest hurdles — along with China — to negotiating a new global climate treaty. Year after year, the superpower refused to sign any binding agreements. This year might be different.”
How amazing …. we have a complete alternative universe in play here…. one where the leaders say we’ll fix this when there is no fix…. year after year they keep making the same pronouncements yet we keep burning record amounts of fossil fuels — because there is no other choice. There is no solution.
Imagine the amount of resources that are wasted on these conferences….
Just another example of the matrix — and without a doubt — there are men behind the curtain creating this make-believe world…. the same men who create the make-believe world that the economy is recovering… that peak oil is not to be worried about … that solar energy will save us…
etc etc etc
And absolutely nothing of any consequence will be done, because for humans the economy is everything.
I think you’d like this YT video. It pretty much sums up our conundrum.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=82W41de4TT4&ebc=ANyPxKrc0V8AkWoTsiTVwsRrNi-PlezdlMRhDr7pV7bx1zucZCV89wTAcRNEwPFWh7lKomq5yPHL
The tl;dr version. Fossil fuels built our civilization, take it away and billions die.
What that Epstein guy is saying is global warming isn’t necessarily bad. He’s saying it’s just mild warming not catastrophic and going further to say people presume because there has been some warming there will be catastrophic warming.
Trouble is he has no idea when a tipping point may be passed and neither do we, so it is much better to be safe than destructively sorry and find other ways than burning FF to produce energy such as renewables including geothermal as well as fission and or maybe someday fusion.
Top scientists back call for no new coalmines
http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=331928
Former NASA Goddard Institute director Dr James Hansen, Dr David Suzuki, Nobel Laureate Professor Kenneth Arrow, and Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber have joined 53 other scientists, economists and other experts in calling for a moratorium on new coalmines ahead of the Paris climate summit.
The list includes notable signatories from a wide range of countries who support the proposition on the basis that it makes economic, scientific and common sense to stop building new coalmines.
“The world will not succeed in keeping temperature rise under two degrees if it continues to construct new coalmines,” chief economist at The Australia Institute, Richard Denniss said
Financial analysis by Carbon Tracker, respected UK financial analysts, this week found “No new coalmines are needed globally” in a world meeting a two degree target. Globally, US$2 trillion ($F2.4t) of coal and gas projects would be in the “danger zone” at risk of being stranded
And this about nuclear
NASA scientist James Hansen is heading to COP21 in Paris to berate climate campaigners for failing to support ‘safe and environmentally-friendly nuclear power’, writes Jim Green. But they would gladly support nuclear power if only it really was safe and environment friendly. In fact, it’s a very dangerous and hugely expensive distraction from the real climate solutions
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986335/dont_nuke_the_climate_james_hansens_nuclear_fantasies_exposed.html
The glum assessments of the US and French governments are based on real-world experience. But Hansen prefers conspiracy theories to real-world experience, claiming that an IFR R&D program in the US was terminated due to pressure from environmentalists with devious motives.
The real reasons for the termination of the IFR program were mundane: legitimate proliferation concerns, the already-troubled history of fast reactor programs, the questionable rationale for pursuing fast reactor R&D given plentiful uranium supplies, and so on. But Hansen has a much more colourful explanation:
“I think it was because of the influence of the anti-nuclear people who realised that if this newer technology were developed it would mean that we would have an energy source that is practically inexhaustible – it could last for billions of years – and they succeeded in getting the Clinton administration to terminate the R&D for the fourth generation nuclear power plants.”
Wrong, stupid, and offensive: Hansen lines up with far-right nuts who argue that environmentalists want everyone living in caves. No wonder he is having so little success winning the green movement over.
“the questionable rationale for pursuing fast reactor R&D given plentiful uranium supplies,”
Yet we are approaching peak uranium production …
“realised that if this newer technology were developed it would mean that we would have an energy source that is practically inexhaustible – it could last for billions of years”
As soon as someone tells you they have an amazing thing that is going to provide unlimited power forever with no downsides, you should be able to detect it is a scam.
Neutrons get lost, you end up with useless isotopes – waste. It seems to me that fully reprocessed uranium would last a hundred years, and thorium maybe a couple hundred, assuming no exponential growth needed.
You must really hate these guys…
Won’t Someone Think of the Polar Bears?!?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKRneha-4VE
If you’ve never watched it, this is brillinat, IMO…
Lies, Damned Lies, and Global Warming Statistics
Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobile, has the best scientists in the field and this is what he has to say on the subject of Global Warming
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TkuyY2FFR7c
Seems his solution is human adaptation!
Sounds interesting….LOL
Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. One thing is true… there will be a lot of “adaptation” going on post economic collapse. Those with nothing left to lose will be the ones doing the least adapting.
Peak Bananas
The virulent banana-killing disease that quietly stalked through East and Southeast Asia since the 1960s is now on a global conquest. Since 2013, the lethal fungus has jumped continents, ravaging crops in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia.
It’s clear the strategies for containing the spread of Panama disease, as it’s known, aren’t working. And since the fungus can’t be killed, it’s likely only a matter of time before it lands in Latin America, where some more than three-fifths of the planet’s exported bananas are grown. In other words, the days of the iconic yellow fruit are numbered
More http://qz.com/559579/the-worlds-favorite-fruit-is-slowly-but-surely-being-driven-to-extinction/
Please say it isn’t so. I have a banana cut up in my oats and bran every morning for the daily potassium and magnesium. If bananas go extinct so does my morning nutrition. For those that aren’t aware of it, the single most nutritious food are bananas, at least that is what an article I read 20 years ago reported. Now I’m sure someone will reply that something else is, but at least bananas are high up on the list. In India a lot of people eat them because they cannot afford to fill up on other foods.
A banana and an avocado a day — keep the doctor away 🙂
All right, I’ll continue to have both until the fungi get them.
Salmon, Potatoes, Kale, Blueberries, Broccoli, Sardines, Eggs, Bananas.
Bananas went extinct once before. The old bananas are the taste that banana flavoured candy is based on. Bananas are all clones, to ensure they all taste exactly the same; as a result, a disease wiped them out decades ago and we now are on clone banana flavour #2. This fungus will wipe them out, and we will have to decide on a new flavour of banana from the ones that are resistant to the disease and the fungus that killed banana #1 and #2, respectively.
Matthew, I have read that Banana #2 is the last type of banana species extant on Earth. Once it is gone, all bananas are extinct.
” I have read that Banana #2 is the last type of banana species extant on Earth”
The Bananas we eat in the western world are all the same, seedless clones.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bad-news-banana-may-soon-221507852.html
Sidenote: they alternate between referring to Tropical Race 4 as a virus and a fungus.
There are many other types of bananas, that are less sweet and need to be cooked to eat, generally called plantains. I could be wrong, but it seems it would be similar to having one strain of hydroponically cultivated marijuana that was 30% THC by weight, and having hundreds of strains at 1%. Someone should be able to make a new Tropical Race resistant strain of seedless, high sugar banana and begin cloning it. Either through selective breeding or genetic modification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_plantain
The Story Line Dissolves
Sometimes societies just go crazy. Japan, 1931, Germany, 1933. China, 1966. Spain 1483, France, 1793, Russia, 1917, Cambodia, 1975, Iran, 1979, Rwanda, 1994, Congo, 1996, to name some. By “crazy” I mean a time when anything goes, especially mass killing. The wheels came off the USA in 1861, and though the organized slaughter developed an overlay of romantic historical mythos — especially after Ken Burns converted it into a TV show — the civilized world to that time had hardly ever seen such an epic orgy of death-dealing.
I doubt that I’m I alone in worrying that America today is losing its collective mind. Our official relations with other countries seem perfectly designed to provoke chaos. The universities have melted into toxic sumps beyond even anti-intellectualism to a realm of hallucination. Demented gunmen mow down total strangers weekly in what looks like a growing competition to end their miserable lives with the highest victim score. The financial engineers have done everything possible to pervert and undermine the operations of markets. The political parties are committing suicide by cluelessness and corruption.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-story-line-dissolves/
A person wonders whether all of the violent video games are having an effect on the minds of the many who play them by the hour.
Never has so much violent imagery been pumped into the minds of babes and adults alike.
This is just another branch of the programming schedule. Imagine all of humanity is strapped into chairs in a lab where the most twisted scientists can ply their trade. Well, essentially that’s what we have. Many of these techniques were developed by government scientists such as Jose Delgado…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Rodriguez_Delgado
…and later embedded in multiple commonly used technologies. The TV was set to 50hz because it induces a hypnotic state that allows for greater suggestibility in the face of advertising and propaganda. Modern TVs have switched to ELF and other visual techniques to achieve a similar effect.
This can also be achieved through LED lights and synthetic telepathy. Moods can be altered or subliminal messages directly implanted into unsuspecting brains either above or below the auditory range.
http://harvardsciencereview.com/2014/05/01/synthetic-telepathy/
Regarding your comment, studies have shown that the violence portrayed in video games has no more effect than any other medium. In fact, it’s the velocity of imagery over extended periods that causes stress and irritability to increase in subjects.
As a gamer myself, I have disputed this on occasion and have suggested that although there may be no outwardly visible effects in the 99.99% of gamers, what the mind perceives it becomes and so a mild form of PTSD is certainly possible from these intense experiences.
The same can be said for ultraviolent TV shows such as The Walking Dead which whiile expertly written, well acted and so on, requires the viewer to absorb an inordinate amount of over the top violence.
As with video games, the suggested age restrictions are ignored, so much of this material is being consumed by young minds that may not be developed enough to handle it. In my own experience, I can safely say that realistic TV and movie violence is still much harder to tolerate than anything I’ve seen in games.
At that point, you have to ask yourself what kind of culture immerses itself in an increasing amount of background violent imagery? And whether there is an agenda at work here based on all the billions of dollars of research that goes into the manipulation of the mass mind.
No lab monkeys were harmed in the making of this comment.
I am afraid I have problems with movies, television, and video games. They all tend to have a violent streak to them.
I highly recommend people do this (make sure there is nobody below first…)
https://images.rapgenius.com/9bef1ddd88f9db56603c5660811ff206.800x531x1.jpg
It is well and truly an idiot box.
We haven’t had a TV in years.
If I were voted in as World Dictator ….
My first act would be to ban Tee Vees.
I never get tired of this scene:
In order for humans to get back to a darwinian world, then many will need to die. Indeed, die before reproducing.
In today’s world, not only do we support children with defects (thus potentially enabling their reproduction), as well as rush in with international aid at every threat of starvation, but we also support many elderly and ill, etc.
It’s not that their aren’t healthy bodies around. We have more healthy bodies around than the entire history of human civilization. Also, it’s not that compassion or morality are wrong. It’s just that, by the very development of our systems, on a long enough timeline, the needs of the dependents begin to overwhelm the ability of the healthy bodies to support them.
The religions of the world, which were codified long, long ago, have no answers to these dilemmas. And, as far as I’m aware, the idea of being kept alive artificially, on machines, is not a part of their codes, no matter what noises the Christian right makes. And isn’t it interesting that the Christian right wants to deny women the methods to control reproduction (which, by limiting excess and unwanted births, helps to control poverty), but, at the same time, believes that the entire edifice of modern healthcare should somehow be magically available to all, and that any attempts to ration care are “death panels”.
What’s also interesting is modern healthcare has it’s origins in science, but many Christians apparently only want to use the end product of science when they’re having medical problems, i.e. when it’s in their immediate personal best interest, but not when the data analysis from science reports there is global warming.
Speaking of artificial life giving machines, remember they wanted to keep Schiavo the women in a vegetative state (in Florida some years ago) alive for as long as possible, but didn’t want to put the pope who was near death on life support. Somehow a regular person should be on life support, but a pope should not. Maybe it wasn’t the regular person’s ordained time to die, but it was for the pope? In any case, they are an interesting group of people.
“In today’s world, not only do we support children with defects (thus potentially enabling their reproduction), as well as rush in with international aid at every threat of starvation, but we also support many elderly and ill, etc.”
Yeah, and some person in their 90’s could be breathing real hard (refusing artificial ventilation) just seconds from passing away, when in rushes an 18 year old that shoots the old fella and gets life imprisonment. But somewhere else in the world some psychopathic person purposefully drives super fast at night in the country to run over as many animals as possible, but there is no law against that except for speeding. So said person could kill tens of thousands of animals but never spend a minute in jail, but spend the rest of his life in prison for killing a man seconds from death. That’s humankind. We come first and all other life is disposable.
Somehow, we should have reined in healthcare long ago. Perhaps, the best healthcare that 7% of GDP (or some other select percentage) can buy. The economic system can’t really afford a healthcare system where we use specialists to try to cure every kind of disease and injury imaginable, even in the very elderly. Instead of putting big deductibles on healthcare, we should be putting caps on the services provided (and also on the incomes of health care professionals). All of coding rules need to go away, as well as all of the rules requiring computer records.
The plant which will be built in Dabaa (about 130 kilometers south of Cairo), and will be one of the largest joint projects between Russia and Egypt. It will comprise four 1200 MW nuclear power generators. from rt.com
Egypt goes nuclear for electric power.
How long will they take to build and do you think the project will be completed?
New reactors are causing developmental headaches and unwieldy cost over-runs for investors. I just wonder how realistic it is to invest in a nuclear future post Fukushima? The added cost of extra safety measures must inflate intial investment to uncomfortable levels.
They have little choice. They could import coal from Australia but that is far away. With nuclear they can store on site 60 years worth of fuel rods and have some level of security. If BAU last for the next 15 years yes I think they will be built.
Dear Finite Worlders
For all doomers, you should at least take a look at this:
https://www.thinkdif.co/news/dif-2015-ellen-macarthurs-closing-words
The circular copy is the only way to go….Don Stewart
The sweet smell of progress!
Half A Million Square Kilometers Of Heavy Smog Force Beijing To Issue “Orange Alert”, Close Factories
On Sunday, Beijing issued its highest smog alert of the year, upgrading it from the yellow of the past two days to orange, second only to red. According to local CCTV, heavy smog covered an area of half a million square kilometers around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as heavy air pollution hits 31 cities.
Xinhua reports that the municipal weather center said humidity and a lack of wind would mean the smog will linger for another two days, before a cold front arrives on Wednesday.
On Sunday, the reading for PM2.5, airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, hit 274 micrograms per cubic meter in most parts of the capital. Indicatively, the World Health Organization (WHO) considers only 25 micrograms to be a safe level.
Beijing has recommended that residents minimize outdoor activities and urged people with respiratory diseases as well as the elderly to stay at home.
It wasn’t just Beijing: moments ago Shanghai joined China’s capital in issuing an orange fog alert. The local government asked for heightened management of airports, highways and ferry terminals as heavy fog covered western and southern parts of the city, according to a website run by the Shanghai Meteorological Service said. Visibility is limiting visibility to 200 meters in Minhang, Songjiang, Qingpu, Baoshan, Jiading and Chongming areas, the website said. Orange is the 2nd-highest of 4-alert levels
In March, four types of pollution alerts – blue, yellow, orange and red – were introduced by Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau. All factories are to be shut down during orange alerts. Heavy vehicles, such as construction trucks, are also completely banned during orange and red alerts. Furthermore, construction sites should stop the transportation of materials and waste while heavy-duty trucks are banned from the roads.
In other words, the local economy shuts down.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-29/half-million-square-kilometers-heavy-smog-forces-beijing-issue-orange-alert-close-fa
I read that–glad I wasn’t there. The heating is with coal. Now is the time the heating starts. It ends March 15. So this is the worst pollution time.
First Russian airstrikes torche more than 1,000 tankers taking stolen crude oil to Islamic State refineries https://www.rt.com/news/323065-syria-airstrikes-terrorists-russia/
Immediately after that US Nato (in Turkey) takes a Russian plane down.
Just makes one wonder who has been selling the oil, through what channels, to whom, for the US to make such an aggressive move.
Putin must be laughing his socks off.
Probably not laughing his socks off: Russia is, although a nuclear power, weak in global force- projection capacity, unlike the US.
Putin is generally popular in Russia, trusted in fact, although known to be corrupt: but the balance could shift against him rapidly if domestic conditions deteriorate too much -sanctions are bearable at present – or Russian soldiers start to die in large numbers for a lost Assad cause, which is what the US and her acolytes want – hence the provocation in taking down the Russian jet, and murdering the pilot (but that is fortunes of war is it not?)
However, the US, in only wielding the big stick against Putin, does more than anyone else to keep him in power.
And we should be grateful for that, as there are elements in Russia who truly hate all non-Russians and who might not be as level-headed as Putin.
A person wonders how accurate the oil supply figures we are getting are. Where is the ISIS oil counted, for example?
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Global warming and population trends in Central Europe:
An immigrant from China wants to introduce rice growing in Central Europe, namely in the swampy parts of the Eastern Slovakia Lowland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Slovak_Lowland). He is persuaded that after Italy, Slovakia will be the second place where the rice growing will be successful in European Union:
http://www.pluska.sk/regiony/vychodne-slovensko/cinsky-farmar-li-ting-pestuje-vychodnom-slovensku-ryzu.html
Thanks MG, AGW will be with the planet for a long long time ahead
Warming of oceans due to climate change is unstoppable, say US scientists
Seas will continue to warm for centuries even if manmade greenhouse gas emissions were frozen at today’s levels, say US government scientists
“I think of it more like a fly wheel or a freight train. It takes a big push to get it going but it is moving now and will contiue to move long after we continue to pushing it,” Greg Johnson, an oceanographer at Noaa’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, told a conference call with reporters.
“Even if we were to freeze greenhouse gases at current levels, the sea would actually continue to warm for centuries and millennia, and as they continue to warm and expand the sea levels will continue to rise,” Johnson said.
On the west coast of the US, freakishly warm temperatures in the Pacific – 4 or 5F above normal – were already producing warmer winters, as well as worsening drought conditions by melting the snowpack, he said.
The extra heat in the oceans was also contributing to more intense storms, Tom Karl, director of Noaa’s National Centers for Environmental Information, said.
The report underlined 2014 as a banner year for the climate, setting record or near record levels for temperature extremes, and loss of glaciers and sea ice, and reinforcing decades-old pattern to changes to the climate system.
Hey, question’ how much warming is absorbed by the oceans?
Hint like 90 %
The future of European cuisine: rice with a garnish of protein-rich grasshopper? Courtesy of NWO (they will get the grass-fed steaks)…..
A look back at China in 2006.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/15/china.china
Extract:
Chongqing is the fastest-growing urban centre on the planet. Its population is already bigger than that of Peru or Iraq, with half a million more arriving every year in search of a better life.
At some point this year, our species will prove Darwin wrong. For the first time since the dawn of civilisation, the human being is about to become a predominantly urban creature: humans have not evolved to fit our habitat, we have changed our habitat to suit ourselves.
According to the United Nations, the planet’s population is currently split almost right down the middle: 3.2 billion in the city, 3.2 billion in the countryside. But by the start of 2007, the balance will have tipped decisively away from the fields and towards the skyscrapers.
No one knows for sure precisely where and when urban life started. But we can make a good guess about where the urbanising trend will reach its zenith. Simply count which skylines have the most cranes, track where the bulk of the world’s concrete is being poured or follow one of the biggest, fastest movements of humanity in history. All lead east, to China.
Every year, 8.5 million Chinese peasants move into cities. Most of their destinations are mere specks on western maps, if they appear at all. But their populations put them on a par with some of the world’s megalopolises. Britain has five urban centres of more than a million people; China has ninety. A few – Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Nanjing – are well known around the world. The names of many others – Suqian, Suining, Xiantao, Xinghua, Liuan – are unfamiliar even to many Chinese. Nowhere is the staggering urbanisation of the world more evident than in Chongqing. Never heard of it? This is where the pace and scale of urbanisation is probably faster and bigger than anywhere in the world today. This is the Coketown of the early 21st century.
Set in the middle reaches of the Yangtze, this former trading centre and treaty port has long been the economic hub of western China. But after its government was given municipal control of surrounding territory the size of many countries, it has grown and grown, becoming what is now the world’s biggest municipality with 31 million residents (more people than Iraq, Peru or Malaysia). The population in its metropolitan areas will double from 10 million to 20 million in the next 13 years.
When the planet’s rural-urban balance tips, it is as likely to happen here as anywhere. To get a snapshot, I spent a day with a Channel 4 film crew in this megalopolis – just the sort of day, in fact, when humanity might pass the halfway point on its millennia-long journey out of the countryside.
Even at the height of Britain’s urbanisation in the 19th century, there was nothing to compare with the scale and speed of change taking place here. How can space and jobs be found for so many new arrivals?
This seems to suppose that the city will go on growing indefinetely, I think that’s the drift of what you’re saying.
But of course jobs and space can’t be found.
We have allowed ourselves to become deluded into thinking that cities are ‘wealth producers’ when in fact they are energy consumers.
Cities print money, the surrounding country (of whatever size) sustains its value.
In the UK, London needs 2.5 times the total area of the entire UK in order to sustain its energy needs—that doesn’t happen of course—instead that energy is sucked in from elsewhere around the world, because through an accident of geology and geography, the uk became a dominant power in the 1900s. Right now we are freewheeling on that past acheivement,
As long as the music keeps playing, the financial game of pass the parcel can keep going.
Not quite sure how this proves Darwin wrong exactly. Humankind is evolving, but into a dead end. We cannot ‘evolve’ into city dwellers because cities are themselves unsustainable. When any species crowds itself into smaller and tighter spaces, disease breaks out, allowing the dominant species (bacteria and micro organisms) to re assert their control, and start culling
Over the last century, we have declared war on bacteria. They have merely retreated, and evolved (in true Darwinian fashion) to fight back with new and more deadly forms.
This is happening right now. Their evolution will prove Darwin right, and we will be consigned to another minority species, maybe even one of nature’s mistakes. There have been lots of those in the past.
“At some point this year, our species will prove Darwin wrong. For the first time since the dawn of civilisation, the human being is about to become a predominantly urban creature: humans have not evolved to fit our habitat, we have changed our habitat to suit ourselves.”
Doesn’t a beaver do the same thing? Can you paste in with quotation marks exactly what Darwin wrote so we can determine if he was wrong or not?
Darwin’s thesis, at least as I understand it, is that species evolve and adapt to their environment, but also are subject to ‘survival of the fittest’
The beaver limits its living environment to the area that can offer material support–and no more. On my local lake, 100+ Canada geese limit themselves somehow to only one or two broods of chicks each year. They seem to be collectively cared for. They also seem to be more intelligent than we are.
We may adapt to the environment part in the short term, but crowding together is ultimately a bad idea, and so will hasten our demise because our lack of an industrial production/protection system will mean that we cannot protect ourselves against the planet’s dominant species.
These are of course bacteria and other micro organisms, which in the past have always kept our numbers in check.
If cities were ultimately a ‘successful’ habitat, humankind would, in theory at least, cover the globe in buildings. Impossible of course, but that line of thinking is the logical conclusion. Nevertheless cities are already morphing into multi-billion unsustainable sprawls.
In other words, we will breed until stopped.
Only bacteria can do that. And they have always been very good at it.
None the less, the beaver changes his/her environment to meet their needs. I still don’t see an exact quote from a passage written by Darwin. Gotta be sure when you’re saying someone famous was wrong – need to be more specific.
Wallace wrote in a letter to Darwin about the “Survival of the fittest”. Darwin replied that it is not the fittest, but rather the organisms best able to adapt to change. If I recall correctly.
You are correct. By “fittest” Darwin meant the species that best fit into the environmental niche it was located in. Since then, various people twisted the meaning of “fittest” into strongest, making it about an individual, not a whole species.
physical adaptations leading to ultimate survival advantage are always minute to start with, then that adaptation is passed on down the generations, increasing in importance and strength
Those adaptations go on until a new species evolves–the original species might remain, or die out. There is no point where you can say—‘we now have a new species’, yet over time, the new species becomes unable to breed with the old one
Darwin’s thesis in specific terms concerned Galapagos finches (you can google that) but it is just as applicable to any specie divergence. Each finch was adapted to the food source on a particular island….each occupied the niche in which it was fittest to survive.
In no respect does that infer that Darwin was wrong. Quite the opposite I thought. Obviously I wasn’t very clear in my previous comment.
Adaptation to change and ‘fittest’ though would seem to be an interchangeable concept.
Cro Magnon man was obviously the fittest to survive in the changing climate of the last ice age, while at the same time the most able to adapt to change. Neanderthal man didn’t survive. What the minute details of living at that time were, which caused that, we can never know.
We can be certain though, that while those details might have been minute, they accrued into survival of one species and extinction of another.
Right now, we don’t know if the path we are on is leading to extinction or species change. We certainly cannot go on as we are.
Norman,
re. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, the recent findings in genetics are telling a different story.
They have reconstituted the whole Neanderthal genome (huge task acheived by a lab in Leipzig, iirc) and then compared with that of modern humans.
Surprisingly, they found that in each modern human of non-African ancestry, 1.5% to 4% of the genome was of Neanderthalian origin. That suggests that our species were not totally separated yet, and that Sapiens has somewhat “absorbed” the Neanderthalians they found on their way out of Africa 70-50,000 years ago. This theory is consistent with the % of DNA, as the respective numbers were very different (many more Sapiens than Neanderthals).
The same goes for Denisovans, human sub-species found in Siberia, for todays populations of East-Asia.
I haven’t found any really up-to-date article, but this one explains a little bit:
“About 30,000 years ago, Homo sapiens migrating out of Africa began encountering Neanderthals, a lineage that had diverged from modern humans hundreds of thousands of years before. Despite their differences, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals mingled, and over time, produced children with genes from both lineages.
Today, the biological remnants of that collision between two distinct populations remain alive in the genomes of Europeans and East Asians.”
more: http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/anthropology/science-neanderthal-genes-modern-human-dna-01734.html
It’s delightful to be descended from the dear old Neanderthals.
But ultimately, my vote goes to the humans who invented fermented drinks: bravo!
Gilgamesh civilised the wild man Enkidu by introducing him to two novelties: bread, and beer. He couldn’t resist.
Maybe the Cro-Magnons got the Neanderthals fuddled, and stole their women? Quite possibly, newly drunk, the Neanderthals didn’t care, which is, of course, the sensible attitude. And so they died out: out-manoeuvred, but merry.
With apologies to Kipling: ‘A woman is a woman, but a pint of beer is A Drink!’
Dos anyone know what the Neolithic people are meant to have been up to burying sloe berries with the dead? Combined with vodka or gin it makes an excellent fruity winter drink, but eaten alone it is far too sour to bear. I haven’t heard that it improves with cooking. Anyone tried?
Xabier,
I don’t know about the details, but I seem to remember that they found similar % values in both mitochondrial DNA (female lineage) and Y-chromosom (male), which would mean that -at least in some cases- the mix happened in both directions.
What fascinates me is the evolutional jump it allowed: in only a few generations, our ancesters have physically integrated in their genome the result of hundreds of thousands years of adaptation to specific features of the land they were conquerring.
I imagine it’s been even more important on a cultural level, as Neanderthals may have teached them about hunting techniques, plants, and other knowledge specific to the new landscape (ex.: how to better protect oneself against cold weather).
Our medical care is designed to allow even the worst adapted to survive. We are not really following the system.
“By “fittest” Darwin meant the species that best fit into the environmental niche it was located in.”
Turns out is was Herbert Spencer who said survival of the fittest, not Wallace. Darwin is claimed to have said, but may never have actually done so, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
It sounds like Spencer was looking at environments as being stable, while Darwin was seeing evidence that the world around us is constantly changing.
“It is the one that is most adaptable to change”
Most adaptable – that’s the key. We’re so adaptable the famous Author William Catton coined the term Homo-Colossus to describe our voracious decimation of the planet. I’m sure the next decades will require an amazing degree of adaptability.
Here’s a couple of examples that prove the point…
Peacocks develop ridiculously large clumsy tails that slow them down and make them easier targets for predators. The Peahens are really impressed with the surviving peacocks because they have proved their worthiness despite their handicap.
Men in the past – not so much now – were known to put themsleves to the test in high risk rituals – rights of passage – to garner the attention of females. Not so different really.
But it doesn’t end there. When you bring the two together, you get a multiplier effect. Humans wishing to augment their status through visible displays would adorn their luxurious properties with peacocks and other exotic birds, thereby extending the natural survival benefits of having excessively large beautiful tail feathers beyond their natural environment and into a secure one. More peacocks would die but more would be bred resulting in a net gain in peacocks.
Domestic cows have gone through a similar process where many breeds would be extinct if it were not for a human taste for beef and dairy products.
Artificial natural selection? No more artificial than ants harvesting aphids…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009212548.htm
“Chemicals on ants’ feet tranquilise and subdue colonies of aphids, keeping them close-by as a ready source of food, says new research. The study throws new light on the complex relationship between ants and the colonies of aphids whose sugary secretions the ants eat.”
Really folks, all of our activity is represented in “nature”. We are not separate from it, just another part of it. Nature has been “doing” nanotech and space travel for eons. We are just another expression of its brilliance.
Even the human villains that we love to bash are part of the natural order in the same way that viruses antogonise the immune systems of organisms provoking adaptation.
Unfortunately, for the latecomers, China is arriving at the big party just in time for the lights to go out and for the police to show up. They got to the party too late. Its over.
Another suspect death, already highly spinned by western MSM:
“Mikhail Lesin, a prominent Russian political figure and mass media expert credited with inspiring the creation of Russia Today (now RT), has died in Washington, DC after a heart attack.”
https://www.rt.com/news/321121-lesin-dies-heart-attack/
Until January 12, 2015, he was head of Gazprom-Media, a state-controlled media giant that describes itself as one of the largest media groups in Russia and Europe. He resigned in December 2014 citing family reasons. After retiring, he spent several months in Switzerland for treatments to a spinal injury that he received while skiing and then returned to his home in California.
An autopsy had been conducted but according to Beverly Fields, the Washington DC medical examiner public information officer, no ruling about the cause of death will be made until February 2016. Russian officials were working with U.S. authorities to determine the circumstances of the death.
Yup, Mikhail and Vladimir clearly had an falling out.
How Green Energy Really Works
This is priceless…
After this week’s vaporization of $29 billion of liabilities ($230 million of which was owed to the US Taxpayer) amid Abengoa’s bankruptcy (Spain’s ‘Solyndra’), we thought it worth reminding the world’s greater fools just how “green” energy works…
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2015/11-overflow/20151128_green.jpg
More http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-28/how-green-energy-really-works
Yes FE,
somewhat ironic that Abengoa’s bankruptcy happens just before opening of the COP21…
“With the subsidization scam in Spain reaching its limit, it turns out that not even sunny climes can keep solar boondoggles afloat. In the current case, a cool $29 billion (€27.3 bn.) in liabilities have just been exposed to intense vaporization danger, as “green energy” company Abengoa has finally filed for bankruptcy.
It is the by far biggest bankruptcy in Spain’s history. 24,000 employees will have to look for a new job. The sovereign wealth fund of oil junkie Norway holds 2.7% of the company’s shares, an investment it will now have to write off. More than 200 banks are creditors of Abengoa, with total exposure of €20.2 billion. Abengoa’s business activities are described as “renewable electricity generation, converting biomass into biofuel and desalination of seawater” – practically a what’s what list of businesses that cannot possibly survive without subsidies.
(…)
Businesses that cannot possibly survive without subsidies are ipso facto not economically viable. In spite of all the high-minded pronouncements about the “need to save the planet” and how this valiant effort can allegedly be “combined with economic growth”, their existence serves primarily one function: to distribute money looted from taxpayers and consumers to assorted cronies of the political class, who in turn provide the latter with kickbacks. That is all there is to it.”
“Giant ‘Green Energy’ Giant Boondoggles Flops in Spain”
http://www.acting-man.com/?p=41628
24,000 jobs, that’s huge, for Spain…
It’s a good thing I drove all those Solar Jesus followers off …. they’d be suicidal after reading this…
Wow! Thanks for the link. We should have a name for this–perhaps “Pseudo-energy investment.” An investment that doesn’t really yield an adequate return, when all of the costs are included.
Still too hard to use quote marks?
Here’s the thing…
When I put a link at the end of my posts…. that means I have copied an excerpt from the article linked to …. and if you would like to read the entire article …. you can click the link.
If I have not copied an idea from an article there will be no link with the comment.
Does this make it simple enough for you? Let me know if you require a more detailed explanation
Unfortunately, that is the way it works. It makes a good story for as long as the business can be kept afloat. Everyone feels that they are doing something noble, by patronizing the money-losing organization.
Look what we’ve done 🙂
ees can interbreed with the remaining wild fish, pushing Atlantic salmon as a whole down a new evolutionary path on a much faster time scale than ever before.
Studies have found “hybrid” farmed-wild offspring have weaker genetic adaptations for the rivers and migratory paths of the wild. One study has found these interactions could potentially cause an “extinction vortex in vulnerable populations.” Hybrids are also reversing the genetic divergence in which salmon have evolved to thrive in unique rivers and conditions. Another study has forecast a decrease in “population differentiation” between previously distinct populations. “Now, salmon are distinguished in a new way—through the traits you select for in farming,” says Lien.
http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/is-farmed-salmon-really-salmon
Another hybrid, seemingly successful: the “Coywolf”
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/coywolves-are-taking-over-eastern-north-america-180957141/
Interesting article Stefeun. I remember reading that early settlers were good at getting rid of the wolf, but not so with the coyote. Reason being the coyote have a built in ability to produce bigger litters the greater the predation on their species. I wonder if that is part of the coywolves adaptability as well as other aspects described in the article. Got to give wolves credit for reading the writing on the wall and interbreeding for survival sake. “Nature finds a way”, Jeff Goldbloom in Jurrasic Park.
Oh, and I was hoping for the prospect of us humans developing a “Master Race” (sarcasm)
On the other hand, genetically engineered mosquitos to fight malaria always seemed like a good idea to me. Who would miss the little blighters? What could the knock on effects possibly be…?
Bats, birds, fish, frogs, turtles, dragonflies, and spiders might have something to say…
http://www.orkin.com/other/mosquitoes/mosquito-predators/
Well, maybe we could just genetically alter them to not like the taste of human blood.
What is actually being done…
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/genetically-modified-mosquito-could-eradicate-malaria-a6745541.html
“The study suggests that it may soon be possible to eradicate malaria from entire regions of the world by releasing genetically modified mosquitoes that are able to pass on their malaria “immunity” to the rest of the breeding population of mosquitoes.
However, scientists and environmental campaigners have warned that releasing GM mosquitoes equipped with powerful “gene drives” that amplify the frequency of synthetic genes within a natural population of breeding insects poses the risks of “unintended consequences” if safety concerns are not addressed.”
Time to quote Jeff Goldblum again…
Details! The overall system is hard to think about in advance.
Another oops!
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This British Bank Is Backing The Bullish Case For Oil
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/This-British-Bank-Is-Backing-The-Bullish-Case-For-Oil.html
Barclays is one of the very few financial institutions that is actually predicting oil prices to increase in 2016 despite the recent slump and worsening supply glut. As per Barclay’s corporate banking team, oil prices would increase mostly because of doubling of global oil demand from 2.1 million barrels a day to almost 4 million barrels a day.
“There is no doubt that the UK North Sea oil and gas industry is under pressure right now but we do feel that signs of relief are there, and the forecast for $60 oil in 2016 with oil demand growth above trend again is encouraging,” said the head of Barclay’s Corporate banking team. This prediction made by Barclays in is sharp contrast to the recent Oil Market Report by IEA, which predicts the global oil demand to slow down from the current 2.1 million barrels per day to just 1.2 million barrels a day by 2016
U.S. shale drillers who suffer from high breakeven costs. In case OPEC decides to reduce its production levels in its next meeting on December 4, we can expect a sharp jump in oil prices. Whether OPEC decides to reduce, increase or maintain its production levels, one thing is certain: Oil prices would be largely dominated by the balance of supply and demand in 2016 rather than mere speculations and market sentiments. So all eyes should be on these fundamentals. If oil supplies from OPEC and U.S. shale reduce in the coming time and demand from countries like India (whose oil demand has already witnessed a 10 year high in September 2015 as per IEA) remain strong, the ‘3 billion barrel oil cushion’ could deflate and this could make the oil prices head north.
There always have to be two points of view, and $60 oil is not really very high, compared to the prices companies really need.
Gail, isn’t it true that demand for oil will begin to surge again as we add an additional 2.5 billion people to the world population in the coming decades. Is that possibly the way that the price of oil begins to rise in the face of depletion?
The 2.5 billion additional people won’t happen, so the oil surge won’t happen that way.
Never underestimate our species capacity to breed and to believe in mandates and fairy tales that support unlimited breeding.
“The 2.5 billion additional people won’t happen, so the oil surge won’t happen that way.”
Do you expect something dramatic is going to happen in Africa? After all, virtually all projected population growth is supposed to come from Africa. Even if BAU collapses, I don’t expect they’ll suddenly lose all their mosquito nets and water filters.
Gail and Matthew, I had this same thought. Will a collapse of BAU really impact the population growth in Africa?
They already depend on a lot of things provided by the more developed parts of the world. Water filers don’t work for very long, before they need to be replaced. Mosquito nets are impregnated with insecticide. I presume that somehow the insecticide needs to be replenished.
According to the UN, the population of Africa was 229 million in 1950. In 2015, it is estimated to be 1.2 billion, or somewhat over five times as much. If we go back to pre-fossil fuel days, the population was much smaller–only 74 million in 1820 so we get to a multiplier of 16 to get to today’s population. Egypt is now a big importer of food, because it has a population of 91.5 million, and little place to grow food, now that so many people live there. With the Aswan dam in place, they are also dependent on imported fertilizers. Different versions of the story play out in different places. Africa os not much more sustainable than anywhere else.
Collapse takes time, so things may not all fall apart at once. But if they are dependent on outside markets, and cell phones to access those markets, it could fall apart pretty quickly.
‘ In 2015, it is estimated to be 1.2 billion, or somewhat over five times as much. If we go back to pre-fossil fuel days, the population was much smaller–only 74 million in 1820’
http://johndopp.com/wp-content/uploads/ApocalypseAhead_300x225.jpg
See my response to Matthew.
The infrastructure is built out, the world has long ago been explored, settled, and developed.
Now what matters is: is there enough energy, agricultural capacity, and workers to keep people fed, controlled, and entertained? Can you produce and recycle just enough new TV/movie/video game content to keep people happily sitting at home, imagining that they are beautiful people involved in important decisions, or sports stars, or exploring space fighting bad guys and aliens?
The answer to that is yes, at this time there is. May not last forever, but at this point in time, and for the foreseeable future, there are enough resources for what I mentioned.
All of those things require a vast amount of infrastructure, electricity, oil, and their continued maintenance to function. Entertainment production requires multi-billion dollar studios that need to break even so that they can continue to churn out more electro-slop. If targets are not met, studios close and employees walk.
I know, I know, the govt will manage all this operation somehow USSR style. Somehow, I just don’t think that would be even remotely possible once things start to unwind. The microchips and other millions of rare earth metal based parts have to flow around the global network for any of that to happen.
Maybe we can play rock, paper, scissors in the local FEMA camp…
How would the US government take over all of the oil production in the USA? This is just me thinking out loud so here it goes: The Federal Reserve loans the government money at 0% to explore for and produce shale oil and gas. Since Uncle Sam knows nothing about the oil business he would just pick a winner like Exxon and say “here is some money go get the oil out.” So now you have two middle men between the oil in the ground and the barrels to be filled. Exxon and the government are now two middle men where there was only one before. Surely you don’t expect Exxon to be all thrifty with all this new government money now do you? So, it would amount to more waste fraud and abuse on a massive scale. I hardly see an efficiency improvement here. And fundamentally that is what we really need is to become more efficient producing oil and gas not less. Or, I am just way off here?
Who knows, really, we are in speculation phase, a wile e coyote moment. They will definitely try something. Anything to keep production at a certain minimal level.
No, you don’t just give the money to Exxon and expect them to do good. You NATIONALIZE Exxon and turn it into a federal agency. Have you ever heard of PEMEX? or Aramco?
I am not sure what you mean by nationalize it. How would it be funded? Somewhere somehow people would have to be paid. You could force people to work but how do you force replacement parts to be produced? One would still need refineries as well. The oil and gas is in remote locations and somewhat scattered so roads and transport would be needed as well. And more replacement parts for that equipment as well. I just don’t see how it would be workable. I would be more inclined to believe if there is indeed and “illuminati” type organization and I was in charge this is what I would do: 1. Cut the electrical power to the biggest cities and just let the bulk of the dead weight die off. 2. Go in with tanker trucks and haul all the gas and diesel fuel out of the storage tanks in the cities to a central location. 3. Use stored food and military equipment to round up some slave labor so I could live out my days in relative comfort.
PEMEX and Aramco were nationalized when they made money. No one wants a company that needs capital infusions (except perhaps those rooting for renewable companies that can’t make it on their own).
Good point!
Nationalizing a company that is losing money is not a magic solution — all that happens is that the losses are absorbed by the tax payer….
In fact nationalizing a company will likely result in even larger losses — we all know how proficient bureaucrats are at running companies 🙂
The last thing governments need are more bottomless pits…. (see Solyndra)
Amen. Thank you!
Gail, Fast Eddie, et. al.
Well, didn’t we basically do just that when we nationalized GM, AGI and some of the shakier big banks back in 2008-09 using TARP! They weren’t making a profit then, and needed huge capital infusions. That seemed to work out pretty good for the taxpayers in the end!
Can you explain how nationalizing the the oil industry would overcome the problem of production costs of $100+ vs sale price of $40 per barrel.
BTW – the US has already nationalized the oil industry — where do you think the money came from to make the shale ‘miracle’ happen?
Without the Fed’s QE ZIRP policies… that oil would still be in the ground – and the oil industry as a whole — and BAU would have collapsed.
Sure — subsidies can delay the day of reckoning…. but they have their limits…
Likewise with the banks and auto companies…. QE and ZIRP are keeping them alive — there are limits….
Nationalization is not a fix…. it is a palliative….
“Nationalization is not a fix…. it is a palliative….”
Private companies must continue producing, to service their debts. A sovereign nation can lower production to raise prices. Particularly America, which benefits from trading pieces of paper for imported oil. It would be better to consume everyone else’s oil first.
I still can’t wrap my head around Saudi Arabia’s supposed motivation of “maintaining market share”; the competitors can only produce so much, so as long as demand keeps rising, or eventually when competitor export supply falls, the export market would grow.
The biggest problem is lack of political will to raise prices on energy. Most of the oil rich nations have gone down the path of trying to offer near-free energy to the masses. Canada has continually raised taxes on oil, consequently oil consumption per capita peaked around 1980, thus resisting Export Land Model issues.
Greg, How did Hitler and nazi Germany get oil and coal when they had no economy except a war economy? How did the Pharoahs pay for the pyramids, which produce nothing? HOw do Americans pay for cars, which produce nothing?. The economy runs on credibility and subjective valuations – it does not have to make sense to work. . Long term, yes, the contradictions will kill it, Short term, no.
“How did Hitler and nazi Germany get oil and coal when they had no economy except a war economy?”
They took it by force.
” How did the Pharoahs pay for the pyramids, which produce nothing? ”
Taxes, AKA they took it by force.
“HOw do Americans pay for cars, which produce nothing?”
Cars do slightly increase productivity. Paid for in large part by credit. Ultimately, it is because the people are convinced they MUST have cars, so they will sacrifice other things, such as future needs, in order to have a car.
Very good article about Hitler from a close attache
http://www.historynet.com/a-rational-german-explains-his-respect-for-hitler.htm
Carl Boehm-Tettlebach was as much American as he was German. His mother was from Oregon, his father from the Rhineland, and he spoke perfect English, tinged with an American accent. Yet this half-American man found Hitler “impressive.” Moreover, he told me that he believed Hitler was “a respectable person. Charming as a host, not wild and shouting…. He was very friendly…, normal.” He was particularly struck by Hitler’s ability to dominate a meeting: “I never heard a conference where he did not win [the argument
.. More than anything, though, over time Boehm-Tettlebach simply came to set aside his rational judgment and put his trust in Hitler. Life can be much easier, Boehm-Tettlebach discovered, when you have faith in a strong leader who is certain about the right way forward
Even when it was clear that Germany was losing the war, Boehm-Tettlebach marveled at Hitler’s ability to inspireBut the flair Hitler had was unusual. He could [take] somebody who was ready for suicide, he could revive him and make him feel that he should carry the flag and die in battle. Very strange
Is there another Leader to pop up in our world when the SHTF?
Just read an interesting article concerning a reason why lost the Battle of British.
Seems the Brits had access to higher octane jet fuel than the Germans and the Americans provided the means to plentiful Petro and other equipment.
http://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/2015/10/27/oil-behind-causes-finish-wwii/74684108/
There is a lot about this topic on the web, including Germany’s synthetic fuel program
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/296859-High-Octane-fuel-in-Britain-WW2-Forums
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1981/jul-aug/becker.htm
I expect the “Governments” will us any means to extract fossil fuels, even if it kills their citizens
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/opinion/the-danger-of-urban-oil-drilling.html?_r=0
Well for one thing oil and coal were a helluva lot easier and more profitable to extract back then than they are today.
Why can’t the government just decide oil costs $80? Or how much it takes to take care of the supply side.
It works in other places with other products. The challenge will be raising taxes, but you will be given a democratic choice between higher taxes and much higher taxes.
Yes, its called “price supports” which Nixon tried in the 1970s and it worked! It doesn’t have to make sense. The government is coercive and is sovereign.
I agree.
If the Elders wanted $80 oil there would be $80 oil.
The reason it isn’t is likely because:
HIGH PRICED OIL DESTROYS GROWTH
According to the OECD Economics Department and the International Monetary Fund Research Department, a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second years of higher prices.
http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/high_oil04sum.pdf
I don’t think $80 a barrel in 2015 dollars is too high for the world economy to handle. It handled over a hundred for years, even in the 110’s and 120’s until those high prices incentivized production to the point of the current over supply that has driven down price into the 40’s. The increased value of the USD vs. other world currencies has dropped oil price as well.
I will say this though – at the low price it has been the US economy is jacking back up. last qtr.’s GDP was 3.2% which is very high for the US economy in recent years. It had been tracking between 0-2% for several years. It was designed to run on cheap oil and it’s showing it now. But how long can the oversupply last until price goes back up into the 70-80 range is anyone’s guess. Probably sometime in 2016 is my guess.
But one thing that is happening is the price range of oil is getting squeezed between the high the world economy’s consumer can afford and the amount needed by producers to extract and refine different oil reserve sources. What we are left with is legacy oil and what can be produced at the consumer affordability price. As the legacy oil depletes, those other sources many of which are non-conventional are clocking in at a much lower eroei. So over time the price range will descend and with it the total amount of reserves that can be produced.
For now during the oversupply, party on – pull up a recliner and watch a football game or whatever and take a load off. Soon enough we will all be expected to do a lot a more under harsher conditions.
All stats concerning employment, gdp etc are 100% total and complete BULLSH#T. Thanksgiving shopping was a bust. http://reut.rs/1NgE3BX
So please, spare us with your regurgitation of mainstream eyewash about how good this or that quarter was, or simplistic arguments about the low oil price.
The economy handled 100+ oil for years only because this was offset with gigantic stimulus policies including subprime mortgages, QE, debt, ZIRP, ghost towns, etc…
If not for those policies 100+ oil would have collapsed BAU…
Money printing is not a perpetual economic prosperity machine… it has toxic side-effects…. I suspect that is why oil was pushed down to it’s current levels.
And as we are seeing — $40 oil is not spurring much in the way of additional economic activity….
So what would happen at $80?
Stilgar,
I agree with you that the world economy can probably handle a higher price than $80 per barrel. Or at least the US seems to be able to pay. I have recently wondered if the US will be the only consumption economy left and the rest of the world will basically exist to serve its consumption needs, surviving as best they can on US crumbs. Wealth and continued American lifestyles for Americans–eternal servitude for everyone else.
“Why can’t the government just decide oil costs $80? Or how much it takes to take care of the supply side.”
If one economy is running on $80 oil and another on $40 oil, the difference in competitive advantage will be tremendous.
Either a top-level government agreement – such as this climate meeting, or a cartel of world oil producers with teeth to enforce quotas, seems the logical solution to me.
“So what would happen at $80?”
QE, Zirp, the rest of it helped support a +100 a barrel, but I still figure the world economy can handle 70-80 a barrel. Guess we’ll see what happens when the over supply dwindles.
I think forcing a global oil price of $80 and cranking up QE again would be the one thing most likely to buy a little more time.
If we have an oversupply of oil when WTI is now trading at $41.59, how does a country convince people to pay $80 for it? If the country does impose taxes on it, to get the price up to $80, the oversupply will simply be greater. There will be no more search for oil, unless the taxes on that oil are funneled into specific companies to spend on exploration. The $80 program certainly would not be an $80 worldwide program. It would tend to make prices lower, elsewhere outside the countries where the $80 per barrel charge is used.
“If we have an oversupply of oil when WTI is now trading at $41.59, how does a country convince people to pay $80 for it?
What we need is a global oil (or hydrocarbons, with coal and natural gas included) cartel with teeth, to trim supply down when the price is too low. OPEC lacks the teeth and has major producers not under its control. Otherwise, we will continue with destructive competition.
Right. Then we need to work on natural gas, coal, corn, copper, silver, and a number of other resources in oversupply.
“If we have an oversupply of oil when WTI is now trading at $41.59, how does a country convince people to pay $80 for it?”
It needs to occur by way of depleting the oversupply via low prices, i.e. greater consumption. There is a famous saying, “The cure for low prices is low prices.”, meaning consumption increases with a lower price, which is occurring in the US. I put a link on this message board somewhere with an article and graph showing US mile driven is sharply rising.
So I don’t expect the govt. will need to do anything – it will happen on it’s own.
People may be driving more — but the price of oil has been low for nearly a year now — and we are not seeing the usual recovery associated with a drop in the oil price.
In fact – based on falling corporate profits — things are getting worse
That is troubling.
$100 a barrel killed demand in 2014. Just like $140 dollar oil killed it in 2008. Price is now around $40 with no economic rebound in sight during all of 2015, deflation has its icy claws around us, but I’m sure what people really need is to pay double the amount per barrel. Yes, that should get the animal juices flowing, maybe even doubling or tripling the cost of food, shelter and healthcare as well. It will feel like it’s happy days all over again…
http://www.virginmedia.com/images/happy-days-278×160.jpg
Maybe. Next you need to fix all of the other commodities. Perhaps we will eat more as well.
If lower gas prices do not increase consumption doesnt the reverse apply, higher prices dont dont decrease consumption?
The reason lower gas prices are not spurring consumption is because the jobs reports are lying … labour participation is at a record low… most jobs created are minimum wage/part time…
Also people are up to their ears in debt…
So they haven’t cash for more ‘stuff’
$80 oil makes ‘stuff’ more expensive….
I’ll leave it to you to connect the dots and work out why your statement is not logical
“If lower gas prices do not increase consumption doesnt the reverse apply, higher prices dont dont decrease consumption?”
I think the bigger problem is that economists expect people to react to price changes instantly. It takes years of higher or lower prices for people to fundamentally change their lifestyles, unless it is a sudden massive price increase – which almost never happens, since governments instead force price controls which cause shortages.
If oil stayed over $100 from 2008 onwards, by now there would be a lot less new SUVs and 4X4s and more small cars. Since the price spiked and collapsed, it sends mixed signals, and people think the high price was a temporary shortage, go right back to buying new big vehicles.
“I’ll leave it to you to connect the dots and work out why your statement is not logical”
Its entirely logical. And its based on my observations in my business. Pricepoint is just not a factor in purchasing now. People are buying what they need. If they dont need it they dont buy it whether the would like it or whether its cheap or expensive doesnt matter. If they need it they buy it whether its expensive or not. As we know gas can not be substituted for like beef and chicken. I agree with Gails analysis that supply and demand does not apply when it comes to the primary resource. Why is it so hard to understand that If supply and demand doesnt work in one direction it wont work in the other? Why is it so hard to understand that we cant stop consuming gas we have no capacity to do so? If the price of heroin is high does the junkie quit?
“If they need it they buy it whether its expensive or not”
When you don’t have a job and/or your credit card is maxed out —- a situation that huge swathes of the world’s population is facing…
Where does the money come from to buy ‘it’
We may be in a world where up is down and down is up —- but one thing is for certain — high oil prices mean higher prices for ‘stuff’ — and higher prices for stuff — in a situation where wages are stagnant and unemployment is incredibly high….
Means people buy less stuff — regardless of if they need it or not…
Now if you are selling cars the rules don’t apply — because it does not matter if you make $250 a week working part time at Starbucks…. you will get your no money down auto loan payable over a 10 year period.
Pretty sure people are not as addicted to driving around in their cars as someone who is addicted to heroin. Driving your car slightly less often will not cause you to feel agonizing pain through every inch of your skin, constantly.
The big difference is, as the price moves up, some people might consume less, while new consumers who have no price memory come along and use the new higher priced gasoline. Maybe instead of one person commuting in an SUV in America, it is 10 people on scooters in Taiwan.
If drinking water cost you $1 per litre, and then one day it was on sale for $0.50, you wouldn’t suddenly drink twice as much water that day – unless you were dehydrating yourself before because you could not afford to drink as much as you need.
A big share of our consumption is determined by things other than day-to-day purchases of fuel for a vehicle. Things like paving roads, and the sale of new vehicles, and new houses are important. Commercial use around the world makes a difference as well, including air flights, fuel used in building new buildings, and fuel used in transporting goods. We tend to think as if our own direct purchases are all that are important, but they are not.
The situation is not symmetric. One the way up, a rise in prices hurts, so governments and businesses do everything they can do to pass on the pain to the individual consumer, so that it is the individual consumer who is hurt, not governments and businesses. (It doesn’t take very long to lay off workers, whether high paid or low paid.) So it is the individuals who get hurt worst, through job loss and loss of wages.
On the way down, there is a benefit to be had, so businesses and governments are quick to jump in a scoop up the benefit for themselves. Governments take the opportunity to raise taxes; businesses use the opportunity to widen their profit margins–they only occasionally use the opportunity to hire more individuals. If they do hire individuals, the people they hire may be low paid and temporary. It takes time to start new investment programs, using high paid individuals. Individuals get a part of the benefit of the reduction in prices, but not necessarily very much of it. Individuals are often so overburdened by debt that what the reduction in prices does do is allow the individuals to pay down their debts a bit, rather than buy more.
Ugo Bardi quotes Lucius Annaeus Seneca who two thousand years ago wrote, “increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” It takes a lot of investment and time to build up a new business. Thus, no matter how much oil becomes available at a low price, it is not going to be put to work quickly. High oil price is more like “pulling the rug out from under a person.” It is easy to lay off workers quickly. This is a chart Bardi uses:
Maybe in the US, for right now, until interest rates are raised, there is the capacity to keep BAU going.
In the rest of the world, there is a whole lot of debt (often in US $) that can’t be paid. In fact, it looks like there is a whole lot in the US as well. This issue is lurking just below the surface. We have to wait and see–there are lots of signs that the problems are gradually spreading worldwide. Falling profits of companies are not a good sign.
The fact that the younger generations have no future is already undermining the BAU. The system in many postindustrial countries keeps functioning only thanks to the supply of the human resources imported from other countries. The system lacking the cheap energy consumes human resources, it is no longer able to provide for replacement of the human resources, as regards birth rates and training of the workforce.
E.g. what we have in Slovakia is so called “assembling industry”, as the majority of the resources and energy must be imported in some way. The assembling industry functions untill there is enough workforce. At the moment, Slovakia seems to hit its limits as regards the amount of human resources and the situation before 2008 repeats: tens of thousands of new jobs, but the lack of the appropriate human resources.
As the system implodes, there is less and less qualified workforce not only due to the wages (which may or may not stagnate and go down). There is a rising demand for couches, motivators etc., because when there is no perspecitve, why should anyone try hard?
The lack of the prosperous future in case of the human resources kills the system more than the lack of the capital.
MG, Volkswagen Slovakia, with € 5.73 billion in manufacturing, will be laying off people soon.
Don´t worry, soon people will try harder.
Van Kent, you mean they will be laying off robots? The people will not try harder, they will become drug addicts, fall ill or will continue loosing interest in manufacturing jobs. That is why more and more robots are needed: the manufacturing jobs become less and less profitable for the workforce.
Furthemore, the hypermodern factories like WV Bratislava with minimum (highly qualified) human workforce will be the last to lay off. However, even such highly automated factories become with diminishing returns superfluous when the affordability (i.e. purchasing power) of the customers fall.
This “glut” of job vacancies is a sign of overheating (i.e. the economy runs dry of human resources) while the wages are not going up enough to make the jobs attractive. Only a naive person can think that others will try harder forever when the deflationary forces make their jobs unprofitable. The manufacturing industry adds more and more various desperate measures to save the profitability. Lying about the emissions is one of the less harmless ones.
E.g. the Jaguar car maker that is comming to Slovakia wants more aluminium in its cars: you dont need coal for aluminium production, just the electricity from the nuclear power stations.
Replacing steel with plastics, aluminium and other light materials that do not need much coal for their production shows where the industry is moving: away from heavy and energy intensive iron.
It is hard to come up with a good story to tell workers about the future.
Gail, its even hard to come up with a good story to tell my children about the future. One of my younger sons asked me the other day, “Dad, I’m going to have a bad life, aren’t I?” Broke my heart.
This is a difficult one. I get e-mails from young people who are very concerned, and it is hard to come up with a good answer.
I don’t think it is a good idea to tell them the truth ….
There are plenty of feel good stories out there that were dreamed up by Don Draper to help people with this …. the one about solar panels saving the world can be convincing…. throw in a bit about the wonders of Elon Musk….
Even if you don’t believe them it can be considered a public service message to point people in these directions
You know, if everyone here would just get out there and buy a bunch of stuff that you don’t need and put it on your credit card, everything would be just fine! I think Krugman even said that this was the key to the Japanese “recovery”. I betcha Krugman himself is actually a big saver and spends very little of his discretionary income. He probably has a FRED chart that actually shows that folks in his economic category help the economy more by saving.
LOL!
Actually, the ideal expenditures would be ones that use commodities, like vacation trips, and boats, and new cars and homes. Higher education for children, and more medical care is not as helpful. Leaving money parked is not very helpful at all.
I found this article which has oil production cost numbers for several oil producing countries:
http://peakoil.com/production/what-it-costs-to-produce-a-barrel-of-oil
What it costs to produce a barrel of oil
“In the United Kingdom, it costs $52.50 to produce a barrel of oil — which is trading right now around $42.
Oil production in Brazil costs nearly $49 per barrel. Production costs around $41 a barrel in Canada.
In the United States, production costs are $36 a barrel — still below the trading price.
On the other side of the coin, Saudia Arabia and Kuwait can pump a barrel of oil for less than $10, on average. Iraq can produce oil for about $10.70 per barrel.”
My understanding on cost of oil production for fracking is higher than the 36 average for the US indicated above. It ranges from 45-65.
There is a wide range of “costs” depending on what a person includes. Governments depend on the tax revenue of these companies. It is the fact that oil can be extracted cheaply, but there are various costs that “need” to be paid, but are not part of the extraction costs themselves that leads to an increase in production when prices go down, rather than a decrease in production.
This one is for YOU…Don Stewart
PEAK HAIR
http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Leicester-men-fearful-baldness-unemployment/story-28079205-detail/story.html
Going bald ranks higher on the list of Leicester men’s fears than their partner’s infidelity, unemployment or even their entire internet search history being made public, new research suggests.
When asked what the number one cause of anxiety was in their daily lives, one in 10 (11 per cent) of respondents in the city rated losing their hair as being worse than their partner cheating (9 per cent), their entire internet search history being made public (6 per cent) or even their favourite sports team losing an important tournament (7 per cent)
Men’s top 15 fears nationally:
1.Illness (40%)
2.Death (35%)
3.Old age (32%)
4.Getting into debt (16%)
5.Terrorist attack (23%)
6.Being burgled (23%)
7.Losing job (13%)
8.Knocking front teeth out (13%)
9.Losing their hair (11%)
10.Snakes, spiders etc. (10%)
11.Partner cheating on you (9%)
12.Favourite sports team losing a tournament (7%)
13.Entire internet search history being made public (6%)
14.Seeing parents naked (3%)
15.Clowns (3%
Psychologist Emma Kenny said: “Men’s self-esteem is often underestimated and baldness considered an issue they should simply accept, yet hair is very much part of a human beings identity and enables us to express our style and be confident within our appearance
Cheers and keep smiling
Things could be worse…you could be Ecuador!
But the cost of this economic relationship has given many Ecuadoreans pause, especially as the country lurches into tight financial straits. Ecuador’s outstanding debt to China stands at around $5 billion, at a time when the government, hit by slumping oil prices, has a current budget shortfall of around $7 billion. Payments on Chinese loans will start being due in the next two years, and it’s not clear where those funds will come from. The loans from China were also accompanied by steep interest rates — around 7 percent on average, which is about twice as high as those from multilateral lenders like the International Monetary Fund.
“It’s true,” said Manta resident Laura Villamar, 25, when asked about criticisms that Ecuador had indebted itself too deeply with China. “China is the ones with the funds, so they offer it and we just take it. There’s no choice but to keep getting into more and more debt
http://www.ibtimes.com/china-latin-america-relations-ecuador-dependency-beijing-financing-development-2190025
“The party is now over. More and more people are starting to realize, ‘Oh, look at this, Ecuador has pretty much committed its domestic crude oil production for the next 10 years just to pay loans to China through last year.’”
Cheap Oil and Strong Dollar: Ecuador’s Twin Troubles
Two of the most punishing trends in emerging markets are the rising dollar and falling oil. And caught between them is Ecuador.
Cheap Oil and Strong Dollar: Ecuador’s Twin Troubles
Two of the most punishing trends in emerging markets are the rising dollar and falling oil. And caught between them is Ecuador.
Two of the most punishing trends in emerging markets are the rising dollar and falling oil. And caught between them is Ecuador.
The South American country has the misfortune to be an oil producer with a “dollarized” economy that uses the U.S. currency as legal tender.
Dollarization helped officials rein in inflation in 2000. Now, it is depriving them of the relief valve a depreciating local currency can provide at a time when the drop in oil prices is hurting its exports.
Sarah Glendon, head of sovereign research at Gramercy Funds Management, an emerging-market manager with $6 billion in assets, has doubts that Ecuador will be able to manage its debt load after this year.
Given oil prices’ slide, Ecuador is trying to beef up its nonpetroleum exports such as flowers, like these at a Tabacundo plantation. Given oil prices’ slide, Ecuador is trying to beef up its nonpetroleum exports such as flowers, like these at a Tabacundo plantation.
“I’m convinced that they have the willingness to pay, but what I’m more concerned about now is their ability to pay,” she said.
“Beyond 2015, I’m more skeptical. We’ll see additional weakness thereafter because of the challenges the economy faces,” Ms. Glendon added
Some of these debt are going to default–it is hard to see another way out. $150 barrel oil prices might save them, but hurt the rest of the world.
At some point nations will bite the bullet and default. So far North Korea and China are free. But that is old news. Which nation will be the first in the new wave of reality?
Not the really poor nations of Africa they have no ability to defend their resources from the bankers. They are just owned by the bankers and get nothing beyond brides for the resident enforcers.
Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland? Greece and Italy already can not control their borders. So maybe not. Brazil? Much like African countries it will be unable to defend its resources, Amazon basin, so yes it may default and live without international liquidity but it will be robbed blind.
I really do not see any nation state being able to maintain territorial integrity and control without the liquidity provided by the global banks. It will have to wait until resources deplete far enough that global bank liquidity is no longer able to buy national stability. Then I expect a silent slipping away of periphery. Areas where people no longer pay tax and live off of local resources 100%. I expect plenty of killing as that gets “sorted out”.
So three regions of the world the first world, the resources locals, the subsistence natives.
“Not the really poor nations of Africa they have no ability to defend their resources from the bankers. They are just owned by the bankers and get nothing beyond brides for the resident enforcers.”
Africa is a contested area, between the western banks and China. I think China will win.
Isn’t debt what is used to rob these countries? If debt goes away, the resources stay in place. The jobs disappear. The IMF participates in robbing countries by its debt programs.
It seems like the system stops from a lack of new debt as well as defaults on old debt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79bZ71fUZRU
We are on the winning side… we get to drive these:
http://bestsmallssuvs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Best-Large-Suvs-Australia.jpg
We get 8 meals per day and play video games 🙂
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KYRcAKYYEG4/maxresdefault.jpg
This pretty much sums it up:
Yes, it is sad!
Agreed. Sad and pathetic, really. We could have done better and made better choices.
On Rat Island…. when the ship of grain washed up …. they did exactly what we are doing …. they gorged and had orgies…. they increased their population immensely …
Then when the grain ran low they tore each other to shreds fighting over the remaining kernels that had rolled into the cracks… they ate everything that could be eaten including gnawing on the ships beams, scraps of leather, bones of the dead crew…. then they ate each other…. there were so many of them that they scorched the island….
Then they completely died off because there was nothing left to eat
We are animals driven by the exact same things that drive rats — we have demonstrated very clearly that we do not consider the long term —- we do ‘whatever it takes’ to get as much as we can here and now…. there is no stopping us.
Case in point — we know that 7.5B people is nowhere near sustainable on a world that is finite — that we are consuming the earth’s resources like the voracious rats consumed the grain…
Do we pause to reconsider?
Nope. Not for a second. The plunder is relentless — unstoppable. If left unchecked we’d cut down every last tree – burn every ounce of coal and oil — gut every single fish….
Suggest to a newly married couple that they not have children because there are too many humans already.
You may as well tell that to a rat…
F. Eddie,
I think you are probably right. This outcome was likely pre-ordained as soon as we stumbled upon fossil fuels, right on up to the development of our current late-stage capitalism where we begin to cannibalize ourselves for profit. I wonder if things would have been delayed a century or two if communism had won the Cold War since it is so much less efficient at consumption.
“I wonder if things would have been delayed a century or two if communism had won the Cold War since it is so much less efficient at consumption.”
It seems to me that communists deplete resources faster, with less to show for it, and much lower quality of life for the commoners.
Hi Everyone!
It’s Black Friday are you ready to do your part to keep BAU alive?
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-black-friday-results-20141201-story.html
Nicole Bredeson, 31, dropped by Wal-Mart in Long Beach on Friday to pick up a toy castle for her daughter that was discounted 50% to $30. The graduate school student, who makes only $16,000 a year, said she stretches her budget by looking for bargains. This is the only way I can afford Christmas for my kids,” Bredeson said.
Every day is Black Friday and every minute is Cyber Monday,” Shay said. “It’s going to be a dogfight for the consumer every day, every minute.
Yes, I did my part. I just purchased a $250 hockey stick for my son this morning. Let the good times roll!
God Bless you!
Hope you didn’t have to use the hockey stick at the check out line
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-27/videos-are-us-shoppers-go-wild-beat-each-other-celebrate-black-friday-sales
We went to Best Buy and it was packed to the gills with bargain hunters.
Literally not one parking spot with grid lock.
BAU is alive and well
Stay calm and spend and consume.
I think next I’ll go for a 2016 Chevy Suburban. With gas now at $1.98 per gallon I think I can afford a new gas guzzler!
Oh come now – get with the program. Your new Chevy Volt awaits you. Just make sure to charge it for a full week before your first ride!
We live in a world of fantasy, a virtual world. Reality doesn’t matter. Truly! You insist that it does, but it doesn’t.
That’s my message.
Come back and tell us how reality doesn’t matter when the electricity goes off — your food runs out — and starvation sets in …
We don’t need no stinking reality. We’re America and we can just make our own.
Ha. Channeling a little Karl Rove there.
Not going to happen.
This is a decline into irrelevance, not an immediate collapse of all industrial functions.
What matters is the virtual world, the world of fantasy, images, and entertainment. That’s the only world that anybody is interested in anymore. Look at me! I’m singing and dancing and reading lines from a script, and throwing a ball down the field! I’m so pretty, I’m so important!
That’s how this is playing out.
ive just tossed a penny in your hat
dolph, turn off the TV.
I agree with your statment that we live in a fantasy world. A virtual world if you will. On that much I do agree. Virtually everything humans touch today does not and mostly cannot exist in the natural world without large inputs of very specific and directed external energy. In that sense we live a fantasy. It really isn’t real. But, there exists a very real substance on which this illusion floats. It is called oil. Or, fossil fuels to be more precise. Fossil fuels is the reality which give us our virtual world. Fossil fuels do matter. We eat, sleep and breathe it every day.
You are right, but there are fuels left. It’s going to take awhile to extract and burn it all.
“But, there exists a very real substance on which this illusion floats. It is called oil.”
That sounds like it could be a quote straight out of Dune! It is indeed surreal how our illusory world is upheld by this mysterious black fluid. And how without it the illusion quickly fades unless some other illusion fuel replaces it.
At some level, I still can’t accept that humanity reaches this level of development and just before reaching escape velocity stumbles and falls flat on its collective face. What an utter disaster!
What if the path is truly narrow, almost impossibly so, but some essence of continuity makes it through to the other side. And no, I don’t mean BAU. I mean just the right amount of knowledge and technical knowhow for an entirely new cultural organism to emerge. All the excess would be sloughed off like so much dead skin. I mean an entirely new way of life, something that a half billion people could manage.
Yes would be a real pity if all these billions of barrels of crude oil energy were for naught. All the scientific knowledge that has been accumulated (courtesy of the copious amounts of energy that has been available to us for the last 100 years) is in danger of being lost. How do we carry all our scientific knowledge with us as computing will inevitably disappear? I can see the world reverting back to the dark ages of a flat and young Earth, Witch hunts, Burning at the stake and just plain barbarism. If all else fails I hope we as a species don’t fall back to the dark ages. That would be worse than extinction.
I agree that there are things worse than extinction. And don’t we have witch hunts now? Gotta keep those climate change deniers in check somehow.
Javier,
Careful now with your wishful thinking or you’ll have Fast Eddy singing Koobaya again. Don’t want that, do you?
I’ll take the risk. 😉
And I’ll take a crack at the crazy proposition…
I think there are ways a dedicated elite could survive the apocalyse and re-emerge with most knowledge and some technology intact. We have seed vaults and other underground installations strategically positioned around the world specifically to increase resilience in extreme situations.
If I was in charge of restarting civilisation I would want to secure mostly engineers and scientists in the reduced human population. Combined with the safeguarded information, this would provide the best chance of survival even with limited resources.
Computers and spare parts don’t magically disappear in a collapse scenario. Any IT guy can cobble together an old laptop and switch out a part or two if necessary to get things going. At least you can access that stored data for several years until you come up with a replacement, but there woud be millions of spares to use in the meantime. All they would have to do is squirt a bit of electricity into these.
The knowledge that would be required has probably been organised and stored in a similar way to seed vaults. Much of our current information is massively distributed across billions of servers and would not be available post collapse, but most of that information is also useless crap, so won’t be missed. Other than that, libraries should still be intact – and no, I don’t mean for use as combustible material FE.
Of course, there would be obstacles to overcome and a high probabilty of failure, but at least you would be making an attempt to salvage useful knowledge for a new beginning. Small communities could survive for quite some time with local farming, scavenging, while developing their other skills.
And everything that Van Kent said…
Javier, I go with the book “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Niven and Pournell. In it the smart guy has in his house reference books like the 1900 Encyclopedia and various old and new books and many subject farming, metal making, medicine, chemistry. When the SHTF he places a few at a time in double sealed plastic bags and dumps them in his septic tank. They sink below the excrement. When they are all in he replaces the lip and the dirt and heads for the hills.
Paper not computers.
Oh, it’s been already been shown in this film clip
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mzddAYYDZkk
I keep an extra unused laptop loaded with various files including thousands of e-books … and a small portable solar kit with batteries that could be used to charge that laptop….
http://files.hanser.de/hanser/pics/978-3-446-24904-2_215427135238-43.jpg
You should read this book. It will appear in english in 2016. I read it in german language.
It is about the efforts of the elite to survive the collaps. Very exciting.
Saludos
el mar
Love that movie clip! And I’ll have to download that book to my emergency laptop! Now all I need is the solar panel kit and I’m all set.
I think I’ll pass on the books, bags and poop strategy. There must be another way…
Ed, I remember reading “Lucifer’s Hammer” in the 70s as a boy. Great book!
Javier, a long term plan would need some sort of plan of how we can efficiently grow food, harvest enough of it and transport some of it. While mudslides, hurricanes, floods, cold, draughts and excess heat persist. Any sort of society or civilization rests on efficient food production and transportation.
If I had to write a paper about preservation of knowledge, it would be something with a home schooling system that concentrates on valuable skills.
– Ability to make a polycarbonate sheet in to a riot shield (first personal protection)
– Ability to make a bowling ball mortar (then homestead protection)
– Ability to efficiently use natural antibiotics, sterilization, germicides and antivirals (Garlic, Ginger, Honey, Cayenne, Vodka, Rosemary, Eucalyptus, Orange, Lavender)
– Ability to make a efficient masonry heater (heat and shelter)
– Ability to combine a masonry heater with biochar production, or potash and sodium production
– Ability to make wind mills from flag poles and sails (power)
– Ability to combine that wind mill with woodmills, bellows for ironworks, bellows for brick kilns, or limestone and clay to produce cement
– And finally rainwater harvesting bawris, water storage tanks, distribution channels (food)
– With properly designed barns and haylofts
If we could design food production to be efficient and secure, then everything else follows.
Van Kent, I fail to see to point of having a mortar. Of what use could a mortar bee outside the battle field? Defending a homestead is to small scale a battle more like a skirmish.
“– Ability to efficiently use natural antibiotics, sterilization, germicides and antivirals (Garlic, Ginger, Honey, Cayenne, Vodka, Rosemary, Eucalyptus, Orange, Lavender)”
Are the mentioned substances really of any significant use to sick people? I mean can they really be comparable to modern medications? I know that for instance fresh honey is useful on wounds and it’s even used by school medicine. There are many antibiotics in honey but the problem us to make them work to cure humans.
Medications would of course be a huge loss in case of a collapse. Finding a decently working replacement for modern medications seems hard.
Modern medication relies on advanced chemistry, labs, computers, microscopes, the grid, modern medicine will be lost. Since giving birth or a simple cut on a scythe can become deadly without simple antibiotics, doctors and hospitals, it would be nice to have at least some cards up our sleeves.
It would be nice if we could somehow first gather how and what natural antibiotics work, and then preserve that knowledge http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/how-to-use-best-natural-antibiotics/
The healthfood industry with all its goji berries etc. make such wild claims that the area of natural antibiotics is filled with BS. But simultaneously we know that the very same molecules that make modern medicine work, can be found naturally. So, replacement, no, but substitute, yes.
“Since giving birth or a simple cut on a scythe can become deadly without simple antibiotics, doctors and hospitals, it would be nice to have at least some cards up our sleeves.”
As long as we retain Germ Theory, that’s the big thing. Simple hygiene, soap, water, etc is pretty effective at greatly reducing deaths and complications from injuries and during child birth. Like Doctors simply washing their hands.
We are immortal. Eternal bliss. Unyielding Truth. There is no escaping it.
But right now… in this virtual world… I need a bacon sandwich pronto!
For those who think it is difficult for a group of men to control the world…
Think about the decision that was made in 2008 — the one in which tens of trillions of dollars was pumped into the global economy….
Now imagine what would have happened if that had not happened…
That decision was made by a small group of men at the Fed – which is a private company that they own.
It was not made by the US government. Only TARP was voted on … an insignificant amount of money.
Now think of the macro influence that money had on the global economy.
It had an impact on everything — it surged into every single corner of the economy — it determined if there were jobs — it determined if there were funds available for ALL business, government and personal purchases… it ensured the oil kept pumping … and on and on
Basically that money allowed BAU to continue.
That is what owning the rights to print the reserve currency means. It is the ultimate power on the planet. If you control BAU — you control everything.
And you don’t even have to micromanage — you make the rules — those who don’t follow get shunted into the poor house.
Those who try to change the rules — well… they get a drone missile up the their ass….
It’s a simple yet elegant system.
What you say reminds of someone who survives a disaster, hundreds or thousands die and they pray to the lord for saving them. The questions of course are, why wasn’t everyone saved or why was it allowed to happen in the first place if the lord is so powerful.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%9308
take note of WHAT CAUSED the GFC.
Subprime lending
Housing bubble
Easy credit
Fraudulent underwriting
Predatory lending
Deregulation
Debt burdens and over-leveraging
Boom and Collapse of shadow banking
Commodities boom
and much more, it was complex all probably exacerbated by the rising cost of oil. Europe caught the contagion.
Printing didn’t save anything immediately. Governments made guarantees that the sheeple fell for, which was a good thing. Some institutions were allowed to fail, many banks went to the wall but eventually debts were assumed, bonds issued and QE took centre stage. Probably similar to what occurred with Greece. After The GFC and with debt and high prices I guess there was still some resources to plunder but high prices can’t work forever unless the consumer is compensated. The consumer has been bled dry and is now unable to support the high prices.
The question now is, what guarantees can governments make that will once again be swallowed.
Wrong.
All of these things you mention were policies enacted by the Elders to offset the impact of $100+ oil.
Do you really think the Fed was not aware that it’s minions (the retail banks) were not giving 750k mortgages to gardeners on 50k per year?
Do you really think the Fed was not aware of these things called Liar Loans?
It is ludicrous to think that they were not aware — banks do not lend money to bums — they do not lend money to liars (or people with no credit history) — unless someone has told them to do so.
Do you think the Elders are not aware of the fact that nearly 30% of the new car market involves lending to the people with horrible credit ratings?
Do you think the Elders are not aware of the fact that the money they churn out is not being loaned to failing corporations that use it to buy back stock so that they do not collapse?
Of course they are aware — they are the ones who are dictating the policies.
The Elders are not gods — they are men.
They cannot conjure up new oceans of cheap oil.
All they can do is pull levers and push buttons and give orders…. like the captain on a torpedoed ship…. orders that keep the ship afloat for as long as possible.
The ship is going to the bottom and they along with it — the only question is how much longer can they keep in on the surface by stuffing their underpants in the hole….
All you have is an obscure reference to these “Elders”. You make it up as you go along. It’s really beginning to eat away at your thought processes. These elders you speak of are a figment of your imagination, that is all. How about you name some actual people. Maybe an organisation, a gang, a political group, a religious sect, an ethnic group or race.
I could go into competition with you and say my group is acting the exact opposite to yours. My group has always been acting in the best interest of all countries, sects, races or groups. My group is as obscure as yours of course, I only have events from the past that I can conveniently cherry pick to cement my case. My “Youngers” ended wars, they exposed the despots, they endeavour to end racism, environmental destruction, inequality and over population……….
Of course I don’t believe that nonsense, we are simply humans going about our business and we are individuals, subject to our beliefs, instincts and drives. They add up to our eventual demise, it’s a finite world and we can’t change it. How we get to the end matters not but as individuals we all want everyone to see it our way. It assists with how we cope, especially if you stuck in the anger stage.
Have you read the Elders of Zion?
I guarantee that if you did you’d change your tune.
I had heard of it … and like you — assumed it was tin hat stuff…
But then I read it.
Mainly because I had my suspicions about how the world works…. and that the MSM was definitely not going to provide insights…
There most definitely is a matrix — and a matrix needs a maker…
The Elders of Zion explains who made the matrix — and why…. in very great detail….
Of course the Elders are dead by now — and nobody has leaked any additional documents since…. so it is difficult to know who the current Elders are… or how their Protocols have been updated to address a modern and changed world….
They do not advertise themselves
They stand in the shadows pulling the strings…. and their puppets are the ones who step onto the stage…. the politicians…
Have a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR3RqMMIwD4
Henry Kissinger surely is one of the current Elders …
As no doubt would the Zionists who own the major media outlets Seven Jewish Americans
Control Most US Media http://www.rense.com/general44/sevenjewishamericans.htm…
[again – one of the key protocols – called for the control of the MSM — coincidence that the MSM is now controlled by Zionists — or part of the plan?)
Various billionaires such as Soros… Nat Rothschild… Sheldon Adelson
Of course the so-called neocons like Wolfowitz, Perle, Douglas Feith, Alan Dershowtiz…. these types would all have seats on the board…
Again – one of the key protocols called for control of policy making… isn’t it strange that so many key American policy makers are Zionists? Almost bizarre…
And the mother of all protocols called for the control of the reserve currency — that would be even more important that controlling the media…
And we know who the shareholders of the Fed are — Zionist bankers….
Case closed.
Gail has asked that this topic be left alone.
If you don’t like it and won’t read the document then go vote for Donald Trump because he’ll bring you the hope and change that Obama didn’t.
The president is the most powerful man in the world yadda yadda yadda…. enjoy the matrix 🙂
Yeah my “Youngers” are the same, they “stand in the shadows” and no one knows who they are. They didn’t need no BS protocols of fiction to dupe the gullible into believing an outrageous conspiracy concoction though. What the “protocols call for” is in your mind, as it must be because the so called protocols are a PROVEN work of fiction. You though have fun cheery picking details matching them to events and declaring they must be true. I bet you think that Nostradamus made accurate predictions.
Enjoying the matrix?
Few escape its clutches — and those that do expect attacks from the Idiocracy …
Shall I describe the feeling? Why not….
It’s like I am standing on a very tall hill called Truth enjoying a fine glass of NZ pinot — perhaps a Fromm or a Neudorff…. it is sunny … I am looking over the undulating vineyard… the birds are chirping…. I am with friends (from FW of course) … we are chatting … enjoying the day
And you are down below with the rabble …. some are screaming at me ’embrace Solar Jesus Fast Eddy — or rot in hell!!!’ Others are hollering something about Electric Vehicles saving the world — that Elon Musk is god … difficult to make them out because they are so far down the hill….
I think I can hear you — something about ‘democracy runs the world.. and corporations – the Protocols of Zion are a fraud — Wikipedia says so —- you are a fool Fast Eddy — just do a google search — you will see – 5000 pages of evidence support what I am claiming!!!’
I momentarily lose my train of thought…. but only for a very brief moment .. a millisecond actually … enough time to blink once…..
I return to the conversation… I refill the glasses of my friends….
And you continue ranting and screaming like a madman …. from the very bottom of the very tall hill.
Wouldn’t it be more fun to be at the top of the hill? We can help you … but you need to first acknowledge that you are tangled in the matrix… we can cut the cord…
There is an empty glass waiting for you …..
Names without proof. Childish really. It appears like anyone “successful” is your target and if they are Jewish then it’s a bonus. There is no Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, if there was it has been a hundred years of spectacular failure.
I have studied this field almost exclusively for the past 8 years or so and I stand by everything that you have said. In fact, I would go much further than you have, but this is not the platform for that.
FE, I sense that you may be wasting your time and energy trying to convince people on this forum about things which they obviously have no knowledge about. It’s like trying to educate old world doctors about tiny microbes that cause sickness in the body. You would be laughed out of the halls of supreme knowledge and kicked down the street as the watching crowds sneer and spit in your general direction!
Forget it. A closed mind in 2015 will remain closed for all time. If only they would take the time to go down the rabbit hole – and it does take time and effort – there is no way they would hold their current position. You would have to be insane to do so.
These “deniers” (oh the irony) may be right about one thing though… that it may not matter that much going forward if you strongly believe your position on collapse.
Eddy Boy! Wake up. The Fed didn’t decide anything all by itself. It worked hand in glove with the US Treasury Department, the White House and the Council of Economic Advisers along with select players on Wall Street to craft a response to the GFC. Come on, man stop being so conspiracy-theory minded. You’re sounding like a crack pot.
Eddy Boy! Wake up. The Fed didn’t decide anything all by itself. It was more like 100 people involved in the decision, not just 10. That’s way more people. Most of them unelected appointed people that all previously worked for the same bank. Definitely no conspiracy.
From the horse’s mouth…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9dVQi-APZ8&w=420&h=315%5D
I don’t recall a vote on the tens of trillions of money that was printed…. do you?
A dictatorship requires minions to execute the dictators orders.
You have outlined the government bodies that were involved in carrying out the orders of the Elders.
Perhaps while you are at it you can explain why a PRIVATE company has the right to print the reserve currency.
Why doesn’t the US government do that?
Indeed, why did the legislature of the U.S. surrender its economic sovereignty to a financial cabal? Because it’s a revolving door between the government and the banks. One owns the other, has for a long time…
I kind of think the “financial cabal” controlled the government before the government could control the “financial cabal”.
Hence, the comment “has for a long time”. Cheers!
None of this should come as a surprise….
“I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, … The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply.” Nathan Rothschild
“Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation’s laws. … Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.” — Mackenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister 1935-1948.
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” – Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence
“Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” ― Woodrow Wilson
If a presidential candidate ran on the following platform….
‘If elected I will abolish the Fed — take back the printing presses — slash federal income tax — and make up for the difference by funding hospitals and schools and roads etc…. with interest charged on money that the government printed and loaned out…. ‘
I suspect the sheeple would be very keen on this and would desire to elect me…
Of course the media machine would be turned against me…. the NSA would search their file on me and threaten to leak damaging information …. all sources of campaign funding would dry up …
And that would be the end of the campaign….
The printing press = power. And those who own it will do anything to keep their power.
Uh, Eddie, please get it right: the Fed is a part of the US government, incorporated just like Fannie or Freddie, and the president of the United States appoints the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System who are confirmed by the Senate and serve for 14 years. It was the Fed that kept the world from the death spiral caused by the 2008 GFC. So, FE, what’s your beef with the Fed, again? I thought you wanted BAU to continue for as long as possible. The whole shitaree would have circled the toilet bowel in 2008 without the Fed working in concert with the US Treasury and other agencies to be the lender of last resort. Come on now, consistency, FE, consistency!
If I wanted to be spoon fed spin I’d just click http://www.newyorktimes.com
You wouldn’t see the truth even if it were staring you in the face — because it is staring you in the face and you continue to post rubbish that looks to be copied off the home page of the Fed’s site http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm
Duh – if you owned the company that had the right to print the reserve currency would you announce that to the world?
Don’t you think that if you did that more than a few people might say hey – WhyTheF do a bunch of bankers get this right? Who anointed them? Why am I — why is my government — paying them interest on every dollar they print? That makes NO sense.
Of course not — they would instead spew some bullshit because the last thing you want is for the sheeple to realize that a small group of bankers run the world — that they have indentured 7.5 billion people..
That could really backfire on you at some point…
But of course you question nothing — you are stuck in your mind rut waiting on more ‘news’ out of the Ministry of Truth telling you what to think — telling you that it matters if you vote — telling you that the President is the most powerful person on the planet.
Lapping up mumbo jumbo about what the Fed says it is that makes absolutely ZERO sense.
Think about it — if a serious politician were to come out and say Screw the Fed (nice bumper sticker) and stated if I win I will take back the power of the press and I will cut your taxes in half because we not longer have to pay a den of thieves a % on every USD that comes into existence
Would you not vote for that politician? (I can smell the gears grinding…. you really need to get some oil onto them before your mind seizes up….)
“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.” – The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s
he Federal Reserve (or Fed) has assumed sweeping new powers in the last year. In an unprecedented move in March 2008, the New York Fed advanced the funds for JPMorgan Chase Bank to buy investment bank Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar. The deal was particularly controversial because Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, sits on the board of the New York Fed and participated in the secret weekend negotiations.1 In September 2008, the Federal Reserve did something even more unprecedented, when it bought the world’s largest insurance company.
The Fed announced on September 16 that it was giving an $85 billion loan to American International Group (AIG) for a nearly 80% stake in the mega-insurer. The Associated Press called it a “government takeover,” but this was no ordinary nationalization.
Unlike the U.S. Treasury, which took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the week before, the Fed is not a government-owned agency. Also unprecedented was the way the deal was funded. The Associated Press reported:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-owns-the-federal-reserve/10489
Fast, president Kennedy signed executive order 11110 to do just what you want. Six months later he was assassinated. No politician will ever run, and live to tell the tale, on that platform in the US.
At around the same time he also vetoed this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
‘Whatever it takes’ has been around for a long, long time…. anything to keep power….
Fast Eddy,
Once again, you are misinformed. The Federal Reserve is NOT a private entity. It is an agency of the US Congress (i.e., an independent agency like Freddie or Fannie), established for the purpose of regulating the private banking system and the US money supply while minimizing corrupt or special interest political influence on those processes. Federal Reserve employees, throughout the system, in the individual Federal Reserve Banks as well as the Board of Governors, are all federal employees.
“dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year ” http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm
Not bad! Would be nice to take a piece of that, by law..
How many trillions has the Fed churned out since 2008?
And the owners get 6% on that — and it’s 100% risk free — who needs money to grow on trees…. you’d have to water the trees… with this gig you just push a computer key or two…
Damn that is a sweet deal — money for nothing … chicks for free….
Imagine what could be done with 6% of 20 trillion dollars… IF the US government got that instead of the shareholders of the Fed….
I want my … MTeevee…..
Wow that’s quite the thing. How does a non-profit organization generate 6% per year in profit in order to payout to its shareholders? Or do they just create the money as needed?
This is one of the ways that the “overhead” of the system keeps growing, at the same time that non-elite workers have a hard time holding their own in after tax compensation.
And who appoints the president? Eh? Please don’t say the voters otherwise I’ll throw a Hannity.
Why can’t you or anyone else audit the fed?
Fast e,
“because the last thing you want is for the sheeple to realize that a small group of bankers run the world — ” Whoa, really? Stop the presses! News release by Fast Eddy, the rich rule the world! Gee, nobody has ever thought of that before. No, wait, just kidding, everybody knows that from just about the moment their old enough to count. Brilliant!
Next:
“Think about it — if a serious politician were to come out and say Screw the Fed (nice bumper sticker) and stated if I win I will take back the power of the press and I will cut your taxes in half because we not longer have to pay a den of thieves a % on every USD that comes into existence. Would you not vote for that politician?”
Geez, Fastee! Think! Talk about being spoon fed spin: this sounds like just about every republican campaign platform I’ve heard for the last 40 years! Screw the fed and lower my taxes….Without the fed doing what its been doing for the last 6 years, you’d already be dead and eaten.
See – you already knew who ran the world.
You just need to refine your outlook a little… it’s not the rich…. the rich are the minions of the real power…
The ‘real power’ do not concern themselves with amassing riches — when you own the printing presses money becomes rather passe no?
“Without the fed doing what its been doing for the last 6 years, you’d already be dead and eaten.”
The thing is…
I am on record of not being critical of the owners of the Fed — as I have stated if they did not run the world someone else would….
And I guarantee you it would be not be a democratically elected leader … it would be another oligarchy that someone got it’s hands on the printing press… and they would be doing exactly what the Fed is doing to keep the hamster running….
So don’t get to excited about what the Fed is doing… if I had the printing press I would be keeping you alive too — because if you die — so do I…. we are joined at the hip with the Elders
The Federal Reserve — or “the Fed” — is the CENTRAL BANK of the United States. The U.S. was pretty late to the central banking game, as Americans’ spirit of individualism generally inspires disdain for large, centrally-coordinated government authorities.
Central banks are tasked with controlling interest rates, the money supply and overseeing the banking system.
There are four tiers: The Board of Governors, the Federal Open Market Commission (FOMC), 12 regional banks, and smaller member banks.
The Board of Governors is responsible for much of the monetary policy. Seven people are nominated by the President, pass Senate approval, and sit in Washington making decisions. There is a Chairman, next the FOMC, a commission of seven Board of Governors members and five regional bank presidents.
There are 12 regional banks, responsible for much of the nitty gritty banking stuff (like check clearing). They are located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco. Each regional bank has a president and oversees the thousands of member banks in its region.
The U.S. didn’t have a Federal Reserve bank for a long time. This meant that the late 19th Century was basically a series of uncontrollable economic panics. It wasn’t until 1907, when the New York Stock Exchange fell 50% and depositors “ran on the bank” to recoup their money, that people warmed to the idea of a central bank and legislation passed.
We all know that when you deposit a check, the money doesn’t just stay in your bank’s vault until you need to hit the ATM because this bar is cash-only. No, banks move around and invest most of what they take in. This is how banks make money, among other ways. There are, of course, rules now about how much banks have to hold in “reserves,” but the problem before the Federal Reserve was this: What happens when all the depositors want their cash back at once, a la the bank run scene in It’s A Wonderful Life. As you’ll recall, Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey tells the townspeople of Bedford Falls, “You’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house… and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others.”
George Bailey was actually talking about fractional-reserve banking. Today the Federal Reserve might say, “George, if all else fails, we can step in and be the lender of last resort.” The Fed kind of did say that in 2008, albeit not to George Bailey, but to nine highly-paid bank CEOs.
How can the Fed be the lender of last resort?
The Federal Reserve has power to print money. Theoretically, though, it could print enough money to bail out anyone or anything in any situation. As a fiat currency, the dollar is not tied to anything. It was once tied to gold, but Richard Nixon got rid of that in 1971.
Debt hawks are wrong when they say things like, “The U.S. is becoming the next Greece.” Greece doesn’t have its own state currency, and needs to be periodically bailed out by Europe’s central bank. But the United States as a whole can always just print more money. That by itself is not sustainable. Plenty of governments have tried to do that and bad things have happened. The good news is that the Fed keeps a watchful eye on inflation to make sure that, as the balance sheet expands, the figures don’t run away.
Still, as originally intended, the Federal Reserve exists to extend credit to banks or other institutions in emergency circumstances like a bank run.
Central banks have come a long way in 100 years, and new circumstances like the financial crisis has inspired the Fed to do a lot of new things. They admit as much in their mission statement: “To provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. Over the years, its role in banking and the economy has expanded.”
Expanded?
The Fed sets what’s known as “monetary policy” in order to promote the economic health of the country. Monetary policy impacts interest rates, which obviously impact the economy. Via monetary policy, the Fed intervenes in a few key ways.
1. The discount rate: “The discount rate is the interest rate charged to commercial banks and other depository institutions on loans they receive from their regional Federal Reserve Bank’s lending facility — the discount window,” according to the Fed. Don’t worry too much about this one for our purposes.
2. Reserve requirements: How much a bank has to hold in reserves. The Fed uses the tool to control how much banks can lend out.
3. Open Market Operations (OMO): .OMOs have been the longstanding program by which the Fed implements monetary policy. The Fed has used OMOs, the purchase of government bonds on the open market, as a means to adjust the federal funds rate to a specified Fed target. The federal funds rate is a metric that controls “interbank loans.”
When the Fed reduces the federal funds rate, as it has done since the crisis, it encourages banks to take out interbank loans. That incentivizes them to lend more freely, which theoretically speeds up the economy. Conversely, the Fed would raise the federal funds rate if it thought the system was too loose and could create a bubble.
With the economy in recovery mode, the Federal Reserve wants to keep the federal funds rate as low as possible. The only problem now is that it has been at 0% since 2009.
In fact, the Federal Reserve has been operating under ZIRP — zero-interest rate policy. Simply put, nominal interest rates are as low as they can go. We’ve reached the boundary of conventional monetary policy wisdom.
It’s later. QE is what’s known as “unconventional monetary policy,” which is a nicer way of saying “Sure, I guess we’ll try this now.”
In the wake of the financial crisis, and with rates at the “zero lower bound,” the bank introduced a spate of new monetary policy options. Chief among them was “quantitative easing,” a program in which the Fed purchases assets in order to increase the money supply. Since 2008, the Fed has purchased billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities (those bad things that helped cause the financial crisis) and billions of dollars worth of Treasury notes. Along the way since then, the Fed introduced two new “rounds” of QE.
QE has kept interest rates low, some would argue artificially and “uneconomically” low. Either way, the upshot has been a rebounding stock and bond market in the years since the crisis.
Now, critics of QE (who like to call the third round “QE-Infinity” due to the program’s endurance) have warned that this kind of asset purchasing will lead to higher inflation. Controlling inflation, as it happens, is one of the Fed’s chief concerns.
So far, we haven’t seen the kind of inflation people were worried about, and economist Paul Krugman gained a lot of notoriety for basically calling QE critics wrong over and over again. That doesn’t mean the program isn’t problematic. The Fed’s balance sheet has grown immensely
In June 2014 the Fed sent markets in a tizzy by announcing it would look at “tapering” QE. Now, tapering doesn’t mean ceasing the purchase of assets. It means buying them at a slower rate. Markets still freaked out and interest rates shot up.
Even with a taper, it looks like QE will go on for a while longer. And even when it finishes, people are unsure how exactly a central bank can unwind the many trillions of debt.
The Fed has tried to be pretty direct by offering what’s known as “forward guidance” — meaning clear communication about future interest rates. Having exhausted its normal monetary policy tools, the Federal Reserve has said it will tether policy changes to observed economic indicators. Better communication will help market actors “price in” economic changes.
The Fed right now is saying, “Look, we’re going to keep rates low for a very long time.” Normally, the Fed only controls the short-term interest rate, but by telling Wall Street that they can borrow at low rates for a long time, firms will presumably be more eager to lend money out to the American people (at a lower interest rate too).
Central banks usually act in a shroud of mystery, but Chairman Bernanke clearly wanted to uproot that. Other central bankers, like Mark Carney in England followed suit.
The Fed says that it will keep the federal funds rate unchanged until we hit 6-6.5% unemployment. We’re currently at 7.3%. Seems clear enough, but market still get roiled every time the Fed opens its mouth or people think it just did. Central banks will always make waves in markets because what they do or say is clearly so intrinsic to the future of economy. Guessing on the future of the economy remains how traders make money, so you can imagine how angry some of them get when the they think the Fed isn’t being clear about its intentions.
The Fed DOES concern itself with employment figures. As a 100-year old institution, the Fed’s responsibilities have been revised by legislation through the years.
There was the 1946 Employment Act which called upon the government to pursue maximum employment. Then in 1977, Congress got more specific and passed the Federal Reserve Reform Act, which instructs the Fed to use monetary policy to promote employment and control inflation. That law didn’t happen by accident. You might recall that the late 1970s was a terrible time for employment and inflation when conspiracy theories took hold and Ron Paul’s had a campaign battle cry to “End the Fed.” And Rick Perry’s veiled threat to murder Ben Bernanke for high treason.
The Fed today has what is known as a “dual mandate” to keep an eye inflation and employment at the same time. And this is one of the chief critiques that Fed haters cite.
Critics stress that the original intention of the Fed was to avoid banking panics. If the Fed has to concern itself with employment, it has an incentive to keep interest rates low to juice the economy. But if you keep interest rates low, especially during good times, bubbles can and will appear. In 2001, we saw a stock bubble. In 2007, an asset (housing) bubble. Bubbles, as history has shown us, lead to the kinds of banking crises the Fed was originally tasked with preventing.
So what’s the likelihood of another crisis…… This is hard stuff. The people at the Fed are genuinely trying to ensure the health and stability of the American economy. In retrospect, it’s easy to see clear central banking mistakes. During his tenure as Fed Chair in the 1990s, Alan Greenspan was hailed as a demigod for having “figured out” monetary policy. It wasn’t until the housing market crashed years later that people realised his policy of ultra-low interest rates and deregulation fostered an economic powder keg.
Monetary policy can have reverberations years — perhaps decades — later, so it’s best to pay attention. It’s not easy work, but hopefully now you understand it a little better.
The above was copied from Business Insider.
I think it’s time for the conspiracy nuts to start naming names. Things like obscure references to “The Elders” is growing old and reeks slightly of ignorance.
Quoting from the MSM is not exactly an ideal way to identify who and what the Fed is….
Do you really think the MSM is going to publish an article stating that a group of Zionists (naming the board members) really runs the USA — and the world.
That they do this via control of the reserve currency and the MSM.
Seven Zionists Control Most US Media http://www.rense.com/general44/sevenjewishamericans.htm
On September 30, 2010, Sanchez was interviewed on Sirius XM’s radio show Stand Up With Pete Dominick. Sanchez’s interview occurred on the final day of his show in the 8 p.m. time slot and he was reportedly angry about being replaced by CNN’s new Parker Spitzer talk show[9][10] as well as the occasional jokes made at his expense on The Daily Show. Sanchez called Daily Show host Jon Stewart a “bigot”; after questioning, Sanchez backed down from using the term and referred to Stewart as “prejudicial” and “uninformed”.[11]
When queried on the issue of whether Stewart likewise belonged to a minority group on account of his Jewish faith, Sanchez responded,
“ Yeah, very powerless people. [laughs] He’s such a minority. I mean, you know, please. What—are you kidding? I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority?[9][10] ”
A day after his remarks,[12] CNN announced that Sanchez was no longer employed with the company.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Sanchez
Fast Ed’s Note: Jon Stewart is a complete asshole — I recall a clip of him crying over 911 on air — asking ‘why would they do this to us’ — why would they do this to you? Uh-hum… could it be because the west does this to them x 100,000 on a regular basis…. how about a few tears for Iraq Jon… Libya… Bahrain etc etc…
How about you show this clip Jon — then we can all cringe and take out our tissues…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faHAcRL-5LU
Give your head a shake bandits. You are in a hole 500 miles deep and it’s filling with water
InAlaska is it your contention that the federal reserve has no stock holders, no owners? Have you no knowledge of the USAs history, its stuggle to keep the USAs sovereignity intact by refusing the grip of the central banks, personified by the election and actions of Andrew Jackson? That struggle was lost in 1913. Have you no knowledge of the secret meeting on jekyl Island which the elite bankers traveled to under assumed names which created the federal reserve. The federal treserve was created by individuals who used there power money and influence to take the currency of the USA from the government. The fact that the federal reserve was a in its creation a sham federal enity fully owned and operated by private individuals for the benefit of private individuals is a fact.
The congress does not dictate anything to the federal reserve nor the executive branch. Those are part of the sham inherant in its creation. If you feel that the federal reserve became a benign goverment organization at some point in time please state your reasons for belief in that change, and how it was accomplished when in its conception and implementation the federal reserve exits for private individuals to control the USA.
The thing is…
Based on his historical comments … Alaska believes pretty much all the BS that the MSM spews out about America … for instance he believes the US is a force for good in the world … that the US helps the downtrodden and spreads democracy ..
I imagine Alaska waking up each morning putting hand over heart and swearing allegiance … just like good boy scout….
The matrix is powerful in Alaska’s world… there is no room for questioning — at least when it comes to America the Beautiful.
Fast and Hickory,
If I were all of those things, I wouldn’t be on this site. I simply don’t lap up the conspiracy theories the way you do. I’ve read all the books on the Fed and I don’t engage much in the MSM BS. I simply think rationally and make up my own mind. The thing is, humans are incompetent at conspiracies and keeping secrets and all of that Hollywood hokum. If the Elders were all-powerful, we wouldn’t even know they exist. But things fall apart and the center cannot hold, etc. etc. FastE hasn’t read about a conspiracy he doesn’t like from the Kennedy schlock, to the shadow government hiding in plain site, the FreeMasons to the Rothschilds, to the Elders…it just goes on and on and on. I don’t have cognitive dissonance. I believe collapse is inevitable. But not because of secret societies and shadowy fat men in backrooms. It because we are foolish, incompetent and greedy. And yes, America has its flaws, but it has also been a force for good in this world, as well. Certainly more so than just about any other major world power in the last 300 years. Think clearly, my friends, and see the world as it is. You sound like a crackpot.
I thought this was common knowledge, but obviously there are some that choose to believe in fairy tales. It makes them feel better. A bit like sucking your thumb.
Coming to grips with what is obvious to anyone who is not completely entwined in the matrix (FW attracts the greatest concentration of un-entwined of any site on the internet…) creates two problems for the general masses (who prefer to suck their thumbs and remain tangled ….)
1. It calls into question the very existence of democracy – something that has been pounded into our heads from the first day of school — we are told we run the show because we choose our leaders.
Acknowledging the obvious — that all the key decisions are not made by our leaders rather by a small oligarchy of men who are not elected — is troubling to many.
2. It also raises the spectre of anti-semitism which makes a lot of people very uncomfortable.
Which of course is what the Elders want you to feel. There is zero tolerance for identifying them — and heaven forbid criticizing them.
Even Ron Paul who would supposedly like to end the Fed would never go that far. Because the second he identified who the owners of the Fed are — he would be ruined.
Rather strange that he wants to end the Fed but he never really explains why. Also he would know that ending the Fed means ending the reign of the Elders…. he would understand that this is futile …. which makes one wonder what purpose he really serves…
There is no sense in fighting the Fed (Elders) — it is much wiser to stick your nose in the pig trough and feed…. because the great thing about the Elders is they reward loyalty very generously…. Ron Paul surely is aware of that…
Screaming anti-semitism at pretty much anything – is a very effective strategy…. it ensures that it is political incorrect to make the statements I have made above —- statements which are most definitely not anti-semitic.
To test the theory substitute Catholic Church for Zionists…. or how about Queen of England…. or Caesar….
Many groups have had aspirations to run the world…. this just happens to be the most successful attempt at it.
It is what it is.
Same mindset, same groupthink. That’s the takeaway.
Democracy, with every person having a vote, doesn’t really work on issues like this. The system needs a benevolent dictator. That is the role the Federal Reserve and Bank for International Settlements have been trying to play.
Good call! They’ve been dictating things for quite some time.
Yes, thank God. Can you imagine how horrible things would be if we left such important matters up to the US Congress. Imagine the political mess that would make. The financial system needs a benevolent dictator and we are damned lucky we have a federal reserve system to do it. All this hogwash about abolishing the Fed is just that.
Hasn’t congress just suggested that they make the “Fed” pay for highway improvements?
I rather like the idea of having Wall Street pay for universal free college tuition instead.
How about ending the Fed — and instead take the interest that the Fed (a private company) collects… and use that to fund free college education?
I did some searching about this a couple years ago when the internet rumour was flying around about the expiration of the Federal Reserve’s “100 year charter”.
It seems that the Fed is really just a contractor for the US government. They were granted a 20 year charter in 1913 by Congress. Before the 20 years was up, Congress voted to give them an open-ended charter.
The only way to cancel the charter is by a Congressional vote. So it would require a favorable House and Senate and a favorable president that wouldn’t veto it. Good luck finding an uncorrupted Congress to do that…much less a president. The NSA has all the info to force co-operation for the bosses.
I don’t have a citation for this information, but it is spelled out in US Code and not just read on some random blog on the interwebs.
Your view seems fairly believable.
It used to be a simple mathematical proposition. When a country’s currency tumbled, its consumer prices would rise as the cost of imported goods climbed.
When Australia embraced a flexible exchange rate in 1983, that’s certainly what happened. The consumer price index soared 16 percent as the local dollar depreciated 38 percent from March 1984 to July 1986.
In the post-global financial crisis era, the principle appears to have been diluted. The Aussie has slumped 38 percent since July 2011, yet the cost of living has risen only 8 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
That wouldn’t be a problem if the cheaper currency was spurring manufacturing exports and workers’ pay packets. But those aren’t rising either. For the central bank, it means the exchange rate is no longer the powerful tool it once was, increasing the burden on Australian policy makers.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-26/aussie-s-slide-spurs-weakest-inflation-response-since-1983-float
FE,
sounds very much like Mexican situation (as someone posted before): weakening inflation although local currency tumbling.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-24/mexico-prices-rose-less-than-forecast-in-first-half-of-november
USD-MXN from 13.00 by mid-2014, up to 16.60 today (http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/USDMXN:CUR)
Wonder how many countries are in similar situation.
I expect oil demand is down in Mexico this year, as companies invest less.
I suppose part of the problem is that wages are not rising. Businesses can’t raise prices by very much, without cutting off sales. So businesses only put through part of the price increase. They also lay off workers because of the adverse impact of higher prices on sales. Profits fall, as we have seen from worldwide figure. These companies have a harder and harder time repaying debt. They have little need for adding debt, so demand continues to fall. Any debt in US$ is especially a problem.
Open question…
How can central banks finance all parties in a global conflict in today’s economic environment?
Are we in a similar situation to pre-WW2 or is it different this time?
If even more debt can be magically produced out of thin air to back a nation’s role in the coming showdown, then why can’t banks do this without the excuse of war?
If war only benefits the few i.e. the banksters and the weapons manufacturers, then why don’t all other parties stop them in their tracks? Why don’t more military personnel say no?
At least those oil stockpiles will be reduced, so no more glut.
The war drums are getting louder…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-25/why-we%E2%80%99re-sliding-towards-world-war
Easiest way of rising consumption fast, is starting a war. During a national emergency, or war, you can throw all the rules out the window to how much debt to GDP there is. The US can freely move the debt ceiling https://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/Pages/debtlimit.aspx to dig this hole even bigger http://www.usdebtclock.org/ and EU countries can forget about this http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/economic_governance/sgp/index_en.htm
The IMF has not even begun to print money, or SDR:s. So, central banks still have trillions to take in as new debt http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/sdr.htm
Keeping zombie industries alive through money printing, all churning out unwanted widgets, cannot be solved by doing more of it. We’re already seeing this. It sort of worked for the last 7 years, but the patient is now as dead from the “cure” as from the disease.
“The IMF has not even begun to print money, or SDR:s.”
I’m pretty sure at least one country (Venezuela?) has already started tapping into its SDR for deficit financing.
“you can throw all the rules out the window”
Haven’t the rules already been thrown out the window…. along with the kitchen sink, sofa, dog, children and wife…
“Whatever it takes!”
http://blogs.blouinnews.com/blouinbeatbusiness/files/2013/11/2013-11-07T150728Z_1020484919_BM2E9B718JH01_RTRMADP_3_ECB-RATES.jpg
Van Kent, I think the rule book has already been thrown out the window when it comes to debt v. GDP. That happened about 2008. The problem with starting a war now to spur consumption is that all the economies of the world are linked together. There is no us and them anymore.
I’m pretty darned sure that is the answer I was looking for. The closest analogy I can think of is some idiot rocking the boat that we’re all sitting in when the boat is already sinking…
I agree which is why my eyes glaze over when I hear nonsense about business cycles etc.
Exactly!
It is almost like all the prospects for additional growth have already been exploited. There isn’t anywhere left to grow. To make matters worse, the declining net energy from fossil fuels means less energy available for growth. Stagnation is where we are at. The big question is what comes after stagnation. Slow or fast collapse? From my point of view we are at peak complexity right about now. That means there are many interconnected links in the chain spanning many areas of society that could break leading to a catastrophe. Just take for instance the antibiotic resistance issue. Or a virulent strain of viral infection. A solar flare. Grid failure, Energy shortages at the pump. Food shortages. These are tough to control in the best of times. How would we fare in times of scarcity? So many breaking points in the system. Pollution, climate, financial, energy etc. The odds of any one of these events happening is low but when taken together all these low probability events become much more likely to affect us in the near term.
This Apocalypse has 100’s of horsemen….
The many poor people cannot afford all of the expensive overhead we have already added to the system. We can’t afford to add more, in the name of “growth.”
You’ve been taking this masterclass, haven’t you…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt1W0F0yObg&w=420&h=315%5D
Thanks for the links. Who really gets to enforce all those sanctions for disobedience in the new EU governance? Who are these “lawmakers”?
And how do SDRs change anything about the fundamental resource problem we face? It all sounds like an overlay on an already overly complex ponzi scheme that is collapsing under its own weight.
Lawmakers? Dunno, so far all EUs big policy decisions have been in line with the best interests of Deutsche Bank.
Nope, IMF or BIS SDRs are just a novel way of printing money. They don´t create any resources whatsoever.
That sounds about right. And wouldn’t SDRs become the global reserve “currency” at some point thereby giving BIS direct monetary control over international affairs?
IMF is US controlled. Nobody knows who truly controls BIS. They have offices in Basels and London, but who really is in charge of the central bank of the central banks? Dunno.
The only way the US can keep printing money is to have the petrodollar intact. As long as global oil is traded with dollars, there is an constant need for dollars. Therefore US can keep printing all they want. So, the only ones wanting to switch global reserve currency would be the Chinese.
Russia adds yuan as currency reserve…
https://www.rt.com/business/323639-russia-adds-yuan-reserve-currency/
In terms of financial warfare, is that Defcon 4 or 5?
Also, if you can throw the “rules” out the window any time you want… then it follows that they never really existed in the first place, and they never really hold any power over any of the parties involved.
In fact, the whole construct is a fiction and serves no purpose whatsoever in the advancement of human enlightenment. I have a feeling that some time soon, all shall know the “truth” and every knee shall bow before its brilliance. This truth will either be authentic or another time-wasting fabrication deployed by the controllers.
Ronald Reagan rose from obscurity to become a president, his campaign director and later director of central intelligence was former OSS veteran William J. Casey, he once stated “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” Casey later founded a number of think tanks, the think tank co-founders families are now in ruling positions in UK politics.
I have been waiting for the intelligence agencies sponsored Thomas Paines “Common Sense” of our modern times, but haven´t seen one yet. Then we would know to whom we should be bowing to.
That’s a great comment. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Tavistock Institute, The Royal Institute for International Affairs and other such string-pullers. We do appear to live in a world of deceipt and obfuscation, but to balance that we also have access to more information than ever. I’m afraid that a grass roots awakening will amount to too little too late just as the lights go out, but you never know.
Yup, might be that the Thomas Paines Common Sense of our times is: “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”. Ryan Seacrest, the epicenter of disinformation 😉
I had to look Ryan Seacrest up because I don’t watch much TV ever since two blew up in quick succesion many years ago. That’s the first time in my life that I had experienced the “silence” for a few months… I never went back.
But yes, bread and circuses all round. Gotta keep that soma flowin’. Can’t have millions of people suddenly living in their OWN lives. That wouldn’t do at all now would it.
The banker and the president…
Enlightening. This could be titled “Everything you need to know about politics in 9 secs”. And the stroke of irony that puppet and puppeteer had almost the same name. Precious!
Fast Eddy, I remember Public TV (PBS) here in the USA ran a segment on Front line on the same topic. I vividly remember the CEO of Cargill (read the book “Thr Grain Merchants”) being at all the swearing in for the Presidents front and center
PBS series Frontline has reported on this many times
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/view/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/money-power-wall-street/
Ronald Reagan wasn’t as obscure as say Obama. Reagan was was a Hollywood actor. Apparently actors make convincing presidents. What would be even more obscure though are pictures of Reagan and Ford at a place called the Bohemian Grove years before they were to become presidents. I don’t know if the pictures are real or it the story is fake. But it is, interesting.
Of course it’s real. There is so much incontrovertible evidence supporting this field that anyone that doesn’t understand that things are not what they appear to be is willfully keeping their head buried in the sand.
All presidents are groomed for their role by the likes of Kissenger and Zbigniew Brzezinski (gatekeepers/handlers). Meetings at the location you mentioned and many others as well as the rituals involved serve to keep the puppets in line through blackmail, career suicide, and assasination.
One only has to read some books about Freemasonry (Albert Pike, Manley P. Hall) for the blinders to come off. Most, if not all leaders are involved in some aspect of Freemasonry. Many are high ranking members 33rd degree and above.
These groups tend to show far greater allegiance to their own secretive orders than to any nation state or people they represent. That much should be plain enough for anyone to see.
War certainly has been a way historically of solving resource problems–(getting other people’s resources). Also, it provides employment and an excuse for more debt. The offsetting difficulty is the need for more taxes, and the resulting marginalization of those who are taxed, but don’t benefit from the additional employment opportunities.
It’s difficult for me to see how a WW2 “employment” effort building Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and hand pressed ammunition could be replicated today or if there are suitable equivalents. The US has already been at maximum warfighting production levels for the past 15 years and long term unemployment figures are of course much higher than official reports. I just don’t think the same rules apply today. Military hardware manufacture requires a much higher level of technical knowhow than before and automation has reduced the manpower required somewhat.
Add to that the disastrous level of corruption and greed seen in the military hardware industry that leads to “too big to fail” trillion dollar “turkeys” like the F-35 fighter program.
The same applies to building projects such as “embassies” and other forward operating bases in Iraq etc. Even if there was a sudden surge leading to further prolonged confilct, the only extra employment opportunities I can forsee are for conscripted “grunts” (cannon fodder). Again, unlikely due to the way war is fought today.
Also, if a nation is directly under attack or is suffering rapid resource depletion due to a war effort, wouldn’t martial law and rationing be enacted anyway thereby eroding any gains made by a so called war effort? And the magical loans from CBs are unlikely to be repaid given the current economic environment. One of the reasons Germany was made to pay reparations after WW2 was to cripple their ability to wage war again for as long as possible. There appear to be two conflicting forces at work here – sometimes nations are obligated to follow the “rules” while at other times, they can wave them away as if they never existed.
If war is ultimately financed by taxation, then even the short term “winners” will become long term losers as disposable income goes down and the economy flounders – which is where we find ourselves now. I can’t see how increasing war spending now will not result in the subsequent implosion of the global economy… or worse.
Being a lawful society, or even having the pretence of lawfulness, requires valid reasons to implement emergency measures. War is an easy and simple way of implementing any emergency measures you might want.
“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.” – Gaius Julius Ceasar
Great quote! War under any of the usual circumstances is unlawful by default. Many lies must be told and many cogs turned before the hounds can be released.
My question is… why hasn’t the rest of humanity learned the lesson already? Why don’t enough good people in high places throw their collective spanners in the war machinery? Or are we doomed to repeat history yet again?
“Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.” -Mahatma Gandhi
Unfortunately very few people think or act like that.
Might makes right, seems to be the lay of the land nowadays.
When Colin Powell retired from the Secretary of State, he commented to his aide: “Next money, serious money”. Powell understood the lay of the land. There is next to nothing good people can do in an biosphere like this.
Interesting to contemplate France today:
Imposition of state of emergency well into 2016, banging the drums of war, and everyone encouraged by the Govt. to wave a tricolour around in a display of mass patriotism.
Oh, and let’s forget about the EU budget deficit rules so we can fund some bombing in Syria and new ‘security’ spending……
The crudity of it would be stunning were it not so predictable.
I have even just read a propaganda piece in the Guardian newspaper, by a senior French journalist, blaming Russia for encouraging iSIS and for the Paris attacks. Pretty distasteful, rather and shameless, after what happened to the Russian tourists in Egypt.
More of the same will be served up for us soon. There must be something more worthwhile to do, like growing vegetables…..
MOAR Victory Gardens!
“If war is ultimately financed by taxation, then even the short term “winners” will become long term losers as disposable income goes down and the economy flounders – which is where we find ourselves now. I can’t see how increasing war spending now will not result in the subsequent implosion of the global economy… or worse.”
The only way to benefit is to actually win a hot war. Scarcity is created by destroying everyone else’s capital. Most of the factories in Europe and Asia were destroyed in WW2; America benefitted by being virtually unscathed. Thus, they were able to produce and export a lot of stuff.
Unfortunately, nuclear deterrence makes that an unlikely outcome going forward.
“Unfortunately, nuclear deterrence makes that an unlikely outcome going forward.”
I agree. Yet another reason why it’s different this time. I don’t think it’s even remotely possible to “win a hot war” anymore. And so it won’t happen. Skirmishes around the periphery – yes – but nothing more than that. It’s not worth the risk.
I think America will remain “unscathed” suffering only its own steady demise as will all other developed nations. I’m thinking more whimper and less bang.
I think it will be a slow demise. I believe social wealth depends on cheap primary energy but we have to keep in mind we are using historical cheap energy to a large extent. By that I mean the existing infrastructure was built using $20 oil, the existing doctors were educated using $20 oil, the existing weapons systems were built using $20 oil. It will take some time to fully feel the effects of $40 oil or $80 oil.
no nation has the indigenous energy within its own borders to maintain a millions-strong army, at least not for the years-long conflicts there used to be.
WW2 was won by the USA not because of better soldiers, but because the axis forces ran out of fuel first. If Hitler had waited 2 or 3 years and developed the atomic bomb, and the means to deliver it, the outcome of WW2 would have been entirely different. As it was–the USA is its indigenous energy sources to rebuild Europe in order to sustain global trade and industry
In our time now the USA will cease wars because there will be insufficient fuel and resources to sustain military output, just as Germany and Japan had to stop fighting for the same reason.
When that happens the US military complex will collapse, while the people reliant on it will be in a state of denial, unaware that their ’employment’ is paid for by taxation, which is itself a product of energy availability—the lack of which destroyed the military/industrial complex in the first place.
And the exquisite irony of the fact that the Europeans can only intervene in the Mid-East using the resources of the countries of that region. Relying solely on European energy resources, they couldn’t project a paper dart into Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan…..
It is one world bankers world. With one mission consume ll resources until they are gone.
Very interesting observations. Reminds me of a snake eating its own tail…
You actually have to win resources to make war worthwhile, unless the world is in a situation with a huge amount of oil that is easy to extract–all it takes is some debt that allows that oil to be tapped, and the oil to be used for such purposes as roads. We were in a situation in WW2 where oil resources were really cheap, and there were a lot of good uses to put them to. Now oil is difficult to extract, and the low-hanging uses for oil have already been taken.
“You actually have to win resources to make war worthwhile”
+++++
Particularly cheap to extract resources….
What’s happening is that the resource wars in the MENA are already causing disruptions & threats to supply. As these really whip up going forward once can easily imagine whole oil provinces being laid to ruin as a result of the desperation to grab what’s left.
Russia must have some relatively cheap oil left in the ground…
Ya know whatam sayin…
The neocons would love to “tap that”. Which is why Putin is worse than Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin all rolled into one, in their minds.
That’s why when my daughter says she wants to be a Ballerina I say go get an engineering job at Lockheed Martin. She’s only 6 though.
The article does not mention finite world issues. In an infinite increase world world war III might make sense. Go steal their stuff or at least kill them so they do not bid up the price of resources. And it does offer an excuse for why you do not have enough food, electric, …
Precisely. Most analysis of this kind lacks the FW “secret sauce”.
Oil Jobs Lost: 250,000 And Counting, Texas Likely To See Massive Layoffs Soon
According to Graves & Co., an industry consultant, oil and gas companies have laid off more than 250,000 workers around the world, a tally that will rise if oil prices remain in the dumps. “I was surprised it’s gotten this far,” Graves & Co.’s John Graves told Bloomberg in an interview. In an eye-catching statistic that highlights who exactly is bearing the brunt of the downturn, Graves says that oilfield service companies account for 79 percent of the job losses.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-26/oil-jobs-lost-250000-and-counting-texas-likely-see-massive-layoffs-soon
Somehow, these people need jobs elsewhere. Ones who can’t find jobs in somewhat comparable industries may end up in the “dropped out of the labor force” figure. They don’t really want jobs handing out hamburgers at MacDonald’s.
They certainly won’t find them there as McDonald’s has started to replace it’s workers with robots, including it’s food preparation.
From The Telegraph (UK):
UK oil industry ‘to face wave of company failures’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/12019295/UK-oil-industry-to-face-wave-of-company-failures.html
Extracts:
A wave of company failures is “inevitable” in Britain’s oil and gas industry, with businesses supporting the wider energy sector the first to fail, according to advisory firm FRP.
The Treasury set out a bleak prediction for future of the North Sea industry with an expected collapse in tax receipts, but offered no relief for the sector.
Data from the Office for Budget Responsibility predicted that the tax take from the North Sea would collapse from £2.2bn last year to just £130m in 2015/16, highlighting the intense pressure the sector is under from the oil price crash. Four years earlier the sector’s tax contribution was almost £11bn.
Even if the Treasury had offered new tax incentives, they “would have little effect. No amount of efforts from the Treasury can stimulate capital expenditure by the oil majors” in the face of oil trading at below $50 a barrel.
The drop in revenue no doubt affects British finances. Somehow, the government needs more revenue (in part for the laid-off workers) at the same time that tax revenue continues to decline. Also, more imports of oil are needed.
Are we not seeing the “oscillating decline” scenario playing out. Oil prices are high because of production constraints. This is self-evident.Unconventional oil is expensive to produce but is being produced because the cheaper sources are in decline. Were those sources not in decline there would be no need to plumb the depths of the oceans or turn bitumen sludge into crude oil. This high price leads to economic contraction (GDP rises and falls in an inverse relationship to the price of oil). In an economic contraction less oil is used leading to oversupply and a lowering of price. Theoretically this should in turn lead to an economic stimulus,Less money spent on oil leads to more money being available for discretionary spending which leads to more oil being used This in turn leads to a higher price which in turn will lead to another recession.We are back to square one and the cycle will repeat itself. If the supply is steady and unaffected by production constraints this model does not apply- in such a situation there will be plenty to go round and prices will be stable. Commodities which are in constant and suffficient supply tend to find a median price range which is constant and stable rising and falling only with fluctuations in demand. Oil is different in that a paucity of oil creates the conditions not for a sustained higher price ( that will be a short-lived result) but for an ultimate fall because of the economic distress that it causes. High oil prices are not, ultimately a golden goose for the oil producers.
On each upswing of the oil price the pendulum moves higher in terms of price because of fundamental production constraints which are exacerbated by the need to restart production which has been mothballed-and it moves lower in terms of the recession that follows because of the debt overhang that the good times have left as an economic hangover.
Anyone who is familiar with systems theory will recognize this model as being typical of a system in distress.
What is extraordinary is that we can judge the fundamental weakness of the economy from the fact that despite lowish oil prices there is little sign of economic recovery. The debt overhang is too great and the fundamental supply problems of oil too constraining. Those supply problems have been masked by the availability of cheap money printed by the central bank. This has been used to fund the domestic industry which has spun the deceit that the US is self sufficent in oil.It isn’t.It can produce oil from fracking and unconventional means but not at such a price that the economy will be able, in the long run., to afford it.
.
Good summary…
Here’s a few more points about why we have a glut of oil….
1. The ‘low hanging fruit’ is mostly gone — and now the cost of producing a barrel of oil is over $100
The marginal cost of the 50 largest oil and gas producers globally increased to US$92/bbl in 2011, an increase of 11% y-o-y and in-line with historical average CAGR growth. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2012/05/02/983171/marginal-oil-production-costs-are-heading-towards-100barrel/
Steven Kopits from Douglas-Westwood said the productivity of new capital spending has fallen by a factor of five since 2000. “The vast majority of public oil and gas companies require oil prices of over $100 to achieve positive free cash flow under current capex and dividend programmes. Nearly half of the industry needs more than $120,” he said http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11024845/Oil-and-gas-company-debt-soars-to-danger-levels-to-cover-shortfall-in-cash.html
Sanford C. Bernstein, the Wall Street research company, calls the rapid increase in production costs “the dark side of the golden age of shale”. In a recent analysis, it estimates that non-Opec marginal cost of production rose last year to $104.5 a barrel, up more than 13 per cent from $92.3 a barrel in 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ec3bb622-c794-11e2-9c52-00144feab7de.html#axzz3T4sTXDB5
2. If oil is priced at over $100 that destroys growth:
According to the OECD Economics Department and the International Monetary Fund Research Department, a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second years of higher prices. http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/high_oil04sum.pdf
3. Oil is at $40 which means oil producers need to pump as much oil as possible in order to generate enough cash flow to service their debts / OPEX … if they don’t maintain volume they collapse.
4. If oil prices do not eventually rise then of course Big Oil will collapse.
5. However they need well over $100 per barrel to return to profitability — but $100+ oil kills economic growth.
No way out.
“However they need well over $100 per barrel to return to profitability — but $100+ oil kills economic growth.”
The economy is getting weaker by the day, so I would say the ceiling for an acceptable oil price is declining all the time. I doubt it could tolerate prices above $70 PB for a prolonged period.
Based on the fact that the economy is sinking even with oil at $40… I think we have reached the point of no return where the price of oil has become irrelevant…
The economy and the consumer have been damaged beyond repair by the chemo treatments… I doubt oil at 20 bucks would help much…
Declining real wages…. massive unemployment… most jobs created are low paying / part time…. mountains of debt … fear of losing one’s job…. all massive headwinds
I believe you’re right, but I’m sure the CB’s will attempt one last hyper-inflationary stab at overcoming deflation which will see oil back around $80 a barrel. Of course all this effort will be as effective as tits on a bull, since as you’ve pointed out that the patient is as much dead from the cure as the disease.
“they need well over $100 per barrel to return to profitability — but $100+ oil kills economic growth”
That summary is chilling.
Ever get the feeling you´re reading Edgar Allan Poe novels, when real world facts are presented?
I get that feeling all the time! Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Strange how people go blank when you mention that quandary… they cannot seem to understand the implications…
If you quizzed them with:
I own a coffee shop.
My cost to produce a cup of coffee is $5.
But if I try to sell at anything above $3 nobody can afford my coffee.
What do you think of my business prospects?
And btw — I need to raise 100k — are you interested in investing?
I suppose it comes down to this — they do understand that quandary of being out of cheap oil — but their brain kicks in with some form of defense mechanism that convinces them that there must a solution — we are humans — we can do anything…
And the MSM helps that along with stories of EVs and solar panels and thorium and new colonies on Mars, and the eternal salvation associated with religion ….. it feeds the defenses…..
And it keeps people from collapsing into despair… always offer hope… always offer a way out…
Yup, not so long ago most people used to have this imaginary friend, who would keep them in check. Now we have “positive thinking” to do that. People crave money, power and success and they fear for their ability to get those things if they start “thinking negatively”.
For goodness sake, if those negative thoughts were actually real, that would mean that moving away from the city would be a sane choice. Living in some “cabin in the woods” would actually be good for you. Learning how to get blisters on your hands, would be healthy and respectable, simply awful.
The only thing that matters is to be a winner in the status game and until SHTF, to prove your more fit to run on the treadwheel then tour competitors, get a new dose of hopium and keep thinking positively.
Not so fast, Fast Eddy. There are many ways to kick the can. For example, in extremis, the government can institute price supports and artificially maintain the price of a barrel of oil at around $80. High enough to spur production, but low enough to keep some demand going. It won’t be rosy but, hey, if those fascist cops you keep raving about just knock a few head in, we’ll get the job done. A command economy can work wonders.
How many will support the price of oil at $80 per barrel, if storage is overflowing?
A command economy cannot overcome the fact that oil extraction requires a price per barrel of over $100 — and oil at anywhere near that price stops growth and collapses the economy.
Screaming at the oil producers … putting guns to their heads… even torturing them trying to force them to produce…
Won’t work.
1+1=2… not 4, not 7 … and there is nothing you can do to make it = anything but 2.
Exactly!
New production in hard to reach places needs $100/barrel. The Saudi’s make a profit above $10/barrel. They do not make enough to provide welfare to 30 million unemployed locals but the customers in China, India, EU, US do not care about welfare payments. In fact they are all happy to sell KSA the means to deal with the infestation.
The Saudi’s need high priced oil so that they have the cash to pay off their people to keep them from hacking their heads off..
$10 does not cut it… nor does $40…. and even $100 causes problems for them
Saudi Arabia to tap global bond markets as oil fall hits finances
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d1be572a-86fd-11e5-90de-f44762bf9896.html
The marginal cost of the 50 largest oil and gas producers globally increased to US$92/bbl in 2011, an increase of 11% y-o-y and in-line with historical average CAGR growth. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2012/05/02/983171/marginal-oil-production-costs-are-heading-towards-100barrel/
http://www.theenergycollective.com/sites/theenergycollective.com/files/imagepicker/488516/1_2.jpg
If they don’t make the payments then Saudi Arabia turns into another Iraq….
And when you are producing oil in a war zone … 10 bucks a barrel doesn’t cover the oil field security costs….
In any event it does not matter if a few places can still produce oil cheaply …. what is needed is continuous finds of oil that is cheap to produce….
If that does not happen then no oil is produced — even the 10 buck a barrel stuff — because even the cheap stuff needs a fully functioning global economy…
Good points. We really can’t fall into the trap of looking at things in isolation. Every little cog in the global system is dependent on every other little cog. And the cogs started failing some time ago…
Thanks for your helpful comments. A system near limits tends to oscillate–that seems to be what we are seeing now. Many people believe what we are seeing is “just another cycle.” You explain well why this is not the case.
I especially like your last two paragraphs. People have not understood that price is important. High priced oil is not a substitute for low-priced oil. We can’t really run our economy on high-priced oil.
If oil prices remain depressed for very much longer, how long will it be before there are major bankruptcies in the energy sector? At some point this seems inevitable without some form of subsidy. QE was a backdoor subsidy to the energy sector in the form of cheap low interest loans. Without some form or subsidy I fear (at least in the US) the energy sector will begin to collapse. I know here in Texas the energy jobs are keeping the state from many of the economic woes affecting other parts of the US. Construction jobs are drying up here because the oil money is gone. Lumber is piling up at the popular yards that builders use. I have two friends here that are builders that are not finding any jobs to bid. It is beginning to cascade through the local economy here in Permian Basin of West Texas already.
Timing is always a question. What seems obvious to us doesn’t appear on the front pages until several small breaks in the system have taken place, and combined into a problem that can’t be overlooked.
Gail wrote: “. A system near limits tends to oscillate–” For simple systems, yes. For more complex systems, chaos theory shows us that established patterns suddenly morph into new patterns that may not resemble “the old normal” in any way. For more on Chaos Theory and economics see:
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=16802
Organizational leadership sciences have same sort of short cuts. When the questions become difficult just say “complexity” and no answers are required. Now economics can just say “Chaos Theory”, and Voilà! research until infinity, without any real breakthroughs, answers, theories or actually anything. Convenient. But that being science, hardly.
Van Kent wrote: “Organizational leadership sciences have same sort of short cuts.” Chaos Theory is not a short cut; what are you referring to?
“When the questions become difficult just say ‘complexity’ and no answers are required.” Answers are still required; Choas Theory gives you deeper understanding as to why a small change in initial conditions yield drastic changes in outcomes.
“Now economics can just say “Chaos Theory”, and Voilà! research until infinity, without any real breakthroughs, answers, ” One of the answers is this: if you are dealing with a chaotic system, many of the changes desired will not be accomplished through intuitivly obvious answers. This becomes a demand to eliminate factors and create simpler systems that become more predictable.
“But that being science, hardly.” Something not being understood does not negate it being science.
Stan, in physics, string theorists have calculated for decades, without a single real world empirical experiment. Might be better to concentrate on the real world, not an imaginary one? Decades of calculations without one touch of the real world, isn´t that belief systems and sci-fi, not science?
As can be seen from this years economics Nobel laureate, the economics profession is going to give more attention to data and careful experiments; more concern for the poor; and more attention to inequality.
Instead of Chaos Theory, why not pick up where Thomas Piketty dropped the bomb, or even better, combine Piketty with Gail..
One of the fundamental differences between today vs 100 years ago is we consume a lot more energy. It is this energy consumption that “funds” the technology and complexity we have today. It isn’t chaos it is BTU’s.
Either way, the “new patterns” will not be able to sustain the existence of the old complex system. The old complex system goes away including most of the people that it was supporting. Whatever replaces it is of little consolation to the comfortable inhabitants of the existing dis-order, even if a new system were capable of some positive development in the new territory.
Thanks! It has always been a wonder to me that Economists have selected models because the mathematics is easy, not because the models fit the real world. I wrote about Mandelbrot’s “fat tails” and the problems with Black-Scholes back in early 2008, in my post “Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008.”
Gail,
I read your article on the oildrum.
You forecasted dollar value to fall relative to other currencies, quote:
“12. The value of the dollar will fall relative to some currencies, causing the relative price of oil to rise.
I expect that Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing Middle Eastern countries will revalue their currencies relative to the dollar, causing the value of the dollar to decline. Because of this revaluation, the cost of oil will rise, despite the sharp economic downturn.”
Finally the indexed USdollar gained quite a lot. Can you comment on this, please?
What is your prediction on forex markets this time?
At this point, the US dollar has risen quite a lot, and Yellen’s plan to raise interest rates will raise it further. All of this will tend to lead to more defaults on dollar-denominated debt in countries where currencies are falling, and more problems for US exports.
This cannot really end well, but I don’t know how it ends. The world economy mostly goes down together. Perhaps this comes from a fracturing of the system–a loss of interchangeability of currencies, because of too many problems in some currencies.
Saudi Arabian Ryial to USD exchange rate was stable since 2005.
http://www.usforex.com/forex-tools/historical-rate-tools/yearly-average-rates
I have heard questions raised as to whether Saudi Arabia will lower its currency rate relative to the dollar, so it will get more benefit from the low prices which are now available. That would tend to put the US in a worse position.
Because interest rates are at zero, trillions in debt been added, millions have left the workforce prematurely, government assistance is at all-time record levels and growth has not rebounded in the 7 years since the GFC, except in the feverish imaginations of politicians and other grifters. International shipping rates are at all-time lows, Black Friday was a monumental bust, commodities are falling to historic price floors, blah, blah, blah, blah-blah.
I’m sure there is more than ample evidence for the inquiring mind to reach the conclusion that business is usual is broken and is only being kept alive for the time being, thankfully for all our sakes, by the unceasing actions of criminal masterminds in central banks around the world, millions of momo trades and a 10,000 algo-bot transactions a second.
Why do you persist around here? Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable on some feel-good type forum where reality is suspended and dreams of rainbows and unicorns abound, so as not to confront the truth that the only thing standing between you and the dustpan of evolution is the printing press?
http://i0.wp.com/www.treemagineers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/unicorn-rainbow.jpg?w=350
I’m not sure who this rant was aimed at, but I thought it was pretty good. Lol…
Outstanding!
Cheers! I have since come to the conclusion, after the triple backflip of Super Mario the other day that the only thing separating us from oblivion is no longer the printing press but simply CB jaw-boning. Lol! May God have mercy on us!
“Following yesterday’s crash in the DAX, and historic surge in the Euro after an ECB announcement which many suggested was another central bank policy error, moments ago Mario Draghi did everything in his power to reverse said error, when in a speech in New York which concluded moments ago followed by a Q&A session, he effectively tripled down on his “whatever it takes” position (remember his double down took place in Malta at the end of October) and said that not only is “QE there to stay”, but could be “calibrated” if needed and the ECB can use “further tools” if needed as there is “no limit” to the “size of the ECB’s balance sheet.”
http://bit.ly/1PLv6Ya
Norway: Many idle oil service ships in harbour these days. More and more rigs without work. Future investment plans scaled down again. BAU not.
North Sea oil decline in the UK (or Scotland) http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-26326117
Difficult to say, Enron style wizardry and fakery seem to apply to the official numbers https://itportal.decc.gov.uk/pprs/report4.pdf “Anyone relying on the
information does so at their own risk”
If a person assumes that oil prices can go up indefinitely–say to $200, $300, then $500 per barrel, then all of the oil in place looks like it can be extracted. Or if not all of the oil in place, all of the “technically recoverable” oil can be extracted.
The catch is that the economically recoverable is much lower than the technically recoverable portion. People cannot imagine that this might be the case–we can see the oil, but we can’t get the oil out, because the price won’t go high enough.
“People cannot imagine that this might be the case–we can see the oil, but we can’t get the oil out, because the price won’t go high enough.”
Isn’t the problem rather that it will take more barrels in total to find, exploit, extract, transport and refine the oil than is given back in return? The EROEI – or if you prefer, total net energy to society – will simply be too low for a lot of the remaining reservoirs.
The problem is loosely related to EROEI or net energy. It is a multidimensional problem; EROEI measures one dimension of the problem. The real issue is return on human labor (what I consider the original meaning of EROEI), not return on fossil fuel energy (what EROEI is now used to mean).
The problem has to do with how fossil fuel energy use is concentrated, with some human players being nearly left out. The price won’t go high enough because many non-elite workers keep getting squeezed out. Also, increased concentration of energy, and increased debt based on that increased concentration of energy, is important to the functioning of the system. Some of the new capital goods are not producing a high enough return to pay their way. They lead to a large amount of debt, but their return is not really sufficient to compensate for that debt.
This is rich, after decades of “mainstream” swedisch utopia drumbeat the day has come runing into the wall of finite world, now they have to back pedal away from the fully open imigration spigot nonsense policy, otherwise a coup/civil wars starts in short order. Here “green” swedish deputy PM Åsa Romson cries during a press conference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKXEUalVsWc
Just a few centuries ago they pillaged and killed over the Europe, then came industrialization, Nobel, SAAB and ABBA, meanwhile wealth spoiled crazies-lunatics took over the country and installed millions of non-compatible culture immigrants, today the country is both moraly and financially almost bankrupt. What a trip.
This is not the end of swedish immigration. Not close.
True, but look at details. In their own words they will revert to normal EU levels of immigration, so perhaps dozens thousands per year incoming, still much better than of 10x todays levels. Also from what can be gathered from that link to local paper the bigger coalition party put these “greens” junior partners against the wall with a dilema, either we will cut your budget money to your pet immigration projects by 60% or you will have to sign on this stop of fully opened borders imigration system now, decisions decisions. What is also great some of the top “greens et al” are not amused by this deal at all, infighting among the traitors begins, that’s why she is crying. I’d say it’s a clear security of the state operation manouver to hold for at least for some time the current regime, before the real swedish anti immigration opposition swells them all like tsunami, can kicking operation of limited time horizon.
Moreover, the overall likely context is that Germany is about to shut the doors as well, so Swedes had to act fast, and for these “greens” it’s just gut wrenching situation they never ever possibly imagined in their multikulti human races and cultures mixer lofty dreams, lolz.
I’m skeptical this means what they say. About two weeks ago they introduced border controls, which in practice meant spot checks of ID (ethnic profiling not allowed).
Also a lot of exceptions for families, unaccompanied “children”, exposed etc.
Anyway this is supposed to take effect from April. Will be quite a rush in march.
I expect Sweden to crash economically first, but I’m not sure it is a bad thing going first.
Yep, if I recall that iranian-kurdish-swedish academic named Tino .. ?, one of the few semi-allowed critics of the establishment, they ran some near term projections and the case is already lost unfortunately, with 15% migrants now and their high natality it’s gamer over, he said something along your lines alredy in 2014 probably economic crash comes first meaning even the victory of the anti immigration party won’t solve the problem.
But I’m wondering what’s next? They will have to segregate openly by some form or other, i.e. police-army permanent fencing of the country into subdivisions, this will be pretty messy during times of general economic reset.
For one thing, I feel sad for swedish friends, but ultimately it’s of their own making, also perhaps a little bit of karma blowback for how they pillaged the richess and burned down central europe during the mid 17th century..
Yes, Tino doesn’t have to be called racist, only housen****r.
We don’t have an army since Ivan became forever peaceful.
One of the reasons we didn’t go through with securing the borders the other week is because we don’t have enough police.
I have a hard time imagining civil war, or who would fight it. I don’t know what happens when money finally runs out, gangs, crime, looting, misery?
Tino Sanandaji is his name. He is clever and since he is of a non swedish origin he can’t be called a rasist. Many have tried to question the situation here but then you automatically is a rasist and your political/academic career is over. If you don’t join the swedish democrat party but then you are a “really bad person”.
Karma blowback indeed. Maybe not from the 17th century but from our own stupidity believing in multikulti. Though many of us never believed that crap. I have always said to everyone that multikulti only works decently in times of plenty and the times of plenty are not here to stay. The result: People dismisses me as a crazy doomer.
Where are you from? From your knowledge about the situation here you can’t be that far away.
Sorry for droping salt into the open wound, but I found it fascinating how some of todays dilemas and questions have been hinted upon before. Most notably by the french novelist
Jean Raspail in his book from early 70s “The Camp of The Saints” – there are couple of interviews available on ytoube with him.
What is quite perverse the author is now in his 90s and being still very lucid to talk about the current migration wave as the only begining chapter he envisioned decades ago:
http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2015/09/jean-raspail-we-are-only-at-beginning.html
you can peak inside but get the original hard copy:
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/pdfs/camp_of_the_saints.pdf
ps years ago I dated a swedish beauty and I was shocked noticing when parties ended, that her female friends without boys or taxi money for some reason had to literally run to home/dormitorium through the streets (afraid of assault), when asked later it was impossible to get them talk why, I learned the reason only after many months; it was surreal and crazy, never noticed such “psychologic block” behaviour on other continents before or later, now it must be likely even worse
Sorry for droping salt into the open wound, but I found it fascinating how some of todays dilemas and questions have been hinted upon before. Most notably by the french novelist
Jean Raspail in his book from early 70s “The Camp of The Saints” – there are couple of interviews available on ytoube with him.
What is quite perverse the author is now in his 90s and being still very lucid to talk about the current migration wave as the only begining chapter he envisioned decades ago:
http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2015/09/jean-raspail-we-are-only-at-beginning.html
you can peak inside but get the original hard copy:
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/pdfs/camp_of_the_saints.pdf
ps years ago I dated a swedish beauty and I was shocked noticing when parties ended, that her female friends without boys or taxi money for some reason had to literally run to home/dormitorium through the streets (afraid of assault), when asked later it was impossible to get them talk why, I learned the reason only after many months; it was surreal and crazy, never noticed such “psychologic block” behaviour on other continents before or later, now it must be likely even worse
http://www.weltderphysik.de/typo3temp/_processed_/csm_20121108_TurbulenzRauch_PVladuchick_97a733f6c8.jpg
Sweden may be the tippingpoint of the turbulence. Or Greece or …?
There are two disjoint complaints against immigration 1) race 2) finite world/carrying capacity. I would be interested to know if any one in Sweden or Germany or anywhere makes the case for #2 finite world?
I am also dumbfounded why no women’s rights groups express concern about admitting immigrants that have a multi thousands of years tradition of zero women’s rights. Where is the self interest? What value do they think they are getting by importing a rape culture with respect to un-escorted women?
Ed,
1. Race- Close to noone. The true nazi party got about 150 votes in last election.
Culture- Common among Sweden Democrats to claim islam don’t blend with western values.
2. Finite resources (but in the form of debts, houses, teachers, doctors) is the usual complaint.
Feminists doesn’t seem worried, I believe they believe it’s just a question of living at a certain GPS-coordinat and then you’ll believe in gender equality.
Ed, the situation is like this. The liberal parties claim that borders are unfree and more people is good for the economy. The left wing parties claim that we have to be solidaric with the poor and immigration is good for the economy. The funny thing is that the feminists often belong to the left wing camp. If you question them you are a racist and a sexist.
There are the Sweden democrats, they want to stop all migration. This camp used to be an openly racist party. Today this is not so. They claim that this kind of immigration is bad for the economy, in fact it’s bad for society in every single way. They have 20-25% of the votes if an election would be held today.
No one talks about finite resources except that they discuss that the present wellfare system is not dimensioned for this quick increase of population. Not even the green party understands the more fundamental limitation of recourses. In fact the green party is the most fundamentalistic party when it comes to immigration.
The situation is far from lawlessness here. You could safely walk the streets at any time in Sweden except for maybe some of the immigrant ghettoes. The government has until now managed to provide wellfare to everyone. Unemployment insurance and so on. But the quality is declining. It’s particularly noticable in the school system. People are safe on the streets. But when the wellfare system collapses things will probably turn unsafe very quickly. Multikulti only works decently in times of plenty…
What if the Green party are not idiots?
Shut down nuclear, cut down hydro, shut down farming, move industries abroad. Move everyone to a few cities. Stop building roads.
Import electricity, import food, import everything.
Sooner or later everybody would stop exporting to Sweden.
The soil, forest and sea would have recovered a little by then, but noone would know how to use it.
I can almost sense a secret plan.
No, I’m just imagining. They are idiots.
🙂 🙂 🙂
Ed,
We, the Germans are the bad people – for ever!
We are always guilty an have to help everyone.
This poor little refugees are the good ones. If they don´t accept women, it is not their fault. They don´t know it better, because we, the bad germans, did not edcucate them.
Now we can care. Halleluja!
By the way, I´m also supporting refugees, but I don´t like the black/white painting.
It seems to me, as if mother Merkel is orderd to pull young men away from Assad´s army.
An the silly “greens” are helpful idiots!
It is all about the fight over cheap to extract oil, to set Putin under pressure.
Saludos
el mar
Åsa Romson personifies the stupidity of swedish politics. Fundamentalistic solidarity. “We are rich we have to help everyone”, this has to be done by moving everyone to sweden where they can have our welfare though there are no jobs and no places to live except immigrant getthoes. The richness of Sweden is more and more based on the credit bubble. Industrial production index down 20-25% since 2007 which was the peak. Total credit amount is increases around 10% of gdp each year. This is good for consumtion.
Romson is crying because she was forced to weaken the rights offered to refugees. I think the government was hoping that germany should loose the chicken race against Sweden and close the borders. In that case our government could have continued to claim that there is “no limit to the volume of refugees coming to Sweden” and we are the humanistic super power in the world”. Unfortunately this is what many swedes want to hear. People have no understanding for what’s possible and not since they are spoilt by the welfare state.
I wonder how this will end. A financial collapse will not be pretty. 30 years ago sweden was politically and ethnically homogenous, today there are many fractions and increasing mistrust. Another interesting fact: if I recall correctly, Sweden (togheter with Finland) has the highest density of sniper rifles and shot guns in Europe since there are plenty of hunters.
2014: 36500 new housing units. A record.
2015: 100000 migrants in 10 weeks.
Sustainable!
Your comments about the connection to credit I found particularly interesting:
I was also struck by your statement about Sweden being rich, and wanting to share its wealth with others. Sweden’s wealth is really a wealth of energy consumption. It cannot last, any more than others, because of the connection to the overall world economy. Sweden does have a lot of forests for fuel, though.
Historically we shouldn’t forget that the major reason for Scandinavian colonial (not just Viking raiding) expansion to France and the British Isles (and let’s not forget what became Russia!) in the Dark Ages was the rather poor and hard living to be had in such a northerly region, exacerbated by climate change and over-population. This sent the warlike, inventive and hardy people searching for richer pickings elsewhere, where Norwegians and Swedes could find rich agrarian plains to farm.
In the same way that the original English (various Germanic tribes) were driven to Britain by starvation as well as taking advantage of the opportunities opened up by the collapse of Roman rule at the fringe of empire: empty farmland, the need for mercenaries.
The Northern lands should be sparsely populated, more trees than people….. Will hydro power for a time stave off the great correction which we foresee? Can the mass of soft-living duvet-cossetted Scandinavians and Brits recover their past toughness?
Before fossil fuels, the nordic countries did not seem to be as “developed” as areas farther South. I remember hearing that so many people died off from one of the plagues, that they imported business people from Germany.
Now, there are as many people of Norwegian ancestry in the US as in Norway, as a result of all the emigration, when food was scarce especially about the early 1900s.
Uppsala University and church was founded/built before america was “discovered”.
I agree that about 1M seems like the comfortable non-fossil fuel carrying capacity.
“We” used dutch ship builders. Maybe not such a good idea 🙂
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)
Walloon workers were more useful. But I wouldn’t rule out scandinavians did some good on the continent.
it’s a simple matter of appropriation of available resources.
in ancient times If you lived in Egypt, barring the odd famine when the Nile failed to deliver water, you could float around in light cotton frocks, needing fire to just cook your ample food–leaving lots of spare energy capacity to build tombs and such. (job creation schemes are nothing new) The same applied to much of Africa.
Spin a globe, and youll find the early great civilisations grew in the tropics.
Humankind however, had expansionist ideas, and gradually pushed north into colder and colder latitudes. We were never content to stay where it was warm and comfortable.
The further north we went (into the major global landmass) the more energy had to be appropriated from other sources. We needed the meat and fur from other creatures, for warmth and sustenance, and trees for shelter and more heat.
As people pushed north, the more time they had to spend just surviving against the elements, and less time building otherwise useless artifacts like pyramids..
This has worked OK until our own time. Cold and starvation kept northern numbers in check, and allowed only primitive societies to exist. Cities were viable only so long as forests could be cut and other animals eaten at a rate to deliver heat to survive winter. Nature was the balance mechanism.
Take the latitude /heat problem to its polar conclusion, and you understand why the Inuit built nothing and ate raw food..
Now we have had a century of hydrocarbon fuel use, but unfortunately that is seen as the new ‘normality’, even though numbers have exploded beyond sustainability. So the northern races are engaged in a race to find continued sustenance.
Sweden (pop 5m) for instance now uses 80% fossil fuels to keep warm in winters that drop to -20 C. That is unsustainable. They can only buy that fuel on the illusion of their debt bubble. Moscow is on a similar latitude, with 13m people with the same temperatures to contend with. They too must maintain a frantic rate of fuel input to stay alive. There are hundreds of major cities facing the same stark future.
Good summary of the situation! When a person looks at energy consumption per person, it is striking how that consumption rises as a person looks at increasingly cold countries.
When energy products are expensive, countries with low energy consumption have an advantage. Thus, in the early, pre-fossil fuel days, it was the warm countries with the advantage. Now that energy products are again expensive (or were before the price collapse), it again becomes the warm countries that have the advantage. China is mixed is terms of warm/cold. Some areas are definitely warm. The use of coal also tends to keep energy costs down, relative to countries with higher-cost fuels.
It’s a big difference between Denmark and Norway. While we needed several hundred years to get back our population, Denmark got back a population of pre-plague levels in just a couple of generations.
The most densely populated area in Norway used to be around Lake Mjøsa, where the best soil is, old seabed dirt. Only about 3,5% of our landmass is fit for agriculture though. And since the plague much of this soil is laid under asphalt, a process which is intensified as we approaches collapse: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Riksveg_4_-_Rv._4_Viggadalen_-_Hadeland_-_Norway_-_Road_construction_-_18.JPG
When I visited Norway, I could see how the carrying capacity might be very low. My father wrote a paper when he was in college, investigating why my grandfather had left Norway. The family owned a very small plot (7 acres, IIRC), high in the mountains near Voss. My grandfather was the oldest son, and thus would have inherited the farm. But the historical production of the farm was so low, that it was heavily encumbered with debt. My Grandfather could see no point in staying in Norway. My father found a story about the family supporting itself by making bootleg liquor, for some period, because of the low productivity of the farm.
The area now seems to be used for recreational hang-gliding.
By the way, until the end of the cold war Norway had food reserves for 1 year. Now the only reserves we have is what is on the trailers and in the stores.
The problem must have disappeared!
Yes, and even then I think the Vosso River was teeming with wild salmon and the mountains were full of reindeers. How now to survive on paragliding and rafting after a collapse?
Yes, the carrying capacity is low, but from what I understand much of agricultural land here consists of so called “morene”, which is rich in minerals and drains well, and is not so exposed to soil erosion.
Anyway, the carrying capacity of the farms around Lake Mjøsa is unique. In the 17th century 80 percent of agricultural production here was exported out of the area, in spite of being the densest populated area of that time. That’s the reason for all the big farmhouses and barns you can find here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Slagsvold_p%C3%A5_Kraby.JPG
My grand-grand-grand-grandfather left for the USA when he was 73 years old. Wonder how it went for him?
Now 300K elks, soon 10M people.
Should be the other way around.
The etymology of the word Russia comes from Swedes who row rowingboats together https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus_(name)
The toughness of the Vikings actually probably rested on the ability of the men to cooperate with each other. If you were to look for the first manifestation of “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” in Europe, that would probably have been the Viking rowing boats. Though there seems to be some idealization of becoming rich and securing as much resources as possible for oneself here in Gails blog. For the vast majority of human existance men that can cooperate with each other have won over lone wolves who try to gather all resources for themselves. Every single time.
Combat unit odds of victory (and survival) increase when:
– The unit brings back their wounded, no matter what
– The unit brings back their dead, no matter what
– The veteran warriors can form an impregnable wall, to protect reinforcements, supply lines, wounded and fresh junior warriors, with their own lives
– The officers know that “if in doubt what is happening, then flank”
– The honor of the unit, and cooperation within the unit, is more important than personal suffering and death (a healthy knowledge, that all life so far on planet earth has died, and even you will eventually die)
The first time a young man is under threat of imminent death, its impossible to say what will happen. He could run forwards, in to the enemy, backwards, away from the enemy, or just freeze. The human brain works its own magic when put under threat of imminent death. So, if veteran warriors can keep the young studs alive a battle or two, then the field efectiveness of the unit grows exponentially.
I think the old instincts of the swedes still persist. The cooperation gene is still there. Today it just manifests itself with a bleeding heart philosophy -take all the refugees in that you possibly can-.
“If you were to look for the first manifestation of “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” in Europe, that would probably have been the Viking rowing boats.”
The Liberty, equality and brotherhood to rob, rape and murder other people. Good job on being co-operative.
“Though there seems to be some idealization of becoming rich and securing as much resources as possible for oneself here in Gails blog. ”
Through consensual exchange, merit and hard work, not through raping and pillaging, even as members of a brotherly team like the Vikings.
Matthew, yup, Touché!
The easiest way of organizing co-operation has been by greed and/or fear. Both have meant excessive violence to extract stored solar energies from neighbors. Today we just rape and pillage the earth by our consensual exchange, merit and hard work, to extract stored solar energies. But the point I was trying to make, was the comparative effectiveness lone wolf vs. co-operation strategies in the raping and pillaging.
I think you are being to hard on the vikings. They were not just pirates. The christian church wanted to turn them to siple pirates. In fact they were foremost merchants and farmers. They were also empire builders. Building an empire can of course mean some violence. But the russian empire was not just founded by violence. The different slavic tribes were making war with each others. The vikings lived in the cities used for trade and upheld order there. The slavic tribes realized that it would be easier for them to accept a foreign party to upheld order than to have one of the tribes to do it. That is how the first russian empire was founded. Rather peaceful compared to other empires. This is documented of in the chronicle of Nestor.
Are you referring to later times, when they were no longer generally called Vikings? Such as the Kievan Rus? Or the Varangians, bodyguards of the Byzantine Emperor?
The Slavs taking over the countryside is already post-Mongolian Empire, so you are talking, what, the 15th century and later? Not so many of the former Vikings were even still pagan by then.
To me, at least, Vikings refers to post-Roman Empire up until 12th century, when they came raiding western Europe. The times when they used the dragon boats / longships.
yes–but cooperating on a tribal basis i think—to the exclusion of rival tribes
Matthew, the Kievan rus where vikings going eastward. The first prince was Rurik and he is assumed to be from the area around Stockholm in the 10th century. Some of the vikings also continued to Constantinople.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27
The funny thing is that the viking era (800-1050 A.D) is supposed to be a warm period. Probably even warmer than today. Some vikings even settled on greenland as farmers. When the climate turned cold again 1350-1850 A.D the settlers on Greenland disappeared. The 17th century was probably the coldest period in Europe during this “little ice age” of 1350-1850. Many of the famous dutch master painters paint people skating on deep frozen rivers. Skating on the dutch channels is not common today.
In eastern europe vikings were called “rus”, sweden is still called routsi in finnish. The connection to russia is often forgotten.
The mere shock of changing to a historical scandinavian/brittish diet would probably kill most modern people in these countries. You would basically only eat porridge with very salted or fermented fish, some milk and occasionally perhaps celebrating sunday with some meat. In Sweden some still eat something called “sour herring”, its fermented herring. The smell is quite extreme and disgust most people.
It’s hard to adapt to a hard life if you have been spoilt for 20+ years. In a fast collapse scenario hydro power will quickly be useless. In a slow collapse scenario hydro power will be of great help.
Christopher, have you tried growing Fava Beans in Sweden? Before potatoes were introduced from the New World, protein rich nutrition in the Nordic countries probably came from Fava Beans. Minced fava beans works just like minced meat in cooking, but with a better nutritional values.
Three meals a day of pickled herring and brännvin. Great fun, for about three days.
DJ, just add some crayfish, even more schnapps (or chilled brännvin) a whole lot of Swedish drinking songs, a longhouse, and that sounds like most the marvellous Post-SHTF time.
Where can I sign in?
Yes, I do grow fava beans. They are very reliable and cold hardy.
Are citizens allowed to own hand guns? Are they allowed to carry them? Carry concealed? When will young women begin carrying to defend themselves from rape? Or would that be racist? In which case they are mad (insane).
If you have a license you could carry a hunting rifle disassembled if you could make a reasonable case for being on your way to the hunt.
I can’t imagine self defense with a gun would be anything other than manslaughter.
Not like the state of Vermont where a state citizen can carry any weapon in any way any where as long as the person has no intent to do harm. Court buildings are excluded.
Also, as a response to the terror attacks in Paris EU moves to make hunting rifles illegal. (That would probably mean Sweden has to employ professional hunters, which we cannot afford)
What a strange situation, national suicide! I must say from the American perspective I find this incredible.
America was always a country of immigrants/settlers and we have lots of space. So our situation is different.
As a crowded, cold, nordic country, I find it incredible that Sweden takes any immigrants at all.
Its simply a matter of demographics. All European countries are at zero population growth, so in order for those economies and nations to survive they need immigration. Who is going to take care of all of the retired elderly Nordics? Answer: displaced Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans, etc…
The scanidinavian countries have not the same problems with demographics as continental europe. The birth rates have been close to steady state population. This is just politics going crazy.
Non-european immigrants has something like 45% unemployment, and those who work earns less on average. Retirement won’t happen.
If we had a world with overflowing abundant $20 oil and other cheap energy and no pollution problems, then the employment problems would be solved, and the retirees could be handled. We are dealing with a resource problem that people don’t understand.
Agree. Sweden doesn’t have $20 oil or $2000 oil.
In the 90s we had a defense and were self-sufficient in food (~50% now), now or soon we won’t be self-sufficient in electricity.
Actuaries always seem to be the ones voting for rising population. Government pension plans are necessarily pay as you go. Without enough young people, there is absolutely no way that they can be funded. The overlooked detail is that those young people must have good-paying jobs, and the jobs depend on resources, particularly oil. So while more young people is helpful, it is not sufficient. The whole system must work.
“Without enough young people, there is absolutely no way that they can be funded.”
I like to refer to them as ‘new recruits’.
The finns experimenting by combining elderly care and cheap housing for the young http://pulptastic.com/old-friends-new-house/
The Japanese population pyramid is equally scewed, just wondering if the Japanese have similiar experiments?
Aren’t the Japanese also considering softening their strict immigration policy?
Their other much publicised “solution” to this problem involves robotics although I’ve never much approved of their approach in this arena. In surveys, not only in Japan, elderly people requiring assistance prefer automation solutions in the home over all other options (immigrants). I believe a more US/EU approach to robotics and wearable tech (exosuits) would excel at this goal rather than the overly cutesy/humanoid preferences of Japanese engineers.
But yeah, if all else fails… immigration.
All countries that retain any taste of the old world order in their culture traditions and ethnicity must have that taste diluted until it disapears. That taste offends the palate of those who call the shots.
I’m all for it. I’ve never understood this clinging to racial, cultural purity based on location. We all came out of Africa didn’t we? Brits and Americans still suffer from this affliction and yet most of them did not originate in the place they happen to live now. They are horrified to learn that they have a multicultural and multi-racial background. And race is disputed anyway since we are all from the same species even with slight differences in genetics.
How much of the embedded culture of native americans has been conserved after the shift to european values in the US? Would you have London or New York revert to cockneys and mohicans because there was more cultural cohesion – something worth protecting? I think not.
The controllers may try to use this “dilution” to their advantage, but the whole premise is based on their own severe delusion surrounding this topic – that they are racially and culturally superior to all other humans. And even after much of their manipulation has been debunked over the years, they still resort to “fancy dress” and ridiculous accents and bling to hoodwink the gullible. Why do they still get away with it? Because it works. But only on a primal level. Rise above it and the illusion is plainly ridiculous. The emperor couldn’t be more naked.
The mixing and smoothing out of differences between peoples and cultures would happen anyway and IMO has been a blessing and works very much to our advantage.
Perhaps mixing of genetic traits works to our advantage, but if we end up doing without clothes in the future, it certainly would be nice to have skin color adapted to the part of the world where we live. My ancestors are from Norway, and my coloring is light, as a person might expect for Norwegians. Living in Atlanta, GA, USA, my skin is too light colored for the climate where I live now.
Yep, same for British Australians. Much higher rate of skin cancer among the “whiteys”. Aboriginals (10s of 1000s of years) not so much.
I wonder how long it takes for physical traits to adapt to a given climate? In the meantime there’s sunblock. Even elephants and wild pigs use it in Africa, because their relatively hairless skin is probably more suited to shady environments not open savannahs.
Rapid globalised mass migration really has screwed up a lot of things that would even out if nature were allowed to take its course. This happens with animals too such as the problems cats and dogs in Australia caused, rats with plague on ships, and all kinds of destructive flora in non native environments. Now we have all manner of invasive species being introduced to areas all around the planet causing havoc with local species and food chains.
But we have been the most destructive species of all, no matter how diluted our traits or how universal our culture becomes. People already worry about the wrong things, but in a collapse scenario, I can see how almost all of these wrong things will be accentuated to the point of chaos, not diminished.
Being from the north of Spain myself, my direct ancestry is a mix of Celt, Viking, Roman, British, Jewish, Arabic, Germanic inputs to name a few. The number of chinese and african is growing rapidly in local cities too which would end up being the majority given enough time, much as New York would end up majority hispanic at current rates. To me, it’s no different than the invasion of Native America by Europeans over a relatively short period.
It’s still all up for debate but the amount of mixing is not…
http://time.com/3964634/native-american-origin-theory/
Zero to negative is great especially in cold northern places. Yes, I have read all of Gail’s articles, yes I understand the collapse of the financial system. I am talking about the survival of the people. As in enough food grown locally using local energy to feed the people. As we have all agreed growth is not a solution. It may postpone for a few years only to make the eventual correction that much worse, more humans to die.
Such self-indulgent infantilism as crying about this in public is dismaying. Our ‘leaders’?!
On how economic free fall is fast, not slow. http://www.suomenpankki.fi/pdf/174043.pdf
During the collapse of the USSR the Finnish economy went through a phase of economic free fall.
When our global economy goes in to free fall, there wont be exports or capital to stop the fall.
Important to note that those countries were dragged from the bottom of the lake by the hair by BAU… and BAU pumped the water from their lungs bringing them back to life
They indeed had collapsed but they still had electricity and oil and police and government and hospitals… that is because the rest of the world had not collapsed… there was still a fully functioning global economy … there was still plenty of cheap to extract oil….
None of these options will be available this time for Russia, Finland or any other country…
This time…. is different…
by Ellen Brown
“Hang On to Your Wallets: Negative Interest, the War on Cash and the 10 Trillion Bail-in”
“The scheme to impose negative interest and eliminate cash seems so unlikely to stimulate the economy that one wonders if that is the real motive. Stopping tax evaders and terrorists (real or presumed) are other proposed justifications for going cashless. Economist Martin Armstrong goes further and suggests that the goal is to gain totalitarian control over our money. In a cashless society, our savings can be taxed away by the banks; the threat of bank runs by worried savers can be eliminated; and the too-big-to-fail banks can be assured that ample deposits will be there when they need to confiscate them through bail-ins to stay afloat.
And that may be the real threat on the horizon: a major derivatives default that hits the largest banks, those that do the vast majority of derivatives trading. On November 10, 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported the results of a study requested by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Elijah Cummings, involving the cost to taxpayers of the rollback of the Dodd-Frank Act in the “cromnibus” spending bill last December. As Jessica Desvarieux put it on the Real News Network, “the rule reversal allows banks to keep $10 trillion in swaps trades on their books, which taxpayers could be on the hook for if the banks need another bailout.”
The promise of Dodd-Frank, however, was that there would be “no more taxpayer bailouts.” Instead, insolvent systemically-risky banks were supposed to “bail in” (confiscate) the money of their creditors, including their depositors (the largest class of creditor of any bank). That could explain the push to go cashless. By quietly eliminating the possibility of cash withdrawals, the central bank can make sure the deposits are there to be grabbed when disaster strikes.”
http://ellenbrown.com/2015/11/20/hang-onto-your-wallets-negative-interest-the-war-on-cash-and-the-10-trillion-bail-in/
IMHO, she’s right on that part, but not when she thinks that helicopter money of some sort would save the day.
The global finance has been on life-support for 7 years, that’s true, but our real problem is that today it’s the real economy that’s dying, due to growing scarcity of cheap fuel and resource. The only cure for that is a dramatic decrease in size (which will happen wether we like it or not).
If “Everything’s Awesome” Why Did Aussie CapEx Just Collapse By The Most In Its 30 Year History
Day after day, the ‘stability’ in the stock “markets” (specifically in AsiaPac) is posited as ‘proof’ that China is ‘fixed’, the worst is over in EMs, The Fed can raise rates, and massive monetray policy manipulation of market signals had no mal-investment consequences.
Well all of that utter crap just got obliterated as China’s right-hand-man in the credit-fueled commodity boom bust – Australia – just saw its business capital expenditure collapse 20% YoY – the biggest drop ever, accelerating the crash in business spending to 11 quarters. As Goldman warns, this exposes significant downside risk to any forecast for GDP recovery in 2016.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2015/11-overflow/20151125_aus.jpg
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-25/if-everythings-awesome-why-did-aussie-capex-just-collapse-most-its-30-year-history
Yikes, time for Oz companies to take a leaf out of the DOW constituents and goose their share price by indulging in firings, free money and stock buy-backs!
Thanks! It seems like there must be other countries with crashing capital expenditures–Russia, for example, and many other oil exporters. Also, African countries exporting other raw materials.
Global capex has been declining for three years straight now:
“The world’s top-spending corporations are set to cut back on investment in 2015 for the third year in a row, according to a report issued by Standard & Poor’s on Monday, as a commodities sell-off hits confidence.
“Capital expenditure (or capex) by non-financial corporations is set to fall by 1 percent this year and by 4 percent in 2016, according to S&P’s 2015 global capex survey, which tracks the top 2,000 public and private corporate spenders.
“A rise in capex is seen as crucial for any long-lasting economic recovery.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/03/us-global-economy-capex-s-p-idUSKCN0Q816W20150803
Another great article Gail! Slaying another great myth dragon. You are about the only author I care to read nowadays.
It feel compelled to mention something. It was one year ago that In Alaska brought mention to the fact that many doom writers always forecast doom two years out and made several humorous posts in this regard. Apparently some of the more hard core doomsters took offense to this and replied yes it was certain doom within two years. To my surprise our normally reserved fearless leader Gail also chimed in agreeing with doom within two years.
I bring this up not to undermine Gails contributions which I feel to be exceptional. However none of us has a crystal ball. Who knows perhaps it is the final countdown one year to go. But BAU persists. It can not be denied that it persists. Yes it is a most unhealthy existence but it persists. Collapse has not occurred this can not be disputed. It may or may not occur in our lifetimes.
I like all humans like to have a belief system that allows appropriate action. Many create belief systems that support operating from a particular feeling/emotional base they prefer. Doomsters are not immune to this. Appropriate actions are often going to be very different based on collapse or not collapse beliefs. Myself I believe it could go up any day but it could not occur in my lifetime. This makes it very difficult to find a center to move from but it is possible.
I believe the two years expires some time in 2016….
Good point! Meanwhile, the oil storage places get fuller and fuller, and more companies get closer to bankruptcies. The number of people saying bad things about the Christmas shopping season multiply. We keep tending in the same direction.
I must have missed the “doom two years out post.” It is easy to see that is “should” be fairly close, but figuring out how distant is a problem. Someone here gave the analogy of a patient dying from an illness. It is pretty clear the patient will die, but it is not always clear when.
… or which of the many diseases that the patient is suffering from will be the one that kills him…
Seems to me, that most slow collapsers here, have not been introduced to economic free fall. During the collapse of USSR the Finnish economy (exports tanked) went through a phase economic free fall. http://www.suomenpankki.fi/pdf/174043.pdf
Sure, if you are not familiar with the concept of economic free fall, its hard to imagine. But economic free fall is fast, not slow.
Besides oil, I´m interested in food, because economic crises such as soaring food prices reduce real income, consumption tanks and forces the poor to sell their assets etc. http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4251e.pdf
Oil, petroleum and food are interesting, because no matter the Enron style financial wizardy and fakery, the real world eventually comes knocking.
China is fast running against a brick wall concering fish. http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-2/fisheries/state-of-fisheries-worldwide/
But China isn´t the only one, collapsing fish stocks are a global problem. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/common/ecg/1000505/en/stocks.pdf
And the record El Nino will likely reduce crops, therefore consumption everywhere in 2016 and 2017. http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4251e.pdf
What stopped the finns from total economic collapse was foreign capital influx and an eventual rise in exports, in the form of ICT and Nokia. When our globalized world will be going in to economic free fall, there will not be capital or exports, just global free fall.
Thanks! Interesting links. I realized that Ukraine, Cuba, and North Korea had had problems at the time of the crash of the Former Soviet Union, but hadn’t thought about Finland. The first article has done a lot of research on the Finland situation. It is a 2014 paper, so has quite recent data. It is starting to show a demand shock feeding into Finland’s current poor results.
Yes, Finland in 1990-1993 is a showcase of modern times fast collapse. The paper is from the Central Bank of Finland, so, should be reliable. I think it was in the fall of 1991 the economic free fall was so steep and sudden, that without foreign capital, Finland was days and weeks from default. Keep in mind, only a year or so from record boom-year. When the dominos start tumbling, it´s fast..
For slow collapsers, when profits tank, corporations stop spending, layoffs begin, it is a rapid spiral of death, economic free fall in to collapse.
“For slow collapsers, when profits tank, corporations stop spending, layoffs begin, it is a rapid spiral of death, economic free fall in to collapse.”
It depends on how you define collapse. The more hyperbolic people use collapse when something drops 5%. For me, collapse means no more electrical grid, no gas at the pumps.
The difference this time is the world is much more interconnected. It is going to be hard to find “foreign capital.”
Finland was not only stressed by the collapse of Soviet but also very much affected of the bursting of the Finish-Swedish credit bubble. Sweden also had a hard time and a financial crisis in 1991-1994. In 1992 the fixed foreign exchange course was protected fiercly by the central bank. The interest rate reached 500% for a shorter period. “The sky is the limit”, the central bankers said. The swedish crown was in the end released to change freely relative to other currencies. Many banks had to be bailed in and saved. I believe Finland had more or less similar problems.
Today Finland seems more hesitant to boost their credit in comparison to Sweden. In Sweden we have entirely forgotten what happened 20 years ago. Finland may have problems today but in the long run I think they are better of.
Thats not collapse. Even this is not collapse as UN military is in place along with food aid but it getting close to the feel of collapse.
Collapse was playing out very fast in 2008…. people seem to forget the panic of post-Lehman when millions of jobs were vapourized … trade was collapsing… the banks were not lending … the global economy was days away from a complete implosion (literally).
If the central banks don’t step in with the mother of all stimulus plans + guarantee the solvency of all banks …. this red line runs off the bottom of the page….
http://www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/econ-growth-inflation-dec-2011-500×4081.jpg
We will revisit that situation— but this time there will be no way to stop it….
The collapse — once the trigger is pulled — I guarantee you will be rapid.
FinalCountdown,
I’m grateful that you remembered. I predict we’re still about two years out from total collapse! Let’s go with 2017 just for grins. Seriously, though, I do believe we are in for some difficult times ahead. Normalcy bias is difficult to overcome, but so is falling prey to your worst fears. Will it be fast or will it be slow? Nobody knows. There are far to many variables and people are surprising creatures with a will to live. There are many on this site who speak with a metaphysical certitude that is amusing. For those who seek to predict the future, beware the fool’s game.
I’m up for a forecasting competition. The problem here is drawing the lines quantatively and saying when things happen. I’ll go with 2017 for a 40% drop in US stock indicies,
and 2021 for a 5% reduction from today’s worldwide liquid hydrocarbon production.
If you’re a fast collapser you have to define of collapse. A large market correction (=buying opportunity) or forever loss of BAU?
Fast collapse is the point at which the electricity goes off – permanently.
Agree that would be collapse (or one week before).
So pinnacle 2001 at latest and collapse on the other side of 2050 would be slow.
Collapse before 2020 would be fast (implying “everybody” thinks everything is great now).
?
Everything will appear to be normal — just as everything appeared to be normal in 2007 — the one day something will snap….
This time is different in that the Elders will have done every possible thing to fend off the snapping point… so unlike 2008 when they had many options to reverse the collapse…. this time we just keep racing into oblivion…
The job losses will compound into the millions then billions… there will be deluge of bankruptcies that turns into an avalanche of bankruptcies… the financial system will fall apart… the global supply chain will stop….
The first big manifestation of this will be the lack of electricity.
I am afraid you are right.
The trend continues…
This might not normally be cause for alarm … however one must look at the context…. this is happening in spite of massive global stimulus…. and it is happening across the board to corporations around the world….
The abyss beckons….
HP Inc. said it expects its first-quarter adjusted earnings to range from 33 cents to 38 cents a share, below analysts’ forecasts for 42 cents. Meanwhile, it pegged full-year adjusted earnings at $1.59 to $1.69, compared with analysts’ views of $1.77.
Meanwhile, Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it expects adjusted profit of 37 cents to 41 cents a share, compared with analysts’ views of 43 cents, and backed its full-year outlook of $1.85 to $1.95.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise shares rose 2.8% after hours.
As a combined company for the quarter ended Oct. 31, H-P said its revenue declined 9.5% to $25.71 billion, while profit edged lower to $1.32 billion from $1.33 billion. On a per-share basis, earnings were 73 cents, compared with 71 cents a year earlier.
Read more: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/hp-inc-gives-weak-earnings-forecastsupdate-20151124-01093#ixzz3sX0gdZEL
Pingback: Why “supply and demand” doesn’t work for oil | Enjeux énergies et environnement
The price discussion seems somehow unlucky. If we look to the 1973 oil crisis we find that a rise in price leads to recession and not as argued to boom. The assumptions may be considered falsified. It is doubtable that “rising prices clearly encourage production”. Perhaps “rising profits” would be more correct?
As time and effort of exploration rise oil consumers have to spend higher parts of their added value on energy resulting in less productivity and limited profits. The effect is increased by growing cost reflectiveness forcing to cover environmental and social damages of exploitation. Because growing amounts of cheap oil substitutes are not in sight and productivity growth seems to base largely upon oil use we should expect a permanent economic downward circle.
Rising prices certainly do lead to recession. But in the time before everything falls apart, everyone makes a major attempt to get more out.
Rising profits indeed do come for those suppliers from parts of the world where oil is extracted cheaply. The “catch” is that those profits are practically never there for the oil companies to keep. Governments take as much as 90% of the excess. Some of this, especially in the early days, we put into sovereign wealth funds. Some of it was spent on programs to help citizens. In recent years, it has especially been used for things like food subsidies, and jobs programs, schools, roads and hospitals. Governments become dependent on these high tax levels, and there gets to be a big problem if cutbacks need to be made. Population has been growing rapidly in these countries, because life has been so good.
I agree that we should expect a permanent economic downward circle. I was just trying to explain how, for a time, the higher prices could be helpful to parts of the economy.
Hi Gail…the other day I sent you a link to an article that mentioned tankers are sitting and waiting to off-load their oil at (now fewer?) working refineries. Are U.S. oil storage tanks also full up? Does difficulties in getting loans affect refinery repairs (and construction of newer, more efficient refineries)?
What impact does this have on the supply and demand see-saw?
US oil storage tanks are not yet full up, but some people are getting concerned because of the apparent upward trend in usage, and the distance from maxing out. I thought that this was a pretty good article. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-24/crude-storage-tanks-nearing-their-brim-spur-super-contango- Cushing is the biggest US storage area. According to the article, the theoretical maximum storage at Cushing is 71.4 million barrels, but the practical maximum is only 65 million barrels. We are at 56.9 million barrels in storage.
Now that the summer driving season is over (and other storage is in use much of the rest of the world), US storage has been filling up rapidly since August 21, according to this table. For all US storage, we have added about 38 million barrels of oil in the last 13 weeks. Between November 2014 and April 2015, Cushing added about 2 million barrels a week. At this point, there are only about 4 more weeks of additional storage in Cushing, if additions are made at that rate.
Another execution carried out by your friendly neighbourhood American cop:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3332731/Horrifying-dashcam-video-shows-white-cop-shooting-black-teen-16-TIMES-point-blank-lays-ground-Chicago-officials-make-plea-peaceful-protests.html
Do you have any idea what these cops deal with on a daily basis? Every single day you are dealing with violent black thugs who are ready to attack you and innocent people. Who are raping, stealing, killing. Behind every single story of some “innocent young black youth” taken down by cops, was in reality a violent thug.
Having said that, the cops/blacks in America are engaged in terminal combat, just like Americans are engaged in terminal combat with the Islamists abroad. Neither side is going to back down and neither side will win.
Line of Duty Deaths: 114
9/11 related illness: 6
Accidental: 2
Aircraft accident: 1
Assault: 3
Automobile accident: 28
Duty related illness: 2
Fall: 1
Gunfire: 34
Gunfire (Accidental): 2
Heart attack: 17
Motorcycle accident: 3
Struck by vehicle: 5
Vehicle pursuit: 4
Vehicular assault: 6
https://www.odmp.org/search/year
Policing doesn’t even make the Top 10 list of most dangerous jobs http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/10-most-dangerous-jobs-us-1.aspx
There is no excuse for what the police are doing in America – they are shooting down people in cold blood.
And there are a huge number of idiots in America who think that is fabulous.
The same people will — at least initially —- welcome the Fascists…
“Cops in America: Safer Than They Have Ever Been”
http://www.dailyimpact.net/2015/09/11/cops-in-america-safer-than-they-have-ever-been/
Nice find 🙂
“The notion that there is a “war on cops” being conducted in America — beloved of headline writers, politicians, and cops — is a complete myth.
Policing, it turns out, is not an especially dangerous job, nor is it getting more so. If you want to honor someone who goes out there every day and puts his life on the line for you, hold a parade for the person who catches your fish.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, commercial fishing is the most dangerous job in America. On the Bureau’s list of the ten most dangerous occupations, police officer does not appear. Nor is the trend going the wrong way; fewer cops were murdered in 2013 than in any year in the past generation, and it looks like 2015 will be about the same.”
‘Shoot first – shoot to kill — saves you having to ask questions — frees up more time to hang at the doughnut shop’ — the new motto of America’s police forces…
Plus you have to have “some” fun with all those heavy weapons. Target practice just ain’t enough.
https://img.rt.com/files/news/28/3d/00/00/3american-police-militarization-war.n.jpg
Eddie, As usual, you have no idea what you are talking about. Always you speak in generalizations and stereotypes. 99% of police are fine and honorable people working hard in a hard job. Without the thin blue line, you would be dead or wished you were. Stop talking out of your ass.
I’ve probably mentioned this previously … but let’s redux it…
I have a friend in Hong Kong — he’s a Stanford MBA … former banker… owns a business…. heavily involved in the American Chamber in HK …. a blue-chip black fellow you might call him
From time to time I send him the stuff that I post here re the US gestapo….
Wanna know his response?
Sure you do…
He says Fast… there is nothing new here … this shit has been going on forever…. black people have been treated like dogs by the police ever since he can remember
The only difference is that people now all carry video cameras in their pockets — so this brutality gets documented and uploaded…
Does that make a difference? Not a bit…. these thugs get away with murder — as they have been getting away with murder forever….
And it’s not just gang bangers that are targeted — all blacks are targeted — he knows of plenty of educated law abiding blacks who have been targeted… when he is the US he tries to avoid the cops as much as possible… he is afraid of them
I saw this interview recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6QbOgOPRbQ
It sure must be nice to be a white man in America — then you can shoot your big mouth off telling everyone how the police are so fantastic. You can conveniently ignore their gestapo tactics because they — at least for now — are not bothering you…
Just wait till the electricity goes off – permanently…. don’t count on any help from these vicious animals….
The cops in America are just another symptom of a diseased dying dog…. they are the syphilis that is rotting the dog’s brain…
What I am wondering is why the black community in the US is not rioting and tearing the place apart….
Even they were — I might even buy a teevee and sign up for CEE EN EN so I could watch the action in HD 🙂
Everything is a mix. There are a lot of fine cops in America, and some (most likely a small proportion of the total) who are not so fine.
I spent Thanksgiving with a group of people would worked in the Sheriff’s Department in a community in Tennessee. They were “relatives of relatives,” rather than my direct relations.
A person runs into a lot of people working in some way for police departments. Working for the police seems to be a popular occupation for people without college degrees.
No doubt plenty of good people working in the police force … however there is a dark, dangerous undercurrent at play….
A bit of blow-back from the days of slavery combined with being the epicentre of a world about to be blown into a billion pieces.
Other symptoms: the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, the NFL and its association with the military, Black Friday madness, Facebook, video games, porn etc…
Ha ha ha. Listening to too much Hannity, eh?
KILL KILL KILL!!!
http://res.cloudinary.com/govtslaves-info/image/upload/v1391631623/strengthpopo_rsakzr.jpg
http://gaweeklypost.com/files/attach/images/2015/10/08/1884_20151008122502592412.jpg
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/drunken-peasants-podcast/images/9/98/Brutality_by_Wayne_Tilcock_slash_Enterprise_photo.jpg
If the guys at the top just had capes they could hang with Darth!
http://www.dailydesigninspiration.com/diverse/3d/jasonmartin/Darth-Vader.jpg
That would be awesome!
This past week I have been trying to locate Polycarbonate sheet manufacturers. Polycarbonate is a versitile material in Post-SHTF. It can be used for green houses, riot shields and bodyarmour. All pretty handy in Post-SHTF.
Christopher, don´t know if Motala bridge is far from you, but in Post-SHTF the bridge seems like a nice place for some scavenging, when that time arrives. http://www.arlaplast.com/motala-bridge/
The ancient Etruscians, Greeks and Romans had some nifty features in their Domuses. Rain water harvesting, evaporative cooling AC, vegetable gardens, under the floor heating and workshops. Just been wondering what the Etruscians, Greeks or the Romans would have done with a material like Polycarbonate sheets.
Not too long ago the police in N Ireland were transported about in helicopers with an army escort. Then there was peace. That was quickly followed by a partial disarming and normalising of the police force. (Since re-armed due to terrorist threats)
I’m surprised that no-one is calling for the US police forces to be disarmed.
Recession Watch: Falling Commodity Prices to Hurt America
Leading indicator of trade, economic growth, and geopolitical instability.
By Larry Kummer, editor of the Fabius Maximus website:
US exports, a problem that even the Fed warned about, depend on the health of other economies that are buying US products. The emerging markets are important customers for US goods, growing as they evolve from exporters to have more balanced trade. Trade figures from emerging markets (EMs) are only somewhat reliable, but imports’ share of EM’s seaborne trade has grown, and equaled that of exports for the first time in 2014.
So falling commodity prices are now a mixed blessing for the US economy. It multiplies exposure to slowing growth in China, the third largest buyer of US exports, with a 7% share of total exports year-to-date (Census, through September) — as China’s slowing continues to depress commodity prices. Several nations that rely on commodity exports are big customers of the US: Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Australia — totaling 38% of total exports. All are slowing; Brazil might implode.
The other commodities exporters are in aggregate significant to the US, and some of them are hurting, such as Russia and Venezuela.
As a secondary effect, falling commodity prices slow growth throughout the emerging and developing nations. Their GDP grew 6.3% in 2011, slowed to +5.0% in 2013, +4.6% in 2014, and +4.0% this years. Next year will be worse if China continues to slow and commodity prices continue to fall.
That means hard times for much of the world. For example, metals exports are 15% of GDP for Chile and Zambia, 6% for Peru and Niger, and 5% for Australia and Bolivia. Mining (esp. copper) produces one-quarter of GDP in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
While oil began to crash in mid-2014, other commodities began slowing in 2011, a process that has turned into a rout.
It’s not just oil that’s in oversupply. It’s a broad collapse in prices, from the big three metals (iron ore, copper, aluminum) to agricultural products. There’s even a glut in diamonds. Non-fuel commodity prices have fallen also: down 1% in 2013, -4% in 2014 , and estimated by the IMF to be -17% in 2015. That’s probably optimistic; -20% looks more likely. The 2000-2011 commodity supercycle has died.
Commodity prices are ruled by positive feedback. As prices fall production often increases as extractors increase production to pay their bills. “High-grading” allows them to survive as prices fall (tapping higher grade, more profitable reserves to offset lower prices). Also, lower commodity prices themselves often reduce costs. But this magic works only for a while.
Eventually the “cure for low prices is low prices,” as capital investments are cut — which eventually reduce supply. Glencore has announced cuts in zinc and copper production. Freeport has announced major capex cuts. Eventually everybody will slash capex to survive, with the total drop in capex probably 50%.
More http://wolfstreet.com/2015/11/24/recession-watch-falling-commodity-prices-to-hurt-america/
The author underestimates what this means…
Central banks have hosed the global economy with stimulus since 08 — they continue to do so — interest rates are at record lows…
And yet…. demand is not there…
I fail to see how there can be a recovery in commodity prices — what would be the driver?
Exactly. Where would the demand come from? And high oil prices are a demand killer.
It is certainly hard to see the reason for a price recovery.