I am putting this post up to give commenters who would like to carry on conversations related to previous posts a place to comment, since comments on my last post have been cut off.
Also, my family and I recently returned from a two-week vacation to Japan. The combination of the time away and jet lag has given me less time to research and write a full article. Here are a few observations, based on my recent trip to Japan:
General
The scenery is beautiful, but it is clear that the Japanese people and agriculture are squeezed into the small amount of land that is not mountainous and forested.
The amount of land being used for agriculture has been steadily falling. Our tour guide remarked that if an older person wanted to leave agriculture, getting solar panels installed is an alternate way of obtaining income. We did see quite a few solar panels. But does this approach make sense, when the amount of land farmed is relatively small and falling year-by-year? The USDA says, “Based on total calories consumed, Japan imports about 60 percent of its food each year.”
Tokyo-Edo Museum Visit
When we first arrived in Tokyo, before our bus tour began, we visited the Tokyo-Edo museum. This is a photo of one of the exhibits from the museum.
In previous posts, I have talked about economies being dissipative structures–growing for a fairly long period, before collapsing or obtaining an infusion of cheap energy. I thought that it was interesting that the Edo Period lasted 265 years (1603 – 1868). This is about as long as a person might expect an economy to last in its role as a dissipative structure. In the latter part of the Edo Period, there seemed to be increasing wealth disparity and problems with the government collecting enough taxes. These are things that we would expect to happen, as resources per capita start to fall and complexity starts to increase.
Free English Language Guided Tour of Museum
The three of us (my husband, son, and I) received a free three-hour English language guided tour from a volunteer guide at the Tokyo-Edo Museum. The guide told us that he is a 75-year old retired business man. There was no charge for his services; we were also told not to tip people in Japan.
My impression is that the no-tipping policy is a holdover from the gift economy approach that much of the world used before our current capitalist approach took over. Under the gift economy approach, people are expected to offer their services for nothing, with the expectation that others will reciprocate. This system has pluses and minuses. If pensions of some elderly people are inadequate, it makes it harder for them to provide personal services for wages, since others (with more adequate pensions) will do the same thing for free, as unpaid volunteers.
Traveling School Children
Everywhere we traveled, we encountered a large number of school children traveling on school trips. They often stayed at the same hotels as we did and visited the same sites as we did. In fact, in several places they seemed to be the majority of hotel guests.
The group of children shown above had prepared some type of recitation and response to be offered in the Hiroshima Peace Park. The group is lined up for their presentation, even though there was no real audience for their performance, other than a few of us from our tour bus who happened to be walking by. I can’t imagine US children doing this.
Our tour leader told us that only children whose parents can afford to pay for these class trips are allowed to go. As a result, there is a great deal of pressure on parents to save up money for these trips.
Roads in Japan
The roads in Japan impressed me as being incredibly expensive to build and maintain. Everywhere, we saw walls built along the side of the road, presumably to prevent falling rock. In the US, we just put up signs, “Beware of Falling [really fallen] Rock.” Of course, we have more space, so we don’t build our roads quite so close to the road cuts.
The white line near the side of the road is to mark off what I would call a “sidewalk substitute.” It is a low-cost way of giving pedestrians a little space to walk.
We saw other features that make roads expensive. Our tour bus drove through countless tunnels. We also drove on many sections where the road was elevated, so that more roads could be squeezed into less area.
Nearly everywhere, soundproofing panels have been added because roads are so close to buildings. Roads are being made in an earthquake-proof manner, which also adds to costs.
Our bus frequently drove through toll stations. Wikipedia indicates that most expressways were originally financed by debt, and the tolls are being collected to pay off this debt. The Japan Guide indicates to drive the length of Japan, toll payments of 39,000 yen ($349) are required for a private passenger automobile. This is expensive compared to tolls elsewhere.
Man Made Rocks
Something else I noticed in Japan that I hadn’t seen elsewhere was the use of man-made rocks. Here, they are being used to keep the sea from causing erosion under a major road that is very close to the edge of the sea. We saw other shapes of rocks being used for other purposes elsewhere.
Government Pensions in Japan
The National Pension program in Japan (somewhat equivalent to our Social Security) is based on the assumption that all participants in the program will make equal contributions to the program, regardless of income. In 2017, these contributions amount to 16,490 yen (or $147) per month. To get the maximum pension amount, a person has to contribute at the full level (whatever it is declared to be, each year) for 40 years.
Our bus tour guide told us that because of changing employers and resulting low income, he has been unable to make contributions in recent years. When he retires, he expects that his pension payments will be very low because of this. He seemed to be well educated and hardworking. If he is having pension problems, I expect that many others are also having pension problems. In fact, some may be having pension problems today. We saw quite a few older people working.
Bullet Trains in Japan
One thing we discovered is that Japan’s bullet trains are for people, not luggage. The racks over people’s heads hold a backpack or brief case, but not much more. If people have luggage, they generally send it a day or two ahead of time via a luggage transfer service. There is also no internet service available on these bullet trains.
We chose to take an airplane from Osaka to Tokyo. Airplanes will transfer both people and luggage.
Photo in Kotohira, Japan
This is a photo of my husband, son, and me, after we had climbed 865 steps to a shrine in Kotohira, Japan. We had a good but tiring trip.
I’ve checked with my Families. Actually, they are more like a Community. But they are very close, so sort of like a family. They feel like the System Reset cannot be enacted until they have several Turkey dinners in a row. So, be prepared and bring some stuffing.
Royal Dutch Shell removes export restriction on Nigerian crude, adding to world supply glut. OPEC caught as 250K barrels/day added to glut.
Linky
Sub $40 oil, here we come again…
Tesla owners should pay more for insurance, AAA says
http://www.autonews.com/article/20170604/FINANCE_AND_INSURANCE/170609884/-tesla-owners-should-pay-more-for-insurance-aaa-says?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
“Tesla will have to start making self-towing cars.”
LOL!
New Technology?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-07/saudi-america-%E2%80%93-how-new-tech-creating-another-oil-boom
How will this affect the economy?
It won’t it is total bollocks. Pushed their share price up though.
Agreed. Typical pump and dump. Can’t even get their facts straight.
It won’t effect the economy at all. Because this article is bullshit.
But it will make MOREons like you believe shale = salvation.
It ain’t.
Cuz there is no way in hell shale has a lower break even than conventional. Even Stooopid people could be made to understand that
Wow! There is a huge amount of oil in the world that needs to be heated to be extracted now. This is very expensive using conventional means. Perfecting this, at $10 per barrel, could be extremely important. In theory, it could allow much more oil to be extracted worldwide, at a lower price. It is theoretically what could push up worldwide oil production further. It is not clear it could push up demand, however, so it might lower oil prices further.
Governments in the Middle East and in most oil exporting countries still need very high prices, also reducing the benefit to the world.
Whenever I see the words Saudi – and America — in a headline….
My spiders senses begin to tingle….
FE, New Zealand has 400 miles of mountain top ridge line. Perfect for wind turbines. The “Finite World Energy” corporation of New Zealand is begging to be started.
Corporate motto party while Rome burns.
Not to mention “Finite World Energy” corporations of Chile and western Canada. Lots of mountain ridge lines.
Holy cow “Finite World Energy” corporation of Greenland. They have MASSIVE wind energy. Customers EU and US.
and it is land based no salt water
I have heard renewables are good because they create jobs.
If you put all renewables in Greenland and Sahara I believe you won’t find cheap labor.
Holy cow again “Finite World Energy” corporation of Western Sahara. Customer EU, particularly Spain, Italy, Portugal and France when it shuts down all its nukes.
If we keep installing more and more turbines, wouldn’t there eventually come a point when the friction they generated when the wind blew against them slowed down the earth’s rotation and caused the days to get so long that people would no longer be able to do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay?
I am sure that is why NZ has not gone heavily into wind power…. someone has warned them off of this …. imagine the effect on weather patterns of slowing the earth …
Wind mills slowing the winds and causing the Earth’s rotation to slow. Now that’s a good one.
Tidal forces from the moon and Jupiter (minor) are indeed slowing the Earth’s rotation. The daily growth bands counted in a Devonian coral (living about 400 million years ago) were about 400 days per year. It has slowed to 365. Conversely, the Earth’s tidal pull on the moon has slowed its spin to a dead stop.
Amazing, didn’t know or think about such slow down, thanks.
can’t see what anyone is worrying about
windmills slow the earth down
so Trump authorizes blowing the tops off mountains to get at the coal underneath
By my calculations they should cancel each other out.
Trump gets the credit for saving the world——-again!!!!
Very well said, Norman. I love it!
Well the NZ .gov is not that smart.
All they need to do is use some of that free electricity and power giant fans in the other direction.
IQ test fail
You know Ed… when something seems to obvious … yet nobody is doing it…. you gotta ask yourself why not….
But a stooopid person would not think this way … a stooopid MOREon would keep littering FW with endless stooopidity about windmills and solar panels and EVs…
Because a stoooopid person would read the following and be unable to grasp the implications…
Because they are stooopid… and that is what stoooopid people do….. they are unable to understand even things that are very simple…. very basic….
Like this:
Germany’s Expensive Gamble on Renewable Energy : Germany’s electricity prices soar to more than double that of the USA because when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind does not blow they have to operate and pay for a completely separate back up system that is fueled by lignite coal http://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-expensive-gamble-on-renewable-energy-1409106602
Why Germany’s nuclear phaseout is leading to more coal burning
Between 2011 and 2015 Germany will open 10.7 GW of new coal fired power stations. This is more new coal coal capacity than was constructed in the entire two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The expected annual electricity production of these power stations will far exceed that of existing solar panels and will be approximately the same as that of Germany’s existing solar panels and wind turbines combined. Solar panels and wind turbines however have expected life spans of no more than 25 years. Coal power plants typically last 50 years or longer. At best you could call the recent developments in Germany’s electricity sector contradictory. https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-germanys-nuclear-phaseout-is-leading-to-more-coal-burning/
100GW of wind electric to be built in the north sea. Now we are talking.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170606-the-largest-wind-farms-in-the-world-are-in-the-uk?ocid=ww.social.link.email
Thanks for the link.
Although their msm propaganda (cherry picking peak numbers) in the article is nauseating, instead we can check true %load factor for UK’s wind here and it’s not much above 40% capacity y/y average, and barely about 15% installed capacity for 75% of the running time..
http://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors
“Now we are talking”
We get that sort of nonsense regularly in Australia. Here is a sample:
“South Australia already at 57% wind and solar in 2016/17”
http://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-already-57-wind-solar-201617/
Well, if you look at the website of the same idiots and propagandists, you will see that at this very moment in time, Wind is producing 92MW out of their consumption of 1,366MW – a capacity factor of 6%. Frequently, there is no wind at all. Right now, there is no wind in Queensland.
http://qbusters.com.au/ida/e26.jpg
Prices are through the roof and reliability is terrible. What is not to like?
Australia is beating itself over the head with a hammer
“Australia is beating itself over the head with a hammer”
We have lived here in Oz a blessed life for so many years that few in living memory have truly suffered in any great way.
It’s been a theme park of sun, sand & booze.
It still is, however the dark clouds of reality are looming & amassing as a front that the zombies in their arrogant, toxic & excess living standards will be confronted with in horror.
Don’t worry, the population will bleat, whine & blame everyone but themselves & turn a blind eye to the fact they shipped half the country to China to sustain what we have.
This country has become so entrenched in a high standard of living that few can see how it could be any different.
It’s truly incredible how powerfully the mask of delusion & denial casts itself to an alienated population……………………..
What is the I.Q. cutoff forn mental retardation?
Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-is-the-i-q-cutoff-forn-mental-retardation.277181/
I personally don’t think IQ tests are the ideal measurement of stoooopidity…. instead I devised my own fool proof test…. as follows:
1. Please read the following articles
2. When you finish reading them please let me know if you still think it is a wise decision for a country to deploy wind and solar projects.
I am looking for a YES or NO answer.
Germany’s Expensive Gamble on Renewable Energy : Germany’s electricity prices soar to more than double that of the USA because when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind does not blow they have to operate and pay for a completely separate back up system that is fueled by lignite coal http://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-expensive-gamble-on-renewable-energy-1409106602
Why Germany’s nuclear phaseout is leading to more coal burning
Between 2011 and 2015 Germany will open 10.7 GW of new coal fired power stations. This is more new coal coal capacity than was constructed in the entire two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The expected annual electricity production of these power stations will far exceed that of existing solar panels and will be approximately the same as that of Germany’s existing solar panels and wind turbines combined. Solar panels and wind turbines however have expected life spans of no more than 25 years. Coal power plants typically last 50 years or longer. At best you could call the recent developments in Germany’s electricity sector contradictory. https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-germanys-nuclear-phaseout-is-leading-to-more-coal-burning/
Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables
Even as Germany adds lots of wind and solar power to the electric grid, the country’s carbon emissions are rising. Will the rest of the world learn from its lesson? After years of declines, Germany’s carbon emissions rose slightly in 2015, largely because the country produces much more electricity than it needs. That’s happening because even if there are times when renewables can supply nearly all of the electricity on the grid, the variability of those sources forces Germany to keep other power plants running. And in Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear plants, those other plants primarily burn dirty coal. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601514/germany-runs-up-against-the-limits-of-renewables/
Study reveals that green incentives could actually be increasing CO2 emissions
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-reveals-green-incentives-co2-emissions.html
Solar panels do not grow on trees…. so not hard to imagine
“Industry insiders say the significance of tapping the power provided by coastal winds ever more cheaply should not be underestimated. In December 2016, the World Economic Forum reported that as the cost of producing wind turbines has fallen by more than 30% in the last three years, the cost of electricity from wind power has fallen to $50 per megawatt hour on average worldwide, without subsidies. That’s half the cost of coal.”
1/2 the cost of coal?! That’s amazing, and yes now we are talking. It’s no surprise in my opinion that when it comes to renewables going big is what it’s all about. Go big or go home. I worked on offshore oil rigs off of Aberdeen, Scotland in 1979-80 and the wind blows hard! I mean really hard and consistently – just ask the helicopter pilots. That’s a great area to tap into the power of wind and it’s year round, day or night.
Err, did you not read the rebuttals above?
I guess in your case that answers the question: “What is the I.Q. cutoff for mental retardation?”
Nah. You mustn’t underestimate the power of wind – or its intermittency
Australia is a continent with lots of coast and in the middle of 3 oceans, but right at this moment WIND is providing only 2.5% of the electricity. A capacity factor of around 5%.
http://qbusters.com.au/ida/e27.jpg
Bullcrap! As I sit here burning coal at the plant I can give you real time pricing and coal is not $100 a megawatt. And guess what, the wind farm beside the plant was not moving at all on the drive in here today. Whatever cost they give for wind does not include the backup system to replace it.
If wind is such an energy panacea, I ask myself, why are China and India investing so heavily in new coal capacity?
Then I think of all the hype surrounding the potential of wind power and I recall George Orwell’s line: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
If wind is a real solution, then we should be seeing factories refining materials and building components for wind farms being powered by wind farms, and synthetic fuel produced using surplus energy generated by wind farms. I haven’t seen anything like that yet. All I have seen is wind turbines and wind farms plugged into the existing grid providing high-priced electricity intermittently if not capriciously, chopping up birds and bats that get too close, producing low-frequency vibrations that make local residents feel ill, and generally causing more trouble than they are worth.
Keep the coal burning, Joe, for all our sakes. The wind power industry in its current form would not even exist if it wasn’t for the continued exploitation of coal and other fossil fuels. Wind is a great power source for drying washing in the garden, and even for pumping water. But it is simply too unreliable and when everything is taken into account probably prohibitively expensive for industrial-scale electricity production.
I was reading an article about stagnant/declining real wages last night… and for the BAU Lite types … perfects this can help you get over your mental handicap that has convinced you that growth is not necessary — and collapse will be slow….
Let’s say you have an income of 80k per year — and you assume that each year you will get a raise that is = to at least the rise in inflation.
So you buy a home — and a car — predicated on the expectation that your salary will not decrease.
But what happens if your salary decreases?
Of course the payments on your house and car take up a bigger proportion of your income — because these monthly payments do not decrease.
Which means you have less disposable income for other purchases.
If such a situation continues and is affecting most other people — then at some point you default on the car and home loans….
Corporations run into the same sorts of problems.
That is why they must grow — or collapse
Hm, I recall YOU posting links several times, how is this being circumvented for a while..
The collapse is delayed, pushed away, stock buybacks, redefinition of poor credit score, etc. etc. …
Yes of course…. debt is the tonic that is being applied to counter the disease of lack of wage growth…
But as we are seeing — this tonic is not a panacea — it has limits…
And we are seeing them now — just look at the auto industry …. car sales are declining in spite of massive rebates —- because people cannot take on more debt to buy new cars…
As we have seen — people are at their limits… for a great many a huge chunk of their wages is going towards servicing credit card student loan and personal loan debts….
We have also seen data that indicates that even a slight increase in interest rates would tip home owners with mega mortgages over the cliff….
https://fthmb.tqn.com/1lSOEsMP3bnFxBQLeehwX_s87yU=/3843×2705/filters:no_upscale():fill(transparent,1)/about/HowtoNegotiateaCreditCardDebtSettlement-56ca6b385f9b5879cc4d2891.jpg
https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/20F_xUL6zwaPMtDhrGziC5Pwi9ssDlZMMxA54YU2yQ2lB0cb3CsVmYf6Cnjy8J–DxJV7AMRNbA24VAI4ki7UxbFq9jur_rs1JhpSXymp3Fxux7VPW61MvqEEPR3MDjrtP9dBsA=s0-d-e1-ft#http://thearf-org-aux-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/email/newsletter/debt-380×430.gif
And why wouldn’t CB’s just buy this debt like they have everything else, that will kick the can a little further.
ding dong, another winner here
ps as posted before some industrialized countries are running total debt levels of ~600% to gdp, it could go “easily” to ~6000% we just don’t know the failure point of this stretchy material..
What does this look like?
Do they announce a policy whereby all student and auto loans are forgiven? Let’s throw in credit card debt.
Bundle all that paper into a black hole and it disappears….
Clean the slate and start over…
That would send out a powerful message to the world — basically… go nuts… go shopping… it’s free money….
If the CBs went there then that would be total desperation … and it would signal the end was very near…. in fact such an announcement might actually kick off the end….
The sheeple are stupid …and ignorant…. but most of them know that there is no such thing as a perpetual economic motion machine
Yes, they can try, (although that trick is wearing a bit thin now). But eventually fantasy land (economy) will come face to face with the real world (physical limits).
They will not doubt try… and we may be surprised…
But I am struggling to understand how you turn around auto sales when anyone with even a faint pulse has been extended credit to buy a car already — the loan terms are at record lengths so they cannot trade up because then they would have two auto loans to pay….
Also — the manufacturers are offering record discounts — and still sales are dropping month after month.
I don’t think they can extend more loans to these people — subprime defaults are already climbing…
This symptom is also being exhibited in the retail and restaurant industries…
The CBs are very clever…. I am hoping they can do something about this … because if it continues unabated…. our goose will be cooked.
Why must auto sales be increased?
Automakers doesn’t need profit, see Tesla.
Employees doesn’t need work, ask 102M working age americans.
Lenders doesn’t need interest, more and more debt has negative interest.
Tesla sales USA 2016 – 76,000
Total auto sales USA 2016 – 17.55 million
Tesla does not exist.
This is like discussing granny’s booth at the fair selling her winter knitting …. and Walmart…. in the same breathe.
The automotive industry is a major industrial and economic force worldwide. It makes 60 million cars and trucks a year, and they are responsible for almost half the world’s consumption of oil. The industry employs 4 million people directly, and many more indirectly.
http://www.industryweek.com/global-economy/automotive-industry-economic-impact-and-location-issues
100M are out of work…. at some point a tipping point will be reached …. out of work people don’t shop…. and you get a deflationary death spiral…
But hey – these are desperate times — the auto makers could do what the oil companies are doing — taking on many billions of debt in order to stay alive…. perhaps a deal can be made with the auto industry — unlimited funding — pay back the interest only — or pay back nothing until they ‘recover’ —- with the understanding that layoffs are kept to a minimum…
http://i2.wp.com/sausedo.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/123.jpg
Isnt it already so that for some cars there is remaining debt rolled over to next car?
But I agree, in general cars has to be paid off during their life time. Houses, student debt and government is easier to postpone for a long time.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-17/banks-tighten-auto-lending-as-more-borrowers-fall-into-default
When the camel’s back is u-shaped … it is a bad idea to load on another sack of dates…
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0cn48FsWono/UQpN6OkKzrI/AAAAAAAAIHk/scDNCfzv3dM/s1600/the-straw.jpg
I like the Swedish model better. You borrow everything (renovations, cars, vacations, dental bills) against your home.
Highly leverage has to pay back 1-2% (soon maybe 3% in extreme cases), but of course you could revalue your home or take out new loan. You could also be excepted because of unemployment or divorce.
Interest rate about 1% after tax deduction, we have to get that down to about 0% in order to be able to just cut credit and shelve the debt of unworthy consumers.
How long can this work? I see no reason it can’t work for as long as home prices keep climbing. (We seem to need to increase private debt at least 4% per year, so flat home prices won’t work for long.)
How long can home prices increase? We have a demographic problem in about 10-15 years, but until then … ?
Also you are responsible for your debt even if you don’t have the asset, which if I have understood is not the case everywhere.
So if home value debt and home owner doesn’t pay the bills he will be evicted. Don’t be the one who can’t pay the bills during BAU!
JT, it is not what it seems that CB can buy up anything. Have a look at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-06/ecb-has-almost-run-out-eligible-german-bonds-buy
Do note that government issues a bond if they need money and CB technically can print to buy. However, if the government does not sell any bonds, then CB cannot buy. The older bonds that were sold earlier have good yields and the holder is not interested in selling. In Japan, if you have bought a 30-year bond in 1990 or prior to the crash, then it may yield 5-10% (??) So, who in the right mind will sell them and buy the negative yielding ones. Therefore, for the Japanese and European market, the CBs have actually nothing much to buy and have to “taper” their sales. If you read the link above, ECB has actually tapered the QE from EUR80B to EUR60b per month.
Buying corporate debts results in the same thing. If the company does not issue any new debts, then there is nothing CB can buy. Companies have board of directors that may say “don’t issue too many bonds”.
Remember the last time I posted, the charts showing inflation? CBs know very well that if they continue printing, it will result is hyperinflation. The end game is always the same since time immemorial. It is a fine line on printing but not too much. However, that line is getting extremely hazy. In all countries in the world, inflation is taking its toll especially on the important “middle class”. The upper class will not buy a lot of stuff to keep the wheels of commerce greased and neither will the lower class. If the middle class is dead broke, then what do you expect the CB to do? THEY CANNOT PRINT DEMAND. Giving money to the middle class or to those who really need money the most (including small businesses) will EITHER extinguish debts (if the pay down the outstanding debts) thus causing the velocity of money to drop dramatically whilst killing the “debt-based monetary system) OR hyperinflation if they decide to spend the money on goods.
It is not that the elites are not keen on giving money to the person who needs money the most. If they do, then it is game over.
p.s. it took me more than 3 years to understand this. I studied diligently and I don’t expect anyone who does not go through “the learning process” to understand perfect what I am saying.
Several countries are supposedly experimenting with pilot for UBI already.
This could kick the can a bit, your “living wage allowance” will have enough for the monthly payments for the flat/small house and car, net (entertainment), and few shopping necessities.. Only the very much interested (hobbyist) and core competence folk would be still employed in traditional sense (and at higher income say 2-3x max of UBI).
This was certainly one of the major hot options discussed by TPTB after 2008/9, can’t comment on the situation right now, they are perhaps waiting for another trigger to phase it in more broadly or perhaps rather moved to some other hard core options how to proceed at the next junction.
Good points!
CBs couldn’t “buy” alot of what are they buying today, 10 years ago. Laws had to be changed to allow MBS to be purchased for example. BOJ is now directly buying equities. I just figure they will start buying everything directly as their last ditch effort to keep the ball rolling. This seems to be the best way to steal from the poor, the new poor and the soon to be poor. How long it goes on before it fall over is the big question.
JT, I recall this article from early last year, which made a good case that the BoJ was intervening in oil and commodities at that time (oil was really struggling then – well below $40):
“We’ve said that the best suited for the job of intervening to stem the threat of weak oil prices would be the Bank of Japan. They are already in the thick of their own version of QE infinity. They’ve told us clearly they will do whatever it takes to return their stagnating, deflation burdened economy to prominence again. And, after nearly three years of QE, they still have a long way to go. They’ve told us that higher stocks and a weaker yen are two important tools in their plan. And both have been going aggressively the wrong way for them recently, sidetracked by the broad financial market instability of recent months, which has undone some of their work.
“So, indeed, the Bank of Japan stepped in on February 11 with some action…”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrich/2016/03/03/is-the-boj-quietly-intervening-in-oilcommodities/#7f50d7e42aa4
Hello Finite Worlders,
I have visited Gail’s site over the last year, as well as other similar sites. I’m the organizer of an informal network of Global Capitalists that authored The Philosophy of Capitalism.
You’ll see several ideas and charts mentioned by Fast Eddy, Thomas Malthus and Gail etc. get airtime in our concluding volume: The Reset.
It’s been a real pleasure getting to meta-analyze your output.
So here’s the ultimate payback:
Central Planning Authorities in the USA have little confidence they can get past August/September. They’ll try to kick the can but there’s not much confidence left.
Most data about oil is completely baked, so empirical analysis by outside eyes is very difficult.
The Families are united, they’re in the driving seat, and now operate without constraint. Watch what they’re doing to the price of Bitcoin. It’s deliberate. If it keeps rising, or begins to rise, exponentially then it’s TIME.
The war in the Middle East will be used to explain away the sudden collapse in living standards after The Reset. It’ll probably fail but what do I know about crowd control. My thinking is a Depopulation of entire regions… hundreds of millions freezing to death, starving and drowning.
The FED chairs are terrified.
Protect Yourself,
Putrid
http://www.beforethecollapse.com
Amazing. I’ve read all 5 volumes. Volume 4 is my favorite. I’ve meta analyzed all possible permutations and cleared them the with a high level network. They all agree and also agree to offer much needed advice at the right time. I hope to be prepared. My next step is to read volumes 6 and 7.
interesting analysis—we seem to be thinking similar thoughts and coming to the same conclusions
the only thing you left out was inevitable conflict, driven by denial —other than that, you are absolutely right
pity really–the oilparty was the best while it lasted—but it’s why i put this on medium:
https://extranewsfeed.com/from-oilslick-to-tyranny-e35d04b31fc3
And Gail,
Have you ever doubted whether those at the Top actually understand? I used to wonder about this. I used to read top economists at the FT after 2008 and I was totally confused … I thought … maybe they don’t understand the System.
We’ll never know, were guys like Krugman and Wolf just lying through their teeth or were they just in denial?
But I can confirm that the true elite –the Top Bankers– understand the System entirely.
Yep… they know.
I stopped working last Summer… and sometimes I’m worried sick.
Krugman is very much like Elon Musk…. he has been brought into the game to add credibility to the key fables that keep the sheeple calm.
They are the vodka that gets added to the kool aid before it gets passed out to the masses….
If the powers that be are proposing interest rate increases and the sale of bonds currently being held by Central Banks, they clearly must be missing some important points.
They know we have an oil problem, but they perceive the problem to be “running out,” or a balance of payment problem, or the threat of high prices, or CO2 pollution.
Don’t worry Gail, they understand the situation, through your eyes. They know. It’ll be The Reset. Just protect yourself. These guys are capable of anything, there are no limits. None.
Good one Norman
‘Our system of rolling debt depends on increasing energy input ad infinitum. So the one who asserts that climate change is a hoax gets voted into office, granting permission to burn our planet forever.’
Global Referendum:
Stop burning fossil fuels now and we collapse and die
Continue burning fossil fuels and we get to continue our cushy lives indefinitely
I reckon it’s option two in a landslide — even Jeremy is voting for that ….
‘We don’t know how, there isn’t enough room and probably not enough time. Hungry people will not allow a second harvest.’
We have all heard of starving farmers eating their seed potatoes…. out of desperation … knowing that by doing this they guarantee there will be no crop for the next season…
7.5 billion people will be eating all the seed potatoes… all the farm animals… all the pets… all the other seeds… all the wild animals that they can get close enough to to kill…
It will be as if 7.5 billion giant locusts swarmed over the land — eating everything…. including themselves….
How realistic is this scenario, especially in the West? Most westerners are urbanised, know nothing of, and even have an aversion to nature. Expect to get everything they need from the supermarket. When the lights dim, there’ll be at most 3 days of stock on the shelves, and whatever petrol they have left in their tanks. We are unhealthy, our senses are dulled and generally we are afraid of our own shadows, so I don’t expect more than a handful to make it past the city limits when the end comes.
Regardless of what the city dwellers do — even in rural areas there will be very little food…. and too many hungry people
If you live rural how many people do you know who could survive on what comes off of their land?
I know of nobody — absolutely nobody — and quite a number of my neighbours have decent sized gardens. But to live year round on that — no way.
A great many of our neighbours grow nothing — the small town that is maybe an hour’s walk away has thousands of people who grow nothing.
When these people run out of food — the will overwhelm those who have gardens — who already cannot feed themselves…
The farmland around here – like everywhere – is dead… it grows nadda without the chemical inputs and irrigation pumps.
Desperate people will not lay down and die — they will do ‘whatever it takes’
I have posted plenty of info on what happened during previous famines… most people did not lie down and die….. they resorted to desperate measures —- they stole food and animals…. in many instances they killed children and cooked them….
There is no doubt in my mind — nobody is going to be ‘left alone’ to live out their dreamed of Utopian existence on their plot of farmland. No way in hell is that going to happen.
First, they would raid the supermarkets, hold up delivery trucks, etc. For urban people, that is where food comes from. The criminal gangs already established would have a big advantage here.
Then, when that runs out, people would raid neighbours and take what they could from the weak -from their gardens and store cupboards.
Finally, most urban and even rural (do truly ‘rural people even exist in the West now? very few!) people would sit tight, waiting for supply to resume – that it would not resume is conceptually beyond most people who have always lived in BAU and not given thought to these issues.
Everyone would expect government and the armed forces to kick in and save them with rationing.
Then they would slowly starve. If the public water supply fails, they would die very rapidly en situ.
Real Life:
A relation of mine was once in a situation where they nearly starved to death (31 days without food): he said it wasn’t too bad, but worse for him than the others as they actually slept, but he was deprived of sleep – which as we know leads to psychosis. He always refers to the lack of sleep as the worst thing about it all. I don’t think he has ever been right in the head since, and his digestive system certainly hasn’t recovered.
When food came, the others ate too much solid food, too rapidly, and suffered badly from it. He started on some orange juice and eggs, and fared better than they did.
If in a famine situation with no hope of recovery, I hope it would be in very cold weather, as death from hypothermia is very kind indeed, as afar as I know – a friend in the army once nearly met that fate on an expedition, and it was, he said, ‘most comfortable.’ ‘Just like a nice sleep’.
On the whole, it is probably most important to have stocks of water, as death from dehydration is ghastly.
Falling asleep in a snow bank and not waking up …. that is as good as it gets
Fast Eddy,
Get Ready Bro… for this shit’s about to get real. Final preps. Me and my buddies are just thinking where to relocate to…I’m thinking Iceland.
Who the hell will invade Iceland? Probably no one.
It has energy.
It has its own agricultural output.
It has fish stocks.
It has zero risk of civil war.
It has hot water.
I’m thinking…. ICELAND!!
So question for Finite Worlders…. where’s the best place to survive a Hard Reset?
So we’re talking half a billion dead, regional wars, civil wars, targeted depopulation, mass starvation, political extremism pretty much everywhere… etc…
-1/2B ?
That’s not much realistic, or meant only as the immediate phase shift result in few yrs time? Because for any serious attempt on industrial civilization (+enviro protection) can kicking is needed at least ~3-4B under 2-3decades time frame..
Sorry buddy… the can… cannot be kicked…
Long Term??? Well, if you survive The Reset expect a boot to be stamped on your face for the rest of your life.
I’m holding out for feudalism but in all likelihood it’ll be Fascism.
I don’t know where you tend to pick your numbers, but it’s getting ridiculous.
Seriously, -1/2 B only for a reset? Anyway, I only said ![attempted]! scenario of such quasi BAU would need deleting at least 3-4B pronto, not that the probablities of such scenario are the highest. Lolz
-0.5B, thats one out of every 15 has to die. Could probably happen by stopping medication for a month, but more likely whole countries far away would go.
Then what?
Me and my buddies are just thinking where to relocate to…
Aren’t you leaving it a bit late?
So question for Finite Worlders…. where’s the best place to survive a Hard Reset?
That would be telling!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nuclear_bunkers_in_the_United_States
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/l6XQ4Hh8Fxc/maxresdefault.jpg
That poor soldier is going to feel let down when he turns around and finds the gate has been welded shut….
Fast Eddy,
Here is the latest data on Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly from the NOAA
http://qbusters.com.au/ida/an1.jpg
Can you please tell us where is the “global warming” sorry “climate change” that you are so fond of?
CO2 is plant-food. It is not a pollutant except to those on the make.
Alfred — you’ve got me all wrong…
I do not care if it is happening or not happening… if it is happening and man is causing it then my position is: Burn More Coal NOW!
Hot damn — I do not even care if there any connection whatsoever between AGW and coal — all I know is that there is a 1:1 correlation between burning fossil fuels and me living large longer LLL.
I know with a high degree of certainty than Burning More Coal NOW is a good thing — I can feel it deep in my bones….
I love the smell of coal smoke in the morning …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdzoIHJBGt0
We need to burn this sum bitch of a planet right to the ground…. we need to pillage it and rape it and punish it… we need to wreck and destroy it…. we must burn and poison and ruin…. we must be relentless … we must never stop ….
LLL. LLL. LLL. LLL. LLL.
On the upside, my local utility Kansai Electric has finally jumped through the administrative hoops and overcome the various legal barriers erected by the anti-nuclear lobby and are restarting four nuclear reactors this summer. So the grid in Western Japan will be that much more stable in the event of a major gulf war disrupting oil and gas supplies, and they are going to cut the price of the juice since their numbers indicate that legacy nuclear is considerably cheaper to operate than buying and burning fossil fuels.
Good news!
the atmosphere is composed of a mixture of gases, in the right proportion to support human life and plant life. It’s a very neat balance
Lock yourself in a sealed room, with those gases in the wrong proportion and you will die.
The Earth is our sealed room
I’d be skeptical about announcing such hard dates, especially very near term..
Although it seems evident the great reshuffle is speeding up.
We know “the team” is getting rather desperate, always enlarging the stakes, intensity. For example, over-viewing the recent events, notably, the coup in Ukraine backfired, the unconditional broad political support from the west is no longer there, it’s another failed state territory on the borders of Europe. The benefits of stripping heartland Russia out long term subcontracting industries for MIC in Ukraine is running out as most of the production has been as of known redeveloped in house. Similarly the gamble of denying warm water port in Crimea, failed.
The Syrian project of denying Med port and natgas pipeline failed. Turkey, the second biggest army in NATO is in open antagonism with the West, considering practical steps joining the wider alliance of the East.
Brexit and formation of continental Reich ver XY with France as junior partner (and nuclear capability) for the moment, not important long term, large French metro enclaves are already no go zones, Germany is only few years late in that development.
These are just listed a few of the profound changes on the scene, the team is evidently “loosing bigly” and it’s a series of debacles in a row, entire sections of formerly docile population in the core countries are smelling the wind, seeking whatever fake or real alternatives to the establishment.
As they say time is of the essence, but lets not be paranoid, there are perhaps 7-10yrs more how to stall the development in this direction. Wait for further signs of precursors on the general trend. For instance, as of now, still no large expedition forces or regular navy patrolling by the Chinese around “their lake”, not mentioning larger distances near energy producing regions and global transport corridors or choke points. In the same vein, not finalized structures bypassing the exist mode for recycling of petrodollars etc.
Nice post (especially if i’m hoping for 2-3 more years) Then again,I know the Shadow, and he knows…………………
7-10yrs?? Jesus…As they say, ignorance is bliss…
In October one Zerohedger doubted me:
I wrote:
My contacts with The Families said Trump was being protected, that was months ago. Correspondence implied the Ponzi would be unplugged if the neocon candidate won in November. They’d do it before world war 3 kicked off. I even mentioned it in the latest edition of Before The Collapse that was published a few months ago, last chapter.
Well, a Trump presidency will probably change the time line for gold and the ponzi. Thank God
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-30/fbi-scour-through-650000-emails-found-weiners-laptop?page=9
Please come back some day with some substantial – visible (material) corroboration on the global scene situation.
Although, I’m not in doubt there are probably many maniacs in sheer panic running around D.C. now and screaming, “I told you!, we should have preemptively nuked them 5-10yrs ago when they were much weaker”..
https://goo.gl/images/Y1uK97
Well, there are people who looked into depletion/PO since 2005 or much earlier..
Currently, there 2-3yrs of overproduction, demand is perma weak as the core productive age group collapsed in the west and is also collapsing in the rest of the industrialized world, this forms additional buffer into the early 2020s at least. Plus we know triage works on expendable nations-consumers. At certain threshold this will obviously trigger major JIT problems with service parts etc., yet even then some countries and certain activities are more important than others (MIC, food, grid, ..)
You see it’s a staircase process.
This has been discussed it almost daily, sorry.
No one control of this runaway train.
Some are in nicer cars, that’s all.
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/icbkDFACM4iA/v2/800x-1.png
7-10 years? Man, hahhahahahaahahhhaha
I’d love to have your brain…so young, so…so utterly deluded!!!
Duncan is correct, just LOCATE yourself…intelligently. That’s all I’m gonna do.
The oil story is kinda like the doomsday guys who says screw this … I am quitting my job and will live off my what I have in the bank while traveling the planet…
For him timing his personal financial collapse is as difficult as is timing the collapse of BAU
I think the best option is to wait for the “defining moment” – you’ll have a few days to get out of “Dodge”. Most people (sheep) won’t recognise it for what it is and leave it too late. Stock up a couple of rented 4WD vehicles, move far away from any urbanised area – wait. Take over someone else’s farm. They’ll probably have fled or died by then, having not been prepared either.
That’s my plan.
Ok, not a bad plan. Have you watched The Survivalist? It’s a great movie. Check it out and learn from his mistakes.
In my humble opinion, and I’m no Rambo so I won’t be raiding villages for young ladies, you’ll need a woman. Life can get a little lonely you know.
Also, don’t forget seeds and ammo.
Myself, I’ll take the easier option and move to Switzerland or Finland, perhaps Iceland. I’m going to have to research this. Final preps. The Italian canton of Switzerland would be nice but then again, will the border be closed?
Woman > check. Ammo > check. Seeds? Vacated farm will provide…The Survivalist? Haven’t seen it. Will do so. Cheers.
I think in the end it will be a matter of luck if you get trough the bottleneck, so pick a location that fits your groove and you’d be happy to rest your bones in.
I don’t expect to make it in the long run, and don’t really care – I’ve lived a very full life. As long as my now teenaged kids are safe, it’s all the same to me, and that’s the point of the escape plan.
Good luck.
I’ll drop back if the date changes… knowing the future is the key to survival.
But also what happens afterwards… the political system which follows will Be different in different places. I’m still quite young so this is more important for me.
Well, it depends on the level of depopulation in your region. The more people, the likelier there’ll be organisation. The fewer, like in The Survivalist (watching it now :)), the more likely it’ll be everyone for themselves.
In any case, I’d expect at least 20 years of turmoil before things level out. After all, there’s a LOT of dying to do…
I’d go with Switzerland… when BAU is over … and there are no jobs and no economy …. at least you could enjoy the fantastic skiing opportunities. And in the summer you could hike in the mountains. Maybe do some mountain biking.
It could be marvelous.
But what about all the chic people at the beach resort? Have you given up on that idea?
I’m open minded. Despite my best efforts I’ll probably go down with the first wave 😉
For instance, as of now, still no large expedition forces or regular navy patrolling by the Chinese around “their lake”, not mentioning larger distances near energy producing regions and global transport corridors or choke points. In the same vein, not finalized structures bypassing the exist mode for recycling of petrodollars etc.
But these things are already happening:
> Chinese already consider the South China Sea (i.e Spratly Islands) as “Mare Nostrum”
> Although 5 US carrier groups have been in the Red Sea for decades, recently Russia has sent its to the eastern Mediterranean for the first time.
> The enormous increase in the value of crypto-currencies over the past year
I’m not saying that collapse is around the corner, of course it might be, we’ve been on a razor’s edge for years, but 7-10 years away seems like a bit of a stretch, although I would be more than pleased to be proven wrong here, given the alternative.
Yep, that was my point, the Chinese island fortresses with airstrips are not ready yet, nor the token blue water navy strike groups, which they don’t want match 1:1 with the US anyway. The strategy shapes more like having these islands with lotsa airplanes (anti naval missiles) under missile shield dome, plus large fleet of subs again with missiles. Simply more bang for less money and service cost. Obviously, in parallel they plan land based transportation schemes incl. energy routes (natgas pipelines) not sure about viability of rail for oil in such large volumes, could be some sort of backup only.. That’s also why they are crazy about NPPs and electrified rail build up to ease the oil demand..
worldof
I tend to agree; it’s all about watching general trends.
Like a well-bred hunting dog sniffing a wheatfield for a pheasant or hare.
I was on a flight from Wellington to Nelson yesterday — and they asked me if I wouldn’t mind manning the emergency exit….. I agreed ….
So I took my seat — the flight attendant explained to me what to do if there was an emergency. I listened attentively… and during the flight I guarded that exit with my life…. I remained vigilant at my post … the slightest bump of turbulence and I was ready to pull those MOF levers and toss that sucker into the drink….then rescue little old ladies and make the front page of the NZ Herald under the headline ‘Canuck Refugee Saves Grannies’
Alas… we landed without incident …. and I trundled up to the front of the plane towards the exit…. as I approached the door I asked the flight attendant where I could pick up my fee… fee? … ya my fee…. for manning the emergency exit….. haha she said … it’s volunteer work …. 🙂
Since that failed… and I need to make ends meet here on my End of the World Tour…. might I trouble you for a small royalty on book sales?
Fast Eddy,
You chose New Zealand for your last stand?
Really?
I’m going to have to do some research on this..
It will be more like a last fizzle….
Rather than a gallant battle to stay alive against all odds…. I see it ending like this … skip to 1.48….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arOd349fprM
It is becoming nearly impossible to relocate to NZ …. a lot of the skilled migrant areas are being shut down at the end of July ….. so unless you are really special — or you have a lot of cash to come in under the investor program….. the door is fast closing.
I wouldn’t fret though — in fact because we are in the future — BAU will go down here before everywhere else…. so you will get a few more hours of life if you stay away….
It’s going to be like a reverse New Year’s Eve thing… instead of watching the first place to welcome the new year in — with fireworks and celebrations … when BAU goes — you guys get to watch the lights go out on an entire country … and then you can look forward to the same shortly afterwards…
Yeah, NZ is a really bad option. It can easily be targeted for depopulation.
The movie clip was a good artistic take on New Zealand’s future.
Picture that same scene… playing out inside a 20 foot shipping container… with a solar powered disco light and stereo…..
“It can easily be targeted for depopulation”
Hope not before August,
I’m going there to visit my family & will really have the shits that I paid $200 to Jetstar & get there & there’s nothing but gorse weeds blowing across the runway.
Nah…there’ll be Fast Eddy and tumble weeds…take photos please!
I want to see Fast Eddy four weeks into the Fast Eddy Challenge. Ha! I can’t wait…
I’ve just about to lock in a month of skiing in Queestown in August upping the ante on the Burn More Coal End of the World Approaches Quickly tour…. so we need a few more months out of this engine…
https://previews.123rf.com/images/tobi/tobi1104/tobi110400028/9202659-Man-looking-at-a-smoking-engine-in-his-car-Stock-Photo.jpg
Imagine how much coal it must take to make this go round and round!
http://www.traveller.com.au/content/dam/images/2/n/p/x/i/image.related.articleLeadwide.620×349.2ikf4.png/1370589056677.jpg
BTW – the clip is from this excellent movie:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjEwMjZiY2UtNDE2Ni00MWFmLWE2ZDUtN2I4OTUwODI4OGM3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQxNzMzNDI@._V1_UX182_CR0,0,182,268_AL_.jpg
https://alchetron.com/cdn/Bad-Lieutenant-images-1f4bfe84-8fad-4b5c-955b-955396a7e9b.jpg
Cathal I like your blog. What is a reset? And how would it work and why would the sheeple go insane from it?
Ultimately, large scale problems require large scale solutions.
World War promises a complete solution which is why there has been a tense standoff between East and West since 2008. See Volume 2.
The Reset is a term used by the Dominant Banking Class. It refers to “the correction to prices” which would occur if all the debt would fail World Wide and instantaneously.
The cost of housing, to choose one asset class, would drop by up to 90% everywhere and instantaneously.
My thinking is that this would trigger civil wars pretty much everywhere.
The Sheep may go insane. I’ve never seen a flock of insane sheep so it’s gonna get very entertaining… I mean, then you get the terrorizing and extremism.
P.S. The USA, get out of the USA
“The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up. It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something. The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly. ”
(William White, Chairman of the OECD’s review committee and former Chief Economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS))
“The cost of housing, to choose one asset class, would drop by up to 90% everywhere and instantaneously.”
Definitely everyone in Australia will go stark raving mad once this happens. The place hasn’t had a recession in 25 years and people are conditioned to just expect more. None of my nephews and nieces know what that is. I haven’t the heart to tell them that there’s worse, much much worse, in store.
From more to none.
The utter naivety about your “reset” is claiming .5b will die. Why are you afraid and looking for a hideout? .5b over what timeframe…instantly? We add a net 80m annually now. It’s hard to imagine anything really bad being the result. A random “correction” of half a billion would mean, jobs for the unemployed, a lessening of environmental impacts, a slowdown of resource depletion and maybe even, an easing of pressure on governments.
An economic disaster cannot magically stop at a given number. It is either a collapse or it isn’t. If it’s a full blown collapse then I suggest half a billion in the first six months and a declining continuation until some sort of eqaibrium is reached. Along the way, war, disease, pestilence and violence could see numbers undershoot to numbers that cannot be recovered from. Everything can be SPECULATED upon, we just don’t know timing and how events will unfold.
We do know for a fact that resources are finite, Earth’s ecology is polluted and humans are in overshoot. The outcome of that is assuredly bad and in the hands of providence, and our assumptions.
The level of reading comprehension on this site is deplorable. I don’t know how Gail must cope. I never said .5 billion will die. Ever.
Though you are correct that it’ll be a tough and cruel ride. That’s why I keep saying LOCATION is way more important that any other factor.
Maxim Oreshkin speaks very good English. He is the Russian Economy Minister.
“What do you have to say about oil prices, Mr. Minister?”
“I do not understand the hedge funds funding US shale producers. They are not making money. They are also at risk for the future.”
“What risk?”
“That oil prices might be much, much lower.”
“Is that your expectation? That when the production cut agreement’s extension ends, prices will be much lower.”
“Blah blah blah long term short term this and that, but without question those shale funding sources are taking a big risk.”
“Doesn’t this put Russia at risk, too?”
“Well, not really. The Russian economy is far less dependent on oil prices than it was 5-10 yrs ago. So . . . no.”
“But it’s still important to you, yes?”
“No. Not that much. This is your story. We are prepared to live with oil prices below $40 forever. We are self funding. Not a problem for us.”
[All those who believe Russia can endure sub $40 prices FAR more credibly than shale can, raise your hands. 0/ That’s one hand up. Others?]
Bloomberg reporter quiet a moment. “Let me ask you about capital outflows. You saw $15 billion outflow of capital last year, down 70% from 2015. Do you expect ouflow this year?”
“No, we have already seen $3 billion of inflow this year. This question often comes up talking to investment managers and they want to lump us with Turkey and South Africa. We have no inflation problem. Our inflation is at our Central Bank’s target (unlike the US). But we don’t care much, we are self funding.”
“Gary Cohn is a Trump economic advisor and he has said sanctions may be stiffened.”
“We don’t care. We are much more concerned about what goes on inside Russia than outside. This is all your story. It is important to you. It is not to us. We are self financing.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-06-01/russia-s-oreshkin-on-opec-oil-prices-sanctions-video
Thanks for the link.
This possible scenario would be epic irony, the last big oil short (triangle of doom) before the fossil BAU ends. Obviously the ride from ~50 to ~35 bucks would be less steep in comparison to the 2014-2015 event.
But I’d say much realistic are series of swings both up and down ($25-85 range bound), brief duration perhaps again above ~100, limited by affordability wedge..
What is of supreme importance to Russia is not being displaced as the principal supplier of gas to Western Europe.
For what it’s worth, Russia claims they are nowadays less than 50% dependent on export of “energy carriers” – output has been rising in food, weapons, hitec, ..
Obviously we know it’s all soaked in their natural abundance (incl. fossil fuels), but they managed to escape the trap of raw material exporter only, at least relatively to the bottomless pit of post USSR collapse.
I guess the numbers are slightly cooked, by various (re-)exports into the CIS nations (former parts of the union), but nevertheless, large part of this is a real deal, they turned the boat around, it’s visible on the ground in material level.
When thinking about the energy supernova of the last 200 years. And the hyper complex global civilization it brought forth. Where all parts of the hyper complexity are dependant on every other part of the global hyper complexity. And making it possible are just massive amounts of gigajoules of easy to get cheap energy. Most of the regulars here would probably agree ‘The Great Filter’ is just about to present itself for our species
https://www.google.fi/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwjenMHJp6zUAhWjO5oKHei9A2gQFghbMBI&usg=AFQjCNEADQ4AixYjc65k-lYmijsquaLnfA
“To constitute an effective Great Filter, we hypothesize a terminal global cataclysm: an existential catastrophe. An existential risk is one where an adverse outcome would annihilate Earth‐originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential for future development.”
Wonder if Normans next book is called ‘The Great Filter’? The inevitability of it all, the structure of moar energy and what must happen to a hyper complex global civilization when the energy supernova starts to fade away.
a terminal global cataclysm: an existential catastrophe?
Global Oil Reserves overstated by 50% . Scientific Analysis by Former Chief Economist at Royal Dutch Shell -(Jefferson 2016) (Chapman 2014)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wene.179/pdf
http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/The-End-of-Peak-Oil.pdf
A blind spot is something in which we don’t pay attention, because it’s often times
removed from us either in time or in space, therefore it doesn’t threatening us in the
immediate way.
-Elke Weber PhD Professor of Psychology and Management
Columbia Universtiy School of Business
Reserves depend on price and technology. If a breakthrough in technology could reduce the cost of extracting heavy oil from $50 per barrel to $10 per barrel, the amount of reserves would suddenly skyrocket.
We have a problem, however, with wage disparity. This has been brought on by increasing technology. Even this big increase in reserves doesn’t solve the wage disparity problem. It also doesn’t solve the need for high tax from oil produced, especially for oil exporters.
I am also wondering why guys like this don’t die… do they have the secret to immortality?
They both look like death warmed over…. yet they both seem to be able to function very well …
I was at a drinks night in Bali once and some dude was regaling me with tales of his new business — he was injecting people with such things as HGH and steroids — to increase vigor…. I told him I did not need that — YET —- as I feel pretty good….
Perhaps Soros and Adelson are clients of his?
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2014/04/RTR3J4DF/lead_large.jpg
http://theduran.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/George-Soros.jpg
Shallow-water Gulf of Mexico drilling at lowest level in 70 years: Hercules CEO
https://www.platts.com/latest-news/oil/houston/shallow-water-gulf-of-mexico-drilling-at-lowest-21188902
Qatar crisis: UAE threatens sympathisers with prison
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40192730
The “Qatar dip” was not long for this world, only few hours, lol..
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DRIP/?p=DRIP
“U.S. crude prices plunged toward $46 a barrel on Wednesday after weekly government data left the oil market with virtually nothing to cheer.
“West Texas Intermediate futures plunged more than 4 percent as stockpiles of oil in the United States surged by 3.3 million barrels, confounding analysts’ estimates for a 3.5 million-barrel drop. WTI prices fell as far as $45.92, hitting a four-week low.
“The drop below $47 was a “big deal” said John Kilduff, founding partner at energy hedge fund Again Capital. The next level to watch is the March low just below $44 a barrel, struck after oil prices fell through a number of key technical levels, culminating in a flash crash to $43.76…”
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/07/oil-prices-drop-more-than-4-percent-after-data-shows-surprising-surge-in-stockpiles.html
The article continues:
“The bad news kept on coming below the headline figure. Gasoline stocks also jumped by 3.3 million barrels, more than five times the expected increase. Inventories of distillate fuels like diesel and heating oil rose by 4.4 million barrels, 15 times the anticipated rise.
U.S gasoline demand fell by about half a million barrels a day, despite the onset of the summer driving season after the Memorial Day holiday.”
Er, wasn’t the US summer driving season supposed to be sending prices rocketing skyward, Bergen J?
Yeah, what the heck happened – lol! Actually I just think prices will go up at some point when the glut is gone, but it’s taking longer than I thought and in part because US fracking on top of Canadian bitumen raised total world oil supply to the point that prices are still around $50. a barrel. Look at it this way; If the world is using 95 mbd all oils, then any way that is cut it that’s an extremely big daily flow, and once it has more trouble keeping up with demand, price will definitely go up.
Barring black swans or China going off the rails courtesy of its debt problem, I don’t see the market tightening for at least another two years when the current dearth of investment in the industry filters through as inadequate supply. Could be wrong…
Recall that on August 6, 2001, George W. Bush told his national security briefer, “all right, you’ve covered your ass, now” after he was told that that Osama bin Laden was “determined to strike inside the United States.” And then he went fishing. We know how that worked out.
Shell in Nigeria just put on another 250k a day of production, frackers pumping like there’s no tomorrow – (cause there isn’t). No end to the “supply glut” in sight.
“U.S gasoline demand fell by about half a million barrels a day, despite the onset of the summer driving season after the Memorial Day holiday.”
That … is really.. really .. bad news….
I was figuring the big drop in oil prices represented something like this. If oil inventories are not really dropping, it could indicate recession. Total stocks are all the way up to mid-March levels.
Another mortal blow to the already comatose financial sector : http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-07/spains-banco-popular-bailed-acquired-santander-%E2%82%AC100
I am guessing what straw that will break the camel’s back …..
I know you guys hate me for my slow collapse views, but let me remind you once again that not every news story out there is a sign of collapse.
For instance, let’s say this board existed 20 years ago. Would you guys comment on every single story and say, run for the hills! The end is near!
After 9/11/2001, would you guys have come here and said…this is it folks, the end has begun, we are going to go to nuclear war! etc. etc.
What we are witnessing is much more like a long freeze than a quick burn. Things just get a little worse year and year, that’s all. No big deal for the system managers. Just keep on creating currency, keep the workers showing up to work, and there will be no fast breakdown.
I agree.
Kinda like the farmer and the turkey.
The turkey looks with anticipation as the farmer shows up with food everyday.
One day he shows up with a axe.
Don’t be a turkey
Dolph,
20 years ago most of us would not be on a board like this one because things were humming (relatively) along…the wake up came in 2008, where we realized something was seriously wrong…and then we started digging into the rabbit hole and realized the financial system died in 2008…it’s been kept on life support by CBs…without them we would not be here…that was NOT needed in past crises…
Trump’s America Is Facing a $13 Trillion Consumer Debt Hangover
Percentage of overdue debt has risen for last two quarters
Consumer companies say their customers are under stress
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-06/trump-s-america-is-facing-a-13-trillion-consumer-debt-hangover
This only gets worse… because wages are not increasing…
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i4m1mYnsQzok/v2/-1x-1.png
It is actually worse than that, because the share of people working is falling, partly because of rising retirements and partly for other reasons. The people who are working have to pay taxes to support the people who are not working.
Dolph … nobody hates you …. we just think you are clueless….
It is entirely possible to be clueless and at the same time likable… like a pet rock….
In geological terms, I expect our collapse will be instant. Although to a sub-atomic particle researcher used to dealing in half-lives of milliseconds, it will seem like forever. And on the everyday scale in which most of us live our lives, it could well be be slow, but probably not nearly slow enough for our own personal comfort.
I think all finite worlders share the view that we are either at or close to or just past peak prosperity and it will be mostly downhill from here on. Where we differ is in the details.
In answer to Dolph’s question, I have known people who were instadoomers 25 or 30 years ago. for them, 9/11 marked the beginning of the end, as did the 1991 War on Iraq, Chernobyl, the discovery of the ozone hole, and the two oil crises of the 1970s. Where things differ now is that the entire world financial system is technically insolvent and it is proving no longer practical to “grow” ourselves out of the mess created by all the previous “growth” we’ve achieved.
Tim – I recall all of those events clearly and not once did I think ‘this is the end’…
I agree with you — when the financial system was called into question — and also when I was made aware that conventional oil had peaked in 2005… my spider senses stared to tingle…
And observing how the CBs have reacted in the past decade…. well clearly… this time is different
also, hard to ignore comments like those from George Dubya Bush that “this su.c.ker’s going down!” in fall, 2008 financial crisis.
Some positive news:
Millennials are killing the golf industry
(but they do like camping)
http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-are-hurting-the-golf-industry-2016-7?utm_source=hearst&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=allverticals
Had a down and out couple I knew that resorted to living in a tent in a parents backyard as their home! They claimed it wasn’t too bad, one advantage, tents are not under city building codes! So good thing these kids like camping, they may NEED to do it permanently.
Yes, Golf is taking a beating, Golf Smith filed Chapter 7 protection. And public courses are closing up and turning into housing developments.
Seems soon it will again be a game for the elite wealthy class.
With social media the young people need not have to met up on the course for face time.
It is very time consuming and expensive.
Besides, Tiger Woods is in a state of collapse
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3nBc-Fswn44
The major reason for Golf’s rise and fall.
If OJ ever gets out of prison — he could hook up with Tiger – they’d make an awesome team!
https://the-hollywood-gossip-res.cloudinary.com/iu/s–7E_MOihn–/t_full/cs_srgb,f_auto,fl_strip_profile.lossy,q_auto:420/v1496076280/tiger-woods-mug-shot.jpg
Is Tiger’s zonked and spaced-out expression the result of prescription meds or something he bought over the counter?
A poster with that face on it would be a hell of an endorsement for any pharmacological product.
That’s his mug shot when he was pulled for DUI last week… might be a bit of off the street pharma involved as well….
Perhaps Tiger is a FW Fan… is aware of the situation — and making the best of what little time is left…. Booze Blow and Broads…. BBB.com (affiliated with LLL.com)
“When heroes go down, they go down fast…”
I know a mellennial, a young man, who lives in a treehouse he built on the back of his grandparents property.
And they love to Facebook…. endlessly….
http://afterthemillennials.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/millennials-smartphones.png
obviously they do not alighn themselves with the sentiment of the classic Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song: “Love the One You’re With”.
Trump wants to stop sharing Gulf of Mexico oil royalties with Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/24/trump-to-stop-sharing-gulf-of-mexico-crude-oil-royalties-with-states.html
This is what happens when there is not enough tax revenue to go around. Sounds a little like Qatar.
I also noticed that Saudi has cut off aid to Palestine, which was an indirect beneficiary of their oil royalties:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/11/palestinian-authority-saudi-arabia-halt-aid.html
This is not good either!
All non-essential expenses get slashed — when you are going broke
Food for thought?
May’s day – or mayday
Tim Morgan (in his Surplus Energy Economics):
According to a recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 19 million people – almost a third of the British population – are now struggling to get by on “inadequate” incomes, up from 15 million (25%) six years previously. Comparing 2016 with 2009, a 12% rise in average wages has been exceeded both by CPI inflation (of 16%) and by the cost of household essentials (22%). By the latter measure, at least, the average wage-earner has now been getting poorer for a decade. This is a longer period of deterioration even than the 1930s, and might be unmatched since the 1840s, or even earlier. Neither does anyone really expect a reversal any time soon, not least because of the increase in inflation following the slump in Sterling after the “Brexit” decision.
If the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust would stop putting up rents for their shared ownership tenants by the RPI + 3% every year (the maximum allowable under the terms of the contracts), some people might be struggling a little less.
Bringing in more people will fix this.
It’s interesting to watch but essentially Uber and Amazon are crushing Main Street without any real profitable business. If that a working free market system? Is that fair competition?
Is this any different than what the industrialist did at the end of the 19th century?
Basically business is dead in the US. All we see happening is capital markets cannibalizing their own means of production.
Why are they doing it? No organic growth.
If you read the introduction to Overshoot an interesting comment is made about consuming next years seeds.
Their very low/negative profits are something important, but not something most people would think about. They also have tended to reduce tax revenue of local communities. Amazon now at least (mostly) collects sales taxes, but at one time it did not. Once malls close, a huge amount of tax revenue disappears.
Uber is not paying the kind of taxes that taxis would pay, and it is getting subsidies by getting essentially commercial driving added to private passenger auto policies.
Governments need the taxes, and commercial driving costs cannot be added to auto policies without some increase in premiums somewhere. So there are hidden costs that we don’t really see.
I had a run in with Mish on his site over an article where he criticized the French government for trying to prevent Amazon from destroying the retail industry in that country
He basically called me a heretic for suggesting that Amazon was an economic abomination in that it was able to tap unlimited funding allowing it to absorb losses by under cutting the competition and driving them out of business.
This is worse than an abomination — it is a Frankenmonster….
And we are starting to see the end result — malls are going broke as thousands upon thousands of stores are closed — tens of thousands of workers are tossed out of jobs….
Which will ultimately cause a commercial real estate crisis….
That’s what happens when you unleash a Frankenmonster into the economy
amazon is certainly a destructive abomination
but we have all helped it to grow—-precisely as we helped Rockefeller to amass his billions 100+ years ago.
Rockefeller offered the world something they didn’t know they needed—-Amazon repeated that in our own time.
Once wheels had engines attached–the stagecoach was doomed.—and by definition so were we. We just couldnt see that in the 18/1900s
Fast forward to now—you see a product in a store, Amazon offers to deliver it to your door at a third less…..is your conscience or your pocket going to win out there?
That is the crunch.
Once Amazon has closed all the stores, there will be no one left to buy its merchandise, because we live by commercial exchange, one way or another.
Bezos cannot stop, any more than Rockefeller could stop. Bezos is effectively converting our energy conversion into personal wealth, which is exactly what Rockefeller did.
Weird old world aint it?
I recently realized that the online glasses ordering services are also destructive. They reduce the availability of in store service, for people who have complex needs, and really need the service the stores can provide. Also, the local stores start carrying fewer frames and cancel their in house lab service. With the in house lab service, there is no need to change frames, because they can put new lenses in the old frames in one hour.
But would we be using Amazon nearly as much if Amazon was not able to tap into unlimited free money to allow buyers to return stuff that doesn’t fit free of charge… and to lose money on sales driving competitors out of business.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/17/uber-exploiting-loophole-to-spread-tentacles-across-uk-gmb-union-says
“After changes to the law surrounding taxi licensing, brought in by the Deregulation Act 2015, drivers with a private-hire licence from a local authority can use it to operate anywhere in England and Wales. Previously, the law required drivers to return to the area in which they were licensed between jobs”
“York council has written to the city’s MPs, calling on them to demand clarity from the government over the law. Uber has a temporary licence to operate in the city and, although only 12 Uber drivers are licensed by York council, hundreds of Uber cabs arrive in York from surrounding areas every weekend, to take advantage of increased demand from the city’s student and tourist populations.”
This affects me directly, as I live and work as a taxi driver in York. Uber must have friends in high places if they are able to get the law changed to allow drivers to pick up in areas where they are not licensed and have no local knowledge.
“The debt slaves are beginning to buckle under their loads.
“Consumer and business bankruptcies are rising again, after declining for years since the financial crisis. That’s not a propitious sign.
“For bankruptcy filings by businesses from large corporations to tiny sole proprietorships, the dance started in November 2015. At first it was the energy bust. But bankruptcies of energy companies have tapered off with new money surging into the oil & gas sector once again. Now bankruptcies in the retail sector are steadily worsening, and other sectors too have picked up the slack.
“So here we go again. Total US business bankruptcies in May rose 4.7% year-over-year to 3,572 filings, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. That’s up 40% from May 2015 and up 10% from May 2014…
“Commercial bankruptcy filings ballooned during the Financial Crisis and peaked in March 2010 at 9,004. Then, as credit conditions eased, and as cheap money was looking for a place to go and even zombie companies were able to refinance their debts, filings fell sharply. But November 2015 was the turning point when for the first time since March 2010, commercial bankruptcy filings rose year-over-year.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/commercial-business-bankruptcies-2017-6?IR=T
But don’t worry, we will get out of this crisis as well….all they have to do is ease credit and do a round of QE and..errrr scrap that, it’s already been done…collapse is in the waiting room..
http://viralliberty.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/consumer-debt.jpg
Look at the articles/graphs by Hamilton (econimica) from the end of May.
His argues with the data how the end of growth for the core spending age group clearly syncs with the print and debt fest launched since mid late 2000s. That’s not a coincidence, that’s a detailed plan in execution, there is no way back for normalization for the owners and operators of the system. They must and will print more. Is there going to be a log or more thrown inside the insane machine going forward, most likely something will pierce this trajectory eventually. But there is no guarantee about the time, methods, nothing..
My informed guess is about the biggest hurdle coming in the second part of next decade with the spike of elderly portion of the pop, in the meanwhile cover the lack of growth and demand with print, print. And depletion cover with war and global triage..
Don’t worry, for the debt ridden consumer Elon will soon launch SoupX, the soup kitchen of the future. Fully automated and fueled by solar power. McDonalds and Burger King won’t stand a chance!
At some point, too much of this debt becomes unplayable. Or the business model of Uber/Amazon becomes unviable. Or governments can’t cover enough taxes for all of their programs.
after see saudi arabia give threats to qatar
it remind of robocop quote
https://youtu.be/85cL1HisrNc
Haha TWp, you crack me up with your 80s posts…That movie was an instinct classic for me when I watched it in 1987…..if it happens to be on tv, I gladly watch it again every time….it is uncanny how prescient Verhoeven was…
http://www.blastr.com/2014-2-9/living-old-detroit-how-robocop-predicted-world-we-live-today
…instant classic…damn autocomplete 🙂
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-06/chicago-cab-industry-collapsing-medallion-foreclosures-soar#comment-9672286
Of course,Chicago cabbies aren’t alone in feeling the pinch. In New York, ridership in the city’s iconic yellow cabs has fallen about 30% over the last three years. Last year, San Francisco’s Yellow Cab — the city’s largest taxi company — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Los Angeles taxi ridership fell 43%, and revenue was down 24%, between 2013 and 2016.
Shocking that it is so hard to compete in an industry in which Uber is willing to burn billions of dollars per year to provide your service for a fraction of your operating costs.
No doubt Uber and Lyft are hammering these guys — but one has to wonder if this is also a symptom of an economy that is on life support — fewer people take cabs when they have no munny…
And btw — if you are trying to save a few dollars taking Uber…. buyer beware — Uber drivers generally do not have commercial insurance — so if they ram into a wall with you in the back — and you are left in a wheel chair…. you can forget about getting any money from the driver’s insurance company…. insurance is void if the car is being used for commercial purposes involving passengers
If you want to save even more dollars you can walk…and if you are in a real hurry there’s always running.
Know a couple of pensioners, she still must be working like a cabbie long shifts in smaller taxi company. As you amply documented, the Ubers of the world flowing on the cloud of fraudulently issued moneyz-stocks, are eating their lunch. She is visibly ill from the long driving sessions and night shifts. They are struggling for number of reasons, namely, hidden inflation for consumables (pension’s not adjusted), so real income goes less far each year, also because of EU mandated enviro-climate-energy deals electricity prices went through the roof, huge taxes on fuel, and even owning a flat (not renting) means you have to comply and make expensive upgrades on the heat insulation, heating system etc., while the energy prices dived instead of ever rising (previous EU plan – propaganda). It’s effectively brutal dictatorship out there even in metro areas if you look deeper under the quasi posh surface on which the elite predatory insects tend to surf for fun and glory of the day. And to put some highlight on it all, simultaneously the Italian and Soros NGO NAVY are moving migrants through the ClubMed enmasse (from African side of the shore!), and screaming at govs to give them larger allowance then for own citizens in need.
Xabier, I posted this a few months back…it talks about the reason why Uber exists in the first place (I find this guy’s blog excellent)
From the blog entry in question:
“In other words, Uber is not simply the result of clever, 21st century business acumen, but is rather, almost by default, the shrewd adaptation of industrialism and its technological “progress” to the resource shortages of tighter times. Call it an unintentional disguise of industrial civilization’s collapse if you’d like.”
http://fromfilmerstofarmers.com/blog/2015/june/the-uber-disguise-of-industrialisms-collapse/
Lots of out of work retail workers who need jobs now…..
When there is not enough to go around, corners are cut, including on insurance.
Well, I just checked Trump’s tweets: it seems that he is supporting what the Saudis are doing.
‘All evidence pointed to Quatar’ as funder of ‘extremism’.
Says this is the fruit of his recent visit to the ME.
Well… when he visited a couple of weeks ago .. he brought orders from his masters (the el.ders)…. and the Saudis — like good big fat whore master puppets —- carried out the orders as instructed…
A bunch of men living on a pile of sand dressed in skirts — do not give orders to the Eld.ers…. when asked to jump they ask how high —– afterall they do like their blonde whores and bentleys….
Standing by
http://me-confidential.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/king-ksa.jpg
Another problem with the high price of housing:
North estimates that a record 52,000 households risk default in the next 12 months, and that 23.4 percent of Australian families are under mortgage stress, meaning their income does not cover ongoing costs. That compares with about 19 percent from a year ago.
“People are up to their ears in mortgages,” said Brad Smith, a car sales consultant at MotorPoint Sydney which has seen a stark slowdown in sales in the past six months. “They are all on a budget. Everyone’s got all their money in houses, that’s how it is.”
For an economy that has achieved a remarkable winning streak – it has avoided a recession for more than 25 years – circumstances are looking bleak.
“As the housing market slows, we see consumption growth as a major risk amid record-low wages growth and ongoing headwinds to discretionary cash flows,” Morgan Stanley economist Daniel Blake said.
Retail sales have hardly grown in the past few months. Even online sales have slowed, with all major categories including homeware, games and toys, daily deals and takeaway food shrinking in April, according to the NAB Online Retail Sales Index. Car sales have flattened this year after solid growth in 2016 while sales of luxury cars and sports utility vehicles are at a four-year low.
For consumers like Sydney resident Marie-Aimee Guillermin, there’s little ‘play money’ left after stepping into Sydney’s housing market with a A$1.4 million 3-bedroom house last month.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-06/stressed-australians-struggle-record-debts-housing-market-overheats
As long as everything rise at the same rate–wages, cost of living, savings, things go well. Once resource prices drop, things go badly. Too many laid off from work.
Reality sets in:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/photo-essays/2017-06-01/stunning-photos-of-the-arctic-circle-s-melting-ice-terrain
Nunavut to vote on allowing the private ownership of land that could stimulate economy
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/nunavut-to-vote-on-allowing-the-private-ownership-of-land-that-could-be-stimulant-for-economy
I am waiting for this to pass then I have my eye on some beach front property…
https://photos.smugmug.com/Europe/Norway/i-TXJ44L7/0/XL/lofoten-unstad-surfer-XL.jpg
That video on the link about how the food to the Arctic settlements needs to be flown just demonstrates how far detached we are from being able to live without BAU…. these native people would starve and die within a few hours of being unplugged….
while climate change and icecap melting is a fact that we have to come to terms with, pictures of ‘melting ice’ do nothing to drive the point home—because they are just ‘pretty pictures of melting ice’ taken out of context
so the deniers will just say exactly that and reject any deeper meaning of it
Every well-meaning purveyor of doomsday scenarios essentially faces the same problem in that blaspheming infidels invariably fail to understand the deeper meaning of the truths they are trying to preach—I mean teach. I was talking to a Jehovah’s Witness only last week and he was lamenting how many times he’s had doors literally slammed in his face before he had a chance to warn the slammers of the damnation they were likely facing if they didn’t get their act together.
Re. Arctic sea ice, there’s a blaspheming infidel who swears climate scientists are lying and he presents data he claims proves that this year “the Arctic is actually experiencing a record low decline in sea ice, since the peak on March 3.”
Moreover, he maintains that the data “also show that Arctic sea ice extent is normal, far above last year, and about the same as 2006 – the year with the highest minimum extent of the past decade.”
More troubling still, he uses data from respected official sources to do this.
But not to worry, because once the Church of Climate Catastrophe attains real power on Earth, their clergy will be able to burn such heretics, blasphemers and deniers to death using non-fossil-fuel-derived combustable s it goes without saying. And while that would have no effect whatsoever on the climate, it would shut the mouths of any who dared deny the consensus that climate changes and icecaps melt.
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/06/down-the-rabbit-hole-with-lying-climate-scientists/
Well, the graph posted on his blog from NSIDC clearly shows sea ice extent is not at record lows, and on par with 2011.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
I always have two words for the folks who say all the climate scientists can’t be wrong. Maginot Line.
Walks and squeaks like a duck, hm prolly it could be a duck afterall..
It’s filling all the check boxes, that warming agenda been chosen and used as tool for placating the cattle-slaves for the stricter rule of the near-midterm future, no growth and energy depletion, martial-law, censored net, ..
The fact that in spite of the fact that the leaders of most countries (minions of the elders) claim global warming is going to do us in — and then they do nothing about it — because they can do nothing about it — so why not just instruct the MSM to ignore the issue…
Because as we know — the MSM is very good at ignoring issues when told to…..
Leads me to believe that something is not right with this picture…. that there is likely an agenda involved that requires the narrative of man made AGW….
We are dealing with many very networked systems.
It is very popular in all fields to put together models based on some few variables that the modelers think that they understand. But we have experience, time and time again, that these models are wrong.
Think about Fukushima. Engineering models said that this couldn’t happen.
Think about all of the women who took estrogen pills, before someone pointed out that it raised cancer risk.
Think about the big shift in food (in the US) to use more refined carbohydrates, and the push to paint all fats as bad.
Think about the peak oil analysis, based on oil “running out.”
EROI models assume that wind turbines and solar panels will be useful after the grid goes down because of oil problems. How reasonable is this?
As it turns out, received wisdom isn’t all that wise.
http://imgur.com/y854ZmV
Maybe that JW is waking up???? He’s not supposes to be lamenting door slamming, it’s supposes to be an encouragement. After all, if the “stones can cry out the message” (Luke 19:40)
Good post Tim
Solar energy boom brings Indian manufacturers to financial collapse
http://www.livemint.com/Industry/GLW0GpwlTzt5z7CHdGjAkO/Solar-energy-boom-brings-Indian-manufacturers-to-financial-c.html
If China can use low coal prices and subsidies available through rising debt to subsidize its solar panel output, it forces all world manufacturers to do likewise. Of course, this is not a sustainable approach.
But this approach does help provide jobs for China’s workers, and it helps keep the price of coal from falling too much.
I’m glad articles like these are finally putting the theory of India supposedly undertaking and overtaking China to the grave. The countries are absolutely dissimilar at least in the top metrics-conditions, which are important for the relative positioning within the global rat race as long it lasts.
worldof
I see mostly only Chinese graduate students at the science lab site here, as I cycle by, one of the best university’s in the world. A few Indians, now and then.
There are a lot of Chinese actuaries. I am not close enough to the situation to know exactly the percentage, however. There are a few whose background is from India. Not so much those with background from Middle East or Africa.
India is a basket case…. the only way it competes with China is in terms of the race to two billion feeders….
Solarworld is restructuring under bankruptcy. Perhaps the cost of manufacturing panels is greater than the current price.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/06/06/report-sears-closing-72-additional-stores/102563986/
‘Sears to close another 66 stores’
Is it any wonder? Just this past Friday I walked into a Sears outlet with the model # etc. to order a new dryer heat coil and was told they don’t order parts, but we have some lovely new models if you’d like to look at them. I chuckled and walked out. I bought a replacement part online via Amazon and it got here Tues., installed it just a few minutes ago and the dryer works once again. Cost of part: $21.00 delivered. But I could have been lazy and bought a new one for 800-1200 and I suppose that’s what Sears is banking on now – the last vestige of a company that decades ago was known for quick repairs and great warranties is on it’s last legs.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Storm_clouds.jpg
Sad!
What happens when BAU breaks down?
Qatar — I’m really confused. Oh well, I’m just going to blame global warming.
Just read something that says Qatar oil is gone by 2023. Currently looks like 10 billion per year from oil and 10 billion per year from nat gas. That ought to be a shock loosing half the FF income.
Definitely looks to me that the Saudis are running out of oil . So now they move in to loot Qatar’s bountiful natural gas. But what if the Russians and Iran pull a quickie intervention? Who’re the thugs gonna call?
Saudi Arabia Gives Qatar 24 Hour Ultimatum As Analysts Warn Of “Military Confr
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-06/saudi-arabia-gives-qatar-24-hour-ultimatum-analysts-warn-military-confrontation
So do the US aircraft at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar bomb Saudi or Qatar. Or maybe both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Udeid_Air_Base
This is looking awesome — hopefully the bombs start to fall in time for the weekend — I am gonna organize a Bomb Qatar Party …. 24/7 fire works.
I’m putting the beer on ice …. gotta be ready
I Want to Be ———–Entertained NOW!
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/828/498/2d5.gif
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0W-CXo0YrnE/UWLVd7BJVaI/AAAAAAAAA4A/cS6AKNPjeGk/s1600/G+is+for+giddy.jpg
But but but … what about the world cup?
Fortunately they can hold out without food for many months….
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/11/the-richest-fattest-nation-on-earth-its-not-the-united-states/248366/
Okay FE that made me laugh.
‘Qatar also has very high rates of birth defects and genetic disorders — problems that have worsened in recent decades.’
This is because of the high rate of marriage between close relatives…. apparently brothers get into fist fights over hot sisters… but the biggest problem is when dad intervenes… and takes the hot sister otherwise known as his daughter … for himself…. uncles and cousins also express interest in the hot sister/daughter/niece…
And before you know it the IQ of the country is in Idiocracy territory.
And as we can see — they are exhibiting their Idiocracy by pissing off The Wrong People….
This could end badly for the Kingdom of Idiocracy
https://libyanfreepress.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/qatari-genuine-pork-meat.jpg
I have to say, we have lots of young Arabs at the expensive language schools here.
They often strike one as being Not Quite All There…….
We like to say “the elevator does not quite make it to the top.”
joebanana
With these Arab students, I think the ‘penthouse suite’ is actually missing……
One article I linked to in another comments said that (based on someone’s personal observation), most of the people living in Qatar are foreigners. If this is the case, the original people in Qatar may very well have a relatively small population, and a problem with a shrinking gene pool.
The only option Qatar has will be to ship food from Iran and completely side with Iran (which will be impossible due to American forces in country), or capitulate to Saudi demands before they’re starved out. Decide.
Saudis accusing Qatar of funding terror? That’s a joke right? Saudis are the biggest funder of wahhabist terrorists. That’s like the United states accusing Canada of doing too many drone strikes.
I think this really is a pretext to invasion; the first thing you do is cut off economic support and freedom of movement before marching in.
MSM is of little use in understanding what is happening there…. all they do is publish fables passed to them by the Ministry of Truth…
Saudis have the gall to say someone else supports terrorism? HA!
That would be like a serial arsonist accusing others of starting fires.
Saudi cutting off all transportation into Qatar, including food trucks. Half of the region has cut ties with us. Qatar grows almost none of it’s food and has a 3 day drinking water supply. Air transit over now 7 countries has stopped or will stop. Food will need to be flown in on a much longer route to avoid violating Saudi airspace. Never thought it would happen in Qatar of all places…
Update: stores are packed with people, many types of food have been sold out. I see there being a shortage of food in the coming days if Qatar doesn’t figure something out.
from redditer living in Qatar
Qatar is a peninsula surrounded by Saudi. Everything has to go through them
This sounds bad!
I guess Russian gas was too hard a nut to crack; so turn on one of their ‘own’..? Does any of this gas or can any of this gas go to Europe?
Ding dong, we have a winner here.
The Qatar story is huge, chips are moving fast on the global field again..
For the Saudi. and friends at the moment is to play it both ways, not unconditional support to the West, while increasingly balancing it out long term deals with the East.
And you know what comes next, less West more East, final destination barely no West, all for the East.
WAR
Hugely important supplier to the UK, I believe.
Well, I’ll just go down to check my wood-pile, and pat the logs lovingly……
lolz
That is my understanding too–to the extent that Europe imports LNG, it often comes from Qatar. UK has been an importer of LNG, since it is far from pipeline imports.
The answer is yes…some of it goes to Europe. Try the UK and Poland and the rest of Europe. A few yrs ago the UK came within HOURS of running out of Nat Gas pressure. They were saved by emergency LNG ships docking and delivering gas at the last moment. Europe wants to import LNG to avoid being 10)% dependent upon Russian natural gas.
“Qatar…has a 3 day drinking water supply.”
Where do they get their water? Is it trucked in?
Perhaps the El.ders are going to exterminate the Qataris… it’s so simple…. blockade the port and shut all borders – check….. turn off the tap that supplies the water … check…. turn of the power to the ACs? Blockade the fast food restaurants?
Then wait…. no need for bombs….
Within a couple of weeks most people will be dead…. then all that delicious cheap oil and gas are ours!!!!
And we get to LLL!!!!
Yee Haw — never did much like those Qataris anyway.
https://livingtheworkshop.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/celebrate.png
something like 60% of the people in Qatar are foriegn laborers who are practically slaves. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Qatar stops feeding them.
Apparently they’re just useless eaters, like Greece, Ukraine, Syria etc. “Qataris just love to eat”, so it makes sense to strip them off their resources and bundles them back into the stone age.
Coming to more useless countries you know, soon.
Like being in a hot air balloon …. hovering over a massive pit filled with horrifying and hungry monsters…. the balloon is slowly drifting downwards….. and the strong are tossing the weak over one by one to try to keep the balloon from falling into The Horror…..
Is that a Venezuelan I see hanging on by his finger tips…. hola dude….cómo estás —- here … let me help you out….
http://www.clearwisdom.net/u/article_images/2005-3-19-clz-11.jpg
My view is that what is happening is indirectly the result of low oil prices, and the strain it puts on Saudi Arabia.
Qatar always appears in reports as having a much lower “cost per barrel” for oil extraction than Saudi Arabia, when needed tax revenue is included. For example, this report shows Qatar as the lowest cost OPEC oil producer.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/aricorp-opec-fiscal-breakeven-2014.png
Part of this comes from lack of reinvestment in oil resources. The country seems to be past peak oil. I don’t know if there aren’t things that they can do to produce more from existing resources, or if they have chosen not to, but they don’t have the big reinvestment costs that most companies/countries have.
Part of this, though, probably comes from Saudi Arabia effectively providing the food and water for Qatar. If Saudi Arabia is under pressure because it cannot afford to import so much, and it cannot invest so much in its own water supply, its interest in helping a dependent country goes way down. I expect that this is the basic issue that has been causing recent problems. If Saudi Arabia can reduce Qatar’s oil (and perhaps natural gas) exports, it may help raise the world price of oil, also helping Saudi Arabia. Cutting off its LNG would tend to raise LNG prices–I don’t see a benefit to Saudi Arabia in doing this.
There are other issues as well, including religious differences. While both seem to follow the Salafi version of Sunni Islam,Qatar has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in the past. By contrast, Saudi Arabia adheres to Wahhabism, which analysts see as ideologically different from the Brotherhood. Some Saudis have accused Qatar of betraying “the true Salafi path”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Qatar_diplomatic_crisis Qatar supports Iran, while Saudi Arabia sees Iran as its enemy. Qatar allows women more rights, including the ability to drive. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-Qatar-and-Saudi-Arabia
Update from that ever popular Hellenic Shipping News:
Baltic index continues to slide on weaker rates across segments
http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/baltic-index-continues-to-slide-on-weaker-rates-across-segments/
I need to remember to get a subscription to the print edition — I wonder if they offer rural delivery…
More Ghost Towns NOW!
On a positive note — I was reading that a massive bridge linking HK to Macau has run into corruption issues and that the concrete is suspect…. if indeed that turns out to be true — they may have to rebuild the bridge….
Hopefully it all has to come down and new concrete poured.
Long Live BAU! Long Live BAU! Vive la BAU! Vive la BAU!
Not a sign of growth!
There are at least four reasons for which the elites are happy with terrorist attacks in Western soil:
Terrorist attacks can be used to disorientate public from anti-popular measures by the governments. They can also be used to undermine the momentum of popular resistance against such measures.
Terrorist attacks can be used as a pretext for further repression by the governments to prevent popular uprising against anti-popular measures.
In an Orwellian version of the close future, anyone who would dare to critisize Western disastrous interventions in other countries could be considered potential danger for national security under the pretext of motivating terrorist attacks in Western soil.
Terrorist attacks could give governments and big corporations an excuse to take full control of the internet in order to ‘suffocate’ independent information, and therefore, help the mainstream media propaganda monopoly to recover.
Britain appears to be in the lead on trying to take control of the internet.
Qatar in ‘chaos’ as Arab powers halt food supply to country amid diplomatic rift
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-06/arab-powers-halt-food-supply-to-qatar-amid-gulf-diplomatic-rift/8593506
Well, that escalated quickly.
Oil headed up rapidly. Sure would have been profitable to be in the know 6 hours ago.
It is easy to drive the price of oil higher — or lower…. a false flag bombing in KSA would spike oil immediately…
The problem is …. the global economy cannot afford $50 oil …. never mind $80 or $100
Qatar can cut off gas supplies and really get things going.
So it’s not about a hunting trip gone wrong …. really?
“Forget Terrorism”: The Real Reason Behind The Qatar Crisis Is Natural Gas
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-06/forget-terrorism-real-reason-behind-qatar-crisis-natural-gas
A google search of Qatar natural gas… brings up virtually no mention of this in the MSM….
It’s like the cattle are treated like small children… this is too complicated for you to understand have some candy instead…. now go away and let the adults deal with this….
plus Qatar oil production has also been peak long time ago
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Qatar-10.jpg
Russian hackers…
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/russian-hackers-planted-fake-news-qatar-crisis/index.html
Well why not they get the blame for everything else
There’s been a Propaganda Hyper-Bubble blown over the last few years – in consequence, it’s a currency no-one trusts anymore.
If ‘intelligence sources’ told me my head was still on my shoulders, I’d have to check by feeling it first. 🙂
Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/05/upshot/opioid-epidemic-drug-overdose-deaths-are-rising-faster-than-ever.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1
People of OFW, stop being so negative (sarc)….join the Dark Side of Delusion of “everything will be okay” 🙂
https://futurism.com/an-end-to-fossil-fuels-india-commits-to-sell-only-electric-cars-by-2030/
my gobermint is absolutely stupid instant on focusing on Kashmir
focus on ev cars that we do not have any infrastructure
The story may be right. The total number of cars sold will be zero, and zero electric cars will be sold.
Definitions:
Collapse is not war, (civil or invasion);it is not increasing poverty; it is not lack of social justice; it is not a country being squeezed dry by creditors; or by rackets like ‘higher’ education and complex medicine; nor is black-outs and food shortages and high crime rates.
These might be symptoms of pre-collapse, and the consequences. of one.
But collapse is:
The the cessation of higher layers of complexity, beyond immediate retrieval.
Or in terms that DelusiSTANIS will understand (which is 17 levels below a layman) … it’s when the power goes off — for good — and you are standing there in the dark thinking…. WTF now.
Game over man, Game over!
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gulf-qatar-commodities-idUSKBN18X1Y2
‘Port bans choke Qatar’s commodity trade as gas supply worries grow’
“A campaign by leading Arab powers to isolate Qatar is disrupting trade in commodities from crude oil to metals and food, and deepening fears of a possible shock to the global gas market, where the tiny Gulf state is a major player.
Just a day after Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies severed transport links with Qatar over a diplomatic row, bans on Doha’s fleet using regional ports and anchorages threatened to halt some of its exports and disrupt those of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Qatar is now unable to load crude oil onto supertankers together with other Gulf-based grades, and price agency S&P Global Platts said it would not automatically include the country in its Middle East price benchmark.”
If it is not one problem, it is another!
list of countries in collapse phase or have collapse
Greece
Venezuela
Ukraine
Yemen
Syria
Libya
Afghanistan
Iraq
south sudan
which will be next country that will have its lights goes off
Well, you have to keep in mind that many of them (Iraq, Libya, Syria, ..) have been brutally invaded directly or by proxy, so their earlier scheduled collapse was forced on them in order to delay the collapse processes in the core.
Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine are also at least partly in that category, while Greece and Venezuela, despite foreign influence meddling are mostly falling due organic collapse based on internal contradictions..
Ukraine is self inflicted….not caused by invasion.
Wrong US/EU sponsored coup of neonazis (Western Ukraine)!
Correct, I should have mentioned that the US sponsored coup kicked it off royally. However, the utter corruption in Ukraine has devastated their economy since that event.
Pensioners are forced to choose between winter heating and food. Millions are fleeing the country in search of work.
The rot set in right after Ukrainian independence. The economy was never modernised, falling pray to various oligarchic interests who have been busy with a fire sale of the country ever since.
exactly
Qatar……………(but i somehow doubt it)
India or Mexico. I’m leaning towards India
india that interesting why you believe india will collapse because of Demonetization
btw i live in india
I haven’t seen a decent article on India’s current experiment with money in quite some time.
I have been receiving information from an Indian reader about problems with job cuts in India. This is a link to a story he sent me about layoffs in the IT industry.
http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/it-sector-to-layoff-up-to-2-lakh-engineers-annually-for-next-3-years-117051400487_1.html
Demonetization and too many people. Also, not enough energy resources.
India is not survivable, obviously, as any population biologist can point out.
I’m going with Pakistan- in population overshoot, ecologically devastated, huge water and resource issues, dependent on a collapsing industrial AG system, a population immersed in religious ignorance, etc.
Oh, forgot- rum by a corrupt military
Qatar?
In keeping with whatever it takes….
I reckon we incinerate all Qataris …. and just take the oil …. I understand it is some of the cheapest to extract …
The issue is that Qatar is using this oil to subsidize the standard of living of its people — that cannot be allowed — it needs to be used only to keep BAU alive — and allow us to live large longer (LLL)
This could extend BAU some months… perhaps a couple of years?
If the El.ders have concluded likewise… then I have no doubt they would not hesitate to depopulate Qatar.
Whatever it takes means Whatever It Takes.
Burn All Qataris.
Sorry about that guys… wrong place… wrong time…. resource curse and all that
LLL
“”No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” – John Donne
Surely Canada with its housing bubble should be included…. and the US with its auto and commercial property markets ready to blow deserve mention…. then there is something like 20% NPLs on the Italian banks — that merits inclusion … and on and on…. sparks are flying everywhere
You can’t possibly call Greece collapsed.
Actually … none of these countries has collapsed… collapse = electricity permanently down…. no food in the shops… no petrol available…
Sure, but Greece are not further out on the collapse curve than most other countries, and far behind Venezuela, Sudan, Somalia and most of middle East.
Nigeria? Or have they never been not-collapsed?
Egypt?
Nice chart in this post that shows what happens to usable energy as FF decline and ramping renewables. Even at a minimal 2% decline the pressure on the system by increased renewable manufacturing collapses the system in a decade.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/the-energy-trap/
I love the energy trap post! Many other good posts also such as the nation size battery.
We make our own math now–
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P_6oGx1uXQo/WTWCdANhRKI/AAAAAAAAvH8/2I9nFMtqegojMz_RoYtJhP4w5yQAMJpjQCLcB/s640/9aa0f10b0f9a99bae477e1621ea2cb81.jpg
I think someone here originally posted this but it’s worth posting again.
Excerpt
Once we appreciate that physical growth must one day cease (or reverse), we can come to realize that all economic growth must similarly end. This last point may be hard to swallow, given our ability to innovate, improve efficiency, etc.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
Here’s what happens with renewables used as a primary grid supply.
http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-may-2017-performance-update/
This needs to be required reading for all of the people who claim the world can be saved by wind and solar. In fact, we need to be doing a careful analysis of what is going wrong, everywhere. Measuring the EROI of a piece of the system tells us essentially nothing about the usefulness of a particular electricity generating technique. Wind and solar do not sufficiently upgrade resources in their natural form, to the type of electricity we need.
I agree Gail. In theory it sounds so doable. But in practice it doesn’t work. If people adjusted their theory to include the inefficiency that is demonstrated in practice the renewable movement would be the undoable movement.
If people adjusted their theory to include the inefficiency that is demonstrated in practice the renewable movement would be the undoable movement.
I agree. And i would ever argue it would stop on a dime.
Yes, this is well known example of botched attempt at demo site for multi mode renewables with storage component, Euan’s blog updates the evaluation frequently .. besides the in depth first analysis.
Such open site hydro storage has been known as problematic for decades even in much colder climates (less evaporation), eventually it is being used everywhere only for brief spikes in the grid, not for large buffering/storage purposes. So, it’s not the problem of renewables, that some bunch of Spaniards got mentally unstable for some reason (ideology, corruption – read about their previous PV exploits haha) and went ahead with this particular very stupid project deemed to failure from the beginning.
do we know 1920s there were solar/tesla hopium future watch this video
https://youtu.be/czr-98yo6RU
look closely most prediction never came close
Interesting video, thanks.
It seems that we continually go through cycles of optimism followed by crashes, and the whole thing repeats over and over.
European early 20th century optimism only crushed by WW2, and even then, in a span of a few years things were humming along nicely under American protection.
American optimism barely touched by the great depression, then a great boom in the 1950s/60s, and slightly affected by problems in the 1970s but then fully recovered, with full scale corporate globalization creating the perpetual utopia that we believe in today.
It’s psychologically a part of humanity, with modernity reinforcing a belief that technology can solve the human condition, everything increases like on steroids. The “greatness” of western civilization, which has become global civilization, is based on a delusion! But what a delusion.
If this is true, and I think it is, the prognosis is much dimmer than we think. Only a global nuclear holocaust, black death, or roman style collapse will crush the optimism of this system, and only then if it is neatly recorded, the history well understood, etc.
More than likely, we will have crashes of varying magnitude, followed by brief periods of recovery and psychological optimism for a few years or decade, followed by another crash, ad infinitum for 20, 50, 100 years. The survivors in 100 years may not even have records of what happened, they will simply look around and think, my ancestors were gods and then they destroyed themselves.
The debt is the exploitation tool for the human energy, as only the humans can have debt.
Yes. Non-human species don’t need debt because they don’t have so much complexity in their economy. Most of them are occupied with roles gathering/breeding/defense for the pack/herd/colony.
Debt is just a tool for humans and their entities to have economic activity with each other and dissipate resources. If nation X has 10 trillions in debt and nation Y has 20 trillions in debt, I think it is wiser to view this as a 1:2 ratio of economic activity performed on these entities, rather than this money is to be paid back.
That’s why I believe there are basically no limits to debt between core entities. And peripheral countries are collapsing because banks won’t give them credit. All countries not providing essential resources, goods or services to the core countries are facing collapse at the moment.
As long as the core countries can provide sufficient amounts of food and energy for their own, they will not collapse. But because of diminishing returns of resources and complexity the pie is shrinking faster and faster. It will be a staircase collapse with different timelines for each region / nation. The staircase might go something like this:
Utilities showing signs of stress (more blackouts)
Share of money spent on essentials increase due to pie shrinking
Civil unrest increasing, inequality hitting limits, poor people starving
Epidemics spreading, utilities unreliable, government collapses, food crisis
Die off
???
???
Exactly, one only needs to look at the graphs with flows of energy, products, money on the global map. It’s a club and you are either among the owners/shareholders, core important players, players of lower status or among the complete dupes aka other expendables. Forty years ago they kicked the can by accommodating the Arabs(oil), then came opening of China and former socialist block (slave labor outsourcing), .. , in between we have had also various proxy wars, and few periphery collapses. We are clearly nearing the end of the road on this overall trend, but this is a very long winding one in terms of single human lifespan experience..
This system as any other in history could be after reaching saturation – stagnation phase, obviously trimmed and triaged down for a while, at what complexities thresholds it tends to cascade even more into disintegration is hard to predict. But as we have amply document, if you are at this play for past ~200/1000yrs (past two strongest cycles), through know-how accumulation you get to understand a thing or two how to organize such circus to its fullest possible lifespan, i.e. material churn and nice privileged life for the top class as long as it lasts..
Yes, they can rig the game. A small privileged class can certainly enjoy an excellent, comfortable life while a society slides into general stagnation and increasing poverty – in fact we can see this quite clearly now in both the US and the EU.
An elite bureaucracy, of a few tens of thousands, can skim enough for itself in terms of salaries, accommodation and pensions from an economy comprised of some hundreds of millions of ‘citizens’, and do so without the smallest twinge of conscience.
There were no doubt Romans of old family enjoying nice hot baths with all the trimmings of slaves, heated floors and large estates for hunting up to the very moment that they lost all authority and the wild hairy people took over.
The “wild hairy people “. ….LOL. I love it! Collapse will bring wild hairy people taking over.
I vote you onto FE’s board of directors!
Got the beard. Got the spear. Got the attitude. 🙂
Musk has developed a reputation as a Tony Stark–like man of action—rather than, say, an endlessly self-aggrandizing, union-busting executive whose empire rests on billions in government subsidies and canny acts of self-dealing, like engineering the merger of his money-losing car company with his even-more-money-losing solar company.
https://thebaffler.com/the-future-sucked/musk-of-success
He’s like the anti-hero in an Ayn Rand novel….
Elon Shrugged …
When the government failed to increase his subsidies and Tesla went bankrupt because he could no longer absorb multi-billion dollar losses.