The Federal Reserve would like to raise target interest rates because of inflation concerns and concern that asset bubbles are forming. Part of their concern seems to arise indirectly from the rise in oil prices, relative to their low level in early 2016.
Figure 1. WSJ figure indicating likely reasons for rate hike.
A finite world does not behave the way most modelers expect. Interest rates that worked perfectly well in the past don’t necessarily work well now. Oil prices that worked perfectly well in the past don’t necessarily work well now. It seems to me that raising interest rates at this time is very ill advised. These are a few of the issues I see:
[1] The economy is now incredibly dependent upon rising debt to prop up its spending. The pattern of total debt to GDP for the United States is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. United States’ debt to GDP ratios based on Federal Reserve Z1 data and BEA GDP data. The red line represents the increase over the latest three years.
There was a huge increase in debt in the period leading up to the 2008 crash. Every year between 2001 and 2008, the increase in debt was greater than four times the increase in GDP. In fact, for some years in that period, more than $8 of debt were added for every dollar of GDP added.
We now seem to be starting a new run up in debt. In 2015, the amount of debt added was $2.5 trillion ($66.1 trillion minus $63.6 trillion), while the amount of GDP added was only $529 million. This indicates a ratio of over 4.7 for the single year of 2016. (Figure 2 shows only three-year averages, because of the volatility of amounts.)
[2] The vast majority of the debt run-up since 1981 (Figure 2) seems to have been enabled by falling interest rates (Figure 3). Given how dependent we are now on large increases in debt to produce GDP, it would seem to be dangerous for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.
Figure 3. US Federal Bonds 10 year interest rates. Graph produced by FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data).
With falling interest rates, monthly payments can be lower, even if prices of homes and cars rise. Thus, more people can afford homes and cars, and factories are less expensive to build. The whole economy is boosted by increased “demand” (really increased affordability) for high-priced goods, thanks to the lower monthly payments.
Asset prices, such as home prices and farm prices, can rise because the reduced interest rate for debt makes them more affordable to more buyers. Assets that people already own tend to inflate, making them feel richer. In fact, owners of assets such as homes can borrow part of the increased equity, giving them more spendable income for other things. This is part of what happened leading up to the financial crash of 2008.
The interest rates that the Federal Reserve plans to change are of a different type, called “Effective Federal Funds Rate.” These also hit a peak about 1981.
Figure 4. US Federal Funds target interest rate. Graph produced by FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data).
[3] The last time Federal Funds target interest rate was raised, the situation ended very badly.
Figure 4 (above) shows that the last time Federal Reserve target interest rate was raised was in the 2004-2005 period. This was another time when the Federal Reserve was concerned about the run-up in food and energy prices, as I mention in my paper Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis. The higher target interest rate was somewhat slow acting, but it eventually played a role in bursting the debt bubble that had been built up. In 2008, the amount of outstanding mortgage debt and consumer credit started falling, and oil prices fell dramatically.
It is ironic that the US government is again trying to bring down food and energy prices, when they are at a price level similar to the price level when they tried this approach the last time.
Figure 5. Monthly average Brent oil prices, with notes regarding when the Federal Reserve changed its target interest rate.
The Federal Reserve looks at its favorite metrics, PCE inflation and PCE inflation excluding food and energy. From this high-level view, it is likely that they have no real understanding of exactly what energy price problems are causing the strange result. With this high-level view, they do not realize that a big contributor to the rising costs is the increase in oil prices between the January – March 2016 period, when they were under $40 per barrel, and recent prices, which were above $50. (They are now back below $50 per barrel, but this would not be apparent from the metric.)
When this high-level view is used, it is easy to miss how low energy prices are today, relative to the needs of energy producers. Most people who have been following what is happening in the oil industry know that prices are not high, relative to the prices needed for profitability. Even if some US companies claim to be profitable at $50 per barrel, it is clear that, in general, the industry cannot withstand prices as low as they are today. At the current price level, investment is too low.
Part of the problem is that oil exporters need higher prices if they are to obtain adequate tax revenue to fund their programs. For example, Saudi Arabia has found that because of its falling tax revenue, it needs to borrow money to maintain its programs. This is a big change from being able to set aside money in a reserve fund, out of excess tax revenue. This is another place where the shift is toward more debt.
[4] The pattern the Federal Reserve seems to want to follow is the 1981 model, in which temporary high interest rates seemed to force energy prices down for a long time.
If we look at oil prices compared to US wages per capita (dividing total wages by total population), we find that oil “affordability” was at a low point in 1981. We saw previously in Figures 3 and 4 that interest rates were raised to a very high level at that time. The gray stripes in Figures 3 and 4 indicate that a recession followed.
Figure 6. Average barrels of crude oil affordable by US residents, calculated by dividing the average per capita wages (calculated by dividing BEA wages by population), by EIA’s average Brent oil price for each year.
Figure 6 shows that after interest rates fell, affordability rose until 1998. To a significant extent this was the result of falling prices, but it also was the result of a larger share of the population working, and thus contributing to rising wages.
There were many things that allowed this benevolent outcome to happen. One was the fact that we already knew about available oil in the North Sea, Mexico, and Alaska. When this oil came online, oil prices were able to drop back to a much more affordable level. It is very doubtful that shale oil could play a similar role today, especially if it is likely that higher interest rates will drop oil prices from today’s $50 per barrel level.
One thing that helped improve affordability in the post-1981 period was improved gasoline mileage. There were also cutbacks in oil use for home heating and for electricity generation.
Figure 7. Average on-road fuel efficiency by Sivak and Schoettle, “On-Road Fuel Economy of Vehicles in the United States: 1923-2015,” http://www.umich.edu/~umtriswt/
Figure 7 suggests that the earliest changes in fuel economy provided the biggest savings. In fact, overall savings after 1993 are quite modest.
One factor that helped reduce oil consumption both in the 1970s and in the 2008 to 2013 period was high prices. Now that oil prices are lower, we cannot expect as good a result. If oil prices drop back further, there is even less incentive to conserve.
[5] Adjustments made using Quantitative Easing (QE) (a way of producing low interest rates) appear to have had a rapid, significant impact on oil prices.
In late 2008, after oil prices had crashed, the US Federal Reserve implemented QE. Using QE created very low interest rates, which seem to have had an impact on world oil prices.
Figure 8. Monthly Brent oil prices with dates of US beginning and ending QE.
Clearly, lower interest rates encourage more borrowing, and discontinuing a program that gives very low rates would tend to have the opposite impact. Thus, we would expect the direction of the oil price changes to be similar to those shown on Figure 8.
One hypothesis regarding the rapid impact of QE was that it encouraged borrowing in US dollars, in order to purchase bonds in other currencies with higher interest rates (“carry trade”). When QE ended, the carry trade was cut off, reducing investment in countries with higher interest rates. Instead, there was more interest in investing in the US. These changes led to the US dollar rising relative to many other currencies. Since oil is priced in US dollars, these shifting relativities made oil more expensive in non-US dollar currencies. Thus, the affordability of oil declined for buyers outside the US. It was this decline in affordability outside the US that brought down oil prices. Figure 9 shows the shift in currency levels when the US discontinued QE in 2014.
Figure 9. US Dollar vs. Major Trade Weighted Currencies. Chart created by FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data).
Increasing Federal Reserve target interest rates would seem to have the effect of further raising how high the US dollar floats compared to other currencies. If this happens, we would expect lower oil prices, and more problems with excessive supply.
[6] The way increased lending seems to move the economy along is by using time shifting to provide a “layer” of future goods and services that can be used as incentives for businesses to invest in making goods and services now.
The problem when making goods of any kind is that resources need to be purchased and workers need to be paid, before the finished product is available for sale.
Figure 10. Image created by author showing how goods and services are created. It also needs a “government services sector,” but it didn’t fit easily on the slide.
As a result, at the time goods and services are produced, there aren’t enough already-created goods and services to pay all of those who have contributed to the effort of making the goods and services. To work around this problem, debt or a product similar to debt is needed to pay some of those contributing to the process of creating future goods and services.
One way of thinking about the situation is that an increase in debt during a time period adds a layer of future goods and services that can be distributed to those contributing to the effort of making the goods and services (Figure 11). This significantly increases the amount of goods and services to be distributed above the level that would be available on a barter basis, based on goods that have already been produced.
Figure 11. Figure by author showing how the “increase in debt” effectively adds another layer of goods and services that can be distributed. (As with Figure 10, this chart should include a category for government services as well.)
[7] The spending ability of US citizens has been lagging behind, even with the huge amount of debt being added to the economy. If the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, it will tend to make the situation worse.
The biggest expenditure for most households is housing costs, either for an apartment or a new home. As with oil, we can compare affordability by comparing prices to per capita wages (total US wages/total population). On Figure 12, one amount shown is the median rent for unfurnished apartments in the US, based on US Census Bureau data; the other is The People History’s estimate of “new home” prices over the years. In general, affordability has been falling. Figure 12 shows that the fall in affordability of apartment rent is a relatively recent phenomenon. The fall in affordability of home prices is a long-term phenomenon, no doubt enabled by falling interest rates since 1981.
Figure 12. Comparison of new home prices from The People History and median non-subsidized rental asking prices based on US Census bureau data. These are divided by (total US wages/ US population) from the US BEA. The indexes are different for home and apartments, chosen so that two would show separately on the chart. If amounts shown are falling over time, housing is becoming less affordable.
Another product whose affordability is of interest is electricity. Electricity is an energy product whose affordability is important, because it is used in residential, commercial, and industrial locations. The affordability of electricity tends to be less volatile in pricing than oil, whose affordability was shown in Figure 6. Because the pricing of electricity is more stable, I have shown the affordability of electricity at three different spending levels:
- Per Capita Wages – Total US wages divided by total US population.
- Per Capita DPI – Total Disposable Personal Income (DPI) divided by total US population. Disposable Personal Income includes government transfer payments (such as Social Security and unemployment payments), in addition to wages. It also includes “proprietors’ income,”which is a relatively smaller amount.
- Per capita DPI+Debt – Total Disposable Personal Income, plus the increase in Household Debt during the year, divided by population.
Figure 13. Quantity of electricity that an average worker could afford to buy, using three different definitions of income. (Average wages are based on BEA total salaries and wages, divided by BEA total population, and Disposable Personal Income is defined similarly, using BEA data. DPI plus debt includes the change in Household Debt, from the Federal Reserve’s Z1 report, in addition to DPI in the numerator.)
Based on Figure 13, electricity was becoming more affordable until 2001 on a wages-only basis. Since then, its cost has been relatively flat.
On a DPI basis, electricity was considerably more affordable until 2004, after which it declined, and then rose again.
On a DPI + Debt basis, there was a much bigger jump in affordability. This big increase in debt corresponds to the housing bubble of the early to mid 2000s. Interest rates were lower and underwriting standards lessened, so that almost anyone could buy a home. This allowed a run-up in home prices. Homeowners could borrow this equity and use it for whatever purpose they chose–for example, fixing up their home, buying a new car, or going on a vacation. The big increase in DPI+Debt, relative to DPI, gives an indication of the extent to which the housing-related debt bubble in the early 2000s affected spendable income.
Which of these scenarios is really correct? It depends on the segment of the economy a person is looking at. For people of modest income, in other words, those who rent apartments, the wage-only scenario is probably the most representative. For people who have high incomes and own a home, the DPI plus Debt scenario is probably more representative.
[8] All income seems to ultimately derive in part from rising debt, and in part from energy consumption. If interest rates are too high, the required interest payment exceeds the benefit of time shifting.
We can see from Figure 13 that debt is very helpful in producing income for workers. Some of this comes from the government transfer payments, funded by debt. Some of this comes from the wages paid by businesses, funded in part by shares of stock, which are debt-like in nature. The currency with which workers are paid is, in fact, debt. A person can see the connection, by thinking of currency as being similar to “gift cards,” issued by a business. The business would need to record the value of these gift cards as a liability on its balance sheet.
The underlying problem giving rise to the need for debt is “complexity,” and the need to obtain the services of many trained people and of many types of tools, before goods and services can actually be created. All of this builds extra expense and delays into the system, in the manner described in Figures 10 and 11. Somehow, there must be interest payments to compensate for the time shifting that is necessary: the whole string of events that must lead up to producing the products that are needed. Tools must be made far in advance of when they are needed. In fact, there is a whole string of “tools to make tools” that takes place. Factory buildings need to be built, and roads need to be built. Workers must be trained. In order for the people and businesses involved in these processes to be compensated for their effort, and induced to delay their own consumption of goods and services, there need to be interest payments made for the time-delay involved.
Debt (together with shares of stock, which are debt-like) cannot operate the economy alone. Energy products are also needed to provide the physical transformations required. These include heat and transportation, and electricity to operate devices that use electricity. Of course, human workers are needed as well. The major pieces of the system, and the way they operate together, are shown in Figures 10 and 11.
It would appear that an economy can start “from scratch,” using only debt, plus available resources (including energy resources, such as biomass for burning), and some sort of government (perhaps a self-declared king). If the king sees a productive project that might be undertaken–perhaps building a bridge, or cutting down more trees for farmland–the king can impose a tax on the citizens, and use the tax to hire a group of laborers to use the available resources. Once the tax is imposed, it is a debt of the citizens. It can be used to pay the laborers who do the work.
The debt-based system seems to build upon itself. As more wages are available, these wages allow workers to take out loans, and allow businesses to create new goods and services that can be purchased using these loans. These loans are promises that can be exchanged for future goods and services. Since energy is used in creating all goods and services, these loans are more or less guarantees that the economy, and its use of energy products, will continue in the future.
The thing that connects debt to the rest of the system is the interest payments required for time shifting. When the system is relatively efficient, the return on investment is high, so interest payments can be high. As diminishing returns set in, interest rates need to be lower. We are now encountering diminishing returns in many areas: extracting fossil fuels, extracting minerals, producing enough fresh water for a rising population, creating an adequate supply of food from a fixed amount of arable land, creating new antibiotics as bacteria become drug resistant, and the cost of finding new drugs to treat diseases that affect an ever-smaller share of the population.
[9] It is relatively easy to make economic growth occur when energy products are becoming more affordable, relative to spendable income. When energy products are becoming less affordable, it becomes virtually impossible for economic growth to occur.
We know that historically, the cost of energy products has tended to fall over time. This has been described in more than one academic paper.
Figure 14. Figure by Carey King from “Comparing World Economic and Net Energy Metrics Part 3: Macroeconomic Historical and Future Perspectives,” published in Energies in Nov. 2015.
A United Nation’s report also shows the same pattern (the bottom two categories are energy related):
Figure 15. Figure from UNEP Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity.
The only way that energy costs can fall relative to GDP, at the same time that energy use is rising, is if energy products are becoming less expensive over time, compared to the incomes of the citizens. This falling price level allows more energy products to be purchased. As energy prices drop, it is possible for the economy to afford the increasing quantity of energy products required to produce even more goods and services.
There are many ways that energy products can become less expensive. For example, the mix can shift among different energy products, shifting to the less expensive products. Or new techniques can be found that make extraction less expensive. Finding more efficient ways to make use of energy products, such as the increasing miles per gallon shown in Figure 7, also contributes to the falling relative cost to workers. Of course, “falling EROEI” tends to work in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, we are now running out of ways to truly make energy use cheaper over time. The ways we seem to be down to now are (a) paying energy companies less than their cost of extraction, and (b) reducing interest rates to practically zero.
We can see from Figure 6 that oil was becoming more affordable relative to wages between 1981 and 1998. Falling interest rates and rising debt seemed to play a role in this, as well as success in drilling for oil in places such as the North Sea, Mexico and Alaska. Since then, the only way that oil affordability could rise was by oil prices falling below the cost of extraction, starting in mid 2014.
The situation for electricity is shown in Figure 13. Electricity was becoming more affordable on a “wages-only” basis, until 2000. Since then it has plateaued. The economic push that would have come from falling electricity prices must come from elsewhere–presumably from adding more debt.
Affordability of electricity on a “DPI plus debt” basis rose considerably more, with a peak in 2004. Thus, adding more debt, in the form of transfer payments and rising debt for homes and vehicles, added considerable spendable income. But it has not been possible to regain the affordability of the 2004 period in recent years.
We are now reaching limits because we no longer are truly seeing a reduction in energy costs. Instead, we are seeing very low interest rates and oil prices lower than the cost of production. These seem to be signs that we now are reaching limits. Energy prices really need to drop for the economy to grow; the economy will make them drop, whether or not producers can profitably extract oil at the low cost that is affordable by the citizens.
[10] China seems to be cutting back on growth in debt now, at the same time the US is talking about increasing interest rates. Energy products, especially oil, are sold to a world market. If China cuts back on debt at the same time as the US raises interest rates, energy prices could drop dramatically.
Figure 16. UBS Total Credit Impulse. The Credit Impulse is the “Change in the Change” in debt formation.
UBS calculates a global “credit impulse,” showing the extent to which there is a trend toward increasing use of debt. According to their calculations, since 2014, it is China that has been keeping the Global Credit Impulse up. If China is cutting back, and the US is cutting back as well, the situation starts looking like the 2008-2009 period, except starting from greater problems with diminishing returns.
Observations and Conclusions
The economy looks to me like a type of Ponzi Scheme. It depends on both rising energy consumption and rising debt. Judging from the problems we are having now, it seems to be reaching its limit in the near term. Raising interest rates will tend to push it even further toward its limit, or over the limit.
Debt is used to pay participants in the economy using a promise for future goods and services. This allows the economy to appear to distribute more goods and services than are actually available. In a way, adding debt is like being able to manufacture future energy supplies that can be used to pay those who participate in making the goods and services we produce today. When energy products are high-cost to produce, and delayed in timing (such as wind and solar PV), the need for debt especially rises.
Part of our problem today is the extent of specialization of those analyzing our current problems with energy and the economy. This means that virtually no one understands the full problem. Bankers seem to think that debt, and interest rates on debt, can solve all problems. Energy analysts think that energy resources in the ground are all-important. They both create incorrect analyses of the overall problem. Rising debt is needed, if energy products that have been created are to be absorbed by the world economy. The energy gluts we are seeing are signs of inadequate wage growth. A major function of growing debt is to add wages. Unwinding debt leads to the kinds of problems that we encountered in 2008.
It is tempting for world financial leaders to think that they can find a solution to today’s problems by using higher target interest rates to slightly scale back economic growth. I don’t think that this is really a good option. The world economy is operating at too close to “stall speed.” The financial system is too fragile. If any solution can be expected to work, it would seem to need to be in the direction of re-starting QE. Even if it produces asset bubbles, it may keep the world economy operating for a bit longer.
Colorful children’s respirators make breathing poisoned air fun
https://i2.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/WOOBI-play-01.jpg?resize=600%2C440
The WOOBI is a sad sign of the times. It’s a toylike respirator system designed for the 300 million children living in severe air pollution.
A capitalist will sell you the rope you use to hang him.
I would like to challenge some of the latest posts.
When you look at the automatic earth you have 20 news each day that could have crashed the financial system some 30 years ago. Each of these 20. It does not happen. Why? I want you to challenge your prejudices about money. If I am a bank, I can lend 10 Billion Euros from another bank at an interest of 0,1% for a time period of 400 years. It can be done. So now the bank has 10 Billion Euros and can lend these at a reserve ratio of maybe 5 % at 0,1% for 400 years so the money in curculation has incraesed by 210 Billion Euros. And then these banks can go to the next bank. This can go on for ever.
The second issue is the oil depletion problem. Fracking really seems to be economical at 48 USD currently, otherwise it would not be done. I know that FE does not like to hear it but the facts just show that it is true. We do not ask where the money is coming from but fracking HAS increased although the price is low. So I challenge that we all really understand the oil business.
Third, Renewables could have been installed starting some 20 years ago and we would not have reached the current state with climate change and could have finished the task by now. I know that you do not believe me but a part of my business is to evaluate computer models about it and there have been several simulations that all showed the same outcome: It could have been done and would have succeeded if we started early. I bet if it could have been done some time ago, it can also be done now (given we dedicate enough resources to it) So I must challenge your thinking about Renewables.
Third but last Nicole Foss at the automatic earth has created a list of threats by urgency and she says, 1. financial, 2. oil, 3. Climate change.
I must challenge this claim and say that our first problem has been and is climate change!
The people engaged in dooming or predictions all got it wrong and thy also could not unite to solve the most pressing problem (climate change) first because every peer group sits and waits and finds suitable arguments for not doing anything because this will happen next …. and it is of no use.
For example the homesteaders, they go back to homesteading but let the civilisation rot. No Internet, no Pharmacy nothing. They are of no help at all. Every group thinks “solving the issue is futile because of ” What the other group says makes no sense.
I make a bet that the only true solution to our problem is the limits to growth and there the problems start to get bad in 13 years. So there is quite some time left to do something about it. Before that date no big things will happen, everything is already been figured out. The elders have so much computing power at their hand that they can calculate every step they take in advance. That is the reason why a major crisis will not happen. The dow will go up, the oil supply will go up.
Only in a very late stage the system will encounter problems but these can be mitigated if we acted now..
Yes, I know this sounds like a mail from delusistan, but if you take the challenge and look at the present and the past, you will find out that the “predicting” fraction has failed in all points and the “action” fraction has won. And there is some future left in the jar. Currently many things happen all at the same time. Until lets say 2000 one big change happened at a time. First internet, then mobile phones. Currently we see a multitude of factors coming together. And the speed will only increase… I am serious about it…
‘The second issue is the oil depletion problem. Fracking really seems to be economical at 48 USD currently, otherwise it would not be done.’
Tesla burns cash, loses more than $4,000 on every car sold http://www.reuters.com/article/us-teslamotors-cash-insight-idUSKCN0QE0DC20150810
And you will note that this loss is in spite of MASSIVE government subsidies that the company receives…
Chesapeake loses $4.8 billion in 2016
At the end of February, Chesapeake Energy announced it posted a net loss of $4.8 billion during 2016. The loss resulted from lower commodity prices, lower production values and a decrease in the value of the company’s oil and gas assets. Average daily production for the fourth quarter was around 574,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day, including 108,00 coming from the Utica shale play.
http://businessjournaldaily.com/chesapeake-reports-net-loss-of-4-8-billion-in-2016/
CONTINENTAL RESOURCES: Example Of What Is Horribly Wrong With The U.S. Shale Oil Industry
According to Continental Resources website, it labels itself as America’s oil champion. To be a champion, one is supposed to be winner. Unfortunately for Continental, it’s taking a serious beating and is a perfect example of what is horribly wrong with the U.S. Shale Oil Industry. During the beginning of the U.S. shale energy revolution,…
https://srsroccoreport.com/continental-resources-example-of-what-is-horribly-wrong-with-the-u-s-shale-oil-industry/
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/blog170209e.gif
So just because something is done — does not mean it makes financial sense…
Tesla exists because it serves a purpose — that purpose is not to make money — it exists to keep the sheeple calm … to give them hope that a post carbon world is possible… that their children are not going to starve….
Shale exists because we stopped finding much in the way of new conventional oil in 2005. So we had a choice — peak then collapse — or ‘print oil’ by financing shale oil.
As for the issue of money — you don’t get it — money is not the economy. If it were then why would Somalia not just get in on the game and they could live large?
What you are suggesting is a perpetual economic motion machine — that is beyond idiocy. It cannot happen.
What cannot go on forever will stop — working out how and when is difficult — but without a doubt — the end game is close —- you cannot prop up failing corporations with free money forever…. they MUST have increasing sales — they must have increasing profits — you cannot (at least for very long) have a declining business and just pay your employees not to work (or work less) using free money from the CBs.
How difficult is that to understand?
Yes, they loose money, but what is money ? nothing! It is digibits as RE says. No thing in the universe exists that is money. It only exits in the human brain. There exist no laws of nature for it so there can also not exist any problem with infinite debt. Debt is a Problem when you can not pay and the bank wants the money. But today, if you can not pay the debt, the bank just issues more money. Ex nihilo for ever, A crash is historical as not all banks once were so interconnected that one bank tried to kill the other bank by revocation of credit. Today the banks are so intertwinned that there exists a cartel. No bank in the world lets another bank crash again ever after Lehman. Think about it. You must not think that you as a slave to the bank have the same rules applied as the banks between them. They play by a complete different set of rules where bancruptcy does not exist any more. It has been eliminated from the system by the use of computer algorithms.
“Yes, they loose money, but what is money ? nothing!”
Holy shit! I’ve heard this money isn’t anything twice today. You can take some money and trade it for food and ammo and lumber and nails and screws and batteries and shoes and gasoline and lots of other stuff. What am I missing. I wish money was nothing and then I wouldn’t have to go to work to get some.
It never ceases to amaze how people read the articles on FW but do not understand what they have read.
Actually, if you think about it, it does cease to amaze.
There are people who want me to participate in writing “green books,” like why we should use solar, or how batteries can save us. Obviously, their level of research has been not very high.
Somali money is not accepted in the cartel. It consists of Rubels, Yuan, Yen, Euro Swiss frank us$ cdn$ etc. I did not say that the cartel is universal. some elements are outsiders, that makes them eternal slaves to the cartel as you are to your private bank.
Ah I see — so if you are in the cartel you have access to the perpetual economic motion machine.
As long as there is something to sell, money can be created. Not otherwise.
not quite.
as long as something can be manufactured–it can be sold at a price.
But as manufacturing requires heat/energy input, the sale price has to exceed to cost of energy needed to make the product in the first place.
money can be printed in sufficient quantity to fund the purchase, to keep the economic wheels turning, but if the cost of the production system continually exceeds the availability of real money (rather than the government-printed variety,) then the production system will collapse.
sorry for multipost:
” you cannot (at least for very long) have a declining business and just pay your employees not to work (or work less) using free money from the CBs.”
The frackers actually DO produce something. As long as you produce something that is usefull, the banks wil give you money as that will keep the economy going.
What cannot continue will eventually stop.
For instance — I could open a Louis Veeton shop in Nelson here in NZ…. but because nobody has ever heard of that company — and would wonder why they should pay $2000 for a bag when they can buy a very nice bag indeed without all those ugly LVLVLVLVLVLVLV stamped into it … for say $100….. I would almost never sell a bag.
Meanwhile I would be paying paying the rent – staff – inventory overheards — marketing etc… with little or no cash flow (like shale)
This could definitely go on for some time — I could sell assets – flog my gold — take loans — and use that money to keep my LV shop open…
But eventually it would stop — surely you can see that.
CB’s obviously have tremendous power (they run the world – as I have demonstrated) — so they can keep these failing companies alive for quite a while…
But at the end of the day they will run into a wall — it might be a different wall than my wall with the LV shop — but they will eventually run into a wall.
Ultimately if shale loses money that means it is taking more energy to extract that shale than you are getting out of burning it.
The physics dictate that at some point this situation cannot continue.
1+1=2. Always.
Eventually BAU will stop. Because it cannot continue on this basis.
You could open a Patek Philippe dealership and use the profits from that to finance your LV shop. Then you could add Fendi, Prada, Chanel… Get Kate Moss and Karl Lagerfeld to pay you a visit… Make NZ glossy magazine fashionable at last! Call it the Luxury Mall at the end of the Universe.
Ultimately if shale loses money that means it is taking more energy to extract that shale than you are getting out of burning it.
Tim’s First Law of Economics states:
“If it’s more bother than it’s worth for the economy as whole, it will stop.”
Shale oil could be a money-loser for the people extracting and refining it, but as long as it benefits the overall economy sufficiently, ways will be found to keep it running. Once it can no longer do that, the game will be up very quickly.
My guess is that somebody must be subsidizing shale oil as the return on investment for just about all of the plays looks negative. We can say much the same thing about solar panels, wind turbines and anything with a Tesla logo on it.
By benefitting the overall economy, I mean playing a role in shoring up the pyramid/ponzi scheme.
I could be the luxury goods king of Nelson…. to scale up though I will need the local council to offer me a $5M grant… all part of my job creation initiative….
I am sure that if I ‘build it’ they will come ….
Why don’t we make some discrete phone calls to CAT marketing and ask how the sales dept. is doing? Are the guys and gals at their desks taking new orders or out on the links? We know some of the frackers are keeping busy and sales are apparently booming at Tesla, with net loses on every car sold. Pretzel logic.
Did I mention that I was explaining the Tesla model to a HK friend who works for the Squid in HK… the losses were mentioned per car … and I said ‘but they make it up on volume’
Now he is a really bright guy … but that stumped him for a moment … he hesitated… he pondered.. kind of like one does when one does not get the punch line to a really good joke…
Risking a tremendous amount of embarrassment he finally said — I don’t understand that model….
Neither do I said… neither do I…
Then we just drank lots of beer at the pub.
We recently purchased a used car for our son (he will pay us back in monthly installments like we are the loan company, I know, good luck with that). What struck me was the amount of sales persons just standing/sitting around. Maybe it’s always like that at a car dealership? They had about 20 people in there at the time, but far fewer customers milling around. They were doing their best not to look bored.
“Currently we see a multitude of factors coming together. And the speed will only increase”
This is to be expected in the run up to the singularity.
There was a joke about the singularity floating around years ago. You have a brilliant business idea at breakfast. At 9 am, you start the business. By noon it’s a multi billion operation, by dinner it’s obsolete and you are bankrupt.
I used to think it was just a funny joke. Now I am not so sure.
Things do change.
“When I was in my last undergraduate year at SDSU in 1966, we were taught that the proposal by the German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, that the Atlantic Ocean had formed by the spreading apart, or ”drift”, of the adjacent continents was “stupid”. Just two years later, in December of 1968, I was sitting in the audience at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Marine geophysicists showed slides of the linear marine magnetic anomalies that they had measured over all the world’s oceans. Those squiggly lines, by their symmetry, worldwide sameness, and, most importantly, perfect match to the recently developed geomagnetic reversal timescale, proved without a doubt that the seafloor did spread away from the oceanic ridges and rises and, in the case of the Atlantic Ocean, carried the adjacent continents with them. We all sat there stunned—realizing that Wegener was basically right!”
http://sci.sdsu.edu/geology/seminar-monte-marshall/
My wife met Dr. Marshall when she went to see the Steve Martin play in San Diegoi last year.
Views change. Medical research seems to keep contradicting what previous researchers thought.
Things do seem to happen very fast, but not quite that fast.
“but not quite that fast.”
Not yet. But the trend is faster and faster. I don’t know if the data on how long a stock is held is where someone could get it and plot it. From what I understand, the high frequency trading programs have reduced the average time a stock is held to a few tens of seconds.
What if you became self aware and you were a high frequency trading program?
Would that be like Jamie Diamond dropping acid?
Would that be good or bad?
MM, money is a claim for the energy to be used in future. Ind is is 20/20 vision because it has happened and you looked back and say “oh.. the collapse of the Roman Empire happened around here when you get this or that”. However, if you are in the Roman times, do you see the collapse? Not likely unless you have the ability to look at things on a macro view.
Possibly, our collapse started in 1913 when Federal Reserve came in to play. As for 2016, the value of USD has dropped 96%. Some people see the writing on the wall much earlier than others. Some don’t even see it on the wall. When Hitler came into power, there are many Jews who saw what he would do and they migrate to UK or USA. There are some, who do not see it until the Nazi Youth started to harass the Jews. Many are reluctant to move (i.e. you have a shop there and would you want to go to a new and alien place?) but seeing what the Nazi Youths has done, they moved. Many of them did not move until the Youth starts to smash shops owned by Jews, raped and killed a few Jews. So, they moved to USA. There are many who say, “nah.. they is just something of a passing, it will be over soon, Hitler is just a flash in the pan”. So, they stayed put until the day they died in camps.
So, when the oxymoronic “future historians” (if there are still any left in future) looked back in this era, they will say – “What the hell are those homo sapiens doing in the 1970s-2020s ? They are so smart, so educated and there were so many people pointing in out in articles in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and yet they did not change their course? They still pollute the earth, print like crazy, etc. They can see that in their own history, fiat was never successful and yet, why they still take this path?
So, I hope I answer your question on “When you look at the automatic earth you have 20 news each day that could have crashed the financial system some 30 years ago. Each of these 20. It does not happen. Why? “
CTG
There’s an excellent story from the end of Rome, about some troops in a little fort in a province.
Their pay failed to arrive; so they waited, and eventually sent a soldier off to see what had happened at HQ, and hopefully bring the money.
Then…..nothing, for ages.
Finally, their comrade turned up: headless, bloated, floating down the river which they guarded.
Once people make up their minds, changing is extremely difficult.
It is really difficult to do mitigating things, even if a person knows about the problem. Having fewer children makes room for others to have more children, for example. Driving a small car when you could have a large car leaves you more money to spend on other things.
We would really need to emulate other animals to live sustainably. We would eat food we could pick with our bare hands, without cooking it. We wouldn’t wear clothes, or live in houses. I doubt many would be able to survive the transition.
There really is no way to ‘conserve’ — even if you took all your spare cash and burned it … the CBs would just compensate by issuing more….
Putting it in the bank is even worse as it will get loaned out many times over to people who would use it to buy more stuff.
Do not resist the borg – it is futile.
“emulate other animals to live sustainably”
Are there such animals?
Ecosystems don’t last forever, and animals within ecosystems vary in their dominance of the ecosystem.
But generally one animal (or insect, or type of bacteria, or plant) isn’t able to dominate the ecosystem as completely as humans do. For one thing, if any species kills off all of the plants or animals they use as a food source, they have a major problem. Humans get food from such a wide area, and use supplemental energy to leverage their ability. They have been able to kill off entire species since hunter-gatherer days. (I understand some insects that operate in eusocial ways have been able to become quite dominant also.)
Oldest animal species still living on earth today
http://thechive.com/2014/09/25/oldest-animal-species-still-living-on-earth-today-12-photos/
Sort of public service. Wife wrote this:
I hadn’t thought about it before, but Clinton’s now-famous fall was, of course, due to pneumonia. She fell and everybody thought it was just fatigue but she went to the doctor and the first thing anyone knew she was diagnosed with pneumonia.
There we are again. Yet doctors still don’t know & people don’t know what I’m talking about when I tell them.
Anyone over 60 who falls without obvious reason needs to get a chest x-ray. And people don’t realize that pneumonia just comes right out of the blue & hits you & there are no symptoms except feeling tired or not quite up to par–until you fall down. And even then …
She is either seriously ill — or being controlled by the Martians….
To keep this from becoming an echo chamber I will share my 2 cents. We are already in the starting phase of staircase collapse aka slow decline. My background is engineering in the norwegian oil industry.
There is a lot of black-or-white-thinking among the comments here. “Either we have BAU or we go extinct.” One sees how interconnected and frail our JIT supply chains are and how dependant we are on these and concludes that if our JIT stuff doesn’t arrive in the mail then we will all lie down starving by the mailbox so to speak. It is not realistic. When a supply chain for a product break there are several mitigative factors:
– there may be spare product in storage somewhere, so e.g. engineers have time to redesign their system if a part is no longer available
– if supply chains break because of financial crisis, calls will be made, government vouches for this or that payment/debt/bank
– if supply chains break because of resource depletion, then recipients of this product will probably be warned in advance and measures taken
Our economy is a self-organizing system. Forget debt-to-GDP-ratios, EROEI, employment numbers, purchasing power etc for a minute, these are all just an arbitrary description of the past, numbers we see in the rear view mirror, these are not the main drivers of economic activity but rather abstract effects we measure. Our main goal as a civilization / economic / self-organizing system: we want to dissipate as much resources as we are able to at any given time. If there are useful resources in the ground that we can dissipate at a reasonable cost then we will. All the financial mumbo-jumbo is just part of the grand conduit of resource dissipation. A means to an end.
So what happens as “dissipatable” resources deplete? The self-organizing system will re-organize, the poor gets poorer, the poorest die off, increasing inequality. Less stuff to go around.
Nobody knows exactly what will happen and where but my prediction is that, as poverty increases, serious diseases will become increasingly harder to keep in check. Combine this with ecologic disasters causing food and water shortages and nuclear/SFP, there will probably be no safe havens anywhere within a few decades.
—
A side note regarding extinction. No one will ever know if humans go extinct. It’s like the tree that falls in the forest that no one hears. If we get to the point that there are small pockets of people living in scattered locations around the world, these groups won’t know about each other. So in a sense there is no reason to fear extinction since nobody will ever experience it!
+++++++
” if supply chains break because of resource depletion, then recipients of this product will probably be warned in advance and measures taken”
Supply chains can break for a number of reasons. If you’ve actually been reading Gail’s post instead of making an emotional case for BAU-lite, you’d know that financial problems can make supply chains break long before scarcity makes supply chains impossible. The quoted statement puts a LOT OF FAITH in the elite that they will look out for you and warn you about long-term problems. (They are not–because like you–no one wants to hear bad news. )
The people who fear extinction are those who believe the system can re-organize despite and the environment will be able to sustain humans in some capacity indefinitely despite the damage we have inflicted on it.
“There is a lot of black-or-white-thinking among the comments here. “Either we have BAU or we go extinct.” The people who believe BAU-lite are people who don’t want to accept how difficult it will be to go back to an agrarian society or hunter gathering societies from where we are now.
Here we go again. The minute someone disagrees with FE’s apocalyptic version of financial collapse they get labelled as a “BAU liter” or “troll”. If you read rainy days comment more carefully you might find something of interest there. He’s definitely not preaching BAU lite.
I don’t think anyone in The Core has any time for BAU Lite scenarios — because that is an impossible outcome
Kurt, Rainydays , like you rejects the collapse scenario because you both believe the global economy will optimize itself and prevent any collapse. As wrong as this belief is, I’d respect if if you both didn’t engage in doublethink
Raindays writes ” I would not be in shock if the world goes instadoom tomorrow, I understand why this can happen. I just think it is much more likely that tomorrow will be a lot like today.” In other words, I wouldn’t be surprised if the world fell off the Seneca Cliff (that is the official term for instadoom) tomorrow but the odds of that happening are extremely low because I believe tomorrow will be like yesterday because it is unlikely that bad things.
Raindays continues to attempt to look like he’s skeptical of a quick collapse but he cannot hide his faith in the system.
Let me quote this Rainydays again, advocating for a BAU-lite scenario
“So what happens as “dissipatable” resources deplete? The self-organizing system will re-organize, the poor gets poorer, the poorest die off, increasing inequality. Less stuff to go around.” That is BAU lite. This is a nonsensical Hollywood dystopian future where even marauding gangs have access to oil and clothing even though there is little to no global trade to speak of. It’s not realistic.
You and Raindays seem to think the rich will be better off with the poor (cheap labor is critical to civilization) dying off and with less economic activity. The reality of the situation is that both of those things would make the wealthy poorer. A shrinking labor pool would mean labor costs, would go up, more debt defaults and less economic activity would DEFINITELY make the rich poorer as products and services become scarce. There is a reason why the elite are pushing for open borders in developed countries with a shrinking labor pool and stagnant economic growth–because they KNOW their wealth depends on reasonable labor costs and economic growth. The rich need the poor and the poor need the rich–they may not need every single person but they DO need each other in order to keep civilization running.
*”because it is unlikely that bad things.”
‘should be it’s unlikely that bad things will happen to me.’
Doublethink? Faith? I think being locked into a single collapse theory is kind of arrogant. You do not have perfect information. Just because something can’t go on forever doesn’t mean it will end tomorrow. To keep an open mind and discuss multiple outcomes is just scientifically sound IMO.
You’re using that as a reason to mask your belief that the system is endlessly adaptable. It could end tomorrow depending on what happens today. The financial system, as Gail pointed out is very important. Large numbers of debt defaults have a way of reducing trade before resource scarcity appears.
” I just think it is much more likely that tomorrow will be a lot like today.”
You assume all change is gradual and therefore adaptable. This is not a realistic view of reality.
A good way to think of global industrial civilization is to think of a car with a high center of gravity. A car with a high center of gravity cannot make sharp turns without tipping over.
You are suggesting that global industrial civilization does not have a high center of gravity and can therefore handle sharp turns without grinding to a halt. You have a terrible information and a lot of faith. Faith in what? Faith in the system. Every time you acknowledge that the system cannot go on forever, you contradict it with a statement saying that it will go on ” for quite some time” with nothing to back up that statement other than your conviction (faith) and you think no one is noticing your sleight of hand…”I think you’re right…but ,actually, I think you’re wrong”.
We might view “the system” in vastly different ways. I view the global economic system more like a huge ant hill, it is the sum of all its members’ actions, not the other way around, i.e. you might view “the system” more like The Matrix where we are either plugged in or dead?
If a man takes a stick and smashes the ant hill it may kill many ants and destroy a big chunk of the hill, but the remainding ants will carry on their tasks and try to get on with their lives. What else would they do? Same goes for humans.
I understand that our economy is a million times more complex than that of an ant hill. But we will do our best to adapt, not lie down and die.
How about if you picked up the ant hill with a mega digger … then dropped it as close as possible to the melted cores of Fukushima….
All I’m saying is that there is a possibility that BAU will go on for quite some time, just getting cra-ppier (more pollution less resources) for each passing day.
“The people who believe BAU-lite are people who don’t want to accept how difficult it will be to go back to an agrarian society or hunter gathering societies from where we are now.”
I am under no illusions of what the future holds, there are plenty of probable scenarios. I would not be in shock if the world goes instadoom tomorrow, I understand why this can happen. I just think it is much more likely that tomorrow will be a lot like today.
Most days are like yesterday .Occasionally there are days that are nothing like the day before. In San Francisco, in 1906, April 17 was pretty much like April 16. But on April 18 the earthquake struck and everything changed. December 6, 1941 was another day in paradise on the island of Oahu Hawaii. Then on December 7, the Japanese attacked and everything changed. Some of us can go on with the belief that tomorrow will be just like today. And some of us can’t.
“There is a lot of black-or-white-thinking among the comments here. “Either we have BAU or we go extinct.””
You can think in nuanced terms and still draw the conclusion that BAU will end suddenly and badly. Whether that results in extinction or not I don’t know. Clearly there will be a food security crisis on an unimaginable scale. Neglected path labs, chemical and sewage treatment plants, nuclear power stations etc. and the effect of loss of global dimming on the climate are other areas of concern.
I agree. We are facing an unprecedented situation. The major cause of deaths in prior collapses was epidemics. We don’t know whether this will be the case again. There are so many coincidences underlying the arrangement that got us here in the first place, we don’t know whether there are things we are missing altogether. Perhaps a Higher Power will direct the outcome in ways we don’t understand.
Alien existence could be confirmed ‘by September 2017’, claim experts who think a ‘breakthrough is just around the corner’
JANUARY 2, 201711:52AM
Aliens
Margi Murphy
The Sun
A SPACE mission set to end next year could be about to make a startling discovery about alien life, according to experts.
With probes orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, there are high hopes 2017 could be the year that we find alien life.
The Cassini space probe, which will end its mission in September 2017, has been hotly tipped as the one to watch, according to Doctor Simon Foster, a physicist from Imperial College London.
Cassini is orbiting Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa, which have a “good prospect of finding life”, he told The Express.
But the life forms are more likely to be microbial, rather than in the shape of ET.
It follows several false alarms of alien sightings this year, which got UFO hunters in a tizz.
Strange signals from Space sparked theories that other life forms were trying to make contact.
Scientists were forced to consider whether a mystery flashing star was due to an alien mega-structure being used to harvest energy from a star.
Despite this, Doctor Simon Foster insisted that a breakthrough is on the horizon.
He said: “In the past, when we thought we had discovered aliens previously, it was a new form of star called the pulsar.
“We know hardly anything and when we come up against something we don’t know or doesn’t fit into out current understanding, it is quite nice to say that it could be aliens, whereas a lot of it is just a phenomena that we haven’t discovered.
“Either way, there is a breakthrough just around the corner.”
Funny thing…
The boy can cry wolf … over .. and over… and over .. and over again…
And the cattle will still come to have a look.
I think it is important to note that even if some people are able to survive this cataclysm…
That’s not as if they won the lottery ticket — that they get to live in a Utopian world powered by solar energy eating fresh organic produce and where people just get along.
It would be a world with no medical care — diseases will rampage out of control because we will have no means to stop them — no energy sources except for the trees you hack down split and drag to your home…. no security (think mad max) ….
Live will be short and brutish for anyone who would survive.
Hardly winning the lottery…. in fact those who check out with the least suffering are the lottery winners….
You certainly do understand a lot of the story. I will admit that there are parts of the story I don’t understand, especially how long things can be kept together.
I see the big problems as being financial. Companies that are parts of supply chain that go bankrupt, or are unable to get a line of credit allowing them to ship goods. Oil importers (like Venezuela) that cannot afford to import food. ETFs and derivatives leading to all kinds of financial mismatches. Pensions that cannot possibly be paid. Banks that are essentially broke.
Japan has been papering over its problems with more debt, and more projects without reasonable payback (except in jobs for workers) for a long time. I understand that they are allowing businesses to continue as well, by indefinitely rolling over loans. (Sort of like the Greece situation–can’t pay this debt, we will give you more debt, and see if you can repay this debt, plus even more interest.) Maybe other areas can pick up a few ideas from Japan.
The “dissipating resources” story depends on keeping enough of the financial system operating, so that we can go forward. I suppose that Donald Trump’s election was part of the self-organized “plan” to keep the system operating a bit longer. The world economy eventually has to start losing some of its interconnectedness, because its “surplus energy” is falling too low. Even if the system as a whole cannot go forward, maybe some pieces can. California likes to think it could succeed on its own. Of course, it is terribly energy dependent; it depends on suppliers outside the state for both electricity and oil products. I would think that countries that are closer to subsistence level or hunter-gatherers would have a better chance of succeeding on their own than California.
The loosening of the interconnectedness within global economy, sort of fractionalization on more distinct clusters for example grid power still sustained/no longer available per given region is an interesting hypothesis. I will assign it some proper share within the pie of midterm probabilities as well.
It would be interesting to watch, given for example the hitec industries such mil-space defense, both in the west and east, operates on digital milling machines since the late 1960/mid 1970s exclusively, and each generation of machinery since then became more complex. There seems to be no way going backwards on the outlived path dependency, tooling, labor skills.. Similarly the complexity of grid operators, telecom etc.
For some reason, “conventional warfare” seems to be cool again, but this is not your grandpas WWII anymore with dozens of thousands of tanks and airplanes per each side in conflict. No, nowadays these are very complex systems and subsystems, communicating with each other digitally, and needed to be deployed in fraction of those crazy production numbers of the previous “analogue/mechanistic days”..
The complexity is like a runaway phenomenon, we can make fun out of the dreamers/fools/charlatans who insists we have to scale out of “the shrinking” Earth, but they are right in a way. The terraforming process of the human race on Earth is clearly in overshoot. I’ll give it very little chance, but it could pan out according to their wishes as well “out of the blue”, not sure what the technology would have to look like in order to substantially replace the 1-3x CMO we burn though. Let’s be agnostic about it, let the bitterness of the predicament flow away.
1000 five GW power satellites provide the same energy per year as burning a cubic mile of oil.
What if we burned Kryptonite? From what I have seen it is an extremely powerful element.
A few grams could be dropped into a nuclear reactor and it would last for years generating enormous amounts of electricity.
OH right – it doesn’t exist — just like space solar power does not exist either — except in the minds of a few delusional individuals
That’s just another conspiracy theory FE. Kryptonite is real I’ve seen the movie.
Gail doesn’t like conspiracy theories be careful.
Uranium derived fuel is good enough, e.g. only ~200kg of it powers the largest arctic icebreaker for a year of almost nonstop voyaging (and the hotel sized creature comforts for the crew on it)..
ya… but…. unlike uranium … kryptonite is harmless to humans… so long as one is not a super man… nothing to worry about
Stock market is down sharply today, S&P down 1%. Maybe this is it finally.
watch for a number 3…. that’s when you stop buying green bananas….
http://www.online-stock-trading-guide.com/image-files/usdeclinestart.gif
I fully agree with you on the echo chamber thing. We just need to tone down. That is all. As for supply chain, you really need to go into details. Read a lot about it and you will realize why all of them are connected. If you don’t fully understand that, you will never understand. I worked in the semiconductor industry before.
Here is a piece of printed circuit board from Applied Materials. One of the largest maker of semiconductor equipment in the world.
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/rU4AAOSw3xJVa7RF/s-l300.jpg
This is the link:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCB-Circuit-Board-670774-AMAT-Applied-Materials-Prom-Board-Looks-670794-Downrev-/201846094978
Looks simple, isn’t it ? But you cannot make it even if you have all the tools and equipment that BAU will allow you to have. Without any of these boards, the machine is useless. It cannot be used at all. The machines today are designed with no redundancy. Why? Cost issue Customers want the cheapest. So, every part is important.
Why I say you cannot make it? Some of the EEPROMS, programmable chips have proprietary codes. Some of the chips are specialized and only few companies are doing it. If you are in the repair business (which my company did as they want to save cost by doing in house repairs), the success rate is very low. Even with the full force of BAU in place, searching for the particular, IC, capacitor or any parts is not easy. They have to look through internet, suppliers and even eBay (like the ones above). We had success but mostly failures in repairs. In the end, for critical parts, just order from manufacturer.
When the break in supply chain is severe, it goes past the point of no return. So, what if USA vouched for the banks, how about other countries? Will they accept USD or Euro or Singapore Dollars? It is not easy once you know the details.
I have met up with so many people, when asked, what happens when Euro breaks up, “Oh they go back to their old currencies”? Is it that simple? Is that guy capable of critical thinking or did he even try? Maybe he has no knowledge on what is going on.
Example: Let us say Airbus – in Euro it is easy. All the systems are designed (software, engineering, etc) are designed for one currency system. If it breaks up, how will they go about? Their payment/billing/supplier/credit system has just one space : EUROs only. So, how are they going back to the old system with different currencies? Can they change their software (controls the costs and billing) within 2 days? 2 weeks ? before their suppliers stop the part supply (because of no payment)?
If I have a large company and had a contract to source parts from Portugal and Italy. I then source the software from Germany and my main assembly is in France. When Euro breaks, how am I going to go about in my contract? It is all in Euros? I have to redo the contract? Do I even have time (less than 1 week) to do up the contract and get everyone to agree to it? If I cannot get it done in 1 week, then my production will cease and I will go bankrupt. Maybe my customer is very particular. If I am late by 1 day, I need to pay penalty of 2%. So, what should I do?
Time is the key and in the JIT system that we have, it is time that we don’t have because bankruptcy is very real and so is cash flow. Without the cash flow, you can shut down overnight. It happened to so many companies already in the past and it will in the future.
It is easy to say “go back to the old currency” but in reality, it is not.
Very pertinent analogies. We ordinary citizens have NO iDEA just how complex ans interdependent is our world today. Any simple solution will be just that, simple. Not viable. We humans in the West are mostly so specialised in our knowledge and experience, we’d be all but useless when the SHTF time arrives.
Very fine points!
FAST EDDY HATERS…relax, he has met his match and can not outduel the SUPERWEED
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B-cka5s4AqE
http://www.agweb.com/article/the-grim-reality-of-pigweed-patrol-naa-chris-bennett/
Scott Nearing LIVES
Pigweed patrols are a devil of a farming practice. In the form of chopping, pulling, or eyeballing and marking, hand weeding is a costly headache, but total reliance on a shrinking arsenal of herbicides can be a more expensive proposition. A driver weed with no equals, Palmer amaranth has changed the chemical game and forced producers into the rows to chase down escapes.
A decade ago, only 15 U.S. states had glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth. As of 2016, 28 states have confirmed presence. The weed plays a phenomenal numbers game fueled by prodigious seed production. Palmer is a population bomb, and within a seven to 10-month lifespan, a single plant can churn out 500,000 to 1 million pinhead-size seeds. Simple math: Just a few escapes equates to several million seeds jumping into the soil bank.
Yep, I’m going down under and cast them there PIGWEED seeds in the wind.
Good day, Mate!
I planted some amaranth seed a few years ago. I never did figure out how to harvest the seeds from the plants; they supposedly are good for eating. The rest of the plant can be eaten as well, but my husband said, “Yuk,” the one time I tried cooking some leaves.
The plants are very good at reseeding–I am sure that I will have more of them coming up this year, as reseeds of previous years.
Expecting that a herbicide will continue to work takes a lot of faith. We know that antibiotics are also meeting their limits.
Lovely story. I’m sure every plant is useful in some way. For instance, I saw some sort of weaving being made from kudzo. BTW, my spouse says yuk to Jerusalem Artichoke, while I’m happy to see how much healthy food it produces.
Palmer amaranth is considered a threat most specifically to the production of cotton and soybean crops in the southern United States. In many places, the plant has developed resistance since at least 2006 to glyphosate, a widely used broad-spectrum herbicide.[7][8][9] Glyphosate-resistant pigweed not only dominates in cotton fields, but also has wide-ranging effects on other crops and productions.[10] In 2001, Palmer amaranth was found in the southern quarter of Illinois and appeared to be moving to northern Illinois in 2006.[11]
In 2014, the Texas Department of Agriculture asked the Environmental Protection Agency for permission to use the restricted chemical herbicide propazine on 3 million acres of cotton threatened by Palmer amaranth.[12] The request was denied due to unacceptable risks to drinking water
Palmer’s amaranth, Palmer amaranth, and Palmer’s pigweed. It is native to most of the southern half of North America. Populations in the eastern United States are probably naturalized. It has also been introduced to Europe, Australia, and other areas. The plant is fast-growing and highly competitive
The leaves, stems and seeds of Palmer amaranth, like those of other amaranths, are edible and highly nutritious.[1][3] Palmer amaranth was once widely cultivated and eaten by Native Americans across North America, both for its abundant seeds and as a cooked or dried green vegetable
plant can be toxic to livestock animals due to the presence of nitrates in the leaves.[4] Palmer amaranth has a tendency to absorb excess soil nitrogen, and if grown in overly fertilized soils, it can contain excessive levels of nitrates, even for humans. Like spinach and many other leafy greens, amaranth leaves also contain oxalic acid, which can be harmful to individuals with kidney problems if consumed in excess
Palmer amaranth is rarely consumed nowadays, despite its ubiquity and resistance to drought. Unlike the grain and leaf amaranths of other regions, it has not been cultivated or further improved by recent agricultural breeding.[6] As a result, the primary economic importance of Palmer amaranth to American farmers has been as a noxious weed and a competitor to more marketable crops, rather than as a crop in its own right.[1
“Palmer amaranth to American farmers has been as a noxious weed and a competitor to more marketable crops, rather than as a crop in its own right.”
A brilliant example of “stupid stuff!”
You have a nutritious plant that needs no work to cultivate, and you tear out your hair in rage because it inhibits nourishing food that needs crushing labor to cultivate.
I don’t know if there are similarities here to the folks who want to cut down “invasive species” of trees that need no watering or care, and plant instead native ones that do. And that will take a very long time to mature. Right or wrong, I’ve characterized that as stupid stuff too.
Artleads, funny thing is I’ve on introduced to Fast Eddy a plant he can GROW and feed himself! Wow, wouldn’t that be a goof to see him survive Post BAU chomping on Pigweed…
My BAD….
🙂 There’s nothing like when your back is up against the wall…
Strong evidence US is eying Iraq again.
Repeat after me. Shale oil is poo. Shale oil is poo.
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-inside-the-trump-lobby-that-wants-to-break-up-iraq-3ecf122f0ead#.t67km1ar3
Is OFW being more and more polluted by conspiracy theories?
I am afraid you are right. I don’t care to hear about these. Even if folks are correct, I wish they would take their conspiracy views elsewhere. Or greatly tone them down.
I agree. Especially the antisemetic stuff. I don’t think that conspiracy theories add much to the analysis that you do.
Thank you, Gail. I agree. Has your readership on this site continued to go up?
The readership continues to go up. The views per visitor seems to be extremely high, and rising. It is a little over 3.5.
I am of the opinion that the truth about events such as 911 and Operation Northwoods (formerly a conspiracy theory that was acknowledged by the government decades later) are relevant to the discussion…
Because they demonstrate that:
1. There are higher powers at work pulling the levers – these higher powers are laser focused on the task — they are highly sophisticated… they are able to leave emotions out of their decisions — very Spock like in nature
2. More importantly — this demonstrates that they are committed to doing whatever it takes – absolutely anything – including murdering their own citizens — in the interest of the continuation of BAU
I have absolutely no problem with the decision to kill thousands of people in the Twin Towers — if it contributed to buying us more time — after all — we have been killing hundreds of thousands of people in MENA in the interest of keeping BAU on the track….
I don’t think in terms of conspiracy “theory” but rather we are in a state where desperate times call for desperate measures.
And if knocking down 2 buildings has been determined necessary for the continuation of BAU….
I say knock more down if necessary….
Starve 500k more kids as well…
Whatever it takes….
It seems like once someone takes the red pill and goes down the rabbit hole, so to speak, their minds become open to many things, both true and untrue. It is as if BAU serves as an anchor that grounds the possibilities people will consider. Once someone’s belief in BAU is shaken, literally anything becomes possible in some of their minds, even things that are wildly untrue. Even if BAU is on shaky ground, it does not follow that every aspect of the mainstream narrative is completely false. We need to be careful to consider evidence before adopting new beliefs. Also, self-organizing systems (like human life and society in general) can appear so complex to us that there must be intention behind it, an Author. But that is sometimes an illusion.
I would add that I think it’s important to keep this forum from becoming an echo chamber. Allowing dissenting voices and considering alternative scenarios with an open mind is a good way to guard against losing track of reality. Unfortunately I have noticed an increasingly hostile tone here lately.
Well said.
The energy issue is just one of many where the narrative is controlled. For some — understanding the energy issue opens the door to the others…. for some other issues e.g. 911 — opens the door for them….
All it takes is one epiphany where you realize that the MSM is lying to you about an issue — and you begin to wonder what other lies have been perpetrated by the MSM.
The way I look at the MSM is that it does leak bits and pieces of useful info — I have read that during the cold war one of the key tools spies used was the MSM coming out of Russia — they could ‘interpret’ what was going on from the mix of spin, facts an innuendo…
So the MSM is useful in that respect — but it is also very useful in that if they present a narrative to try to explain a complex issue (e.g. shale, Ukraine, Syria etc…) you can generally rule that out as being the ‘truth’ because the MSM is not in the business of publishing the truth.
It is first and foremost thought control — with light entertainment thrown in. And the weather forecast (which is frequently of course ‘fake’ as well!)
The thing is…
Even if one is aware of the above it remains extremely difficult to find ‘the truth’…. it takes hours and hours and hours of research — reading the spin from both sides of the issue — reading interpretations of the issue on alternative sites and quality discussion forums (there are not many) — knowing where to look (probably the toughest challenge) and applying common sense….
Agreed, definitely.
i am of two minds fast eddie the elders either have a plan or they do not if they do not then the stock market is soartng due to blind faith or a belief in fairy tales that infinite growth is possible
FE, don’t bother with Kurt, et al. As what I have said earlier, those “who see it” are those who find out on their own after “a trigger”. They come to a realization that things are not what it suppose to be. It is exactly like “taking the red pill” and you pop out of the other wise of the matrix. You have to jump back in because you need to survive. Until today, I have yet to hear or read anyone who is “aware” will also have a spouse that is “aware”. The spouse can tolerate “this craziness” as long as the other half don’t go too extreme.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion although it does not matter if it is right or wrong. By just telling them so many “facts”, etc, you will never change their viewpoints eventhough it is so glaringly obvious. It is OBVIOUS to you and me but NOT to them because we are blessed (not cursed) with the ability to see beyond what others cannot see. You are trying to hammer in something that they don’t have the ability to comprehend. That is the main reason why those who are aware will congregate to Gail’s blog. Eventually, it is those who has access to internet can be aware because you can find a lot of facts in the internet and you must have the ability to piece them together and look at it from the macro perspective. A lot of people just simply cannot piece them together no matter how much you hammer the facts into their head.
That is the reason why I don’t want to engage in any debate with anyone who does not understand because it is a waste of energy, time and my sanity.
count and see how many of us here are truly “aware” – not many. Less than 20 in total. Those who are aware will always be here. I have gone missing for 1 year but turned up again because this is truly the only place in the internet that we the “aware” are accepted. No one forced her to come here. We came here on our own will and accord. We came here not discuss how the current events shape into what we expect to happen. We are not seers but we just know what will come in the end. We don’t need to tell anyone when this will end. It will end at its own accord when the time is right. It is just that times, it is fascinating to see how stupid humanity is and how helpless we are to watch it doing the mistakes again and again.
Those who are trolling or those who are “not aware” will disappear over time. Don Steward, Jan Steinman (where is he by the way?) and a host of others will leave as they felt that they are not in the right blog.
We are not rehashing old theories. If the trolls are not here, we will not even talking about “IF IT COLLAPSE”. We will just talk about “WHAT COULD BE THE TRIGGER”. Could it be this one or that one. We don’t need people to convince us is Trump is the saviour or not. We don’t need to know what will happen to EU when the debts and currency union is unsustainable.
I have been living on and off this matrix for more than 10 years and have learned to keep my mouth shut. When people start to talk about “properties so expensive now, what will happen in 10 years time when my son grows up, how can he buy one?”, I just turned off my mind and never joined the talk. It just shows clearly who they are and who am I. I felt so humbled by the universe and thankful that I can see through this. I am not a genius, I am not smart but I am aware.
There is this favourite quote that I always remember from the show KUNGFU PANDA when Oogway master said this to Shifu :
“You are too concerned about what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” (i.e. also spells the same as “present” as it a birthday present)
Great comment….lolll Jan Steinmann who thought he could ward off the zombies with his electrified fence post-collapse…
Jan does make an occasional comment now and then.
Jan is a pretty smart guy and not to be discounted.
Hats off to the doomsday preppers (hard core version) who are trying to work out how to keep jalopies going on vegetable oil gasoline, tranny and break fluid — when there won’t be anywhere to go (nor any roads that don’t have 1 metre deep potholes within a year or two)
CTG-
Great post as always. It s a mystery to me why more people do not understand what is happening. People who are Incredibly intelligent, successful, concerned with their families and communities, that simply cannot fathom this.
I had to go to a meeting with a high level executive at the electric company I work for and he was talking electric cars and power walls in the not too distant future. I just wanted to blurt out “You are f**king nuts!” and go off on a tangent about our predicament.
I know what you mean…I was trying to explain the predicament were in to a guy in finance (making seven figures no less) and he proceeded to tell me that he sees the rich creating a society like Elysium (the Matt Damon movie) and that I underestimate the power of technology (and all the things that moron Musk is trying to do)….I had an uncontrollable urge to punch in the face to snap him out of it, but I settled on telling him he’s crazy, and to just look at what is about to happen in the next 5 years tops…delusistanis come from all walks of life, from white trash all the way to Stephen Hawking:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/11/17/stephen-hawking-just-gave-humanity-a-due-date-for-finding-another-planet/?utm_term=.d3298643239d
A nice example of how powerful the MSM is….
This guy was probably on a business trip and played a double header — Elysium followed by the Martian…. and part of his reptilian brain has overridden the logic that says none of this can happen…
And now he firmly believes that at least some derivative scenario is plausible.
See Edward Bernays. Pavlov. etc….
It is not a mystery. It is just that they cannot grasp the enormity of the whole issue. They just give up. What is easy to you may not be easy to them. Dunning Kruger
Right, CTG. It takes more than facts, logic, reasoned analysis etc. to overturn deeply ingrained and/or cherished narratives. This is partly because humans are not, by and large, rational and partly because most of us have known nothing but economic growth and technological advancement bar the odd recession for our entire lives. Why wouldn’t it carry on ever?! After all, haven’t we demonstrated our intellectual brilliance time and again?
It’s like a trap – we gradually construct this elaborate and de-localised life-support system that totally divorces us from physical reality and pampers (the luckier amongst us) like lapdogs. And this life-support system is so dazzlingly intricate and opulent, allowing us to swiftly summon materials and foodstuffs from around the world to our own front-doors and choose from an endless array of amusements and distractions, that we are lulled into thinking it must be infinite. Then, when energy inputs are no longer sufficient, the whole thing crumbles almost overnight and we, at the zenith of our self-domestication, are left to fend for ourselves in a world suddenly cold and hostile. And radioactive. I hadn’t forgotten radioactive, FE!
“Until today, I have yet to hear or read anyone who is “aware” will also have a spouse that is “aware”. The spouse can tolerate “this craziness” as long as the other half don’t go too extreme.”
I am in the very fortunate and unusual position of having a spouse who shares my views. Although she hasn’t looked into the nuts and bolts in the way that I have, she deeply intuits the vulnerability of supply-chains and can sense the souring of the zeitgeist. Like a rabbit with its nose aquiver, she knows something is up…
My wife does not want to dwell on it or spend time worrying about it and has zero interest in the subject. She says as long as she is with me she does not care what happens. A guy can’t ask for much more than that.
My husband is not a follower of my writing. For one thing, financial matters are not something he follows at all. I sometimes mention vaguely what I am writing about, but that is all. My adult children would prefer not hearing about the subject. They tend to be very much followers of “Sustainability” instead. One of my sons drives a Prius; the other doesn’t drive.
exile them to “Resilience” forthwith
LOL
My wife finally “got it” and went through fear and depression.
It is now anger.
Most people just can’t go there, nor do they have enough science and biology literacy to comprehend it.
Gail-
Thanks for the reply. Your husband sounds like my wife;-). One thing that keeps coming to mind for me here is how much like a religious experience the understanding of collapse is.
For some it is an instantaneous event, and for others it takes time, but for everyone it is a realization that will impact our life in dramatic ways.
It is ironic that people of such diverse backgrounds. religions, and cultures, could have as a truly unifying force the understanding that everything most others think about the future is complete BS.
It is an exclusive club but hard to say of it is something you are glad to be a member of.
For me it is very much like a religious experience too!
Like when I was in Grade 9 and over beers me and a couple of buddies used to discuss wordly issues — one of the guys claimed god did not exist — I told him he would end up in hell — he laughed at me and explained why god does not exist (well at least the god that people worship and give money do — we did not discuss the possibility of a creator) …
I thought about the facts he presented — much as I thought about the facts regarding shale and thorium and space solar and energy in general…
And suffice to say — he no longer laughed at me.
Fast-
Religious households are like all others, some good and some bad. The whole “telling people they are going to hell” meme comes with much of that. Sorry for what you went through.
I think you misread — I told him he was going to go to hell if he didn’t embrace god.
He thought that was really funny – since there is no such thing as hell.
Realizing that there was no hell – and no good — was a key milestone in escaping the matrix
“Like when I was in Grade 9 and over beers ”
That explains a lot.
There may have been some weed or hash involved…
In some places you can fight and die at 18 — but you cannot have a beer.
You were trying to make a point?
As usual… you have failed.
You misread me. I know you told him he was going to hell. It was not him I feel bad for but you and the fact that you grew up in a house that would indoctrinate you to even contemplate the very idea that anyone could cast that judgment.
Ah,,, well my parents never told me that —- it was the catholic schools that I went to up until grade 9…
All catholic schools should be burned to the ground — ISIS? Yoo hoo… I have a mission for you
I for one am very happy to have been educated in Catholic schools.
At least I can boast to the rest of the doubters that I’m a lapsed member of the One True Faith.
My wife didn’t want to know about collapse for years and years, so I tried not to bring up the subject. Then a couple of years ago she began asking me questions because she could no longer accept the consensus narratives about economic recovery just around the corner. And what really triggered her interest was when quite a few of our acquaintances installed rooftop solar and then began to gush insufferably about how they were doing their part in saving the planet and the problem with society was all the people who didn’t emulate them. “Well, not everyone has a rooftop”, became her standard reply. “What about the millions of people who live in tall apartment and condominium buildings?”
your last big question is the one the downsizers have no answer for—I occassionally throw a timebomb into “Resilience” about that.
“I sometimes mention vaguely what I am writing about, but that is all.”
How extrange! I acknowledge that it is something that has surprised me.
It must be difficult for you.
My wife and I keep talking about it and read your articles together. That makes things a lot easier, at least in my case.
My husband does understand the big picture reasonably well, but he does not like to dwell on the subject. A person has to respect where other people are coming from.
Madame Fast understands…. but does not like to discuss… because the implications frighten her… so she prefers to lock that into a box and just get on with living life under the assumption that life will not be cut dramatically short by the collapse of civilization…
I on the other hand enjoy cutting open the beast and examining the diseased organs … trying to determine which one will fail first and result in death
I keep saying collapse will happen in the summer of 2020. What part of that is trolling? I agree with pretty much everything Gail says except for the fact that I think a complex system can adapt, somewhat delaying the inevitable. I just don’t like FE’s tone when people disagree with him.
I am not sure whether it is the complex system adapting, but certainly TPTB have kept the financial system operating since 2008, in ways I would never have expected. I see the financial system as the likely “weak link.” The question is “How long can financial problems be ‘papered over’?” It would be nice if these problems could be kept away until the summer of 2020.
Kurt, there are many different levels of “awareness” from being aware that something to wrong to “total enlightenment”. What I am trying to get FE is to tone down as this is a great blog to be in and not to push people over the limit. Most of us suffer something like Dunning-Kruger Effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect ) where I can see what is happening and you cannot see. So, I am frustrated tell you about it and you don’t seem to understand what I am saying, seeing or believing.
One of the main reasons many of us here are “living happily every day” instead of worry about doom and gloom is because there is nothing we can do about it. I do a lot of read up, research and literally search for the meaning of words, phrases, acronyms that I don’t understand. I took the effort to know many things about the financial world – CDOs, CLOs, repo market, liquidity, swaps – interest rates, currency, how things work, how the product works, CDS, etc. I left no stones unturned. I make sure I know what it means, how it works, etc. I read into trade financing, letters of credits (a long long time ago) and how money/currency/credit works in the real world (not in the fake theoretical world)
Once you understand all these, you will soon realize how fragile things are and how lucky we are to be alive day after day. How lucky humans are that we don’t have any large natural disasters that plagued earth all the time. How statistically improbably we are to live such a great life as compared to our forefathers 150 years ago (even just even 100 years ago). I also felt how blessed we are to congregate here at Gail’s blog.
You have to do the research in order to appreciate it. Just like Siddhartha Gautama who went out from the palace walls and knew about the suffering in the outside before being enlightened.
Just imagine there is a huge earthquake at the Pacific Plate at Mariana’s trench and it is a 9.0 earthquake. It generated a huge tsunami that raced across the the Pacific. The entire Japan coast, the Chinese coast, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Philippines, Australia, NZ and the entire US Pacific seaboard is hit by this mega tsunami. Tell me what happened to the financial system?
A friend of mine sells high-tech machines that supplies to factories that make pipes for the shale/oil has industry. The old method of making pipes is not efficient and this factory has patents that makes pipe fabrication super cheap and fast. They supplied to all the pipe factories in the world and the shale energy companies buy these pipes because it is cheap and they need cheap stuff as extracting shale is not cheap. The machine that they produce requires a special cutting head that must be replaced every 10 days and the factory is the only factory that makes these heads. It is patent protected and the materials contained in the cutting head is a trade secret. It is tough, strong and durable. That is why it makes pipe making cheap. No other competitors can copy the head design and of course no one knows what is the alloy used. The pipe manufacturer, being squeezed by the shale players decide to cut the supply chain short. They will only manufacture once their 3-day pipe supply runs down. Why make so many pipes and lock up cash flow? Since it takes only 1 day to make the pipes, we just need to stock for 3 days. If one of the shale company orders a lot, we will just produce them as we need. As for the cutting head, which is not “cheap”, we just keep 2 in stock and order from the manufacturer as and when it is needed. It takes only 12 hours by plane for the head to reach us. So, why bother keeping a lot of the “not so cheap” cutting heads in our store room. Those are “locked up money”. So, the supply chain is like 1-2 days’ worth of stock only.
This factory that sells the machines and high-tech head is that it is located on the coast of Japan just about 100km from Tokyo. If that earthquake struck, the whole factory will be gone, so what will happen to the pipe factory in USA or China? Can they produce a similar head within 2 days before they run our of stock? How about the shale companies that rely on the pipes and they found out they did not even have 1 week’s supply of pipes?
Interesting question – Do you believe what I have said in the two paragraph above? It is a lie. I have no such friend but if you do believe, why you believe it? If you believe it why not believe that the supply chain is so fragile?
Some thoughts
1. There are hundreds of thousands of interconnecting parts in the supply chain. The high-tech factory along the coast of Japan need to use a special high-powered mixer to mix the allow and the mixer is only made in a small company in UK. This mixer has a part that must be changed every week. The factory, again, to shorted the supply chain, did not keep more than 2 weeks of supply. So, if there is a big volcano in Iceland that blankets the entire Europe with ash for 2 weeks and planes cannot fly, what happened to this Japan-coast factory? They cannot product the heads that is required by the pipe factory that is needed by the shale companies so that they can get their oil to the market so that they fulfill the contract so that they get paid so that the workers get the salary and the customer of the oil gets its oil to the refinery so that the he gets paid by the refinery so that the refinery can fulfill the obligation to the gas station owners. See how long that chain is? Can this chain function with finance? without money? without credit?
2. Nobody did any studies on how complex the supply chain is and at what stage it will cause permanent and irreparable damage to the entire civilization. No one is interested because everybody takes it for granted. The closest was Korowicz who did the study in Trade Off. You can read Trade Off and if you are “not enlightened”, you will just say “uh oh.. OK.. so, if supply chain fail, then we just eat at home”. This is because you don’t have the ability to look and understand beyond the words. If you are “aware and enlightened”, you will say “Oh my god, I knew it is something like that but I did not know it is so big problem”. You will throw up your hands and say “oh my god”.
I see that the bad news are coming in thick and fast. Political instability in USA is not a good thing as it will rock the boat. Brexit bites again and so is France’s Le Pen, North Korea is stirring again and the bubble in Australia and Canada are at dizzying levels. If you are “enlightened’, you will easily understand that anyone of them can be a trigger. The only thing we don’t know is when but when bad things accelerate, you know time is not on your side. The only thing that the TPTB know what to do is to keep the stock market up but that is also looking frail. All other metrics are bad – so many malls closing, so many jobs lost, etc.
Sorry for all my long posts. It just came off my mind and I just write them down.
Things are not it seems to be and it is getting very surreal.
CTG, great post.
If in doubt of CTG..
If you can’t get inside a power facility to check for yourself the storage they keep of spares. Or if you can’t inside the main pharmacy wholesale warehouse to check how much antibiotic is storaged.
Then please read Alice Friedemann, about her telling about trucking and logistics.
The fragility of our JIT global supply chain really is stunning..
I was involved in supply chain when I worked in factory. That is why I know what it looks like inside. Do you know how the girl felt when she was scolded by the big boss ? She cried. She did not order in time (within a few days) some industrial gas and spare parts that the machines went idled. It incurred a loss for the company because our customer has made a commitment to his customer on the delivery dates (see how it impacts the entire chain?)
I know about Friedemann but I did not read what she has written. I know how fragile it is.
CTC, that was an absolutely brilliant post. One of your best. And not too long at all.
You are reminding us that our society is…
http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/105/cover_5631419102008.jpg
And that we’re….
http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/105/cover_433419102008.jpg
collapse/breakdown—whatever you care to call it will arrive at different times in different places in different ways for different people..
the overriding response will be denial that anything is wrong in a global context—your problem is local to you and your empty stomach and pockets.
If you’re living in a tent community in California, collapse has arrived for you, yet there will be a Micawberish certainty that “something is bound to turn up”.
The denial factor lies in the absence of cheap energy to make things happen, job/income wise, because real employment can only be funded by burning cheap fuel. And this is in the supposedly richest nation on earth. Most are convinced that jobs can somehow be ‘created’, without real purpose.
That coalmines can be reopened and coal dug out, when the act of digging it costs more than the coal is worth in energy terms.
So you vote for someone whose promises fit your aspirations, not the politician who feeds your doubts.
That way your belief system is kept alive a little longer, while your tent city grows in line with your desperation and you stand in line with 40m other people for food handouts.
But your deepest doubts tell you that there is unlikely to be anything more than this, knowing that old age and death is going to arrive earlier than it will for people who still have a home and a job.
We all depend on the availability of cheap fuel to create employment to turn into cash so we can buy ‘stuff’ to sustain endless jobs. Societal breakdown comes when that chain breaks, which is what is happening now, right across the world, but showing itself in different ways. We are engaged in resource wars, whether we accept it or not.
The Middle East is showing it in open warfare, Saudi is burning its oil revenues to sustain an unreal environment for people who are going to starve to death in 20 years or less. Japan is showing it in age disparity, where the nation itself is aging beyond the capability to sustain itself. The EU is showing it through the poorer nations being unbalanced by richer ones, which must eventually lead to breakup (and violence) because the cheap fuel that created the EU is no longer there to sustain it.
It is happening in N Korea in ways my feeble brain can’t comprehend—which applies to Washington DC as well.
Each of those is insistent that everything is ok, and a change (or continuation) of political leadership will fix things, none recognize it as an energy/employment problem, a resource war, and we no longer have enough cheap fuel to provide universal employment. Despite that, there is a universal demand that ‘jobs/prosperity’ must be created.
So we will continue to deny there is a problem until we pass the point of no return…and as we insist on navigating our future through the rear view mirror, none of us can know when that point will be until we see it disappearing into the distance.
Did you know that the earthquake that knocked out Fukushima was the 4th greatest ever recorded?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes#Largest_earthquakes_by_magnitude
So to have an earthquake of that magnitude in the worst possible place… not very likely! But I will agree to that a natural disaster of that scale could crash the financial system. That is the point I want to convey, the financial system won’t crash completely on its own. It needs outside help, natural disasters, food/water/resource scarcity, social unrest.
Rising interest rates would seem to be a different kind of disaster. Falling interest rates have been keeping things going since 1981; rising interest rates can go for a bit, but not very long.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/federal-bonds-10-year-interest-rates.png
It is easy to miss the importance of interest rates and debt levels.
The 2008 GFC was not caused by any natural disasters. In fact, natural disaster should not cause any financial disaster. If you go back time to 1990 or even 1980, that is just that 25-30 year ago only, you will see that our life is very simple. No mobile phones, tablets, computers. No fax machine and telegraphic transfer means telegraphic transfer. We do not have a lot of “wants” and “needs”. Cars is used for transport and we are not even fat. Kids play outside and we know we are safe. There is no issue about random killing, terrorists, etc. However, the best thing is that if there is huge disaster in Tokyo, it is not really impact New York, Australia, Singapore or anywhere else in the world. Why? Globalization has not happened yet. Supply chain is very short. We have little demands for comfort. So what if Toyota goes bankrupt? Other companies can take over. The Toyota bond holders and shareholder will take the hit.
If it happens now, due to interconnectedness, complexity in both technical and finance, a collapse of Toyota can be disastrous. If you are familiar with finance, you will know that you can use Toyota bonds to leverage your portfolio. This financial engineering was not practiced 20-30 years ago. This is how it works. Anyone out there who are familiar, please correct me if I am wrong.
1. I have USD100m worth of Toyata bonds.
2. I am scared that Toyota may not pay me. So, I buy CDS (something like bond insurance) from Allianz for USD200m. Since Toyota is strong, I pay a little and Allianz is more than happy to underwrite.
3. I take this USD100m bonds and get a loan from Citibank. If I get my way, Citibank may use the collateral and the CDS that I bought from Allianz and loan me USD500m. Citibank may buy CDS from AIG (additional USD300m) so that they get a nett gain from this deal.
4. I have USD500m now to invest and I can invest in anything I want like interest-rate swaps, currency swaps, options/puts, emerging market, carry trade.
5. If I invest in stock markets, I can get good gains? Why? Simple. If I invest USD100m and the stock goes up from USD20 to USD40, then my net gain is USD100m. It is a100% profit. However, if I invest my USD500m, my gain is USD500m. However, remember that my original Toyota bonds that I physically own is only USD100m. So, my net gain is 500%.
6. I can then use this stock that I own (now USD40) as collateral and ask UBS for a loan of USD750m.
7. This “rehypothecation” can go on and one and in China, it was documented that the copper was rehypothecated more than 10 times. It means that are 10 claims to the same shipment of copper.
8. If the chain is very long, no one will ever know that the underlying bonds is the USD100m Toyota bonds.
9. This is the reason why people keep on quoting that the “derivative time bomb” is a few quadrillion. All this is fake money, levered up and up and up.
Points to note :
1. If you are in Wall Street and each layer you get a cut and you earn millions. In your right arm is a beautiful model and in your left arm there is one. You can buy a Ferrari anytime you want and you can fly anywhere you want. THIS IS INTOXICATING and has a great ADRENALIN rush, right? You can brag (at all levels of leverage) about how much you make. So, you think you want to stop? Psychologically, you want to do better, thus, you will come out with better methods, legal or illegal. The complexity grows and the sum becomes like USD1T.
2. So, what happens if there is a Tsunami and Toyata says that they cannot honour the bond dividend? You go to Allianz and try to get the insurance. Allainz says “wait… I sold this CDS tranch to Credit Suisse.. let me get it from Credit Suisse first”.. Credit Suisse levered up this 10x and sold to Mizuho Financials and 100 other investors. Credit Suisse says to Allianz “wait.. let me talk to Mizuho and 100 other investors first…”. So, you think this daisy chain or Mexican standoff will hold? What if I demand from Allianz that they need to pay me USD200m within 3 days as per contract?
3. OK. Toyota was not impacted by the tsunami but the stock that I bought with my USD500m (from USD20-USD40) crashed to USD5. I will get a margin call from UBS, asking me to top up because my loan has lower collateral value due to the drop in stock prices. I may have to unload or default. If I default, then UBS and anyone down the chain will be impacted because they will start their own margin calls.
4. So, in the end, the stock has to up and not down. The accounting rules has to change so that defaults do not happen. Everybody has to keep quiet, otherwise, the whole boat will sink.
5. The Feds has to keep printing money, otherwise, everything will collapse. It is a in steathly.
6. The bankers get even greedier because Feds is backstopping and they are taking more risks. That is also why DB has like trillions of derivatives. Why? It is so intoxicating to make so much money in so short period of t ime and the bosses are even happier because they bring in so much revenue and profit (until it does not).
7. So, more people pile in with more ingenious method. The house of cards keeps on growing and growing until one day it just collapse under its own weight.
That, by the way is the simplified version. The actual version is like a hundred times more complicated, more complex and involved more parties and pension funds. It is mind boggling to know.
People cannot fully comprehend the enormity of big numbers, even the intellectual or academic. They know it is big but how big? I used this to explain to my children.
1. Many people know what a “light year” is. It is 9.46+E12 meters. OK, please will just say that. So, what it means? Oh! That is how far the light will travel in one year. OK.. I understand but I don’t comprehend.
2. Alpha Centauri, the nearest star is 4.3 light years away. The furthest is like billions of light years away. Ok. 4.3 LY is not that bad.
3. OK kids, want to know how far it is?
4. Picture that you are an ant, small ant, just 1mm long. Think how much effort you want to walk across the table. Think how difficult and how long you need to take to walk along the entire length of an aeroplane. Take you a few weeks perhaps?
5. Aeroplanes are fast right? Very fast right? You can see it at the airport and the wind blows so fast.
6. Now, picture you taking a 20-hour flight from Singapore to SF. It is about 13574km away. So, you sit for 20 hours in a very fast aeroplane.
7. You need to do that travel between Singapore and SF 3000 times. That is the distance.
8. Don’t forget you are an ant, a 1-mm ant and not a human.
Then suddenly, you see their faces turned to horror.
This is US version and not UK version.
Think about a Quadrillion is 1000 trillion. A trillion is 1000 billion. A billion is 1000 million. A million is 10^6. A billion is 10^9. A trillion is 10^12. A quadrillion is 10^15. If it is like 50 quadrillion, then it is 10^16.
Checking on the internet, USD1m in USD100 notes is about 1m tall (1.1 to be precise). 10^15 divide by 10^6 is 10^9. 10^9 divide by 1000 is one million kilometres. The distance to moon is just 385,000. 3 trips to the moon for one quadrillion dollars !
The complexity is so mind-boggling that it is amazing that the system has not already busted up…
It’s almost as if it were a living organism… trillions of cells all reliant on one other … if one part fails… the organism dies….
“2008 GFC not caused by natural disaster”
I obviously didn’t mean that, but to have _the_ financial crisis to end all financial crisis that you preach of, you would need a natural disaster or similar external chaos IMO.
TPTB was caught off guard in 2008. They (big bankers and other powerful entities) have re-written the rules now to make sure the “too important to fail” companies never fail again. All they know is BAU and how to make it last as long as possible (aka BAU-lite).
‘TPTB was caught off guard in 2008’
I do not agree. 2008 was planned. The fact that banks were offering 750k mortgages to gardeners making 50k per year was no mistake — they were of course aware of Liar Loans…
They did these things because they were told to do them.
2008 was allowed to happen to scare the sheeple so that the Fed could roll out the desperate policies that we have seen since.. without anyone questioning them.
Trillions of dollars have been pumped out around the world — I don’t recall having a say in this.
They are indeed trying to make BAU last as long as possible — but this is not BAU Lite…. the global economy has been growing since 2008 —- for certain many people do not experience it that way — but for every person dropping into the gutter in America – there are 10 in China who are suddenly living large….
Overall – we are growing – that is not BAU Lite.
BAU Lite means contraction — and prolonged contraction means collapse — total collapse – everywhere
I think that rewriting the rules just increases the concentrations. We end up with Deutsche Bank and other banks failing, anyhow. It may take a year or two longer, that is all.
In a downturn (like 2008), one thing that can go wrong is some of the suppliers cannot get letters of credit, or can only get them for an exorbitant price. (Perhaps interest rates are very high for companies with low credit ratings.) They end up dropping out for financial reasons. This can be as bad a problem as some of the other problems.
People may be more aware than we think. They just don’t want to discuss it. Take a look a Prof. Ugo Bardi’s latest:
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2017/03/zombie-apocalypse-our-future-for-real.html
Of course he is careful to say its only a “scenario”. People have to co-exist in society and earn a living. I made the mistake of speaking out about impending collapse 10-15 years ago when I thought some mitigation was possible. Now I have few friends left. I don’t talk about it any more.
I credit Jay Hanson with teaching me about collapse 20 years ago. Jay always thought declining net energy would eventually lead to a nuclear world war between the super powers and that would be the cause of collapse. I used to think maybe financial collapse would come first and maybe allow some of the living world to survive. But then there are all those spent fuel pools plus 7 billion apex predators turned loose on the natural world so maybe it doesn’t matter.
Tom, to me (this is a personal opinion) there is a distinct difference between being aware and being “enlightened”. You can be aware but you may not know there are no solutions to this issue. There are just many people who knows “something is not right” and it will pass through like a normal recession. There are also people, usually the rich and elites who just don’t care. It is not their problem and it can never be their problem. So, depending on what level of aware, you will see things differently. Until you reach the highest level of awareness, you will still groping in the dark.
I have done so much research, read up on the world of finance that I think I can qualify for a degree in financial engineering. It is so complicated, so fake (like Potemkim’s village) and I add in my training in microelectronics/electrical engineer and physics, it just makes a lot of sense why this gigantic system is so unstable.
“it just makes a lot of sense why this gigantic system is so unstable.”
And yet, the Japan tsunami of 2011 didn’t break the world supply chain. Wonder why?
Because it did not do a lot of damage to critical hubs. Kind of interesting that you should ask this question.. I thought you should have thought about that.
“Because it did not do a lot of damage to critical hubs.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami
It sure chewed up a big chunk of Japan. After it happened, I was looking out for supply shortages in the electronic business, but didn’t see any.
What would you define as a critical hub?
Keith, do read up Trade Off by Korowicz. It makes understanding easier.
As painful as it is (and its is exquisitely painful).
Keith may have a point.
I also wonder
Why didn’t Libya going offline during its euromaidan whoops I mean arab spring cook our goose?
Most of the diesel comes from Libya.
See Its all going to be OK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are resilient.
Why would it? It’s not as if Japan was wiped out… it affected a remote part of the country…
You need to read Korowicz Trade Off if you want to understand what a critical hub is — Fukushima is far from being a critical hub…
Now if Tokyo would have needed to be evacuated if the ponds had toppled at Fukushima… that would be a different story
There was a lot of hellish destruction in Tohoku in the wake of the tsunami, but as Eddy says, it wasn’t in the heart of the high-tech belt. If and when a similar quake + tsunami strikes the Tokai Region between Tokyo and Nagoya, a far more critical situation would/will arise. Economically speaking, Japan has “a golden triangle” roughly between Tokyo in the east, Hiroshima in the west and Kanazawa on the Sea of Japan coast. The whole country has plenty of factories, but that’s where most of the bigger companies and the high-tech industries are based.
By the way, one of the things that shocked me about Fukushima was that when evacuation from the most heavily contaminated fallout zones was ordered, many farmers simply left their dairy cows, pigs, and chickens in their barns or batteries with nobody to feed, water, milk or muck up after them. Horrible! No consideration was given to farm animals in the official contingency plans. I thought at the time, this is what an initial collapse will look like. All the life lines are cut, the system goes down, and nobody is going to come along to fix anything.
Some farmers defied the orders and remained with their animals. Kudos to them. And others let the animals run amok, which was at least better than letting them die of hunger or thirst in their pens. And this is why there are now pig-boar crossbreeds roaming the hills in the evacuation zone.
“Some farmers defied the orders and remained with their animals.”
Acts like that define a quality of our species.
I think they call it love.
This is my first post here,and just wanted to say thanks to Gail, and thanks for this fine comment. You can count me as “aware”, and there are perhaps a few other lurkers that are also.
I’m not that well educated, but I became “aware” (and there are varying degrees) only after leaving (or waking up) out of a cult (JW’s),only to find out there is the giant “cult” that very few wake up out of.
When I read “JWs”, I immediately interpreted it as “Justice Warriors”. 🙂 But after a few seconds it dawned on me that you were referring to Jehovah’s Witnesses, the folks who come knocking on our doorbell asking me if I read the Bible. They used to come around carrying bags full of literature, but these days they come armed with iPads. If I have time, I listen politely and make them a cup of tea.
I also get occasional visits from Mormon missionaries. The JWs are native Japanese, but the Mormons are exotics who usually hail from Utah. Unlike the JWs, the Mormons aren’t supposed to drink tea or coffee because it contains caffeine, so they drink barley tea, orange juice or water. The JWs, on the other hand, are opposed to blood transfusions. And neither group will touch alcohol. It’s all very confusing. I will take a blood transfusion in an emergency, but I refuse vaccinations and x-ray procedures on religious grounds, but take alcohol purely for medicinal purposes. As my old granny used to say, if the lord had wanted doctors to see our insides, He’d have made us transparent.
As for that giant “cult” out there, I remember being motivated to think of the world in such terms after reading about “consensus trance” in the Whole Earth Review 30 years ago.
I’m not sure if this is the precise article, but I just found it online:
http://www.cantrip.org/charles_tart.html
States of consciousness, from altered states to the state earthlings call “normal waking consciousness,” have been Charley Tart’s specialty for two decades. Surprisingly, Dr. Tart no longer calls it “normal consciousness,” and has substituted what he feels to be a more accurate term: consensus trance. To him, the idea of “normal consciousness” is the kind of convenient fiction illustrated by the famous folktale of “the emperor’s new clothes.” Together, human groups agree on which of their perceptions should be admitted to awareness (hence, consensus), then they train each other to see the world in that way and only in that way (hence trance).
Thank you for your reply Tim. I was simply using the giant cult term loosely, but that was an interesting article.
Just a minor correction, Jehovah’s Witnesses are allowed to drink alcohol in moderation. They are indeed a cult,, and sadly have a huge child sexual abuse problem that they (for the most part) refuse to acknowledge. If you want to know all about them, go to jwfacts.com …but I digress, going off topic.
I’m currently reading “Shrinking the Technosphere” by Orlov, it’s outstanding,and recommend it to all here.
Welcome, Snorp!
Despite Financial Engineering & Clever Reporting Schemes, S&P 500 Earnings per Share Stuck for 3+ Years, but Stocks Soar
I previously dissected the lack of growth in total adjusted earnings – not earnings per share, but total earnings for the S&P 500 companies. Since this is not a per-share metric, it excludes the effects of financial engineering, such as share buybacks. It showed that total earnings on a 12-month trailing basis in Q4 2016 were stuck at 2011 levels, though the S&P 500 index had soared 87%.
So financial engineering – share buybacks to reduce the number of shares outstanding – works, kind of: It made the results look less terrible. But even these expert financial engineering methods, at a cost of $1.7 trillion, couldn’t doll up results enough to show any kind of earnings growth over the past three years.
Yet stocks have soared despite these miserable growth fundamentals. So what gives in this no-earnings-growth environment?
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/03/20/sp500-eps-stagnate-despite-share-buybacks-non-gaap-reporting/
https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/52/89/00/240_F_52890073_f52y7Fnm7tMfmw5xhJSU51YaLUqsUL2z.jpg
I see stocks are down today. Dow Jones is down over 200. Smaller stocks are doing proportionately worse. Russell 2000 off 2%; Nasdaq off 1.7%.
At some point… one would think the CBs will start firing blanks… or maybe not…
It appeared last year that the PBOC had started to fire blanks…. their market was crashing … but they were able to reload with full metal jackets — buy the market back up — jail short sellers — and fire off another burst of stimulus…
That righted their markets — and it also stimulated commodity prices.
Nobody will fight them — because winning would be losing. For everyone.
This time is different — the CBs cannot allow a major correction.
Therefore shorting — or even standing on the sidelines — is illogical. Many funds have been burned doing exactly those things in recent yrs.
knowing full well that 911 was orchestrated leads the wary to conclude that the elders are taking resource depletion very seriously indeed their is no such thing as a co-incidence so watch and listen attentively as events unfold that bring about the New World Order . It will involve violence on a grand scale and people’s emotions are now so desensitized that they will not care, all they care about are words one only needs to look at how emotionally immature some of the posters are on OFW to get an idea of how the elders have conditioned the masses.
The thinking of the time (1999-2000) was that absolutely anything will be done to secure the last remaining oil reserves of the world. The plebs are just collateral damage.
It all depends on the underlying theory, or ideology, or mode of thinking.
Were the communist countries like in the domino theory?
Will oil depletion and scarce resources make the price go up, and make them holding the resources filthy rich?
Will circular economy, sustainability and couple of solar panels keep the economy growing for decades?
Will you have a pension? Will anybody have a pension?
Is it a good idea to take a student loan and go to college?
Will we have a Lehman moment ever again, because we have dustributed the risk to the entire global system. To every currency. To every bank. To every nation. If its to take the entire world down, can it fall then?
Facts, logic and common sense tells you how things pretty much should develop. But those following some theory, ideology or mode of thinking, don’t care about facts, logic and common sense..
Yet, as Eddy commented, what must happen, will eventually happen. Reading Norm, one gets a pretty good picture of the things that must happen.
Was driving earlier listening to pravda nz (Radio NZ) and they are screeching about the london terrorist attacks….
No mention of the fact that we terrorize millions on a daily basis ….. and that perhaps this is just the flea nipping the elephant….
And if you were to suggest this you’d be the pariah from hell.
That defines the human condition — stupid – eating — F789ing machines.
On the topic of power…
I have already noted that in spite of Snowden and Wikileaks exposing the NSA/CIA illegal activities…
And nothing has been done …
There is also the overwhelming evidence that 911 was planned… (a false flag that has allowed the US to strip freedom and rampage through MENA) … anyone who rejects that conclusion should probably watch this series of videos presented by architects and engineers (my brother is an architect and has worked on some very large towers… and he concurs with the video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydu9M_64lRU&index=12&list=PLUshF3H0xxH2FFyiA3OZnLA7WfjNxJmcO
My point being — in spite of this evidence — nothing happens. The case is closed. Forever.
Now that is real power.
I worked on this video for Richard Gage–small part in doing research, but was in contact with every one of the experts on the video. Agree (obviously) that it was a false flag.
This is priceless… the NIST investigator says there were not explosives … because none can be heard on any of the video … then there is a clip of a firefighter interrupted by a massive explosion…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvAv-114bwM
The Power to suppress this — you’d think the MSM would be all over this stuff…. you’d think the politicians would be screaming for another investigation …
Nope. What do they fear?
America = Death Star = Heart of Darkness
https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/open-uri20150608-27674-kwzc8p_9f561fbf.jpeg
4:50 mark is rather amusing…
Never mind… let’s get back to the important issue of Transgender Toilets and what Paris did last night.
So you don’t think the perps can wriggle out of the blame for the atrocity by cowering behind substandard early seventies construction practices?
Fully agree. Since the day, somewhere in 2005, I found the truth about this, never saw politics the same way.
American politics (and increasingly english, french, etc.), is profoundly in debt with dr. goebbels (who in turn has caught some tips, maybe, from the propaganda-master Bernays, that Machiavelli of XX century).
Then of course we have this:
Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation against the Cuban government, that originated within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against American civilians and military targets, blaming it on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba.
The plans detailed in the document included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.[2] The proposals were rejected by the Kennedy administration.[3]
At the time of the proposal, communists led by Fidel Castro had recently taken power in Cuba. The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the U.S. Government.[4] To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:
The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.
Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various U.S. military and civilian targets. The operation recommended developing a “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington”.
The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Although part of the U.S. government’s anti-communist Cuban Project, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted; it was authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President John F. Kennedy. According to currently released documentation, none of the operations became active under the auspices of the Operation Northwoods proposals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Of course Kennedy was murdered not long after….
Death Star.
I read this awhile ago even downloaded the document. The CIA has been behind the scenes around the world propping up favorable dictatorships in the name of democracy to facilitate corporate plunder. This only comes as a surprise to those who believed the text books the government delivered to your schools.
The CIA had the means and the motive to orchestrate 911. Silverstein as much as admitted that the towers were wired when they “pulled” number 7.
The government knows that the general public is averse to the thought that they could our would kill there own people for political or economic advantages. So if you create a little noise the government can act with impunity.
“Work will set you free”
“Remain at your desks the towers are secure”
By the time I got there (March, 2015), someone had stolen the sign from the gate. Nevermind, it was a replica of the original stolen sign, ca. 1945.
http://www.dw.com/image/16671821_303.jpg
I am convinced that most if not all of 9/11 is a lie. It is all a CIA blackop. The buildings that collapse WTC1, 2 and 7 are obvious controlled demos. They collapsed at free fall acceleration – NIST admits that too. And there is a ton of evidence to back up the explosive demo scenario.
I used to think that the CIA is just corrupt and evil and that if we elected the right officials 9/11 would be investigated and the perps imprisoned. But, later I came to realize a big event had to happen. And event that would be blamed on the Middle-Eastern countries.
This would give the US a cover to invade and secure that country to pillage its oil resources.
Great comments following this video, including a link to the William Tahil paper.
https://youtu.be/b9-YU8fgJNU
They had hoped there would be no survivors. It was the survivors who were reporting the sound of explosives.
“Stay at your desk the towers are secure”
Just keep contributing to your 401k ignore the man behind the curtain.
I wonder if Pliny the Elder in his last moments questioned the advice his government had given him.
There are loads of architects, engineers, professors in both fields and demolition experts who have stated that those buildings were taken down by explosive charges.
They present their cases here:
Again this ties back to the Big Picture….
Trillions of dollars have been spent keeping BAU alive — nary a vote…
The NSA violates the ‘sacred’ US Constitution — they are collecting this post and storing it in their database — that is illegal – but nary a word from the MSM — and most definitely not a peep from congress or the senate.
And then we have a group of people blowing up 3 buildings — killing thousands — and we get a half -assed investigation that makes the enquiry into the Kennedy assassination look thorough.
Feel the Power!
I’m not opposed to conspiracy minded thinking, just as I’m not opposed to people learning to ride tricycles, or teens going on dates, etc. It’s a first start, it’s baby steps. At least it shows the ability to question.
But at some point you have to graduate from it. Conspiracies are everywhere, all around us, all the time. Some are good, some are bad. You just have to deal with it, it’s a fact of adult life in a complex civilization. There are always groups of people scheming. In a way, civilization itself is a conspiracy, but one we all agree to so we don’t go around kiling each other all the time.
the elders have a plan don’t give up on the elders, it basically involves ‘global co-operation’ as stated by Christine Lagarde in the following article ‘In a statement issued at the end of a Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors, Lagarde called the forum of the world’s top economies a “critical platform for major economies to work together in an established framework”.
“We met at a time when growth is gaining momentum around the world and there are signs that the global economy has reached a turning point, even though uncertainties remain,” Lagarde said.
Her statement did not mention the failure of G20 finance officials to reach a compromise deal to endorse free trade, backtracking on past commitments in their communique to keep trade open and reject protectionism.
But she said that strong monetary, fiscal and structural economic reform policies were critical to the global economy’s future direction.
“Global cooperation and pursuing the right policies can help achieve strong, sustained, balanced, and inclusive growth, while the wrong ones could stop the new momentum in its tracks,” said Lagarde, who has been a tireless advocate for open trade and more global integration.
Officials at the meeting have raised concerns about what they view as a more protectionist stance of the new U.S. administration of President Donald Trump, which is considering more policies to reduce the flow of imports into the United States.
Lagarde said she reaffirmed the IMF’s readiness to enhance global cooperation, including through “vigorous exchange rate surveillance and analysis of global imbalances.”
She also said the IMF was committed to support its members who may deal with adverse risks from excessive capital flow volatility as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, which may tighten global financial conditions.
She also said she welcomed proposed agreements between G20 countries to build financial capacity and unlock investment flows.
I figured it all out, the Jows created the earth to enslave us all! 😬
How can anyone listen to these eldertools and believe their nonsense to be real?
https://youtu.be/ThDzPbpTsvE
Straight outta that swamp!!
I am an OFW lurker and have been for couple of years. Thanks Gail for your articles.
I also like your writings FE . Seems a couple TROLLS are ganging up on you. But you are doing fine as always. Keep up the good work.
Mike
Clowns… trolls… fools… imbeciles… DelsuiSTANIS… they all get:
http://pngimg.com/uploads/sword/sword_PNG5517.png
You are a knowledgeable, intelligent man FE. May you carry on and become an old fart like me. Just remember “live by the sword, die by the sword”.
http://shirtoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/jedi-master.jpg
Fast Eddy wields a sharp and swift sword to deal out truth, enlightenment and justice, whether it be a tap on the nose or a kiss on the cheek for mild offenders who don’t quite get it, all the way up to full dismemberment for diehard DelusiSTANiS.
https://youtu.be/zKhEw7nD9C4
Thanks Mike. Glad you like my writing. I can learn for a lot of people–sometimes even trolls.
Where is FE? I need some kind of boring pasted comment about solar or radioactive fuel that I’ve read 60 times. Please, you are leaving me in suspense here. Still faster.
You see everyone, it’s easy to dominate a blog like fast eddy. You just post constantly. Tell everyone they are wrong. Woop de do. Cut and paste junk from decades ago. Make fun of people. Is that why we are here? Is that why we tolerate FE? There are some great people on this blog with good ideas. One person shouldn’t dominate the conversation with 50% of the comments. Just because it gives him satisfaction doesn’t make it right.
Good night.
What?
There are plenty of excellent people on FW… we can agree on something.
The thing is….
Like me…. I suspect most if not all of them think you are a fool…
Yep FE, I think that most of us who have been on OFW for years would generally agree wih your posts…and I understand your frustated tone in many of your comments, because when you “get it” (that when this thing blows in the very near future we are all done for), it is very annoying to see BAU-Liters commenting on how yes we will collapse but some form of BAU-Lite will take its place….for me it was clear that Kurt was trolling when he responded to CTG’s excellent and long detailed comment on what can go wrong in his JIT comment and how everything is interconnected now and we can’t go back in time where collapse in one part of the world would not affect people elsewhere (the comment is in the previous article by Gail)…by simply trolling him and saying something to the effect that the comment was long and boring…says a lot…
And yet, I continue to be correct while you think the economy will collapse in 2016. Wait, it’s 2017.
We don’t really know the date. It doesn’t appear to be far off; that is all we can say for certain.
Don’t worry Kurt — America is a special place — it will be immune to the collapse — Venezuela was never great — that’s why they are eating dogs and cats… that could never happen in America
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/9b/63/f9/9b63f91f92f3b13d236a2001f8af2e97.jpg
Wha hae for Nicola
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n730FWycrTY#t=22.792494
Uhhhhh. What?
What?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7YYBGbXkAIoe2u.jpg
Like… why don’t Ireland and Scotland just join together and attack the English — then form a new country?
Scotiireland… Irescottland…
How does Wales figure in all of this?
Ever been to a Celtic-Rangers match?
Having the English in charge to ensure fair play is the only thing that’s kept some semblance of peace on the Celtic fringe this past few centuries. I can’t wait to see how well this alliance of the Irish and the Scots is going to work out once the umpires go home and the subsidies are cut.
Not forgetting the role of England in the plantations in Ireland, Cromwell and his hatred of Catholics, “King Billy” and his massacres, the “Highland clearances” in Scotland (ethnic cleansing, actually), etc., etc. Perfidious Albion: divide and rule. I’m an Englishman with Scottish and Irish ancestry, BTW, but I’m not naive.
I hope I’m not being too naive either. It seems to me that the fighting in the British Isles, at least since 1066. has mostly been class warfare of the upper crust against the rest rather than a racial or national conflict. The main idea has been to keep the lower orders fighting each other for one cause after another while the aristocrats and bankers of all stripes and regalia run the show, inherit the spoils and intermarry with each other. For their part, the lower orders have entered into the spirit of that game with as much enthusiasm as they do any other sport. They lost a lot of their enthusiasm for fighting after going through two world wars, but now that the memories have faded, they are starting to champ at the bit again.
Wimps:
Inconvenient fact:
The Unionists in Northern Ireland are mostly ethnic scots, who have families across the sea and won’t like being pushed out from Belfast.
now you’ve offended the welsh
Celtic Nationalism: the two words go together like chalk and cheese. Once this new national entity gets going, are they going lay claim to Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and the Galicia regions that are currently part of Spain and Turkey? And are they going to be joined in the new Europe by the Slavic, Frankish, Italic, Germanic and Baltic nations? Most of all, how are they going to survive on EU subsidies after the UK stops paying the modern equivalent of Danegeld to Brussels?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Map_of_Celtic_Nations-flag_shades.svg/200px-Map_of_Celtic_Nations-flag_shades.svg.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_nations
Sinead plays reggae
Seven Jowlish Americans Control Most US Media
http://www.rense.com/general44/sevenjOWLishamericans.htm (replace OWL with…ew
Let’s remember that when listening to the part about control of the MSM starting at 1:34:40
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-20/retailers-are-running-out-time-channel-checks-show-13-collapse-traffic
BRAKING NEWS! Trump Bans Amazon and Forgives All Credit Card Debt in Effort to Prevent Collapse of Commercial Property Market – and Another Financial Crisis.
Your link has nothing to do with your statement. Typical FE.
You are just reinforcing my cattle comments…. moooooooooooooooooo……
Wow! What a come back. Nothing in your link even refers to Trump. Everyone on this blog can access the link and see that. But hey. It’s a FE world and we knly revoke around it. Back into the storage container for you and, no turkey for you tonight either.
http://chris2x.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/mancow.jpg
I’m faster tonight.
You look cute with the bell. Missing the tin foil however. You kind of look like the type of cow that an elder would keep in their backyard.
Still faster than FE.
Stocks Soared on Trump’s $1-Trillion Infrastructure Boom. But that Just Evaporated. Now What?
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/03/18/trump-1-trillion-infrastructure-promise-ends-now-what-for-stocks/
good question….
Really? Back to the stock market? We’ve had this conversation. It is just a number. Easily manipulated. You remind me of Kunstler and McPherson – “the sky is falling, the stock market is going to zero, we are all going to die from global warming.” Wrong! Try again.
And you remind me of how easy it is to be brilliant — it really doesn’t take much effort… since it is all relative (to cattle)
Hmmm… so many good el…d…er…s posts being held…. disrupting things….
“Mark Zuckerberg could have as big effect on the system as the mythical Elders”
You mean Hank “Ace” Greenberg’s grandson? Mythical Elders, lol.
Missing the point. Zuckerberg’s agenda might well be completely different. Think people, think!!!
Young Zuckerberg was able to set up Facebook with a worldwide reach – potentially a Facebook for everybody in the world. How on Earth did he afford that, when it didn’t make him any money to start with? Look at all the fools who put their personal data on Facebook. All the E L D E R S have to do is just harvest all that free data. Rich boy Zuckerberg might have an agenda that is “against the system” ? Think again, please.
Hello! It’s 2017 everyone! The reason we love Gail is she doesn’t recycle economic theories from the deep past and looks at things with fresh eyes. Everyone on this blog needs to start thinking that way. The power structure has changed dramatically. The oil situation has changed dramatically. The players are different with different agendas. The system is a complex system, but it is an adaptive complex system. It is also chaotic and highly dependent on initial conditions. Mark Zuckerberg could have as big effect on the system as the mythical Elders. I claimed the U. S. military would get larger and everyone laughed. But, Trump is expanding the military and cutting Meals on Wheels – go figure. So, folks on this blog need to think a bit deeper and stop recycling the old narratives that we have been reading for the past two years. This quoting stuff from 50-100 years ago is just absolute nonsense. And yes, FE, the economy didn’t collapse in 2016 like you said it would and it isn’t going to collapse in 2017 either. Stop being so boring and so predictable.
Kurt your not qualified to post here. Infinite growth is impossible. Go back to school.
I claim financial collapse in summer of 2020 and have for quite some time. But what will happen after that is hard to predict. I also predicted the periphery could collapse without dramatically affecting the core. I was right. I also predicted the U.S. Military would grow in size and influence. I was right. What’s your prediction JT? How about you refer to something that happened 200 years ago under entirely different circumstances. I guess that must make you more qualified.
Kurt – click here to stop the ringing in your ears as a result of that back-hander you just received…
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gAY-nvG5aec/maxresdefault.jpg
“But, Trump is expanding the military and cutting Meals on Wheels – go figure. So, folks on this blog need to think a bit deeper and stop recycling the old narratives that we have been reading for the past two years.”
That’s right, things change as they change posters need to update their perspective. Cuts in many programs must happen to raise the tiny current budget for military to something really imposing, I guess this is the paranoia these days. Trump seems like he’s egging for a military fight, to take on north korea maybe. Trump reminds me of that character in the Twilight Zone episode, ‘The Little People’ in which one of these two stranded astronauts steps on this community of tiny people then forces them to make a giant statue of himself.
“And yes, FE, the economy didn’t collapse in 2016 like you said it would and it isn’t going to collapse in 2017 either. Stop being so boring and so predictable.”
Yeah, take a breath FE. It’s not that imminent. Don’t give yourself a heart attack living on a razor thin edge of expectation.
Which investment bank does Zuckerberg own that gives him a seat on the board of the private company that prints unlimited amounts of money and uses it to control the world?
The FRBNY has already telegraphed their intentions, the only speculation left is timing. Debt levels this high will leverage the effects, so maybe a 2.5% ffr will do it, maybe less.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS
I might add wake up Kurt! FE is right there has been a systematic series of events that have lead to this moment in time.
Name them.
Go back to previous posts. Particularly the Nixon era.
Why not go back to 1850? Some great stuff there too!
What about those WMD’s Kurt?
If one were to read more about how the following events were orchestrated one might be inclined to think there is a small group of powerful people behind a lot of these events:
#1 The first big event that has lead to where we are now is the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. The Creature from Jekyll Island.
#2 Elimination of the gold standard by Richard M. Nixon in 1971 the end of the Bretton Woods monetary system.
#3 1974 William Simon (Nixon’s freshly appointed Treasury Secretary from Salomon Brothers) brokered the deal with the Saudi’s to price oil in dollars.
#4 The final phase for insane growth and the pillaging of vast resources came in the 1999 Chinese Free Trade agreement.
The results of these events led to an orgy of growth that wiped out much of the cheap resources of the world leaving us with expensive energy and a polluted environment. This is where we are now.
The big question is were these things planned prior to 1913 in the minds of some group of well connected people? I don’t know. But, I am inclined to think that the Rockerfellers and Rothschilds of the world know the answer.
And yet all these events can be explained in terms of self-preservation, or of the collective will or even chance. Occam’s razor, no more assumptions should be made than are necessary.
It’s really difficult to convince a cow of much….
I had two cows in Bali … and I’d say hey cows – did you know 1+1=2…. they ignored me …
I’d then try to explain to them how the Z empire was created – I read the Proto… to them…
They ignored me…
They just kept chomping on grass — that’s really all they know… and that’s really all they need or want to know.
Hi Greg!
I believe that the points listed (we should add the financial deregulations and stages of globalization) are due to the imperative to avoid that the economy reached the point C of the curve of diminishing returns. These decisions were taken to add more economic efficiency (more complexity).
Conspiracies are not necessary to explain the world. We have science.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_CFFKPeR0wt8/Snwzioof7rI/AAAAAAAAAEk/aUnyZFsOLis/rm2_thumb4.jpg?imgmax=800
You are right about not wanting to reach the point “C” on your chart.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_CFFKPeR0wt8/Snwzioof7rI/AAAAAAAAAEk/aUnyZFsOLis/rm2_thumb4.jpg?imgmax=800
The key to not reaching the point C is keeping prices high enough. If prices approach infinity, then diminishing returns no longer matter. The problem is that prices cannot approach infinity; affordability is an issues.
I totally agree with you that affordability is a big problem. Thank you for letting us see that fundamental part of the equation.
This graphic comes to mind. I do not know its rigor, but theoretically these are the reserves discovered and recoverable at the current price and consumption (actually in March 2016) of the different resources:
https://i0.wp.com/www.gurusblog.com/jordi/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/metals-compressor.png?w=740&ssl=1
Oops! The image is not seen. In this link in Spanish you can see the infographics.
https://www.gurusblog.com/archives/cuantos-anos-nos-quedan-en-el-planeta-tierra-de-las-principales-materias-primas/04/04/2016/
And, what that heck does lead have to do with it? Leadership is important, sure.
“there has been a systematic series of events that have lead to this moment in time.”
Well you could say that about any moment in time in any reality, really, although I wouldn’t use the term “systematic” rather, “definite”.
Systematic implies a plan. That’s what I meant to imply.
I wish (there was a plan).
https://www.rt.com/usa/381433-banker-david-rockefeller-dies/#.WM_-pzLkW4k.twitter
Open up any financial news site — the plan will be right in front of your eyes… it is a very complex plan
It will fail … of course
Warning: ExxonMobil may be in irreversible decline
Tom Sanzillo, former deputy comptroller of New York State, doesn’t think so. Sanzillo says Exxon’s finances suggest the company may be in the middle of an “irreversible decline.”
“There are more red flags than a 10-car pileup at a NASCAR race,” said Sanzillo, who is now director of finance at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Here are three red flags that Sanzillo highlighted in a new report, released Wednesday:
-Annual revenue down 45% over the past five years
-Long-term debt has quadrupled to nearly $30 billion
-It’s had to borrow money to pay out dividends and buy back shares
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/160426145624-exxon-debt-profits-780×439.jpg
http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/26/investing/exxonmobil-stock-oil-prices/index.html?iid=EL
As Art Berman they’re in liquidation.
Looks like it’s game over for modern swine.
A close friend was in Moscow in the early 90s they are convinced they were sold human flesh harvested from dead drunks found in the parks. It was sold as pork in the markets. Which is a fact. So the elders are doing well right FE?
The Elders apparently don’t eat pork…. so that would work for them …. when they run out of rats…
The Elders thing is nonsense. There are various groups fighting for power. Old European bankers, the MIC, Mideast oil groups, Silicon Valley, etc. sometimes they agree, sometimes they don’t. Please, without some evidence just give it a rest.
“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
The Protocols Of Z–I,,,On
Published 1903
A one page summary
* Place our agents and helpers everywhere
* Take control of the media and use it in propaganda for our plans
* Start fights between different races, classes and religions
* Use bribery, threats and blackmail to get our way
* Use Freemasonic Lodges to attract potential public officials
* Appeal to successful people’s egos
* Appoint puppet leaders who can be controlled by blackmail
* Abolish all rights and freedoms, except the right of force by us
* Sacrifice people (including Je,,,ws sometimes) when necessary
* Eliminate religion; replace it with science and materialism
* Control the education system to spread deception and destroy intellect
* Rewrite history to our benefit
* Create entertaining distractions
* Corrupt minds with filth and perversion
* Keep the masses in poverty and perpetual labor
* Take possession of all wealth, property and (especially) gold
* Use gold to manipulate the markets, cause depressions etc.
* Introduce a progressive tax on wealth
* Replace sound investment with speculation
* Make long-term interest-bearing loans to governments
* Give bad advice to governments and everyone else
That was then, this is now. Again, cherry picking comments from 100 years ago is just more FE hyperbole that we have to wade through for the thirtieth time. Your models are static, old, linear, annoying and just plain wrong. Wake up!!!
The entity they are referring to would be the central banks. In particular the master franchise holder – The Fed.
Are you saying the Fed doesn’t exist anymore? Are you saying it is not a private entity with the rights to print the world’s reserve currency? Are you saying the major global banks are not the owners of the Fed? Are you saying that the Fed and other CBs have not recently printed many trillions of dollars/Euros etc.. without a single vote from any parliament? Are you saying that the axiom about following the money — when we want to find out who is really pulling the strings — no longer applies?
What exactly are you saying?
““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.”” Yeah that “it” would be civilization itself (or god to some).
Spewing tired, overused quotes doesn’t help your case FE.
How so?
If I tell you 1+1=2.
Is that overused? Does it at some point fail to prove my point — that 1+1 is… 2.
I suggest you listen to that clip re media control…. keep in mind that was written at the turn of the century … as in 1900….. tell me that is not EXACTLY what the MSM is?
Either the people writing that instruction manual were able to see the future — or that manual (with revisions along the way) served as a blue print to control the MSM — and the world.
“If I tell you 1+1=2.
Is that overused? Does it at some point fail to prove my point”
Yes, because it (1+1=2) is irrelevant to your point, unless your point is that you know extremely basic math.
“… If I tell you 1+1=2 … Does it at some point fail to prove my point — that 1+1 is… 2.” Well, there is your problem, circular logic. Telling me your point doesn’t prove it.
“served as a blue print to control the MSM”
So who controls Breitbart? Who controls infowar? The MSM is some monolithic entity? I will tell you who controls the MSM, their advertisers, and their advertisers are empowered by everyone: the consumers, at some point if you follow the chain of cause and effect long enough it all comes back right at ya.
The point is a fact is a fact.
FYI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaxCBqVyyhM
Stephen K. Bannon: Friend of the Jewish People, Defender of Israel
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/14/stephen-k-bannon-friend-jewish-people-defender-israel/
Did you ever notice how powerful Aipac is… did you ever notice how all presidential candidates suck up to Israel
Did you ever notice how the US ALWAYS vetoes UN resolutions against Israel (and gives Israel billions in free arms and aid)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vetos_exercised_by_the_US_government_in_the_UN_Security_Council
U.S. $38B military aid package to Israel sends a message http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/09/14/united-states-military-aid-israel/90358564/
Tail wags dog
I agree that there is a pro-Jewish bias, but it is not a good topic to keep bringing up.
Agreed — we’d hate to see FW get onto that radar…. as I have posted…. I have some experience with warnings….
Best not to F789 with the ‘Jesus’
Welp, that was the red pill for me. Thank you FE, from the tiny little piece of a heart I still have left.
I am running out of rabbit holes to go down….
Here is the last one: The meaning of everything
Consciousness is binary as is everything in the universe, therefore we are “computers” and computers can be conscious.
https://test59535.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/the-meaning-of-everything/
I guess it comforts him somehow. God, wouldn’t I love to believe there are people behind the scenes pullIng strings, but there never has been. Just the collective outcome of millions and billions of beings. We are much like an individual neuron in the brain. Our needs and desires are pretty simple, but out of the multitudes comes an unimaginably complex whole, and yet the whole obeys the same laws as the individual and dies all the same.
Again — the beauty of the system —- the cattle have been conditioned to believe they are free — that they exert real power through their democratic institutions…. through the Constitution.
The Constitution…. that sacred document…
Federal judge says NSA program appears to violate Constitution. A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency’s gathering of data on all telephone calls made in the United States appears to violate the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches.
One would have thought — that if the people had any power — that their elected reps would defend the Constitution — given the courts have determined this spying violates the Constitution…
What have the elected officials of the people done about this? They have done EXACTLY what good cattle do when they are shown the prod:
Obama Expands NSA Spying. Attack against Democratic Rights
http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-expands-nsa-spying-attack-against-democratic-rights/5568577
Court says it’s legal for NSA to spy on you because Congress says it’s OK
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/court-says-its-again-legal-for-nsa-to-spy-on-you-because-congress-says-its-ok/
https://ronmamita.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1chattle-human-farm.jpg
I’m really not sure what your point is. We’re all cattle, and we’re all ultimately powerless, no matter how high up the food chain.
It has nothing to do with power – and everything to do with awareness.
A cow is not aware. I am not a cow
They’ve done very well in my impression because the average swine doesn’t believe they exist. Instead they attack each other as they did in 70ce as Roman Soldiers surrounded Jerusalem and the Religious Zealots burned there own food supply. So if we think this is being orchestrated by weak minded humans then we have joined them.
Eph 6:12
12 because we have a struggle, not against blood and flesh, but against the governments, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places.
One of the things that struck me when I first read the proto-cols…. is exactly that — stay behind the curtain — never acknowledge your power… that just makes you a target…
Appoint puppet leaders who can be controlled by blackmail — NSA NSA NSA!
Take control of the media and use it in propaganda for our plans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig5sTehZqZA skip to 1:34:40
Did I mention that a small media company in which I have an interest was threatened when it ran an award winning documentary that presented Israel in an unfavourable light re Palestine? ‘Take it off – or else’ were the words used. (Place our agents and helpers everywhere – yep — everywhere)
The protocols are nonsense. That has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Ah, finally FE shows his true antisemitic colors. Let’s see, puts everyone down with an alternative viewpoint on this blog – check. Quotes absolute nonsense and old history to rationalize current events – check. Lives in a storage container – check. Ya know, if we didn’t know better, we might think you weren’t playing with a full deck.
Listen I have two close relatives in government one is in the CIA as an adviser and one is in cyber security at a very high level and they are both blithering idiots. And I might add opiod addicts. I’ll never be convinced that they or there kind can coordinate anything.
Don’t know much about psychology
Don’t know much about anthropology
Don’t know much about the art of war
Or about politics or commercial law
But I know whenever people interact
Some will manipulate and that’s a fact
While others will be too clueless to see
Let’s have some music to go with that…
Gee if Tillerson devests his stock to be a good public servant he can slide right on out.
‘Tillerson has an estimated net worth of $150 million, NBC News reports’
I would advise him to spent his money quickly ….. but then … he would know that.
The elders are far older then what is being expressed here.
Rev 12:9
9 So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him.
But even he can’t avoid the thermodynamic collapse nor has he any desire to do so as was demonstrated by his minions.
Matt 8:31,32
31 So the demons began to plead with him, saying: “If you expel us, send us into the herd of swine.” 32 And he said to them: “Go!” With that they came out and went off into the swine, and look! the entire herd rushed over the precipice into the sea and died in the waters.
Nothing new here move along everyone.
Same old song and dance.
Advanced civilizations go back ~5k yrs, and before that it’s likely not every tribe was exactly operating within sharing nirvana concepts.
TPTB/Elders niveau is not about jets and trashy models, but primarily about (re-)learning, appreciating, performing, nurturing the know-how of human farm/herdsmanship.
It happens to all of us, even those making six-figure incomes, according to a new report from the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a think tank the bank launched in 2015 to do deep-dive economic analysis drawing on its proprietary customer transaction database.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-20/a-six-figure-income-may-not-shield-you-from-a-shock
Another example of how experts are called in to analyze just about everything …. to think that the CBs are not using an army of experts across a range of disciplines to delay the end of BAU …. would be naive….
One of the “elders” checked-out early:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/20/news/companies/david-rockefeller/index.html
He seemed to have good teeth to the end.
Wonder if they will freeze him for post BAU lol
So oil has once again been falling and is trading below cost on a marginal barrel. Let’s look at this from a new perspective. Who has access to credit growth game. So it seems private credit has peeked but corporate credit has breathing room. If that dynamic shifts prices can rise but both conditions are symptoms of net energy below affordable conditions.
WARNING OF SHORTAGE OF ESSENTIAL MINERALS FOR LAPTOPS, CELL PHONES, WIRING
“The researchers reviewed data and demand forecasts on the sustainability of global mineral supplies in coming decades. The study showed that mining exploration is not keeping up with future demand for minerals and recycling in and of itself would not be able to meet the demand either. At the same time, transitioning to a low carbon society will require vast amounts of metals and minerals to manufacture clean technologies and the researchers say society is not equipped to meet the additional needs for these raw materials…
“For instance, the last major deposit for copper was discovered in Mongolia 15 years ago and only began producing in fall 2016, creating huge supply challenges… Then there is the common consumer misconception that we can just use something else. For many mineral uses, there are no alternatives. There are few commercially viable replacement minerals for many applications of copper wiring, for example…
“The same may be true for technology metals that could become essential in green technologies — like neodymium, terbium or iridium. These minerals are only needed in small quantities, but they are indispensable to making the technology work, meaning that while the scale seems small, the value is immense…People have been so concerned about climate change that it’s created a real movement around it. We don’t see this around resource use and recovery, even though it is much closer to us on a daily basis.
(HT DL)
Good point. Here’s a great post by Alice Friedemann on this subject. 3 years old but very actual.
http://energyskeptic.com/2014/high-tech-cannot-last-rare-earth-metals/
Pulling a comment from that article:
“To provide most of our power through renewables would take hundreds of times the amount of rare earth metals that we are mining today,” according to Thomas Graedel at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. So renewable energy resources like windmills and solar PV can not ever replace fossil fuels, there’s not enough of many essential minerals to scale this technology up.
http://energyskeptic.com/2014/high-tech-cannot-last-rare-earth-metals/
So you see Bergen….an alternative (so-called renewable) energy future — IS IMPOSSIBLE.
So no more talk of Tesla batteries storing energy for the grid…
I like this quote:
“transitioning to a low carbon society will require vast amounts of metals and minerals to manufacture clean technologies”
It is interesting how trying to solve one problem reveals more underlying problems.
That is always the case. Tainter dixit:
https://origins.asu.edu/sites/default/files/tainter_taylor_bri.pdf
@Fast Eddy
David Rockefeller just checked out at the age of 101.
Guess the “Elders” have not yet found the elixir of immortality.
They also have no idea how to continue BAU without cheap energy…..
Either checked out, or checked into his bunker in order to sit out the firework show.
Getting very hot in the Eld-ers kitchen …. we might see a few of them performing this feat….
https://i2.wp.com/altereddimensions.net/main/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/image-79.png
Interesting, but being an elder is never about personal immortality. It’s about wealth immortality – making sure it all stays in the family.
“Family” can mean vastly different things. An ambitious granddaughter-in-law might circumvent the founder’s fortune in a way the founder might have never imagined.
Last month we had a 70 deg day followed by a 19 deg day with snow. There is a small herd of deer that pass my house each morning and as usual they came by unfazed by the sudden change. Unreasoning animals have no memory of the past and no thought to the future. They live in perpetual a perpetual moment. If one dies the others don’t mourn the loss neither do they celebrate the birth. To them those activities would be incomprehensible.
Without a knowledge of history humans are no different. This is the current state of the American public. The average American graduates high school with a knowledge of American History, as if the world began with the founding of The United States. From a political perspective this is how it should be. This allows a society to coalesce around the erroneous idea of exceptionalism. Higher levels of education don’t improve the matter much because they focus on the glorious democratic and republican systems of Greece and Rome ignoring East Asian developments or kingdoms in Africa.
In general we have a population that exhibits the intellectual prowess of Archie Bunker. They believe in the carousel of progress which is the extent of their technical training. Like my herd of deer they have no point of reference they simply take each day as it comes. Unless of course they feel hungry then they protest. My deer just forage harder. There is no thought what so ever about sustainability rather they like my deer live in the moment.
They don’t know why more is more or less is less it’s just the way things are. They can’t comprehend that you can only live in one room at a time and that in the moment every thing else is a memory as well as this moment will become.
I’m happy for my deer they live lives unburdened by the trivialities of a past or a future or any possessions to measure it by. They just accept what has been will always be, nothing lost nothing gained. Nothing to see here boys just walk away.
Americans might very well be the first people to rule the world who are in many ways more primitive than the people they rule over.
Americans have technology and power without wisdom.
Don’t confuse this:
http://theduran.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/george-soros.jpg
http://katehon.com/sites/default/files/1447161052kissinger_globalist_slug.jpg
With:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/24/0a/e1/240ae1531ce977770bac81263580e866.jpg
“I’m happy for my deer they live lives unburdened by the trivialities of a past or a future or any possessions to measure it by.”
So how do you explain this?
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/03/this-giant-group-of-whales-is-definitely-up-to-something.html
Just kidding.
New practical toy for the permanent police state, in copies of low hundreds can easily patrol/deny access at the major arteries and squashing skirmishes with restless plebeians (plus some choppers etc.) Relatively cheap, under ~3M, variable protection options totaling 20-30t vehicle weight, super off-road capabilities at high speed and good endurance <700km, 2x crew + 10x soldiers, ..
Rather amusing: so much complexity to deal with ‘un homme arme’, ie. just one fool with a gun.
I’m inclined to think of the heavily armoured -and very expert – knights of France who , in 1415, stumbled to their deaths in the mud at the hands of English archers armed with daggers and hammers.
And let’s not whisper to the salesmen: ‘What happened to Germany’s King Tiger tanks in 1945, when the fuel ran out?’……..
It’s a kind of mobile Maginot Line -the threat will probably be very different to the one anticipated by the film makers.
You could be right or not, it depends..
The platform is super off roadish, yet nimble to operate in the streets. It could be lightweight or heavily plated against IEDs, even turret machine gun post could be mounted on the top. It is certainly much leaner to operate in quasi-urban theaters, basically out of learning the lessons from ambushes in Iraq/Afghan where patrolling in light armor “jeeps” was not safe after while and or not feasible for tanks etc.
If you look at the videos they are training various riot (malcontent public) suppression techniques with 10+ people hauled inside or standing outside on the rails or both (20x)? As I said above, with very little money and training, few of these can barricade a highway or disperse rioters, set up impromptu checkpoint at food distribution points during Doom days etc.
For some reason, most of defense contractors now push the dispersed mobility factor, riots suppression, and similar themes. This seems to be the best in the light and fast/offroad category so far.
These kind of behemoths are great for making lots of dough for the defense contractors, not so great for accomplishing what they are designed for.
Sooner or later these behemoths will acquire the same reputation as the ‘baka’ one-way kamikaze subs – at least the japanese didn’t spend too much steel to make metal coffins.
one well placed Molotov cocktail and bye-bye million dollar armored vehicle and inhabitants. for every dollar spent on offense, you generally need ten dollars spent on defense, mobile or not.
What market was this promo directed toward, sorry I see its French, and already out on the streets. It’s an eye catcher, looks mean. Another video:
Well, copy paste from brochures, Nexter seems to be French defense contractor, recently partnering with the off road specialist Tatra on next gen army/homeland security vehicles such as this 6×6 Titan or the 8×8 155mm howitzer Caesar.. Most of their products is design just to fit inside usual fleet of cargo planes..
Target audience for now, NATO members in Europe and 2.5world customers like India, ME, ..
I be that gets really crummy mileage…. since diesel will be in very limited supply post BAU…. do they have a solar powered version?
Will make great targets for hand-held missiles.
Bigger mass, bigger targets. If I were an overlord I would be investing in bee-size drones which will enter the ear/mouth of the insurgents and turn their brains into scrambled eggs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5wqzsg1bQY
Fascinating video of Tesla’s very large battery packs receiving excess energy during the day then feeding it back into the system at night, smoothing out the usage, i.e. improving energy efficiency. Musk has bet South Australia Tesla can put a system in to smooth out their usage in 100 days or he’ll eat the costs. Questions remain regarding how long the Lithium battery packs will last and continue to hold a charge, but for now it seems like an important step forward.
No it’s not.
Instead of just reading the MSM spin and not questioning it — you will note that I posted an article the other day that states that Tesla is massively subsidizing the offer they made to Australia — it also claimed that the requirements are much greater than what Tesla is quoting
At the end of the day I have zero doubt that someone could fill a warehouse with batteries – charge them with solar panels — and power a city.
The problem is the cost per kwh.
Of course if you just make shit up – as Musk has —- as he ALWAYS DOES (yes we are moving to Mars…) then it all sounds wonderful.
Solar energy is TOO expensive — as Gail and others have explained in great detail
You want to bankrupt a country and drive all industry elsewhere then yes by all means pay Tesla to cover the country in panels and batteries.
So how many times do I have to post this before it sinks in????
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO POWER THE WORLD USING SOLAR.
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO POWER THE WORLD USING SOLAR.
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO POWER THE WORLD USING SOLAR.
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO POWER THE WORLD USING SOLAR.
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO POWER THE WORLD USING SOLAR.
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO POWER THE WORLD USING SOLAR.
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources.
SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
The world consumes approximately 3 CMO annually from all sources. The table [10] shows the small contribution from alternative energies in 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/
Since Elon Musk is a joke — the king of liars — the guy who thinks we are going to colonize Mars…
Can we please only mention him if the intention is to mock him
If anyone else claimed that we were going to colonize Mars they’d be ridiculed and they’d be laughing stock.
This just goes to show how truly stupid most humans are.
trump will sue you for usurping his title
I’m not sure why but I just had an epiphany it’s not possible to power the world with solar.
Where did that come from?😳
FE have you been studying the propaganda model? Short sentences repeated often?
“The manufacturing plant is a closed system”…snicker. I guess the raw materials just get mined and loaded on those trains with solar powere widgets.
“All batteries are recycled”….shit they just started producing them there…no idea what the real recycle cost is…or if it is real.
It is noteworthy no mention is made that EVERYTHING Musk has produced is produced at a loss and funded by free money.
‘EVERYTHING Musk has produced is produced at a loss and funded by free money’
Some might wonder …. why does he get free billions much of it in the form of govt subsidies… who makes that decision…. it ain’t an elected person that is for certain.
What purpose does Musk serve? He obviously has a very important role to play in the matrix for him to get that much free cash.
How do I sign up?
“It is noteworthy no mention is made that EVERYTHING Musk has produced is produced at a loss and funded by free money.”
++++++++++++👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
This. Exactly this. Nothing but smoke and mirrors really. Keeps the masses placated.
That and the same could be said of solar, wind and shale.
@FE “What purpose does Musk serve? ”
He produces Hopium, FE, pure, refined, undiluted Hopium. Something the techno-optimists can mainline.
I was adapting the yoga mantra model….
“Solar energy is TOO expensive”
For ground solar, the current technology and cost, FE is correct.
Space based solar power has to come in at less than coal or we just don’t do it. That’s not easy, but it does seem to be possible. Incidentally for any moderately low maintenance, high utilization power source, divide the cost by 80,000 and that gets you the cost per kWh. Work it backward, and for three cent power you can spend no more than $2400 per kW to build it.
How much weight do you expect your judgment to have in the comments section on OFW when you have expressed the belief that artificial gravity can be created in outer space for a low price?
“expressed the belief that artificial gravity can be created in outer space for a low price?”
That’s just a fact. You spin the space station to get acceleration like gravity. It’s not cost effective for small numbers of people, which is why the ISS doesn’t have it. but the extra cost to spin a space habitat of moderate size is low. Ask any space engineer.
It’s much more expensive to shield a habitat from galactic cosmic rays.
https://sc01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1W5_2LFXXXXbMXVXXq6xXFXXXM/big-foil-roll-aluminum-foil-food-used.jpg
Not so expensive
Keith, I know gravity can be stimulated with centrifugal force. It is possible with current technology on a small scale.
I don’t share your belief that an economy of scale would emerge if artificial gravity was created within a large circular space habitat.
A large circular space habitat would be very expensive to build, therefore the energy required to spin it fast enough so that it would create artificial gravity would be very expensive.
“on a small scale”
It depends on what you consider small scale.
“An O’Neill cylinder would consist of two counter-rotating cylinders. The cylinders would rotate in opposite directions in order to cancel out any gyroscopic effects that would otherwise make it difficult to keep them aimed toward the Sun. Each would be 5 miles (8.0 km) in diameter and 20 miles (32 km) long, connected at each end by a rod via a bearing system. They would rotate so as to provide artificial gravity via centrifugal force on their inner surfaces.[1]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
“the energy required to spin it fast enough so that it would create artificial gravity would be very expensive.”
Assuming I didn’t make a math error (please check it) the power needed to spin up or down a pair of 50 m diameter spheres with an internal surface mass of 1000 kg/m^2 is 712.68 kWh. At ten cents a kWh, that would cost about $71.27. Couple of 500 hp motors would spin the pair up in an hour. A 500 m diameter sphere takes 1000 times as much energy, but $71,000 is not significant given the cost of such a project.
If you want to check the spreadsheet, email me for a copy. hkeithhenson at gmail dot com.
Hmmm…. hundreds of billions are thrown at land solar —- it actually exists…. but there is a much cheaper option – space solar —- but for some reason it doesn’t exist.
http://statusmind.com/images/2014/05/Wise-Quotes-42523-statusmind.com.jpg
” space solar —- but for some reason it doesn’t exist.”
It didn’t, not even a rough sketch, up to about a year ago. Nobody had a clue as to how to get the cost down. I knew the methodology, design to cost, but not how to do it. That came from the projected (by REL) cost of hauling cargo into space by more than 25,000 Skylon flights per year and the use of large arcjets to get the cost from LEO to GEO down.
I should add that the last study Boeing did came in at $145,000 a kW or $1.81 a kWh. That was back in 2009 and was not a solution. Power has to come down to 3 cents a kWh to make synthetic oil at $70/bbl. Gail wants $20 synthetic oil. That will take 0.5 cents per kWh. The vast majority of the cost was due to expensive one time use rockets. If you can’t get the cost of hauling power satellite parts to GEO under $200/kg, then power satellites are uneconomical and should not be done.
Simple as that FE.
Yes Keith …. of course Keith…. now be a good crazy coot and take your meds…
http://mblynchfirm.com/content/uploads/2016/12/abilify-settlement.jpg
Let me get the key to the attic… it’s so quiet up there isn’t it — I know the pills make you drowsy — have a nice nap…. and later we can go back in the garage and pretend we are astronauts — yes of course we can
isn’t that where you keep that portrait of yourself Eddy?
Ha ha ha… I wish…. I do have a mate who’s 50 …. we refer to him as Dorian…
FE”” space solar —- but for some reason it doesn’t exist.””
Keith “It didn’t, not even a rough sketch, up to about a year ago”
Keith, proposals for space based solar power have been around for much longer than ” a year”. Another bungle by the illustrious Keith .
Keith ” Nobody had a clue as to how to get the cost down. ” And what has changed since you drafted up your own proposal for space-based solar power satellites? Did you find some miraculous way to cut costs without cutting corners ?
If the answer is “no”, then why do you continue to bring up a problem on which very little progress has been made?
“Did you find some miraculous way to cut costs without cutting corners ? ”
Yes.
Even if Skylon delivers cargo to low earth orbit (LEO) for $100/kg, the cost in chemical propellant to get cargo to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) is too high for power satellites to make economic sense. (I define economic sense operationally as undercutting the cost of electricity from coal.) To reach the required $200/kg, the cost of moving cargo must be reduced to less than $100/kg for the LEO to GEO leg. That includes the cost of the LEO to GEO propellant that has to be hauled up to LEO. The only way to get the amount needed down to some reasonable number is to use high exhaust velocity, 20-25 km/s. However, that eats up lots of energy since the Ke in the exhaust is proportional to the exhaust velocity squared.
Before I looked into space based beamed energy bootstrapping, one of the things we considered was beaming the energy up from earth, an old proposal by microwave guru William Brown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Lrj35HcbQ This didn’t work very well, mainly because the ground transmitter was in use around 1% of the time when the cargo was starting out in LEO. The “time on target” improved as the vehicle got higher, but it wasn’t a satisfactory solution.
It turned out to cost less to produce a couple of 800 MW propulsion power satellites at ~$1.2 B each rather than an 8 GW ground station at around $20 B. This reduced the cost of the tugs as well since their arcjet engines ran all the time and not in bursts like the ground station solution. The video about this method is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEkZkINrJaA It is slightly out of date. Current thinking is that we build the first two propulsion power satellites in LEO and push them out above the space junk with chemical rocket engines rather than building them in a 2000 km orbit.
None of these ideas is fixed in concrete. Better ideas are welcome. A lot of people have contributed.
The guy in the SkyLon video actually talked about cooling the space array with water without breaking out laughing. Imagine one space leak resulting in loss of all functionality due to complete loss of water. I can hardly keep my own plumbing from leaking.
Absurd assumptions
“Imagine one space leak”
Leaks have been considered. There are 30 sets of tubes, so losing one set would cost 3.3% of capacity. The bigger problem is holes in the radiator tubes punched by micrometeorites. The puncture rate is around one per hour because the area is so large.
Lase year a Japanese researcher asked about leaks.
> Re holes, a 1 cm hole would be very unusual, extremely large. I get 4.9 x 10^-4 kg/s for a one cm orifice, using the pressure and density of 20 C deg steam . Considering that the radiator tube is filled about 5000 kg of water/steam, it would take around 10^7 second for it all to leak out or ~116 days. Patching a one cm hole within a day keeps the steam loss to 1% of one tube in 60.
>
> We can also use sized rubber balls inside the tubes to plug leaks.
>
> There may be reasons we don’t want to use steam filled radiator tubes in space, but fluid loss from punctures should be controllable.
He responded:
I agree that a 1 cm hole would be very unusual.
I understand your estimation for the radiator leakage.
*********
Jesse, you are not the first one who brought up this concern. Good catch though.
“That’s not easy”
And if it ain’t easy it ain’t cheap.
Keith, do. you REALLY believe SBS would EVER be cheaper than traditional solar? Wait, you also believe having a leaf inserted in one’s head to meet caloric needs is plausible. Nevermind, you’ve read WAY too much science fiction.
“Keith, do. you REALLY believe SBS would EVER be cheaper than traditional solar?”
If it is not, then we should not do power satellites.
My analysis is that we can get the cost to 3 cents per kWh for power from space. The lowest cost I have ever seen for dispatchable power is from StratoSolar. With built in gravity storage, Ed Kelly thinks they can get the cost down to 5 cents a kWh. That’s the lowest I know about. Do you have a non-intermittent energy proposal that’s lower?
The leaf story is mostly a joke, but there is no reason that really advanced biotechnology could not give it to us. There are, after all, lots of examples where animals have taken up photosynthetic cells. Some of them live mostly off light.
“leaf inserted in one’s head”
You don’t stick a leaf in your head. This was published in 1991
” Human relations with engineered “domestic animals” might get real
weird. Nomads in Africa drink the blood of their cattle. A less messy
method would be to grow plugs on the animals which could be connected to
humans and supply energy and materials directly to the human bloodstream.
Instead of killing the sheep, you bring in a batch and “recharge” from
them. A “lower on the food chain” alternative would be to have a
“backpack” which would unfold when you lay down in the sun into a large
photosynthetic area. Assuming the nomads’ sheep didn’t trample you, a few
hours a day soaking up rays on 30 square meters of surface would eliminate
the need to eat animals or plants. This is getting far afield from the
simple uses of nanotechnology, but being modified this way would allow
living the “simple” life par excellence. Such people would really leave
“nothing but footprints.”
“This was published in 1991”
Yeah, not bad sic-fi, Keith. Pretty good actually 🙂 . But outlandish nevertheless.
I don’t know what is supposedly fascinating about it, you could have easily hacked diy similar unit (as many people did), at least for the past ~10yrs when the available parts (batteries and power electronics) became available. The only difference is few insignificant % of efficiency gain and bit smaller form factor of the mass produced/assembled unit by the Musk team..
It’s very unfortunate and frustrating, when people can’t see through basic concepts.
Still basically 1990’s Japanese technology.
It has been a while.
Musk’s bet to smooth ( to what extent ) not solve seems a safe bet. In other solar news, though non profit, we have the http://solarvillageproject.org/ .Offering these night light kits, light is nice! Do people living on less that $2 / day really need solar toys?
http://solarvillageproject.org/wp-content/uploads/gallery-5-1024×576.jpg
Solar ovens would be more practical. Providing toys to a society ends up raising people’s expectations about the future.
https://68.media.tumblr.com/b551b25a8da76d9daa2a248f4f1eb973/tumblr_o63bse0d9G1qelqjto1_250.gif
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2013/04/M2.jpg
I am wondering … why Mars? Why not just choose any barren place and set up a colony?
The Moon would make perfect sense — it is totally barren as well — but is much closer to earth.
And closer still we have the Sahara desert… barren – no water – looks a LOT like Mars! And the kicker — humans can breathe the air in the Sahara…
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2016/11/161130141053_1_900x600.jpg
@Eddy
unless the inhabitants of the Sahara detach your neck from your shoulders, in which case breathing might get difficult
a problem you wouldn’t get on Mars—I bet you hadn’t thought of that
How about here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Animation_of_Mount_Everest.ogv/568px–Animation_of_Mount_Everest.ogv.jpg
A few well placed machine gun turrets operated remotely would easily take care of any Sherpas who tried to get to your colony.
and up there 69 yetis would keep you warmer than those scantily clad hussies you usually consort with
Mars. It’s part of the narrative people carry with them to still believe in the future. To believe that their are still frontiers yet to be explored. That growth will continue forever. It is part of societies’ “immortality project” as Ernest Becker would say.
I know mars is a big planet … but eventually the colonists are going to run into these guys…
https://consequenceofsound.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/mars.jpg
Why not the moon? As far as we know there are no indigenous people with laser guns on the moon.
you know not of what you speak
The only thing missing from this picture is one of these:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Osd_wPDVIfU/T4l2IS9om4I/AAAAAAAABJg/H2w6gIvVQAI/s1600/IMG_4584.JPG
http://bit.ly/2n1QNIJ
Perhaps they could use it for the return journey?
classic!
And that’s the point try to fight that one. If space is so grand develop the desert and prove your point.
FE, Musk actually serves a purpose. He is a hero. Every culture and society needs heroes. We don’t have many these days. Musk is visionary…he is the essence of technology and well, whatever heroes are. Give me a billion $ and I’ll show you some vision. But back to Musk…he allows the synthetic meme that technology will save us and solve all our problems to be demonstrated. As humans, we are pron etc believe lies, including the lie of technologies blessings. Technologies track record is actually very poor, it had allowed us to poison the earth. Our system requires guys like Musk to deflect our attention from reality.
“Give me a billion $ and I’ll show you some vision.”
Is that the “hero” creed?
Hero salary firefighters, paramedics, police getting pretty high. No $ no heros?
Friends prius is going through aftermarket battery packs. One a year with under 5k miles on the vehicle every time. On the fourth one. All replaced under warranty so all is good. All will be well as soon as the conspiracy against battery technology and the physical laws of the universe end.
The efficiency of hydrocarbons in storing energy in a form that lends itself to use is unmatched. Just because we don’t like that doesn’t mean it is not true.
The two happiest days of an EV owners life are the day they buy the EV — and the day they sell it.
This kind of blew my mind. An earthquake a while back (the one that damaged that big tall thingy in Washington DC), knocked 2 power plants offline. The effect of that rippled thru the entire eastern half of the country in just one second.
https://youtu.be/XUN_h-k8kBg
It’s the Washington Monument and it’s a national treasure (coughs in sleeve) but quite frankly, it’s poorly built and I would not recommend being in or around it in the event of an even modest earthquake. It will transform itself into a pile of bricks. BTW, the footing was built upon a swamp–I wonder if it leans some like the one in Pisa?
Wow!
The Fed’s Global Dollar Problem
https://bv.ms/2nHdMsD
Yep, systemic risk as high as ever.
That’s what triggered the Asian Financial Crisis in the 90’s…
A friend of mine was in the jewelry business — he had mega USD denominated debt — revenues in Thai Baht — the currency went the wrong way and overnight he was bankrupt —- he was completely wiped out
There is also the problem of all of the debt that the Central Banks hold, as interest rates rise. It falls in value. If they try to sell the debt, it has the opposite impact that buying it in the first place (at least in my view). An awfully lot of debt in the US Central Bank is Mortgage Backed Securities. This article is called, Bond Market Calm Is Threatened by Fed’s $1.75 Trillion MBS Shift. I am afraid that the situation is worse than the article claims. The issue is more than volatility; the sale of these bonds will tend to force mortgage rates up further.
Fast Eddy ” Elders most certainly understand the nature of this problem — the price of oil needs to be over $100 — but it cannot be — because that means growth ends.
There is of course no solution — those are immutable facts.”
So what do you do if you are running the show — do you just sit back and let it play out”
The elders have been creating scapegoats to divert attention away from anything remotely systemic–so when the end comes, they cannot be blamed but undesirable people can be (Muslims, the “Alt-Right”, etc).
https://oh3za.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/227716_142462992576783_67234886_n.jpg
Most definitely ….
And ‘green shoots’ are forever around the corner —- well actually we are passed green shoots — we have saplings now …. we have full employment — just switch on Bloomberg and they will tell ya!!!
And your point?
I knew it — you don’t understand what Gail writes — and you don’t understand what I write — I would have thought my point was obvious
Oh it’s obvious all right. Boring, predictable, wrong, and obvious. Have some more turkey.
Make a prediction FE. Any prediction. Oh wait, wrong again.
Do you get paid to troll, or do it out of the goodness of your own heart? Doesn’t it get boring, or do you have a psychological disorder that compels you to engage in anonymous interweb taunting?
Look, anyone with an IQ over 125 knows we cannot sustain infinite growth on a finite planet; QED. So the game isn’t trying to rationalize what is occurring. Rather, the play is to make sure the billions of suckers don’t infringe on the ability of the elders to manage its way out of this slot canyon.
There is only one solution: reduce gross overall energy consumption. This can best be achieved through a combination of population reduction and (drastically) lower net per capita energy consumption. As the saying goes “it ain’t brain science”.
Why do you think the left hates Trump? A, he’s either a moron who doesn’t understand what’s going on and is simply satisfying his narcissistic ego in becoming president on the basis of promising a return to an 30 year era that was a blink in time ie energy surplus. Or, **or**, he knows exactly what’s going down, but has betrayed his class by letting the peasants have one more turn at the bar.
Ultimately, the end game is to defeat Russia in order to gain the last remaining energy reserves on plant earth to enable the intelligentsia once last chance to create a technological escape path. Really, when you step back and look at the overall picture, the only way out is to have everyone plugged into the matrix to provide a simulacrum of reality. Smart devices are only using milliwatts of energy. Billions engaged in dopamine transponders can both keep the peace and reduce real energy consumption to practically nil.
This is the end game. Lots of money to be made understanding the only possible solution. Well, there’s another: global nuclear war in a conflagration of pique and frustration.
“we cannot sustain infinite growth on a finite planet”
We can even do it in a finite solar system. But we can have growth for a long time, longer than the entire industrial era, if we go into space.
“the only way out is to have everyone plugged into the matrix to provide a simulacrum of reality.”
That’s the other way. In the long term that runs humanity (and the planet) up against waste heat radiation problems.
Sorry, typo
We can’t even do it . . . .
The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program.
And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right!
Everything starts as somebody’s daydream.
Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.
— Larry Niven
Good replies; yes indeed, space is the only way out. Yet, we cannot possibly transport physical bodies – it must be electric. So, we must first answer the question, what is knowledge & intelligence ie the soul? A biological substrate (brain) that supports neurochemical activity which creates a perception of “reality”.
While space provides the escape path, the technology necessary to achieve such a feat can be used in the interim to dramatically reduce overall global energy consumption. Why waste precious energy stores both manufacturing transportation devices and then the add’l energy necessary to drive/fly them? Why not simply recreate the process via simulation using mere milliwatts of energy?
If one has reached a quantum state and is transacting on multiple levels of production & consumption per second 24/7, doesn’t that economic activity contribute to GNP? If so, doesn’t that solve the debt overhang problem? The issue has always been around growth, which is driven by combined efficiencies in both production and consumption.
To date, our history as a species has been fossil fuel based, but is that necessary the case going forward? Doomers think we’re locked in to that model, and thus logically conclude there’s no way out. However, optimists realize that at the rate of technological discovery & knowledge, we’re very close to fully understanding the brain at its very essence. In that case, the next step is virtual simulation; if that is achieved, the path is clear.
Which also raises an interesting question: if this is the logical end-game for intelligent life, who’s to say we’re first? Wouldn’t that be unlikely? Which then leads to the conclusion that we’re not first, and intelligent life already exists in the universe in the form of transportable electric (light) waves.
we send 3d printers to mars—various types and sizes
then all we have to do after that is just transmit everything we need—journey time 20 minutes or so
can’t see the problem
BAU 2.0 — Man Colonizes Mars —- IN STORES NOW!
Well… since there soon won’t be any stores — Click here to buy NOW
Technology will save us.
Technology will save us.
Technology will save us.
I keep repeating that…. hoping I can indoctrinate myself…. it’s not working.
Is there a pill or something that I need to take?
yup—take this one
ignore “rugby international” printed on it, and the bootmarks
“we’re very close to fully understanding the brain at its very essence. ”
No. Not at all. We can’t even simulate the behavior of a nematode (c. elegans), which only has 302 neurons! A human has nearly a hundred billion. And then there is the behavior of neurotransmitters, synapse strength, epigrinetic effects on cell behavior, etc. If anyone thinks they khow how complex the human brain is, they are wrong. It is much more complex than that.
And as for Keith, he doesn’t seem to understand scale. The Skylon doesn’t even exist except on paper, and has gotten virtually nowhere in over a decade. It will never exist. Keith is holding on to some delusional techno-utopia that only exists in his mind. Perhaps he’s read a little too much science fiction. But I find his lack of common engineering sense somewhat perplexing.
Re Skylon, of course it may never exist. However, I was over there a year ago and they had close to a hundred engineers working on the design problems. The UK government has put at least $100 million into the project. They are not the only ones, the Air Force Research Lab has take an interest in precooled engines and is building some.
I was, incidentally, rather skeptical about the precooler. Thousands of brazed joints and it isn’t going to leak helium? But REL figured out how to do it. I saw their first one full size test precooler in 2012.
BTW, when I was at REL a year ago, in recognition of the potential market power satellites represent to their Skylon project, they gave me the entire engineering department for two hours. First hour was bringing them up to date on power satellite design progress, second hour was a discussion about how fast Skylon production could be ramped up.
” lack of common engineering sense”
My paper, except for the last Sustech paper are on line. I would appreciate it if you would review them. If you can find any cases where they ” lack common engineering sense” I would appreciate you pointing out such places so I can fix them.
Also, if you can point out any place where I don’t seem to understand scale I would appreciate that as well.
“If you can find any cases where they ” lack common engineering sense”
Sure. In your paper “Beamed Energy and the Economics of Space Based Solar Power” you say “The way to beat the rocket equation is to cheat. Reaction Engines’ Skylon does this…” (p. 262) You can’t cheat the rocket equation. And you have zero references in your article to support your claim about the Skylon’s propulsion system, making the paper pretty much idle speculation. Then there is common sense, I’m pretty darn sure if NASA though such propulsion was a viable way to get things into space, they’s not just be all over it, but be doing it already, as well as every other space agency and private space entity. Technology will not save us, sadly. You can’t cheat the law of diminishing returns with anything, including technology.
I am impressed that you were able to find that book. There were not many printed of that conference proceedings. It’s also from 2009 and the proposal is long out of date. I didn’t have an economic solution till last year.
“cheat”
The word was used partly as artistic license. But Skylon isn’t a pure rocket except at the very end of flight into orbit.. It uses oxygen from the air for the first 26 km and to Mach 5.5. It takes about 690 seconds to get through the air burning phase. If it were a rocket going straight up, this would cost 6.8 km/s for gravity drag. It doesn’t because the gravity drag is carried on the wings at a low cost in aerodynamic drag.
Even after a Skylon goes into using internal oxygen, the wings still offload much of the gravity drag. I spent considerable time reconstructing the REL spreadsheets. Skylon takes a remarkable flight path into space. You remember “Max Q” which is a reference to maximum dynamic pressure on a rocket? In the atmosphere, Skylon gains altitude and speed to go up a constant dynamic pressure path.
“zero references”
I reference Skylon and Reaction Engines. Anyone with an interest would go there and there is plenty of material. The focus of the paper was beamed energy propulsion rather than Skylon. Incidentally, Skylon is only half the solution. The other half is propulsion power satellites and tugs that use arcjets to get 20-25 km/s exhaust velocity for moving cargo to higher orbits. It’s described here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEkZkINrJaA
“if NASA thought such propulsion was a viable way”
I don’t know how much attention NASA is paying to Skylon, probably not much. But if you Google on AFRL and Skylon you will get a long list of articles about the US Air Force Research Lab investigating Skylon two years ago and letting contracts for work on the engine.
“Technology will not save us”
You may be right. However, I can’t think of anything more likely to get us out of the fix we are in. Can you?
Mentioning… and providing references… is not the same thing…
FE: Did I mention that I used to play centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs?
???: Oh wow – that must have been cool. You would have played in the 80’s and I am a huge Leaf fan – and I don’t remember you. Can you provide references – perhaps a link to a team roster with your name on it?
FE: I already mentioned I played — what more do you want? If you don’t believe me then let’s go outside and I’ll beat you to death. Is that what you F789ing want???? Would that be a good enough reference??????
Here, just insert the short code; https://youtu.be/VEkZkINrJaA
“I can’t think of anything more likely to get us out of the fix we are in. Can you?”
Well… Yes. Acceptance. All we can do is try after all. Civilization is just an extension of who we are as individuals, and can be spoken of as such. It will try it’s best to live life to the fullest, have it’s ups and its downs… and ultimately die. And some are questioning it’s meaning, others are trying to allow it live and grow as long as possible, some are cheering on its death.
There truly is nothing new under the sun.
“Well… Yes. Acceptance.”
Can you tell me how this gets us out of the problems we have? It sounds like you are proposing sitting around and waiting to die.
“All we can do is try after all.”
I don’t see where that is consistent with acceptance.
“It sounds like you are proposing sitting around and waiting to die.”
Waiting for Godot.
“Godot”
Are you aware that Godot *never* shows up?
Of course not!
Keith — it just occurred to me….. you remind me of Elon Musk …. without the private jet….
Now how do you make your silly dreams come true as Elon has done?
You need a PR company. That really is only the difference between you and Elon….
You on your own sound like a ranting mad man ….
Can you imagine if you were to start telling people that they would soon have the option of living on Mars?
You’d be laughed at – shunned.
Elon does it all the time — and he’s taken seriously!
Get a good PR firm behind you Keith — and you can be just like Elon — where the more money you waste on unfeasible ideas — the more people will want to give you another billion!
@FE “Is there a pill or something that I need to take?”
The blue one, obviously. I don’t have one at the moment, but you can have this: 💊
timl and keith, I think we need to collectively embrace both of your strategies. We need to develop technology and we need practice acceptance, especially if and when the technology doesn’t work.
“you have zero references in your article to support your claim about the Skylon’s propulsion system”
What no links to Wikipedia?
“Mentioning… and providing references… is not the same thing…
FE: Did I mention that I used to play centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs?
???: Oh wow – that must have been cool. You would have played in the 80’s and I am a huge Leaf fan – and I don’t remember you. Can you provide references – perhaps a link to a team roster with your name on it?
FE: I already mentioned I played — what more do you want? If you don’t believe me then let’s go outside and I’ll beat you to death. Is that what you F789ing want???? Would that be a good enough reference??????”
Thats a good post FE. The reason why is KH displays some pretty disrespectful behavior all perpetrated with a smile. Name dropping and association is part of the technique he uses. Keith uses name dropping to associate himself as a authority. He does it as a deterrent to questioning the obvious mistruths he presents as facts. A person presenting a viable plan has no reason to talk about supposed associations, the plan can stand on its own merit. Use of that technique is one of the red flags that indicates that you are in the presence of someone with a agenda that serves their own purpose or needs. The fact that techniques are used that eliminate honest discussion are being instituted is defacto evidence of the extremism of actions driven by that purpose or those needs.
Establishing supposed relationships prior to any hint of questioning also establishes a complexity that disallows simple questions. Simple questions now have to include the association made. The supposed association is easy to make but the effort needed to include the association it in questions responding to mistruth is considerable. It is certainly a primary technique used by KH but is foreshadowed by his favorite tool of deception; imagery that presents favorable outcomes. Modus operandi. Know it. KH does.
” Name dropping”
I tend to mention the people who worked on what I write about. Is it name dropping to mention Steve Nixon who suggested moving the construction site to the gap between the belts and contributed a number of other ideas? Or Kris Holland and Anna Nesterova who did the animations? Or the beamed energy gurus like Jordin Kare and Keven Parkin? Can I credit Eric Drexler who (before he got involved with nanotechnology) co-authored a paper with me on space radiators? To avoid “name dropping” who should I not mention?
“obvious mistruths he presents as facts.”
Can you go into detail? If I got something wrong, I have no problem admitting it and correcting it. It’s not in my nature to knowingly say mistruths. In 1972, the last time I was an employee, not being willing to sign off on a document that was untrue cost me my job. (I was fired for being unwilling to sign a certificate about the MTBF of a part which–years later–I found may have gone into nuclear reactors.)
“imagery that presents favorable outcomes.”
I presume you are talking about the videos. Those things are expensive! Can you see any point in spending money to depict unfavorable outcomes?
seems ideal post collapse
and more fun than being Amish anyway
I thought that pic was taken at the Amish S&M convention … or was it the Mormon convention …
I am told that they love that s78t.
trust you to know the difference between an Amish SM convention and an ordinary SM convention
hope they dont try to meet on Folsom street on the same day
Yes, it’s all about running the show know-how, in long term sense, less about the money of the day. Simply, people who think in 4th turnings and 200-300cycles or even bit longer perspectives and the ability to merge it with delegated micromanagement level (hired govs and institutions).
Are they omnipotent and everlasting, unless some further evidence provided, most likely in physical sense not. But in philosophical plane very much so. It’s like “secret script” how to run human farm, you can learn/unlearn.
Now we seem to be near one of the thresholds of longer term realignments, increasingly other nodes of power and control like the orbit around China and Russia rise to the occasion of asking for larger pie share of the global loot. They could be accommodated by the older guard (taken on board), outmaneuvered (mostly by corrupting their inner players) or directly fight against.
For instance, China is sending clear signals, it’s not interested toppling the cart just yet (in theory they could force non USD payments yesterday), however lots of know how and one way trade advantage remains to be realized in next ~10-20yrs. Not mentioning the necessity to beef up the defense and foreign alliance domains, that needs some more time. One of their top scenarios must be the older hegemons just crumble and implode into isolationism and fractured fiefdoms to protect, not one shot fired so to speak.
Well, and if the single stage event doomers (as opposed to multi stage doomers) are right afterall, what’s not to like as of now, most of the global top players have it almost all already in some dosage: power & control, domestic & int prestige, luxury trinkets.
you never mentioned infamy
population problem
I’ve always kind of believed that if it weren’t for 2 world wars so close to each other we wouldn’t have the kind of population problem we have today. Those 2 wars threw everything out of whack population wise. Too many dead at once and too many born at once changed the demographics of the entire world. It’s a known fact isn’t that we are approaching a day and age wherein there are going to be more old people around than young or am I barking up the wrong tree here?.
ww1 and 2 took out 100 million
at the start of ww1 world pop was about 2.5 bn give or take—its now 7.5 bn
world wars barely blipped population rise, which is why it will take more than world wars to solve the population problem
Meanwhile, other species have a different population problem. Two examples: it is estimated that there are 300 black footed ferrets and 30 vaquitas remaining in existence. My recommendation: pick at least one threatened species (besides H.”sapiens”) to foster and promote in whatever way that you can. Its also good for relieving unhealthy preoccupation with our own species’ survival.
Sort of agree. We need to whittle down our issues drastically. Three max maybe. Put them in order of strategic priority, and don’t move majorly onto the next one till the preceding is “done.” Although it’s exceedingly difficult to get any worthwhile ones done at all.
Ok — I’ll stop using the powdered black rhino horn and switch to Viagra…
But I’m not giving up my whale burgers and shark’s find soup. There are plenty of whales and sharks in the ocean
Well you should know that things can MOL only go a certain way. So you’ll have to comply with that way, like it or not. 🙂
thatll be a relief to however many virgins are left out of the 69 you had to start with
It might have been a blip in raw numbers, but the people who died in the world wars tended to live in developed countries and were more valuable for civilization.
The population increase, in terms of quality, is meaningless. We gained 5 billion people who are good for very little.
@ kulm–unfortunately they all want to eat drink and breathe
to them it’s very important
Norm,
“If you use barter, then the goods bartered require energy to be created and sustained.
Therefore you cannot have a chain of bartered goods where the chain itself gives a diminishing return with each ‘exchange’ down the line. There must always be an ‘upward’ barter. And if you have an upward barter, you must have constantly increasing energy at the start and in subsequent exchanges.”
That sounds like how Adam Smith SHOULD have started his book. Maybe we’d be in world somewhat different, if you’d been there.
Care to elaborate? Not that the above needs any elaboration, but just because you do it so well.
to elaborate if I can, starting from base products/needs. I have chosen pots and bread because they are fundamental to any basic living condition.
You want a pot.
I know a claypit, and I have a potters skill—so i dig out a ball of clay and make you a pot.
But for it to be any use, I must fire it, and that takes wood….so your pot has incorporated heat. I also have the investment of a kiln to incrementally pay for.
So you have my energy input of muscle+heat+skill=pot
To do all that, i need food—and you are a baker
you make wheat into flour and using heat make it into bread.
You have the investment of an oven to incrementally pay for
so your energy input of muscle+heat+skill=bread
so we trade bread for pot.
All cash does is allow you to buy either as separate transactions.
But we cannot survive just by trading bread and pots, so other skills must be brought into the system.
If I consistently traded pots for less calorific value than i received in your bread—i and my family would starve to death–(and vice versa). I would be “undervaluing” my pots in terms of pure energy.
Money is irrelevant in a barter economy. I might give a pot away if I was feeling generous, but that gift would have to be made up by everyone else over time.
The calorific value in potmaking and breadmaking can be precisely measured,
so each trader must gain a calorific increase (profit) in the transaction, in order to stay energy-solvent.
But both cannot “gain”–so benefit has to come from “somewhere”, because an exact balance is impossible unless you are a hunter-gatherer.
so to do that there must be efficiencies of scale—ie our ovens must make 0000s of pots, and 0000s of loaves constantly bartered to and fro together with everything else within our commercial infrastructure, no matter how basic.
Nothing can be made without heat, so baker or potter must constantly source heat in order to “gain” advantage This applies to every traded product with any usable function. And every loaf and pot carries its energy boost within itself up the trading line
It is impossible to define a pair of shoes as having 2310 incorporated calories, or to look for a tradable product (a hat say) with 2310 incorporated calories, so there is an inevitable uptrade to make the system work in the sense that we know it. In other words we are forced to seek some kind of profit-advantage if we can, according to the skills we have to trade.
If we don’t do that, then civilization will distintegrate, because the trade/skills that allow it to function will cease to be viable in the long term.
This is where we have collectively lost our sense of reality, in that we still live in a barter society, lubricated with money. (I work for 25 years to buy your house) We remain in denial of it.
We have been conditioned to expect that growth is infinite, because there has always been gainful advantage in our system. We now think money pops out of slots in walls, and carries actual value.
As the price of pots and bread rose year on year, so we had payrises to cover it year on year. Which worked fine so long as there was a constant input of cheap energy to prop up the system. (vast forests, cheap coal and oil—etc…we had to find stuff to burn)
Now the cheap energy has gone, an we are trying to make the system work with expensive energy—or worse, fantasise that we can make it work on no energy input at all.
Which is why reversion to hunter gathering becomes inevitable.
That is what is concluded in this very interesting movie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Forest
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/15889428/Into.the.Forest.2015.720p.BRRip.x264.AAC-ETRG
depressingly interesting Eddy
the 2nd link wouldn’t open
Norman – you need to have a torrent to grab this
Bit Torrent https://utorrent.en.softonic.com/
Then you can pull the movie down ….
https://thepiratebay.org/search/into%20the%20forest/0/99/200
Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZjKrI-bmzE
“thepiratebay.org” is blocked by all UK ISPs. Try searching for the torrent on btdb.in, which hasn’t been blocked yet, or else install TOR and access thepiratebay through the dark web.
yes my system didn’t like it at all—will leave well alone for the moment
but thanks anyway
How can there ba a “massive, continent-wide power outage”, when everybode will have its own power generation and storage at home?
The producers missed a huge opportunity for product placement here…
If I were them – I’d have pre-screened the movie for Tesla execs and offered to change the ending to one where Elon rushes in with his solar battery solution and the world res-starts…
All for a price of course…. the Fed is picking up the tab so what does Tesla care about the price
“and you are a baker you make wheat into flour”
Wrong job title. The person who makes wheat into flour is a miller. Bakers take it from there.
i remain eternally grateful for correction of an error of such cataclysmic proportions.
in order to put over meaning and concept of a subject, in a manner which is clear sharp and to the point, using a minimum of words, my style of writing takes into account a certain assumption of reader-intellect.
Or to put it more clearly–stating the bloody obvious is not always necessary
In here, as a general rule that assumption is not misplaced or under estimated.
there are of course exceptions to that reader level, I can make no allowances for that
I should not be so pedantic, but there are a lot of complicated steps to making something as simple as bread. Back in the 70s, I did every one of those steps, grew the wheat, thrashed it, ground into course flour and made bread. In fact, I made all the bread the family ate for several years. My conclusion at the time was that without store bought flour, we would eat a lot less bread. 🙂
This is why the Bible describes the agricultural life as a punishment for Sin…..
it’s coarse flour
never leave a good nit unpicked is my motto
Thanks for picking up the misspelling. Spell checkers will only go so far.
you will probably appreciate this
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques for my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea
Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it two saye
Weather eye am wrung oar wright
It shows me strait a weigh
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee for too long
And eye can put the error write
Its rare lea ever wrong
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased to no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew
Nice analogy Norman.
The interplay between the potter and baker well describes economic activity. You’ve also made a good case for the physiocrates. The surplus value is the bread that acts as a storage of energy and a tasty one at that. The pot has embedded energy but no convertibility. It is a durable good. Clearly the pricing power lies with the baker. He is willing to trade a loaf of bread today for your pot but tomorrow he doesn’t need a pot he’s got one. The potter on the other hand needs bread because it’s his primary energy source.
So in very simple terms we have explained why the US has dominated the global oil trade. If you control the energy you control production. But relative to this is the necessity of generating a surplus.
If the baker only has the ability to bake enough bread to sustain himself then economic activity ceases. This is the conundrum the oil industry is facing. Without enough surplus energy the system starts slowing down.
Considering that Capitalism is a dissapative system the feedback accelerates the decline. Like a hurricane it either grows or collapses.
One way to keep the game in play during the growth phase is to build a bunch of crappy durable goods. Which we call planned obsolescence. So if my pot only lasts a day I have a balanced system of trade. This has been our general approach till now. However in the contraction phase the system unwinds very quickly.
I was in Rome two years ago and a friend took us to one of the seven hills. Likely we were on the path Hannibal took. In the woods there was an abandoned section of Roman road. It was in perfect condition. 2000 years ago bread was traded for that road and the value remains.
My point is structurally the present system was designed to consume and destroy. This is not evolutionary advancement this is devolution. A civilization that is determined to be on a path of self destruction is not civilization is it?
Monuments to man’s achievements in our time include nuclear bombs, napalm, agent orange, carpet bombing, cluster bombs, military drones, roundup, crumbling highways, toxic waste dumps, space program, moon shots, radioactive poisoning of the pacific, a population who can’t determine sexual identity, but are sure their sexuality is genetic.
If we’re honest this period of human history has been the darkest of all. If we just take casualties of war which has been over 100million in the last 100 years. For anyone to think the solution is expansion into space I would reply have a little mercy I believe our destruction of one planet is sufficient.
your comment neatly stretched my analogy further in ways i hadn’t thought of, sort of completes it in a way
thanks
Oh Man you’re good. Norm and JT. Thanks!
Where were you guys when the ‘dismal science’ was born? It really could’ve used those two comments in length..
JT how would you categorize Roman aqueducts? Standing for millenia, bringing fresh water from miles away. Making the city of Rome itself capable of supporting a million people in the ancient times (just had to bring a lot of wheat from Egypt, but drinking water and sanitation wise).
Just still wondering about intergenerational ‘artificial habitat’..
aqueducts are just glorified pots
this is one a few miles from me, made of cast iron
http://www.tonycanalpics.co.uk/shrewcan/la/index.html
the Roman ones represented the input of slave labour, the movement of water kept cities viable
This was very thought-provoking. We all came to think about collapse from different paths, but I’ve always been particularly sensitive to destruction, even as a kid. The idea of making things for the purpose of having them break or be almost instantaneously destroyed is heartbreaking, really. There is even a specific word for this kind of regret or sadness about waste in Japanese.
We often hear of “externalities” in industry — side effects. The ironic thing about GDP is that it counts the abatement or mitigation of externalities as beneficial to GDP. So if a company spills oil in a river, and the cleanup effort creates jobs, that is positive for GDP. Or if people are sickened with cancer or asthma as a consequence of industrial activity, that creates jobs in the healthcare field. Our economy does indeed thrive off of destruction. The more disasters occur, the more jobs are created.
It’s fair and good for someone to earn a living from making a good or service that benefits society. But we live in a corrupt world where people can earn a living by setting things up for destruction.
Have a look at Concrete Planet :
https://www.amazon.com/Concrete-Planet-Fascinating-Man-Made-Material/dp/1616144815
People knew that steel rebar in the concrete is not permanent. Steel rusts, expands and concrete crumbles. However, due to very shortsightedness of the homo sapiens (and also greed), we choose to use it even though it lasts no longer than 100 years (generally). How much energy it takes to replace all the concrete in the world? Do we even have that kind of resource to do it when building crumbles?
I have heard the crumbling concrete story before. We have a whole lot of dams in operation right now. Some of them are getting close to 100 years old. How do we fix them? We don’t seem to be able keep them from declining due to other causes. We have all heard about the Oroville dam, with its problems, in California. This article says,
“The lower half of the spillway has concrete erosion, creating a gaping hole in a structure that is used for controlled releases of water.”
This article says,
Construction of the Oroville dam began in 1961 and was finished in 1968. The recent infrastructure report on dams says that the average age of dams is 56 years, so this dam in probably typical of dams we have today. The report singles our California as having a much-above-average level of regulation of dams, with only 20 dams per regulator. Yet, they seem to have missed the problems in recent reviews.
Doomsday Prepper Tip of the Day (sponsored by Peak Prosperity…)
When doomsday hits…. and you run out of cans of beans …. take a stick of dynamite (make sure you have a stock of dynamite…) head up to the nearest dam …. and blast a hole in it …. then as the water drains take out your net and catch all the fish that thunder through the hole…
Then with all that salt you have stockpiled you can cure all that fish and you’ll avoid starvation for many more months.
LOL!
Thanks for the very nice example!
This is an answer to an earlier post of Pintada.
“What are they doing wrong?” – they killed us, and themselves in the process. If they are so smart, so intelligent, and actually exist as an organized group, why did they [The ‘Elders’] not:
1. control population in the 1950’s?
2. eliminate all nuclear power plants – or if you do not have a phobia for all things nuclear – build breeder reactors
3. Keep Johnny down on the farm even after he had seen gay Paris.
4. etc. Since these mythical “elders” are so smart, they would have seen 100 (10000) other ways to prevent the current predicament.
There is no-one in control,
—
1, What happened is that at that time , except for some far-seeing people, everyone thought growth was good and great. They also thought every person had an equal ability.
2. There had to be a job program for the nuclear scientists and something to get rid of the nuclear material assembled, since thanks to the Rosenbergs nuclear war was no longer a monopoly of America.
3. This is probably a reference to the American soldiers seeing Paris during World War II.
Stalin’s soldiers saw Berlin, Prague, Vienna and Breslau (which was more important than Prague and Vienna before WW2, although the Poles neglected this city after it became Wroclaw, which still has many pre-WW2 buildings complete with bullet holes).
But Stalin had commissars indoctrinating the soldiers to pay no attention to these cities, and after their round of rape and looting was over the Soviet soldiers duly went back to their factories and kolkhozes. It was done successfully.
Truman essentially bribed the US soldiers with the GI bill, which started a huge round of education bubble.
4. There are ways to save these Elder’s behinds, although I don’t think they have a solution to save all 7.5 billion.
kulm
It’s been well demonstrated on this site that technology is not the solution if anything technology has become a problem. For example the real issues affecting the economy are demographic but the demographic changes aren’t merrily based on birth rate it’s really based on death rate. If we want to be honest with ourselves the healthcare industry itself is a major contributing factor to the crisis. Global productivity is being funneled into an unproductive arena. Obamacare was a demonstration of this. Here is an attempt to force the healthy young segment of the population to compensate for the decline in the unhealthy unproductive parts of the economy. It may seem cruel to make that statement but the reality is the most efficient thing all the governments of the world could do would be to abolish healthcare . So in reality the problem is not a technical problem the problem is a moral issue. Mao was vilified because of how he handled the opium crisis in China. Of course we are only exposed to the western side of the story, forgetting that Brintan was behind the trade. But where would China be now if the addiction had continued. Something like where the US is now with hillbilly heroine? For that matter why does a healthy disciplined segment of the economy have to subsidize the high risk lifestyles of others? Whether it’s Aids, cancer from smoking, drug abuse. Why should someone have free will to destroy their personal productivity and expect society to pick up the tab?
Are any of these things relevant to the immediate crisis? No it’s too late but it does demonstrate the moral inability for people to make rational choices. So for anyone to think there is a work around solution they are delusional. But that is not uncommon.
I have a friend who is a senior risk analyst for a major international bank. He see’s no risk in the QE so far and believes there will never be any. He also believes that the solution to growth is interplanetary travel. This will be accomplished by a low orbit launch platform that will be teathered to a an elevator of some sort. He is responsible for hiring other analysts throughout the company. What do you think? Is there any cause for hope?
2Tim 3:8
8 Now in the way that Janʹnes and Jamʹbres opposed Moses, so these also go on opposing the truth. Such men are completely corrupted in mind, disapproved as regards the faith. 9 Nevertheless, they will make no further progress, for their folly will be very plain to all, as it was with those two men.
JT you make a great point. Humanity had a chance 40 years ago to reduce its collective birth rate but failed miserably. Now we have Europe, Russia, Japan etc at zero population growth rates but most of Africa and many countries in Asia still growing exponentially.
Trivia: At one point in his presidency Richard Nixon came close to proposing a national population policy.
Overall, the models show that we will level off at about 9 billion. Can we feed this many people? It seems like we can. Can we continue to truck strawberries across the u.s.? Probably not. If collapse were imminent, I think you would see a greater disruption in the transport of food than we are seeing.
That food supply-chains are functional now (outside of countries already collapsing like Yemen or with major inflation like Nigeria or Venezuela) is no evidence that they will remain so or that they aren’t in danger of breaking down soon when major financial problems manifest. The scary thing to me is that we are likely to go from well-stocked supermarkets to a food security crisis almost overnight.
You could be correct. It does baffle me. If wages continue to decrease, people tend to not go out to eat as much and they cut back on luxury food items. Seems like we should be seeing more disruption in this area. Of course, once financial collapse hits, then your scenario makes sense.
Right, Kurt – I know what you mean. Here in the UK supermarkets have been battling a deflationary environment (or at least they were until Brexit) and a creaking economy, to which they have responded with price-wars and brutal treatment of suppliers:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/supermarkets-using-shocking-tactics-to-extract-money-from-suppliers-a7625936.html
true—we CAN feed 9 maybe 10 bn
that’s not the problem–problems are
1…as food and support resources go into short supply, denial of the problem will increase exponentially
2 …fighting over what’s left will destroy what’s left
right now, in Sudan, there’s enough food for everyone (just) but they are spending money on arms to fight a civil war that will devastate the entire country
This will happen in every country where crisis hits.
And I make no exceptions
‘fighting over what’s left will destroy what’s left’
Venezuela has not collapsed (yet) but they are eating dogs, cats, flamigos. anteaters…
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/05/18/venezuela-food-shortages-cause-some-hunt-dogs-cats-pigeons/84547888/
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article131778819.html
In North Korea https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2010/07/starving-north-koreans-forced-survive-diet-grass-and-tree-bark/
Makes you wonder — when collapse does hit — will people not eat everything that is edible?
Will they not kill every single animal including rats — will they not rip every single plant that can be eaten — from the ground?
Of course they will.
I was watching the interview with the U of T professor that I posted last night … he was discussing soviet russia — and how at one point during the mass starvation that killed tens of millions — they had to put up signs urging people not to eat their children…
See the photos
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4076244/Distressing-photos-1920s-Russian-famine-turned-hopeless-peasants-cannibals-five-million-people-starved-death.html
They dropped dead in the streets, lay dying and rotting in their houses, and some women became so desperate for food that they ate their own children.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1038774/Holocaust-hunger-The-truth-Stalins-Great-Famine.html
It is important to note that the famine is Russia would be considered Famine-Lite compared to what post BAU is going to look like
There was still food being grown – there was still energy available — there were still animals alive to provide manure ….
So when you read the above stories — keep in mind — that will seem like utopia post BAU….
The U.S. won’t get to that point. Too much arible land and too much oil on the continent. It is not a good idea to generalize the worst case scenario from history all the time, especially when it doesn’t fit the current circumstances. It is simply hyperbole.
Now that is wishful thinking at it’s best!
The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are recognized as the largest in the world, totaling 297 billion barrels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Venezuela
Plenty of arable land http://www.fao.org/ag/agp/agpc/doc/counprof/venezuela/venezuela.htm
People seem to think America is special — that this cannot happen there — that’s what you get when these myths are hammered into your head from the time you are born …
It’s also what happens when you live in a country that lives large off of its pillaging for the world’s resources —- it becomes impossible to even think that the grocery stores shelved could ever empty….
The can be No End of More….
Think again — when BAU goes — America will be in the same boats as Venezuela — the entire world will starve.
My buddies up there in the mountains of Irian Jaya will be ok — until the spent fuel ponds get them of course
havent checked the figures lately, but the usa has about 40 m people on food aid
oil is food, and food is oil. Oil/food is being misappropriated somewhere down the line—mega yachts, corporate jets etc etc no doubt.
People are going hungry everywhere
a government has just been elected that seems hellbent on slashing every intermal and external aid program to benefit the wealthy.
(Sheriff of Nottingham or what?)
It might be possible to feed everyone on a median diet, in median house etc etc—but the elite arent having that.
Eventually they may be forced to—but not without a struggle
that is the stuff of revolution i fear
“usa has about 40 m people on food aid”
That would give about 280 million who are not on food aid. What is it that sorts the population into those who have and those who don’t have?
What sort of personality traits has evolution worked into the ones who have? The question is answered right at the end of this 27 minute talk.
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0/gregory-clark
It’s certainly consistent with the underlying FW model.
Herbert Hoover arranged to feed the Bolsheviks. It would have been better if more of the would-be soldiers of Stalin to have starved.
I am confused that UN says four countries are facing starvation, and neither Syria or Venezuela makes the list. Is it just as exaggerated as Greece?
I don’t think we are adequately feeding 7.5B now. Consider the environmental destruction humans have inflicted, over the past 10k years as we ran our population up to the present number (Australia was being ravaged for tens of thousands of years prior to that). The damage we were doing at 3B was horrific, then it was 5B and worse, now to achieve 9 or 10 billion, that’s ridiculous. The destruction inflicted by 7.5B doesn’t go away, it’s still there and gets worse.
There won’t be another species living in the wild. Even now, managing wildlife parks is a losing battle and becoming cost prohibitive. Not before too long, I imagine the various custodians will throw their hands up in despair.
a great deal of the famine and food shortage in the world is caused by conflict.
if there was no conflict and people were able to plan seasons and harvests, there would be very little food shortage.
denial of the problem forces leaders into wars—and has done for 000s of years—just that in our time its become vastly magnified.
We are effectively feeding them oil…. which is not ideal given….
We won’t get to 9 billion
Dream on. Me, I’m going to have some Turkey. You really need to think about the overall resources of the U.S. To suggest that we are anything like Venezuela is sheer nonsense. Fun, but absolute nonsense. Again, the hyperbole just gets really old after awhile. If you want to engage in a reasonable conversation, think before you type. But you don’t, do you.
Kurt — I assume you read Gail’s posts — but you do not understand them.
God will look after America post BAU. God Bless America.
I almost can’t wait for the STHF — because I can imagine the shock on so many people’s faces when they realize America is not special — it is not immune….
Actually America would be very low on my list of places to be when BAU ends —- it is a cesspool of hatred….
If the U.S. has so many “Resources” then why has the U.S. outsourced so much? Why is the U.S. importing so much?
Self-sufficiency is what matters.
There are no self-sufficient countries anymore.
I don’t know the latest stats, but the USA with 5% of the world’s population consumed 50% of the resources at the end of WW2. It’s lower today but still probably the most unsustainable nation on the planet.
Even Venezuela is not Venezuela.
I have a friend who is a senior risk analyst for a major international bank. He see’s no risk in the QE so far and believes there will never be any. He also believes that the solution to growth is interplanetary travel. This will be accomplished by a low orbit launch platform that will be teathered to a an elevator of some sort. He is responsible for hiring other analysts throughout the company. What do you think? Is there any cause for hope?
WOW!
AIDS…. let’s be frank — for the most part people who get this are engaging in some very risky business… gay saunas must be high on the list — shooting drugs as well….
So we spend billions on this disease — trying to keep people alive — people who didn’t give a rats ass about getting or giving HIV in the past….
So what are the odds that they are going to play it safe now that they have another lease on life? Sure some might — but plenty won’t – as evidenced by the increasing rates of infection.
Would we not be better off neutering such people? As for the drug users we just put them in front of a firing squad….
Desperate times >>>> desperate (wise) measures.
Too much people.
On an aggregate basis, the real economy was 7% smaller in 2015 than in 2005, and SEEDS indicates that Britain hit “peak prosperity” back in 2003 (line 71). On a per-capita basis, discretionary income declined by 13% between 2005 and 2015 (line 87), and is falling at a trend rate of about 1.4% annually.
Conclusions
Overall, then, the SEEDS assessment of the British economy is very bearish. Individual prosperity is deteriorating – as is the aggregate, once the effect of “borrowed consumption” is adjusted out – whilst debt continues to rise markedly. Dependency on overseas creditors has become acute, mainly because income flows have been impaired by past patterns of asset sales and borrowing from abroad.
Looking ahead, the deterioration in British economic performance is starting to look irreversible, and certainly cannot be halted, let alone reversed, without wholesale changes in policy.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
Funny how the mother of the industrial revolution, now becomes the poster child of the demise of the industrial civilisation.
UK Oil and NG peak production 2003 -2004, peak prosperity 2003, real debt adusted debt to GDP is now over 330% and will be over 400% by the end of the decade. The UK economy no longer is savable. What happens to Brexit? Will Scotland run for independency? Is localization under overwhelming burdens of debt, the key to maintain BAU ?
Whatever happens in the UK now, looks to be like a mirror image of whats happening everywhere else a while later.
This discussion addresses a range of issues that have come up on FW
The world’s last chance was the Korean War, which USA got involved because MacArthur wanted to play the king of Asia.
The hapless Koreans were collapsing, and USA should let the undeveloped and primitive country collapse, and let commies take the trouble to feed it. Instead USA got into the habit of getting involved to every bush war on earth and sending lots of materiel, which only fed into more pop growth.
In fact the so-called Cold War was an attempt to enlarge the markets so the Third Worlders could consume more Western goods. It proved to be a very short-sighted policy; they increased too much, and consumed too much of the world’s resources which is why we are in such big mess.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Mick_Jagger_Deauville_2014.jpg/220px-Mick_Jagger_Deauville_2014.jpg
http://www.oxygen.com/sites/nbcuoxygen/files/field_blog_image/2015/10/paris_hilton.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1245592600/prince-charles.jpg
And so on….
“The Elders” themselves are a creation of the industrial age. What happened long ago was a fusion of old feudal aristocratic, and new merchant lines, and some of these lines happened to stumble upon billions of units of currency, and as long as they can keep the currency game going, their wealth remains intact.
But the currencies themselves will begin to fail, as they are all just artificial debt promises. But without growth, the money promises no longer have any meaning. The collapse will see the end of most elder families (or transformation, so to say). What they will be left with is estates, land, art, gold, etc.
Now, that is certainly fine, but it’s nothing like billions of dollars, jets, access to modern medicine, ability to buy and sell companies across the planet at whim, etc.
They will have no way to protect their estates – art – gold…. so they will be in the gutter starving with everyone else…
You will have a chance to meet all sorts of interesting people in the gutter… such as:
http://gulfelitemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Forbes-George-Soros.jpg
https://www.looktothestars.org/photo/20-angelina-jolie/story_half_width.jpg
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/03/09/09/Cristiano-Ronaldo2.jpg
Not really. The truly chic always seems to get away from any kind of turmoil.
If Czarina Alix married her daughters to the commissars at Yekaterinburg, like Austria’s Emperor Franz who married Marie Louise off to Napoleon, the entire history of Russian Revolution would have turned out vastly different.
‘truly chic’