Economists have given us a model of how prices and quantities of goods are supposed to interact.
Figure 1. From Wikipedia: The price P of a product is determined by a balance between production at each price (supply S) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand D). The diagram shows a positive shift in demand from D1 to D2, resulting in an increase in price (P) and quantity sold (Q) of the product.
Unfortunately, this model is woefully inadequate. It sort of works, until it doesn’t. If there is too little of a product, higher prices and substitutions are supposed to fix the problem. If there is too much, prices are supposed to fall, causing the higher-priced producers to drop out of the system.
This model doesn’t work with oil. If prices drop, as they have done since mid-2014, businesses don’t drop out. They often try to pump more. The plan is to try to make up for inadequate prices by increasing the volume of extraction. Of course, this doesn’t fix the problem. The hidden assumption is, of course, that eventually oil prices will again rise. When this happens, the expectation is that oil businesses will be able to make adequate profits. It is hoped that the system can again continue as in the past, perhaps at a lower volume of oil extraction, but with higher oil prices.
I doubt that this is what really will happen. Let me explain some of the issues involved.
[1] The economy is really a much more interlinked system than Figure 1 makes it appear.
Supply and demand for oil, and for many other products, are interlinked. If there is too little oil, the theory is that oil prices should rise, to encourage more production. But if there is too little oil, some would-be workers will be without jobs. For example, truck drivers may be without jobs if there is no fuel for the vehicles they drive. Furthermore, some goods will not be delivered to their desired locations, leading to a loss of even more jobs (both at the manufacturing end of the goods, and at the sales end).
Ultimately, a lack of oil can be expected to reduce the availability of jobs that pay well. Digging in the ground with a stick to grow food is a job that is always around, with or without supplemental energy, but it doesn’t pay well!
Thus, the lack of oil really has a two-way pull:
(a) Higher prices, because of the shortage of oil and the desired products it produces.
(b) Lower prices, because of a shortage of jobs that pay adequate wages and the “demand” (really affordability) that these jobs produce.
[2] There are other ways that the two-way pull on prices can be seen:
(a) Prices need to be high enough for oil producers, or they will eventually stop extracting and refining the oil, and,
(b) Prices cannot be too high for consumers, or they will stop buying products made with oil.
If we think about it, the prices of basic commodities, such as food and fuel, cannot rise too high relative to the wages of ordinary (also called “non-elite”) workers, or the system will grind to a halt. For example, if non-elite workers are at one point spending half of their income on food, the price of food cannot double. If it does, these workers will have no money left to pay for housing, or for clothing and taxes.
[3] The upward pull on oil prices comes from a combination of three factors.
(a) Rising cost of production, because the cheapest-to-produce oil tends to be extracted first, leaving the more expensive-to-extract oil for later. (This pattern is also true for other types of resources.)
(b) If workers are becoming more productive, this growing productivity of workers is often reflected in higher wages for the workers. With these higher wages, workers can afford more goods made with oil, and that use oil in their operation. Thus, these higher wages lead to higher “demand” (really affordability) for oil.
Recently, worker productivity has not been growing. One reason this is not surprising is because energy consumption per capita hit a peak in 2013. With less energy consumption per capita, it is likely that, on average, workers are not being given bigger and better “tools” (such as trucks, earth-moving equipment, and other machines) with which to leverage their labor. Such tools require the use of energy products, both when they are manufactured and when they are operated.
Figure 2. World Daily Per Capita Energy Consumption, based on primary energy consumption from BP Statistical Review of World Energy and 2017 United Nations population estimates.
(c) Another “pull” on demand comes from increased investment. This investment can be debt-based or can reflect equity investment. It is these financial assets that allow new mines to be opened, and new factories to be built. Thus, wages of non-elite workers can grow. McKinsey Global Institute reports that growth in total “financial assets” has slowed since 2007.
Figure 3. Figure by McKinsey Global Institute showing that growth in debt in financial instruments (both debt and equity) has slowed significantly since 2007. Source
More recent data by McKinsey Global Institute shows that cross-border investment, in particular, has slowed since 2007.
Figure 4. Figure by McKinsey Global Institute showing that global cross-border capital flows (combined debt and equity) have declined by 65% since the 2007 peak. Download from this page.
This cross-border investment is especially helpful in encouraging exports, because it often puts into place new facilities that encourage extraction of minerals. Some minerals are available in only a few places in the world; these minerals are often traded internationally.
[4] The downward pull on oil and other commodity prices comes from several sources.
(a) Oil exports are often essential to the countries where they are extracted because of the tax revenue and jobs that they produce. The actual cost of extraction may be quite low, making extraction feasible, even at very low prices. Because of the need for tax revenue and jobs, governments will often encourage production regardless of price, so that the country can maintain its place in the world export market until prices again rise.
(b) Everyone “knows” that oil and other commodities will be needed in the years ahead. Because of this, there is no point in stopping production altogether. In fact, the cost of production is likely to keep rising, putting an upward push on commodity prices. This belief encourages businesses to stay in the market, regardless of the economics.
(c) There is a long lead-time for developing new extraction capabilities. Decisions made today may affect extraction ten years from now. No one knows what the oil price will be when the new production is brought online. At the same time, new production is coming on-line today, based on analyses when prices were much higher than they are today. Furthermore, once all of the development costs have been put in place, there is no point in simply walking away from the investment.
(d) Storage capacity is limited. Production and needed supply must balance exactly. If there is more than a tiny amount of oversupply, prices tend to plunge.
(e) The necessary price varies greatly, depending where geographically the extraction is being done, and depending on what is included in the calculation. Costs are much lower if the calculation is done excluding investment to date, or excluding taxes paid to governments, or excluding necessary investments needed for pollution control. It is often easy to justify accepting a low price, because there is usually some cost basis upon which such a low price is acceptable.
(f) Over time, there really are efficiency gains, but it is difficult to measure how well they are working. Do these “efficiency gains” simply speed up production a bit, or do they allow more oil in total to be extracted? Also, cost cuts by contractors tend to look like efficiency gains. In fact, they may simply be temporary prices cuts, reflecting the desire of suppliers to maintain some market share in a time when prices are too low for everyone.
(g) Literally, every economy in the world wants to grow. If every economy tries to grow at the same time and the market is already saturated (given the spending power of non-elite workers), a very likely outcome is plunging prices.
[5] As we look around the world, the prices of many commodities, including oil, have fallen in recent years.
Figures 3 and 4 show that investment spending spiked in 2007. Oil prices spiked not long after that–in the first half of 2008.
Figure 5. Monthly Brent oil prices with dates of US beginning and ending QE.
Quantitative Easing (QE) is a way of encouraging investment through artificially low interest rates. US QE began right about when oil prices were lowest. We can see that the big 2008 spike and drop in prices corresponds roughly to the rise and drop in investment in Figures 3 and 4, above, as well.
If we look at commodities other than oil, we often see a major downslide in prices in recent years. The timing of this downslide varies. In the US, natural gas prices fell as soon as gas from fracking became available, and there started to be a gas oversupply problem.
I expect that at least part of gas’s low price problem also comes from subsidized prices for wind and solar. These subsidies lead to artificially low prices for wholesale electricity. Since electricity is a major use for natural gas, low wholesale prices for electricity indirectly tend to pull natural gas prices down.
Figure 6. Natural gas prices in the US and Canada, indexed to the 2008 price, based on annual price data provided in BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
Many people assume that fracking can be done so inexpensively that the type of downslide in prices shown in Figure 6 makes sense. In fact, the low prices available for natural gas are part of what have been pushing North American “oil and gas” companies toward bankruptcy.
For a while, it looked like high natural gas prices in Europe and Asia might allow the US to export natural gas as LNG, and end its oversupply problem. Unfortunately, overseas prices of natural gas have slid since 2013, making the profitability of such exports doubtful (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Prices of natural gas imports to Europe and Asia, indexed to 2008 levels, based on annual average prices provided by BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
Coal prices have followed a downward slope of a different shape since 2008. Note that the 2016 prices range from 32% to 59% below the 2008 level. They are even lower, relative to 2011 prices.
Figure 8. Prices of several types of coal, indexed to 2008 levels, based on annual average prices provided by BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
Figure 9 shows the price path for several metals and minerals. These seem to follow a downward path as well. I did not find a price index for rare earth minerals that went back to 2008. Recent data suggested that the prices of these minerals have been falling as well.
Figure 9. Prices of various metals and minerals, indexed to 2008, based on USGS analyses found using this link: https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/
Figure 9 shows that several major metals are down between 24% and 35% since 2008. The drop is even greater, relative to 2011 price levels.
Internationally traded foods have also fallen in price since 2008.
Figure 10. Food prices, indexed to 2008 levels, based on data from the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization.
In Item [4] above, I listed several factors that would tend to make oil prices fall. These same issues could be expected to cause the prices of these other commodities to drop. In addition, energy products are used in the production of metals and minerals and of foods. A drop in the price of energy products would tend to flow through to lower extraction prices for minerals, and lower costs for growing agricultural products and bringing products to market.
One surprising place where prices are dropping is in the auction prices for the output of onshore wind turbines. This is a chart shown by Roger Andrews, in a recent article on Energy Matters. The cost of making wind turbines doesn’t seem to be dropping dramatically, except from the fall in the prices of commodities used to make the turbines. Yet auction prices seem to be dropping by 20% or more per year.
Figure 11. Figure by Roger Andrews, showing trend in auction prices of onshore wind energy from Energy Matters.
Thus, wind energy purchased through auctions seems to be succumbing to the same deflationary market forces as oil, natural gas, coal, many metals, and food.
[6] It is very hard to see how oil prices can rise significantly, without the prices of many other commodities also rising.
What seems to be happening is a basic mismatch between (a) the amount of goods and services countries want to sell, and (b) the amount of goods and services that are truly affordable by consumers, especially those who are non-elite workers. Somehow, we need to fix this supply/demand (affordability) imbalance.
One way of raising demand is through productivity growth. As mentioned previously, such a rise in productivity growth hasn’t been happening in recent years. Given the falling energy per capita amounts in Figure 2, it seems unlikely that productivity will be growing in the near future, because the adoption of improved technology requires energy consumption.
Another way of raising demand is through wage increases, over and above what would be indicated by productivity growth. With globalization, the trend has been to lower and less stable wages, especially for less educated workers. This is precisely the opposite direction of the change we need, if demand for goods and services is to rise high enough to prevent deflation in commodity prices. There are very many of these non-elite workers. If their wages are low, this tends to reduce demand for homes, cars, motorcycles, and the many other goods that depend on wages of workers in the world. It is the manufacturing and use of these goods that influences demand for commodities.
Another way of increasing demand is through rising investment. This can eventually filter back to higher wages, as well. But this isn’t happening either. In fact, Figures 3 and 4 show that the last big surge in investment was in 2007. Furthermore, the amount of debt growth required to increase GDP by one percentage point has increased dramatically in recent years, both in the United States and China, making this approach to economic growth increasingly less effective. Recent discussions seem to be in the direction of stabilizing or lowering debt levels, rather than raising them. Such changes would tend to lower new investment, not raise it.
[7] In many countries, falling export revenue is adversely affecting demand for imported goods and services.
It is not too surprising that the export revenue of Saudi Arabia has fallen, with the drop in oil prices.
Figure 12. Saudi Arabia exports and imports of goods and services based on World Bank data.
Because of the drop in exports, Saudi Arabia is now buying fewer imported goods and services. A person would expect other oil exporters also to be making cutbacks on their purchases of imported goods and services. (Exports in current US$ means exports measured year-by-year in US$, without any inflation adjustment.)
It is somewhat more surprising that China’s exports and imports are falling, as measured in US$. Figure 13 shows that, in US dollar terms, China’s exports of goods and services fell in both 2015 and 2016. The imports that China bought also fell, in both of these years.
Figure 13. China’s exports and imports of goods and services on a current US$ basis, based on World Bank data.
Similarly, both the exports and imports of India are down as well. In fact, India’s imports have fallen more than its exports, and for a longer period–since 2012.
Figure 14. India’s exports and imports of goods and services in current dollars, based on World Bank data.
The imports of goods and services for the United States also fell in 2015 and 2016. The US is both an exporter of commodities (particularly food and refined petroleum products) and an importer of crude oil, so this is not surprising.
Figure 15. US exports and imports of goods and services in US dollars, based on World Bank data.
In fact, on a world basis, exports and imports of goods and services both fell, in 2015 and 2016 as measured in US dollars.
Figure 16. World exports and imports in current US dollars, based on World Bank data.
[8] Once export (and import) revenues are down, it becomes increasingly difficult to raise prices again.
If a country is not selling much of its own exports, it becomes very difficult to buy much of anyone else’s exports. This impetus, by itself, tends to keep prices of commodities, including oil, down.
Furthermore, it becomes more difficult to repay debt, especially debt that is in a currency that has appreciated. This means that borrowing additional debt becomes less and less feasible, as well. Thus, new investment becomes more difficult. This further tends to keep prices down. In fact, it tends to make prices fall, since new investment is needed to keep prices level.
[9] World financial leaders in developed countries do not understand what is happening, because they have written off commodities as “unimportant” and “something that lesser-developed countries deal with.”
In the US, few consumers are concerned about the price of corn. Instead, they are interested in the price of a box of corn flakes, or the price of corn tortillas in a restaurant.
The US, Europe and Japan specialize in high “value added” goods and services. For example, in the case of a box of corn flakes, manufacturers are involved in many steps such as (a) making corn flakes from corn, (b) boxing corn flakes in attractive boxes, (c) delivering those boxes to grocers’ shelves, and (d) advertising those corn flakes to prospective consumers. These costs generally do not decrease, as commodity prices decrease. One article from 2009 says, “With the record seven-dollar corn this summer, the cost of the corn in an 18-ounce box of corn flakes was only 14 cents.”
Because of the small role that commodity prices seem to play in producing the goods and services of developed countries, it is easy for financial leaders to overlook price indications at the commodity level. (Data is available at this level of detail; the question is how closely it is examined by decision-makers.)
Figure 17. Various indices within US CPI Urban, displayed on a basis similar to that used in Figure 7 through 11. In other words, index values for later periods are compared to the average 2008 index value. CPI statistics are from US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Figure 17 shows some components of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on a basis similar to the trends in commodity prices shown in Figures 7 through 11. The category “Household furnishings and operations” was chosen because it has furniture in it, and I know that furniture prices have fallen because of the growing use of cheap imported furniture from China. This category shows a slight downslope in prices. The other categories all show small increases over time. If commodity prices had not decreased, prices of the other categories would likely have increased to a greater extent than they did during the period shown.
[10] Conclusion. We are likely kidding ourselves, if we think that oil prices can rise in the future, for very long, by a very large amount.
It is quite possible that oil prices will bounce back up to $80 or even $100 per barrel, for a short time. But if they rise very high, for very long, there will be adverse impacts on other segments of the economy. We can’t expect that wages will go up at the same time, so increases in oil prices are likely to lead to a decrease in the purchase of discretionary products such as meals eaten in restaurants, charitable contributions, and vacation travel. These cutbacks, in turn, can be expected to lead to layoffs in discretionary sectors. Laid off workers are likely to have difficulty repaying their loans. As a result, we are likely to head back into a recession.
As we have seen above, it is not only oil prices that need to rise; it is many other prices that need to rise as well. Making a change of this magnitude is almost certainly impossible, without “crashing” the economy.
Economists put together a simplified view of how they thought supply and demand works. This simple model seems to work, at least reasonably well, when we are away from limits. What economists did not realize is that the limits we are facing are really affordability limits, and that growing affordability depends upon productivity growth. Productivity growth in turn depends on a growing quantity of cheap-to-produce energy supplies. The term “demand,” and the two-dimensional supply-demand model, hide these issues.
The whole issue of limits has not been well understood. Peak Oil enthusiasts assumed that we were “running out” of an essential energy product. When this view was combined with the economist’s view of supply and demand, the conclusion was, “Of course, oil prices will rise, to fix the situation.”
Few stopped to realize that there is a second way of viewing the situation. What is falling is the resources that people need to have in order to have jobs that pay well. When this happens, we should expect prices to fall, rather than to rise, because workers are increasingly unable to buy the output of the economy.
If we look back at what happened historically, there have been many situations in which economies have collapsed. In fact, this is probably what we should expect as we approach limits, rather than expecting high oil prices. If collapse should take place, we should expect widespread debt defaults and major problems with the financial system. Governments are likely to have trouble collecting enough taxes, and may ultimately fail. Non-elite workers have historically come out badly in collapses. With low wages and high taxes, they have often succumbed to epidemics. We have our own epidemic now–the opioid epidemic.
I can see enormous benefits to daylighting rivers, not unlike removing dams, but there is a problem with the utopian (progressive) impetus for it.
IMO, the only reasonable motive for public action is to preserve life (including your own). Thinking you can improve a place by removing what is there and replacing is a little like killing the villagers to preserve the village. Once you remove wholesale what other earlier people built, however destructive and flawed originally, you are removing life preserving information. You are using the same hubristic approach that produced these flawed structures to start with.
Now, with hindsight, it’s not that you can’t improve the past structures, but you first have to appreciate them and change them according to their own intrinsic characteristics (their “forms,” etc.). Rather than daylight the entire section of river, creating a separate (and separtatable) park space, it would be more preservationist to create “fingers” of daylighted space that seek to mesh with the urban environment around it. If you daylight the river in horizontal strips, like the steps of a ladder, does that enhance food growing along those strips? If so, is that a better bang for the bucks than enabling riotous frolicking of the many along an isolated linear band?
I would at least look into those linear strips interacting with (incising) the original infrastructure, with more emphasis on specific neighborhoods benefiting than on generic public entertainment. That way, you don’t lose “memory,” you don’t have a massive (simplified) superimposed system to manage, and you spread the management responsibility around to nearby stakeholders. You might get rid of some NIMBY resistance to daylighting that way too.
https://www.planetizen.com/node/94724/bringing-urban-rivers-back-daylight
https://imgur.com/a/eKbqP
Tillerson says U.S. could stay in Paris climate accord
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climate/tillerson-says-u-s-could-stay-in-paris-climate-accord-idUSKCN1BS0LW?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social
I am tentatively planning to write a post called, “The World Needs a New Guiding Story,” relating to this issue.
Meanwhile, Gail is nowhere to be seen. Wile E Coyote recently tweeted that he’d kidnapped her for giving him a bad rap and was going to sell her on the internet. Let’s hope she manages to escape.
https://imgur.com/a/uEjfy
This is no joke – my 10 solar panels give me about 35 kWh per week and cost around $25K with the batteries included. A friend gave us one of those clothes drying racks and that saves us probably 40 kWh per week. Thing is the clothes drying rack was free!
What would the 35 kWh per week would have cost over time if you got it from the utility company vs. the 25k it cost? That is, if you estimate the solar system will last X number of years, what would the cost of that power savings have cost over that time period? Curious because I’m trying to run numbers for my own place.
As explained here and elsewhere numerous times, you don’t buy the renewables setup (+ batt storage) with the idea of cost comparison to existing legacy grid, that’s valid viewpoint only in the exceptional case when in need of establishing new connection with high cost (several miles)..
Instead, you buy it as extra hardware backup with limited functionality and lifespan.
And on top of it running great risk at the same time, that through this gear you will be quickly identified in the future lean times as the hording pig by the impoverished neighbors, gov-mil types in search of loot, various displaced migrating peoples and renegades.. etc.
It’s up to you to decide these plus and minuses, plus timing horizon.
As we don’t know the precise timing and sequencing of the future, getting such setup for today and “near mid term” is just another bet as everything in life, you might loose or gain in the end..
+++++++++++++
http://blog.rmsp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Light_Painting_Blue_House_Grafton_Ghost_Town_Utah.jpg
+
https://offgridsurvival.com/wp-content/themes/church_10/images/2008/08/solarcabin.jpg
=
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/03/13/0077C52D00000258-0-image-a-1_1426277578203.jpg
+
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hbcIcUDkygY/hqdefault.jpg
tastes like chicken?
“As explained here and elsewhere numerous times, you don’t buy the renewables setup (+ batt storage) with the idea of cost comparison…”
Well, I wasn’t around for the previous times when this was explained, but what you wrote does make sense and I will try to time my effort to get a basic set up close to collapse, if I read the tea leaves correctly, and then try to fight off the discontented one’s.
Good for you, actually for “western” middle classes, this should be a no-brainer, much better investment than 3rd car or 2nd $40k plus car in the family or long term pension plan for that matter anyway..
You need to work out the cost to service a loan for that amount assuming you take a loan…. vs the monthly cost of grid power…..
If you don’t take a loan you need to work out the opportunity cost on that money — keeping in mind you could invest it in any of a number of bubble opportunities…
You also have to factor in replacement parts including new batteries in 10 years or so…
You also have to be aware that solar will not replace grid energy — you need to be frugal (forget about a clothes dryer….)
I am sure you will find it make ZERO sense to install solar — unless your neighbours all chip and some of their taxes subsidize you.
I live in a very sunny place in NZ — there are no govt subsidies for solar — almost nobody has solar power… the only ones I know use it because they have properties that are not close to the grid — so solar was cheaper than running lines in
Auckland’s fuel supply vulnerability is well known, and serious
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/96934854/aucklands-fuel-supply-vulnerability-is-well-known-and-serious?cid=app-android
These ar significant investments.
The great problem must be decline of component quality in the solar set-up: ‘crappification’ is more than obvious in everything now, and what penalty is there for the companies if they shave costs and quality invisibly declines – invisible that is until it goes caput?
They can sell an awful lot of stuff before anyone realises just how shoddy it is and posts negative reviews.
Going to bang on their head office doors in China and complain?
Remember the tale of FE’s high-quality solar pump!
If I recall it correctly, FE’s supposedly high quality pump story was a disaster from the day one for different reason. Namely, just the idea of choosing integrated gear, power unit and pump in one package is a no go.. “everybody” will advise you against it. What you need is individual parts, distributed and parallel (doubled, tripled) functionality as low tech, yet durable. as possible by another means..
Ya you can spend your cash on redundancy for a solar system…. and then be poisoned by radiation/overun by violent hordes…
Or you can spend your cash enjoying the time that remains
I vote for door two – if my pump goes again I will take a f789ing axe to it… and I will take the cash that would have gone to fixing it … and buy a very nice case of wine … and I will sit out on my deck sipping it… and listening to the waves crash against the shore
https://coastingnz.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/smashing-waves-of-charleston.jpg
Fair enough.
Although, sometimes I tend to be partial to the scenario, energy crash ~= world gets smaller, hence the proverbial hordes might come knocking with a delay. But it depends on location, and it could not pan like that anyway at all.. who knows..
oops meant “gets bigger – larger distances”, obviously..
JH it’s for my doomstead so there’s no savings. I’m just looking for running water and a few lights and plugs that work and my cash certainly won’t do my family any good once the banks start to fail. My goal is to be around long enough to see how this all ends!
a noble goal.
I want to see how this century ends, but I don’t have high hopes.
Yep, that’s a noble goal, curiosity of things in the future, although we more or less agree here about very bad outcome in the end..
That’s how people use to dry their cloths and it worked great.
http://thegoodhuman.com/line-drying-clothes-illegal/
I would imagine that the yuppie green groupie types are involved in this…. they of course have solar panel powered clothes dryers…
My yard sale of the 20 foot container is back on schedule!
Uncle Sam has plenty of friends in the right places. Its a beautiful thing to have allies that bend over backwards to keep the Oil juice flowing no matter what. But for that matter, Kuwait would not exist if it were not for the likes of Uncle Sam and the “New World Order”
Turkey Dinner on the menu for the Holidays!
enior Kuwait Petroleum Corp official has confirmed to media the company’s plans to increase production by 44 percent to almost 4 million barrels a day in 2020. The plan is a continuation of current attempts to pump as much crude as possible and tender new E&P projects in the Persian Gulf. In addition, Kuwait Petroleum Corp plans to ramp up local refining capacities.
Kuwaiti crude is currently trading at around $40 a barrel, a palpable discount to international benchmark Brent. However, Kuwait boasts low-cost production, but according to a local energy analyst, $40 is below the breakeven level, and significantly so. Kamal Al-Harami has slammed the government for failing to come up with a contingency plan in case prices stay at current levels, and for doing nothing to prop them up—not that there’s a lot Kuwait could do on its own, even though it is among the top 10 global oil producers.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Kuwait-Plans-To-Ramp-Up-Oil-Production-By-44-Before-2020.html
The G3 central bankers have bought $2T in stocks so far this year. Just print and buy. Their balance sheets keep going up up up. They think they have it wired. The only actual people still in are 401k muppets who don’t get it.
persons investing in the stock market have been doing great since March 2009.
that’s 8 and a half years.
why can’t this endgame go on for another 8 and a half?
I’m not predicting, just wondering.
Endgame BAU!
Stock markets and property markets up to now have tended to operate something like like beehives. Masses of busy little investors would spend years buying into them, which drove up prices, and then one day the beekeeper would come along and drain off most of the honey. With this kind of market, as long as you are smart enough to get in at the bottom and get out at the top, you’re laughing.
Nowadays, apparently, the CBs are no longer going to allow the beekeepers to draw off honey. If Janet Yellen has her way, the markets are never going to crash again. With a guarantee like that, theres’s even more incentive for the busy little bees to keep investing the nectar they collect into making more and more honey for the hive.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/28/6a/53/286a53ce35bc7aca920ee784f375d62d.jpg
I missed out on that….
But then … most people investing in the stock market believe there is a future… so they get joy out of watching their Schwaab account increase…. year after year….
Then one day it vapourizes.
Live Large Now. There is no future.
It will go up for a very long time. It will not really fall – it is beyond touch now.
“why can’t this endgame go on for another 8 and a half?”
At this point the banks have gone too far, so the game will keep being played until it breaks.
We are Zimbabwe, baby!
45% of Millennials have NOTHING in their savings accounts -NBC NEWS
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/14/how-much-money-the-average-millennial-has-in-savings.html?recirc=taboolainternal
Teacher accused of assaulting child ‘who did not stand for Pledge of Allegiance
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/teacher-pledge-of-allegiance-accused-assault-child-stone-chaney-a7950941.html
UAE: Saudi Arabia was going to launch military attack on Qatar
Saudi Arabia was preparing for a military attack on its neighbour Qatar, leaked emails dated May 2017 appear to show.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170916-uae-saudi-arabia-was-going-to-launch-military-attack-on-qatar/
then they remembered that they were just Saudi Arabia.
http://az416740.vo.msecnd.net/static-images/typhoon/japan_near/2017/09/17/japan_near_2017-09-17-10-00-00-large.jpg
It’s wet and windy in Japan today. Typhoon 17 is just starting its long crawl up the archipelago. Three or four of these storms hits the mainland somewhere most years, but this one is set to skewer the main islands like a stick through kushikatsu.
https://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/ZO3VjaA5hGlO8KenLoOSww/o.jpg
Strange how these winds always seem to target people of colour.
Absolutely, and especially in the tropics.
In A High WInd in Jamaica, one of my favorite novels from the 1920s, an era well before the rise GW and PC, the following memorable sentence appears:
One ni**er-boy began to roll away: his mother, forgetting caution, rose to her feet: and immediately the fat old beldam was blown clean away, bowling along across fields and hedgerows like some one in a funny fairy-story….
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o_W-LMhU1i0/StCrwhP2HII/AAAAAAAADMA/DFxY56WXUns/s320/High+Wind+1.jpg
The destruction on St Martin as a result of hurricane Irma is representative of what will be coming to other parts of the world when the oil runs short. 70,000 people lived on St Martin with no real organic water source or food. The island existed due to a water desalinization plant and imported food…and of course tourism. Now that is mostly gone. Perhaps the water plant is still functioning or salvageable. But the island has been heavily damaged. People do not have food and water. They cannot exist without imported food. There will probably not be sufficient capital to rebuild everything. The island will recover of course, to a degree, but this stair step effect, will gradually yield to diminishing economy and ability to “come back” from the disaster.
The former colonial powers originally colonized these islands because there was tribute to be had, or resources to be plundered. But now the colonies are perhaps an economic drain, or will be. The former trappings of empire eventually become an economic drain. One can speculate on when, in the future, the colonial powers will not service the needs or their colonies any further….just cut them loose to economic degradation.
Rinse and repeat… and multiply by many other similar disasters. And….you have The economic disaster everywhere.
And while the colonies, often in the Tropics where food grows all year, could be highly self-sufficient in food, they steadfastly remain dependent on the outside instead.
I am not as sure about the islands recovering of course. Perhaps they will recover this time, but one of these times, there will not be resources to bail them out.
The young people there are starting to act weirdly (and have been, less obviously, for 50 years). It’s frightening to think what non recovery (considering the extreme poverty and alienation already existing in the urban underclass) will bring.
————-
Heat pumps seem to warrant consideration for colder areas.
http://doggerel.arup.com/could-the-humble-heat-pump-be-a-decarbonization-hero/
Electric car dream collides with reality on profits -Financial Times
https://www.ft.com/content/cfa0544c-9962-11e7-b83c-9588e51488a0
Eco-futurism is the myth being sold to the left. By a giant, multibillion dollar international public relations campaign.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne has a request for potential buyers of the automaker’s Fiat 500e electric car: Don’t buy it. He’s tired of losing money.
“I hope you don’t buy it because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000,” he said to the audience at the Brookings Institution about the 500e. “I‘m honest enough to tell you that.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/chrsyelr-ceo-evs/fiat-chrysler-ceo-please-dont-buy-fiat-500e-electric-car-idUSL1N0O71MS20140521
Yet they have to be seen to have an EV plan — otherwise their share price will collapse….
Because as we all know — the world (including China) is phasing out IC vehicles…. in a couple of decades….
This ___ ____ + renewable energy + EVs is the mother of all PR campaigns.
PR execs must be making hundreds of millions in fees off of this never ending campaign.
Holy crap. That’s gold right there. Haha!
All this talk about electric cars is making me want some opioids.
man, my back was really hurting about an hour ago.
but now I FEEL GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!
oh yeah!
BAU today, baby!
yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
I think I’m doing ok now.
Electric car, check
Solar panels, check
Wind turbine, check
Bunker, check
Opioids, check
I’m living the dream!!!
All you doomsters can take a hike.
yes, I actually was hiking when I hurt my back.
coincidence?
not, I do think.
Hilarious! I think we can greet Apocalypse laughing, it can only get crazier……
This kind of thing sounds good to people. To me, it sounds like desperate flailing around in a drowning world. It’s shaky science to determine what is renewable about the materials used for making the fuel. There’s a range in effectiveness (supposedly) from 10% top 80% (however that is gauged). And does this technology promote more travel? If so, who can figure out the resulting chain of costs? But even if the costs are ultimately lethal, is there a short term benefit of “renewable diesel” to BAU that we should support?
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Renewable-diesel-use-in-California-moves-to-fast-12195892.php&cmpid=email-premium
Something does not add up here. They must utilize industrial quantities of excess/discarded “biomass” waste, that has already been created using FF for the previous use, or was created strictly so they could create this “renewable” diesel. So the renewable diesel is in effect created with FOssil Fuels.
From the article:
A self-driving car of the future will be equipped with at least 20 sensors using cameras, radar and lidar to ‘see’ its surroundings.
Some of the data must be transmitted to the cloud so the car can communicate with its surroundings, but programming the software to only send the relevant data is a central challenge, says Elmar Degenhart, chief executive of parts supplier Continental.
A person watching Netflix in HD at home would consume three gigabytes of data per hour; Mr Degenhart says a self-driving car collects raw data volume of up to 15 gigabytes per second. “We need a different kind of electronic architecture in the vehicle to handle these volumes,” he says.
—
I will believe this when I see it. At some point, we have a complexity problem. Also, a problem with cars being “hackable.”
The data is used to find out how far ahead is the next car, how far to the right is the edge of the road, how far to the left is the broken white line? None of which need to be sent to the cloud. A simple three part GPS number sent once every ten seconds is enough, 100 bytes per second.
I think there is an issue with not seeing cars coming at a perpendicular angle and not stopping, for example. They think that they will get enough data from other cars to tell in advance if they might collide.
Imagine the size of the server farm that would be required to power this…. it would dwarf the Google infrastructure…
http://images.slideplayer.com/15/4524094/slides/slide_4.jpg
Thanks! I had that problem in the back of my mind, but no good reference for it.
Definitely worth watching/hearing…
Hopium, surely. He says at the end (after railing at California’s water stupidity) that what gives him hope is that we could tighten our belts and live with half the energy we do now – like we did in the 60s!
Surely, that part is not o.k., when cheap resources are depleted and many places polluted in comparison to 60s. And now there is much more people and the populations deteriorate.
Smil is good on the maths and physics, implications of over-population, limits of further efficiencies, and the absurdity of solar and wind turbines as mere projections of the oil economy, etc, but doesn’t grasp finance at all.
‘Make people pay more.’ Well, do that, discretionary income falls and economies go into recession, banks collapse, etc.
Moreover, rates would have to rise even further – if people economise – so that the energy suppliers can cover their fixed costs in a response to reduced consumption, again causing an economic tail-spin, mass unemployment, business failures, bank and eventually state collapses.
What he is proposing is effectively cold-turkey for an addict, without support…..
Yes, MG, look at China: 20% of their farmland poisoned in their Miracle economy!
Or Iran: they will soon lose no less than 40% of their farmland due to over-extraction of water using oil-pumps.. And so on, globally…….
Yes, excellent presentation by Vaclav Smil.
Prof. Smil is wonderfully scathing about wind turbines.
Took the time to hear the whole lecture. Mr Smil talks about energy and technology in very understandable terms, it’s really a mystery that the solar and wind fans don’t get it but instead keep on cheering for Musk et al. Pity Snil doesn’t see the limits clearer, but hey, getting it all is a lot to ask for.
I met Smil in Brussels when we both spoke at a conference there early this year. He doesn’t understand the idea that prices could be a problem–either too high for consumers or too low for producers.
He is therefore a Super MORREon. Quite an achievement
Trump Administration Won’t Withdraw from Paris Climate Deal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-wont-withdraw-from-paris-climate-deal-1505593922
WH denies Trump is softening stance on Paris climate deal
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/351028-trump-softens-stance-on-paris-climate-deal-reports
In 1973 when there was just a 3% US oil shortage it caused the largest stock market crash since the great depression. Now the IEA and Saudi Arabia are saying there will be worldwide shortages by 2020. This will be the biggest shock the world has ever seen.(A never ending oil shortage and decline due to geology and conventional oil fields decline & lack of future investment due to low oil prices). So expect ten times worse of crash happening to all the world markets….This world will burn…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
oh, yeah!
let’s party!
IC is still alive today!
it’s BAU, baby!
yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
In a few years you will wake up to the news one day. That there is an international oil shortage of epic proportions. Once your local gas station runs out, that’s it. Governments are hoarding all that’s left for the military…What do you do?
what do you! do?
This world will burn…
“what do you! do?”
I don’t. Know!
let’s see…
in 100 years, all humans now alive will be dead, with or without The Collapse.
this state of being “dead” will be one of absolute nothingness for infinite time.
what do you do?
maybe I’ll work on a “cure” for cancer.
will that help the human condition?
ps: human extinction is likely within the next million years.
cheers!
If and when BAU ends, if the fuel pond radiation doesn’t wipe out humanity, then the population will crash and natural selection will have an opportunity to do its useful work. Some people will survive and maybe prosper out of sheer luck, random chance, good fortune, but most who survive will be those who are fit to survive because they have “the right stuff”. This sounds tautological but it’s the best short explanation I can think of.
Consider the finches of the Galapagos. They do not sow and neither do they reap. What they do is forage. When the weather’s clement and the rainy season comes normally and there are lots of seeds and insects to eat, all the finches flourish. But when there is a long drought and the plants don’t produce any seeds, the finches have to forage harder to obtain seeds out of tougher, more-difficult to open seed pods, or to dig out seeds from crevices in the rocks or the cacti where they wouldn’t normally bother foraging, or to switch to other less palatable food sources. Life is extremely tough for the little fallas and sometimes the population crashes by 80%, all because of a dry year. Under those conditions, having the right shaped beak can make all the difference.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/1a/2a/6a/1a2a6a2af5c78371a083574a4dcfdc48.gif
Bloody beakist!
https://media.tenor.co/images/a9e9f448466738b925c1256fddf4aff2/tenor.gif
‘Same beaks for everyone’ would actually, eventually, ensure total extinction.
A bit like the uni-gendered, neutered, screen-glued, urban, persons being promoted at the moment……..
Are all those finches one species? Aren’t you showing how new species evolve? Will speciation happen with mankind?
Apparently, there are currently 14 or 15 separate species of “Darwin’s” finches, although feathers are still flying in academic circles about precisely how many.
Speciation has happened with mankind in the past. Neanderthals are generally considered to have been a separate species from modern humans, although there again, it’s a vexed question. How do we explain the existence of Arnold Schwarzenegger, for instance?
For speciation to happen, different subspecies need to be kept geographically apart for a long, long time so they don’t get a chance to interbreed. In the case of humans, maybe for a million years or more. Over that time, speciation can take place due to accumulated genetic change. But as a general rule, it won’t be 100% speciation until the two species are distinct enough that they can’t produce fertile offspring together.
NC mom invents a spray she says will attract any Bigfoot within a mile and a half
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article173012526.html
Here’s one from 1967, which appeared on the UK news at the time. The beast has breasts, a hernia on its leg, and is estimated at 7 feet tall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us6jo8bl2lk
Typical of the US to allow these things to run wild and terrorise people. And what is Donald Trump doing about it? Nothing – that’s what! He ought to plan their wholesale extermination.
Focus on the waistline and you’ll notice a ring of darker hair – why would there be a ring of darker hair around the waist? Answer: To block view of separate sections. It walks identical to a human? No one has ever recovered any fragments like hair to confirm DNA? In all these years something that large has avoided capture or being shot? People love to shoot wild animals and no one has ever hunted one of these fictional creatures? Actually one was shot – ever watch the show a 1,000 ways to die. A forest ranger hearing about a bigfoot scaring people waited in the last reported area it had been seen and once he saw it, he shot it dead. Well, turned out it was some guy who lived next to the park that was sick and tired of people walking on trails near his house and was trying to scare them away. Technically that’s murder or at least manslaughter but the segment didn’t say if the ranger was prosecuted.
I have hair on the small of my back. So what? The creature’s way of walking is different from that of a human – toes then heel. Why is it seven feet tall? Costume designers say that this quality of costume wasn’t available in the 1960s.
Lloyd Pye claimed to have seen a travelling showman who kept a bigfoot in ice, and it had blood in its fur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5qJYwfAju8
Do we know everything? I don’t think so.
You’ve got to be kidding, right? You mean to say you actually believe something like that exists? In a world where people have shot dead every single living animal species, most of which to extinction or at least close to extinction, there aren’t any carcasses of bigfoot? How is that possible? In a world in which people place camcorders in areas Bigfoot is reported to have been seen, but countless hours of footage shows no Bigfoot?
What happens is this; Areas that get little if any tourism have in many cases made up stories to support the idea of some unusual animal to get people there to fill the restaurants and hotels. Take Loch Ness for instance. It was proven recently that Loch Ness was carved out by ice and has only existed since the melt of the last ice age, so obviously there cannot be a Nessie, right. I’ve been to Scotland and Loch Ness is out of the way even by Scottish standards, so much so that I didn’t even get there even though I lived in Aberdeen for a year. Word is they made that story up to get more people there. Pure economic necessity.
I went to one of the towns where they claim Bigfoot is in the surrounding mountains. They have an information building for information on it. Guess what that is; tourism fishing. Not one hair, not one tiny bit of DNA. Why? Because it’s a rumor. Anyone making a film of Bigfoot always has the camera bouncing around.
It was just as easy decades ago, in fact easier to make a suit like that because there were more animals to shoot to get their fur and furs were cheaper.
No it isn’t walking different than a person. Look again, it’s just purposely swinging its arms more. I can do that for a few moments too. Guaranteed it’s a person in a suit, period.
There was a more famous fake movie of a bigfoot from the 60’s and the guy that set it up was later divorced by his wife because of the embarrassment once it was found out it was a fake. Don’t believe any of this kind of other worldly funky animals until you see the whites of their eyes in a zoo.
“I’ve been to Scotland and Loch Ness is out of the way even by Scottish standards, so much so that I didn’t even get there”
And on the basis of your fine research, you have concluded that Nessie doesn’t exist. Just be sure not to go looking for the Sasquatch – with its near human intelligence and brute strength, neither you nor your bones are liable to survive an encounter.
yes, we don’t know everything, do we?
I mean, I once was walking in the woods and met up with a Bigfoot.
Face to face!
I mean, I’m about 6 feet tall, and there we were, eye to eye!
so I asked “What’s up with the height thing? I thought you guys were like 7 feet tall.”
so he says “No, that’s a misunderstanding. Our western relatives are, but we eastern types usually top out at 5 and a half. I’m actually the tallest in my family.”
“Cool,” I said. “Up close, you look kinda purplish, too.”
“Same difference,” he said. “Westies are blacker and we’re more purple.”
“Wow,” I said. “Just goes to show, we don’t know everything, do we?”
“Speak for yourself, dude. Why do you assume we Bigfoot don’t know everything? I mean, we can HIDE from you people quite easily, right?”
Before I could answer, he let out a weird laugh and ran away.
The End.
Fibs and false news. Go work for Trump, why don’t you?
how do you KNOW that I don’t already work for Trump?
There are known knowns, and known unknowns, and unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns. That probably includes everything we know, apart from the unknowables, which can be considered a whole different ball game.
Then there are things we need to know on a need-to-know basis, and things we’re better off not to know as the knowledge would spoil our day or bury us in trivia.
Then there’s empirical knowledge, intuitive knowledge, arcane knowledge, secret knowledge, embedded knowledge, codified knowledge, a priori knowledge, a posteriori knowledge, explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge, propositional knowledge, procedural knowledge, and last but not least, carnal knowledge.
Do we know everything? I don’t think so. Apart from Isaac and I.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-people-who-think-they-know-everything-are-a-great-annoyance-to-those-of-us-who-do-isaac-asimov-1-16-80.jpg
Troll repellent would be infinitely more useful:
“I think that’s enough to say it can attract a Bigfoot,” says Webb. “To attract a Bigfoot, you need a smell that is woodsy enough to keep from scaring him off. But slightly different enough to make him curious, and come to investigate.”
Market reaction to the spray, which is sold on the internet, has ranged from excitement to giggles. This includes a guy named Jeffrey Wilson of Hawaii, who wanted to know if she made a troll repellent.
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article173012526.html#storylink=cpy
Iran claims to have ‘father of all bombs,’ overshadowing American ‘mother’
https://www.rt.com/news/403554-iran-father-bomb-moab/
“claims”
okay.
now they just need to prove it.
the USA proved theirs already.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-working-toward-renewed-drilling-in-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge/2017/09/15/bfa5765e-97ea-11e7-87fc-c3f7ee4035c9_story.html?utm_term=.f949fe81e6ed
Trump administration working toward renewed drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
He will probably recommend killing all the wildlife in the area to reduce their interference with drilling operations. Maybe it can be done by carpet bombing with MOAB’s. I’m sure that would bring a huge smile to Trump. Time for some more of that greatest chocolate cake anyone has ever eaten. I can see him saying something like, “I’m not going to allow a few critters environmentalists are so worried about to interfere with progress, so I’ve ordered the annihilation of anything bigger than a rodent with 100 miles of drill sites. Sharp shooters will be on the ready 24/7 for any others that wander within that range.”
“Will that include migrating reindeer?” “Especially reindeer.” “But that could number in the 10’s of thousands.” “Well, they best not venture too close then. I’m hungry – where’s my chocolate cake?” “But, but…” “Oh, shut up! You’re by far the worst reporter ever and I’m going to recommend to your employer that you be fired.”
He should throw babies onto fires… if that would mean another month of BAU
Ambrose’s vision (not that he takes it seriously) has be roundly debunked by Paul Homewood here:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/wind-could-make-britain-an-energy-superpower-to-rival-arabia/
And as somebody says in the comments, “Ambrose is just working his Davos invite, does it every year.”
Human civilization is an example of Weltschmerz.
Two things seemed off to me, on this article.
Gail, writes: “Another way of raising demand is through wage increases, over and above what would be indicated by productivity growth. With globalization, the trend has been to lower and less stable wages, especially for less educated workers”
Gail, I have several questions about the canard of education raising wages. If 500 million grocery baggers could be retrained as engineers, would there be 500 million jobs that would appear when they finish their degree in Engineering? What would happen to wages for a currently high-paying profession if there was a sudden spike in the supply of people with the training for that profession? If wages could somehow be kept the same even as the supply of skilled workers increased, would the additional productivity of each new worker justify the high wages?
Gail, writes: “Another way of increasing demand is through rising investment. This can eventually filter back to higher wages, as well. But this isn’t happening either. In fact, Figures 3 and 4 show that the last big surge in investment was in 2007. Furthermore, the amount of debt growth required to increase GDP by one percentage point has increased dramatically in recent years, both in the United States and China.”
Gail,you’re not usually the kind to beat around the bush, but it seems like you’re alluding to the 2000s housing bubble, that lasted roughly as long as George W. Bush’s presidential terms.
Despite increasing global integration of regional economies, there didn’t seem to be a lot of good investments available. Of all the sectors in the economy, I feel that real estate was invested in the most. Education gets an honorable mention. Even now, all talk about raising investment, revolves around building more luxury housing and “going to college”. Investment in other sectors of the economy have been disappointing. The sector that everyone likes to talk about, information technology, has many large prestigious companies that are barely earning a profit. The large prestigious companies that I refer to are companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon These companies behave like healthy companies, they hire workers at high wages, work them hard, and they are constantly expanding, but there is almost no return on investment on some of them. I’m reading an academic paper about declining profitability in the U.S. economy since the 1970s, and the conclusion seems to be that roi is declining in all sectors and no one ever mentions it. It is mentioned a lot less than even limits to growth.
Gail, writes: “With low wages and high taxes, they have often succumbed to epidemics. We have our own epidemic now–the opioid epidemic.”
” Deaths from prescription opioids—drugs like oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone—have more than quadrupled since 1999.”(cdc)
Even if you’re being hyperbolic, don’t think drug abuse should be described as an epidemic.A better hyperbole would be to say that legal opioids are an attempt by the elite to pacify its population; to make people less likely to revolt. It may be a symptom of an aging population, where more people are suffering from conditions related to aging that result in chronic pain.
All this talk about opioids is making my back hurt.
“…legal opioids are an attempt by the elite to pacify its population”
Actually, they are simply a reflection of the power of lobbyists in DC to do pretty much whatever they want, like purposefully developing drugs that are extremely addictive (because that insures repeat customers) and the GOP seems not to care much if opioids are an epidemic as long as it raises GDP.
Investing in the new normal = identifying the next bubble — and getting in on it asap.
Meet the new bubble, same as the old one. People are still buying into the hype that housing prices will continue to rise in expensive markets forever. It’s like 2008 never happened –or rather it did happen but it happened because “banks got greedy” instead of the real estate market running out of customers who could afford mortgages for expensive homes. History happens and people purposefully exclude certain parts of it or re-write it so their feelings don’t get hurt.
Humans are bizarre beasts…
Most attribute the 2008 crash to stupidity/greed/venality/lack of regulation….
If you attempt to explain to someone that it has nothing to do with any of the above — and that it was a stimulus response to the end of cheap oil…. they will think you have lost the plot….
But then when you point to the redux that is happening right in front of our very eyes — that is not limited to property —- we are seeing subprime everything including autos… we are seeing stock markets juiced with CB money…..
And ask these same people why — after nearly taking the global economy down in 2008 — the elites would do the same things but this time on steroids….
You get the same reasons…..stupidity/greed/venality/lack of regulation….
They will not entertain any other explanations — no matter how logical…
I recall coming to my senses on this — perhaps 2010…. I used to be lock step with Zero Hedge, Stockman etc…. thinking the Fed was all those things…
Then I thought hang on — The Bernank is not stupid — what does he see that I do not — what does he know that I do not …. why is he doing these seemingly insane things?
Then I read Jeff Rubin’s book that suggested 147 buck oil was the problem….and I no longer thought Bernank stupid….
The facts changed… my understanding changed…. my mind changed…
Just as it recently changed with respect to _____ ______.
It also changed with respect to Monsanto…
Most people never change their minds — never admit they were wrong (even to themselves) — even if the facts dictate a change.
“History happens and people purposefully exclude certain parts of it or re-write it so their feelings don’t get hurt.”
You got it. People love to make stuff up so they are off the hook, even if it sets them up for more situations in which they need to create more mythology about their shortcomings, and around and around we go…
A Real Black Person writes: “If 500 million grocery baggers could be retrained as engineers, would there be 500 million jobs that would appear when they finish their degree in Engineering?”
That is a straw man, and an absurd one at that. For more useful thought exercise: If one grocery bagger could be retrained as an engineer…
As a way of increasing income, education works. Google it. Education also correlates, positively, with health (reduced likelihood of smoking, alcoholism, obesity, etc.). Even better, education benefits society as a whole, not just the educatees. An educated workforce creates opportunities that would not exist otherwise.
I don’t think that in recent years, education has worked as a way of increasing income. Wages have been terribly flat, despite many more college graduates and many more with advanced degrees. Education only “works” when compared to the alternative to no advanced education.
For society as a whole, education has not been providing the productivity gains that are needed to keep the system really advancing. Some types of degrees are far more in demand than others–it is partly the low-demand degrees that are a problem. Education is a way of keeping young people out of the job market for a while.
Employers constantly complain that those in the job market do not really have the skills they want. There is clearly a disconnect somewhere. Perhaps it is wrong expectation on the part of the employers. Instead of higher a random graduate, and training that graduate for whatever tasks are needed, employers have gotten the idea that someone else will provide all the training that is needed. The company can then simply higher a particular worker, for whatever brief time is desired, to do the task that requires particular skills (say knowledge of exotic programming languages, or the ability to operate a particularly complex tool). Once that need is over, they can let that employee go, and find a different employee for whatever task is needed.
I’m sorry, Rural, I;m going to have to dismiss your college brochure defense of mass education. What I said is no strawman, in my opinion. The laws of supply and demand still apply to engineers.
Rural writes ” For more useful thought exercise: If one grocery bagger could be retrained as an engineer…”
If engineering wasn’t so difficult to do, engineers would be facing falling wages like lawyers are facing.
” As a way of increasing income, education works. Google it. ”
I’ve been doing it for the last couple of years. Education only increases income if someone majors in something in which there is a shortage, is very difficult and which there is a shortage of those who hold that major, of or there are very high barriers to entry.
“Even better, education benefits society as a whole,” Yes, that’s why many cities with large concentrations of educated people are running deficits.
The benefits of educations are subject to real world conditions such as supply and demand and diminishing returns. Right now, the big push is to get people who would not do very well at college to go to college and the results are dismal.
“An educated workforce creates opportunities that would not exist otherwise.”
Educated people who are not in a position to exploit natural resources to improve living conditions in poor areas of the world, where the benefit of education is the greatest, are useless. That is why many educated people from poor countries emigrate to rich countries.
Educated people do not create opportunities out of thin air. There are many other factors.
Regarding your investment question, I agree that there don’t seem to be much of any good investments around. In fact, this is why interest rates are so low–to encourage investment, despite low profit. US government reports have some information on profitability of US companies. I have also seen international profitability reported on in some articles.
Someone has seen the light. From Ray Kurzweil with love: https://powur.com/jon.boe/news/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-in-16-years/linkedin
It is amazing the kinds of things that are published regularly!
Kurzweil thinks he can live past 100…. he desperately wants to merge with computers to be immortal. He pops at least 50-100 pills a day thinking he will,live longer. If you see his picture, well he Doesn’t look too good!
I have a fiend who is obsessed with him. He has bought all of his books. So insane
Haven’t seen much from Ambrose Pritchard in some time …. wonder what he is up to…
Wind could make Britain an energy superpower to rival Arabia
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/13/wind-could-make-britain-energy-superpower-rival-arabia/
Presstitution at its finest!
Sure thing. Too bad intermittent electricity isn’t the same as oil!
Ambrose was probably in rehab. Difficult to type when you are shaking so much…. 🙂
“Wind could make Britain an energy superpower to rival Arabia”
One good thing about the days before internet: You didn’t have to see headlines like that everywhere, every day.
Toys ‘R’ Us mulls bankruptcy filing: Wall Street Journal
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-toys-r-us-bankruptcy/toys-r-us-mulls-bankruptcy-filing-wall-street-journal-idUSKCN1BR00I?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social
Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/05/bernie-sanders-is-the-most-popular-politician-in-america-commentary.html
Clearly the most honest and un-beholding. Seems to be hated by Republican and Democrat alike which is a good thing. Would have mopped the floor with Trump in debates.
realistically, if he was now POTUS, his popularity would be much lower.
Triggered?
hardly.
it seems to be the nature of holding the presidency that the faults of each man are amplified.
unless Sanders was some unusually adept POTUS, his popularity would surely be lower than it is now.
but we’ll never know.
the inept and corrupt DNC ensured that Bernie would lose in the primaries.
A guy who promises more free stuff than he could deliver would fall in popularity over time, especially if that “Free stuff” meant raising taxes on your liberal rear end. You would never stand for higher taxes.
“Seems to be hated by Republican and Democrat alike which is a good thing.”
Hated but popular? That’s quite a trick.
Well, imagine Bernie is in, so what, and to what effect is that a real change? Besides the obvious point he likes money and luxury as anybody else. As Banon said few days ago, it would take ~20yrs to “drain the swamp” .. you can’t circumvent 99% of the establishment enablers single handily.
Actually, it’s like classic Greek tragedy or living organism, it must go through several specific phases. Which in this case means fracturing into more cohesive units first, e.g. coastal Republics, inner continental States etc. We are not there yet, perhaps in next 10-20yrs.. And by that point it would be so deep collapse anyway, it doesn’t matter much..
Yeah, and what would Bernie accomplish in the oval office. Nada, because it only becomes policy if the other two branches of govt. sign on which would not happen since they are run by the GOP. Right now Bernie is touting health ins. for all by raising taxes – like that has a snowball in hell’s chance. I find it interesting that Bernie apparently was the one that started the whole ‘Crooked Hillary’ bit and then Trump jumped on board.
Then again what would Hillary have been able to get done? Nothing for the same reasons above. We are all stuck in a conundrum and the only one’s benefitting are the super wealthy and corporations. We all have to live with that now. It’s permanent and will just get worse.
Bitcoin surges from $3,200 to $3,600 in one day!
https://www.coindesk.com/price/
happy days are here again!
IC goes on and on!
BAU!
Everyone wants an easy buck. Lotto huge success ad well.
Just saw the movie mother! Don’t want to spoil it but a lot of you will enjoy the mesage.
Christians beware. An oil barrel even makes a cameo.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/only-morons-believe-what-the-us-government-says-about-north-korea-3d5a5157cea2
perhaps it would be good for the world if he is removed as leader. It seems that it would definitely be good for the people of NK.
it would not necessarily have to mean the end of his life.
USA, Russia and China surely all have the technical ability to remove him without any kind of war with the NK army which is the 4th biggest in the world.
will the next NK leader be any better?
who knows?
Yes lets turn it into another Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan.
Or East Germany.
yes! East Germany reunited with West Germany!
now, the best outcome would be if NK is terminated as an entity of its own and is melded into one Korea with the government and policies of South Korea which in every measure of humanity is surely superior to the NK model.
easy to imagine but a wee bit harder to bring to fruition.
Well we are a few years away from permanent oil shortages which will cause massive worldwide chaos and en economic collapse. So they better get to bombing soon. Because all those Humvee’s won’t run on solar power.
I suspect that China would prefer a divided Korea – better to have fractured states on their periphery, unless they can be brought under direct control.
Never thought of that!
Kim still testing and working on his rocketry projects, really though someone would have interfered by now. Maybe its hard to demonize the cute little guy with a unique hair cut, who knows?
Thought a shot of the back view of the hair cut while testing gives a more menacing view.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/09/05/north-korea2.jpg
In the early years of the 20th century things were not that great for Korea. “Korea under Japanese rule began with the end of the short-lived Korean Empire in 1910…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule#National_Mobilization_Law
Then the 50’s when carpet bombing was all the rage, these people can’t seem too get a break. Can really see where a means of self protection or deterrent would appeal to them.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/1e/dd/4a/1edd4ad947942ae70a1128363f73e943.jpg
“With low wages and high taxes, they have often succumbed to epidemics. We have our own epidemic now–the opioid epidemic.”
Came across this a few months ago, seems appropriate for OFW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZo1sXsC-68
snorp
After new missile test, U.S. says North Korea threatens whole world
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles/after-new-missile-test-u-s-says-north-korea-threatens-whole-world-idUSKCN1BP35B
Looking at a map of the world, in particular the East (see link below), NK is flanked by China and Japan. The only direction they can fire off a long distance missile without it leaping over or hitting some other country is to shoot it south. But then it would be aimed at the Philippines or if it went further it could hit Australia. The only way for them to fire off a missile travelling 2300 miles and have it land harmlessly into a giant ocean (the Pacific) is to fire it over Japan. NK wins the IQ test of what direction to fire its long range missiles and the rest of the world is finding fault where none should be assigned because they are unaware of geography or they just don’t want NK to test long range missiles. You guessed it, it’s the latter.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Korea/@34.7196267,106.9278844,3z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x356263108b3d1c3b:0x86416151fc4a3997!8m2!3d37.6639976!4d127.9784585
Good point! They are certainly getting a lot of attention!
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hr-mcmaster-there-is-a-military-option-for-north-korea/article/2634577
H.R. McMaster: ‘There is a military option’ for North Korea
I tried to paste in more from this article but it kept freezing on me.
Venezuela publishes oil prices in Chinese currency for first time
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil/venezuela-publishes-oil-prices-in-chinese-currency-for-first-time-idUSKCN1BQ2D1?il=0
Hey, that’s a bigger development than most would think. Venezuela even in its troubled state steps up to lead the way and who knows what other countries will follow suit from their lead. I for one want to see what happens as more countries make the same move. Does the US sit by idly watching their coveted petro dollar exchange bonanza turn away or try to come up with a counter move? This is going to get more and more interesting with each defection. If enough countries convert, will the US have to pay for imported oil in Chinese currency. How humiliating that would be – Ouch!
It’s a small world after all, say scientists warning of sand scarcity
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2017/0914/It-s-a-small-world-after-all-say-scientists-warning-of-sand-scarcity
But Texas seems to have a lot. WSJ: The New Texas Gold Rush: Buying Sand For Fracking.
“Our consumption of sand is outpacing our understanding of the economics and environmental impacts of extracting, transporting, and consuming it, finds research published last Thursday in the journal Science. Out of the complexity of the global sand trade has emerged something of a butterfly effect, in which an economic decision in one place can wreak social and environmental havoc on the other side of the world. ”
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2017/0914/It-s-a-small-world-after-all-say-scientists-warning-of-sand-scarcity
An instinctive approach to the surrounding environment has led me away from using sand for construction. I find that, for all practical purposes, anything you can do with sand can be done equally well with paper pulp mixed with latex paint. It is lighter and has better thermal qualities than sand. But sand has advantages through speed of application and indisputable fire retardancy. (BTW, densely packed paper pulp that is then dried allows no air circulation within its mass, and is therefore fire retardant.)
Wouldn’t it be comical if peak sand was what triggered the end of BAU…
And it could …. if sand becomes too expensive how would China ever build the ghost cities?
They’ll probably take to paper pulp, ensuring that public use of it is strictly prohibited (tax paper dumping, etc.). That might extend BAU somewhat.
“It’s no coincidence that the growth in debt payments began to outpace that of discretionary incomes early last year in the wake of a deluge of subprime credit card and car lending.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-14/record-incomes-mean-little-in-debt-era?fref=gc&dti=628659907172309
Also rising health care costs and rising housing rents are adding to the problem of those not in the top income levels.
100 Percent Wishful Thinking: the Green-Energy Cornucopia
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/14/100-percent-wishful-thinking-the-green-energy-cornucopia/
One thing this article mentions is that Mark Jacobson is thinking about suing the authors of a peer reviewed study that disputed his 100% renewable plans! http://westernwire.net/100-renewable-researcher-lawyers-up-in-unprecedented-move/
Where in the world has peer reviewed literature gone?
I can’t believe what I am reading. If I understand this right, your peers essentially sue you for peer reviewing your research? So, you just publish anything now as passing the scientific method? This is unreal. Just when I think it can’t get any crazier.
The coming Age of Deep Irrationality……
Like the confession in chapel scene in ‘There Will Be Blood’: ‘I’m a fossil-fuel sinner!’
We are harvesting the results of an education system where you got credit just for eating your lunch!
“Smokey, this is not ‘nam. This is bowling, there are rules”
Yes Jackobson got into a twitter war with the NOAA scientist who refuted his paper. And Jackobson started name calling and accusing all of the team of scholars who refuted his paper of shilling for the Fossil Fuel industry.
Reminds me of Richard Heinberg saying about me, “Her critiques of renewables appear to be based almost entirely on literature from fossil fuel and utility companies; she doesn’t seem to cite much data from solar and wind engineers. Her criticisms have some merit—but not nearly as much as they would have if they reflected a more balanced survey of the subject.” http://www.postcarbon.org/exploring-the-gap-between-business-as-usual-and-utter-doom/
Of course, his donors give the Post Carbon Institute money because they support solar panels and other ideas that will supposedly save the planet. Resilience doesn’t seem to carry my posts any more, because I am not telling the story they want told.
Maybe send Heini this…. and ask him if google is also paid by big oil.
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/
Jackobson believes offshore wind turbines will help protect against Hurricanes. Wow the delusion is strong in that one.
No he’s right, you just have to put them into reverse and blow away the storms, genius!
DONALD TRUMP SAYS INTERNET MUST BE ‘CUT OFF’ TO STOP FURTHER TERROR ATTACKS
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/donald-trump-twitter-internet-cut-off-terror-attacks-parsons-green-tube-attack-explosion-latest-a7948141.html
Goodbye OFW!
Good grief! How about electricity, instead? That would solve everything.
“Jim Chanos’ Kynikos Associates is betting against a number of U.S. shale oil and gas stocks, saying Wall Street analysis of the sector is deeply flawed.
“Investors are taking for granted accounting methods that mask problems with the fundamental business model in the U.S. shale patch, Chanos warned during a speech Tuesday at CNBC’s and Institutional Investor’s Delivering Alpha conference. Their focus on certain metrics is causing them to overlook hidden threats that will leave drillers with skimpier returns than investors are anticipating, he said.
“”In our view, people have been looking at this industry through the rose-colored glasses of Wall Street. And this is the inherent problem with the North American shale business,” he said.”
“…Chanos looked at about three dozen drillers and found that their capital spending would eat up almost all of their earnings, minus certain expenses, this year. That leaves them with little cash to service their debt.
“”See the problem?” he asked the crowd. “It’s a big one.””
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/13/us-shale-oil-and-gas-investors-are-on-road-to-ruin-warns-jim-chanos.html?recirc=taboolainternal
“…Now, oil will be the big one to watch. Yields have a lot to do, right now, with where oil goes.
“Though the central banks like to say they look at inflation excluding food and energy, their behavior doesn’t support it. Oil does indeed play a big role in the inflation outlook–because it plays a huge role in financial stability, the credit markets and the health of the banking system. Remember, in the oil price bust last year the Fed had to reverse course on its tightening plan and other major central banks coordinated to come to the rescue with easing measures to fend off the threat of cheap oil (which was quickly creating risk of another financial crisis as an entire shale industry was lining up for defaults, as were oil producing countries with heavy oil dependencies).
“So, if oil can sustain above the $50 level, watch for the inflation chatter to begin picking up. And the rate hike chatter to begin picking up (not just with the Fed, but with the BOE and ECB)…”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrich/2017/09/14/watch-for-oil-above-50-to-start-the-inflation-and-end-of-global-qe-chatter/#122c074d4537
Does Gail or anyone here have any idea why the UK has such terrible productivity, even relative to other G7 nations? I understand that productivity generally is being undermined by the diminishing returns problem Gail writes about but why is the UK so egregiously awful?
I think part of it might be that we have a very high employment rate whereas in other countries the least productive workers would not be working at all but that can’t account for all of it.
Are we just incompetent, underfunded and bone idle?!
This explains it…..
More on this….
He who made trainspotting had it, then he lost it. Forever.
It’s a process, sometimes perceived as slow, sometimes it runs very fast..
? You (UK) once had an empire (of global reach) and reserve currency status, and even after this was all mostly blown to the winds 50-100yrs ago, you got a new bonus, little extension via North Sea shelf in oil and natgas. Nowadays, not much of productive value remained, e.g. luxury auto of competitive value is owned by foreigners, posh architects and banking are perhaps the very last breath of life.. The future looks as an Islamic island with perhaps some tiny parts of highlands standing for few more decades.., unless you perform during next few years full scale reconquista attempt, which is very unlikely given the mental, social and physical status of much of British (“native”) population these days..
One doesn’t have to wonder why so much Brits left to Canada/Australia/NZ/.. and other few places in recent decades, the process of decay inside UK has been identified and evaluated by many already.
It’s really post-2008 that productivity has been so flat. The North Sea oil industry has been getting steadily less productive since the 90’s, so that can’t be more than a contributing factor. So why is each UK worker so much less productive than their French or German counterpart? I’m not sure our sad status as once mighty empire-builders explains it. Perhaps FE is right and we’re just too cranked to work competently.
It explains to a great degree, namely in this specific case.
The structure of these economies, trade (export) balance, and their pecking order on the development cycle time line is different, i.e. UK->FR->DE (as the latest-youngest in the cycle).
Plus, major factor is the continental Reich IV reality, which means Germany (center of a ring) and its junior partners France, Benelux, N Italy, CEE and Balkans are all working in synergistic fashion, sharing almost the same productive more or less, but sending the value to the core (DE-fr). That “DE” is then willing (crazy) to squander large part of this wealth later on various global banking casino schemes and or feeding millions of incoming strangers on well-fare is another story, following the prior mistakes of FR and UK..
It was commonly observed in the 18th and centuries that the British peasant worked slower and more grumpily than Continental counterparts. 🙂
I am afraid I haven’t looked into it. I know that financial services is something that doesn’t become more productive. Medical care and education tend to get less and less productive, although the calculations don’t reflect that fact.
Until oil prices dropped in 2014, Britain’s energy consumption was falling. There were a lot of other European countries with the same problem. This more or less means that its citizens were becoming poorer and poorer–wages weren’t rising enough to afford more goods and services; employers were not adding high-tech equipment to aid productivity.
this analyst explains the latest info on the replacing of the us dollar as the petrodollar with the new reserve currency it is a must-see if you wish to know the direction we are heading into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7bqqZQwwpo
This same lady talked about converting the various assets of the world to currency before.
Now she is talking about a scheme to sell oil for gold. I don’t think any commodity holds value, except perhaps food.If the economy is not producing goods and services, there is a problem, regardless of what method of exchange is used.
I have to believe that the Fed injected a large amount of liquidity into the financial system on Sunday evening. The 1.08% jump in the S&P 500, given the fundamental backdrop of economic, financial and geopolitical news should be driving the stock market relentlessly lower. The amount of Treasury debt outstanding spiked up $318 billion to $20.16 trillion. I’m sure the push up in stocks and the smashing of gold were both intentional as a means of leading the public to believe that there’s no problem with the Government’s debt going parabolic.
http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/things-have-been-going-up-for-too-long/
How do the central banks inject money into the financial system aside from the QE programes? Can they inject money anonymously? If yes, how does that work?
Yes, apart from some of the more visible QE programs, printing ~ $4T each year, they prop it up by other channels as well. Mostly by credit for frivolous consumption (hence need for migrant’s influx) and also unpaid liabilities (non existing) future pensions (in real not nominal value) and infrastructure debts. The overall aggregate indebtedness (personal + private + gov) runs in western countries ~300-600% GDP..
If they can placate-mask some of the affordability thresholds and their interconnected loops, which Gail describes so often, this could be dragged a bit more perhaps into low 1,000 % debt levels.. we are in very different world after 2008/9 and we could snap into even crazier temporary make believe reality soon.. before the real “final” crash.. the sequencing of events leading to the big one is a mystery and humans are particularly inventive in prolonging the pain..
Yes, that’s correct. Frequently you can read about hidden cb injections, like in the article linked above. If cb’s manage to inject money beside qe it would be interesting to know how. Yours and gails examples didn’t really answer that question.
It’s for instance the government that subsidizes solar panels and ev’s and not cb’s.
Sorry, again, the pecking order is as follows:
Owner’s of the system > CBs > Govs > mid layer manegement > goons > proles
I remember the time when checks were sent to every family in 2008, as part of the Economic Stimulus Package of 2008. The government ended up with more debt on its hands, and each family received a check. There was a lot of discussion at the time regarding whether this money was really spent, or whether families just used it to pay down credit card balances. If it was spent, the question was, “Did the money go for US made goods and services, or did it simply lead to more imports from China?”
This is the only direct way of injecting money I remember. There are a lot of indirect ways–subsidizing solar panels and electric cars, for example, mostly benefit wealthy citizens. Unemployment benefits tend to benefit the poor. Bailing out AIG helped all of the people who had outstanding policies with AIG. It also helped shareholders and bondholders, including banks and pension funds.
Here’s how CM sees it.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/109221/why-markets-overdue-gigantic-bust
this is the future world that the elders have planned for a fraction of us https://www.technocracy.news/index.php/2016/12/04/life-in-2030-smart-city-promises-utopia/
smite warned us many times. Only dolph, hanuman and I listened to him. What he said is all true. Even he seemed to be a bit worried about being replaced.
It is hard to believe that this is a future we would really want.
what we want does not matter to the elders
Everything matters (and doesn’t) in a self-organizing system.
An absolutely stupid article….everything is free….transportation, energy, living space….food. Good luck with that.
“Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city – or should I say, “our city”. I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.”
From that article, adonis is the above clip. Yeah, but someone owns them and will make money off the one’s that lease them, even if temporarily. But the transportation part may become what more and more people in cities do. My stepbrother lived in SF and didn’t own a vehicle. It worked while he was there, but once he moved to a more rural setting he needed and got a vehicle. But that also applies to Aberdeen, Scotland, where I worked for a company out on the oil rigs in 79. Most people including myself didn’t own a vehicle, so that’s probably not a new revelation in cities.
I think what is happening is the more it seems like we’re headed for collapse, the more people are trying to reinvent the wheel so to speak. Really, there are only so many ways to make this work and it’s not headed to a good place as we know.
I tend to agree, JHW.
Coming up with bright new Utopian urban projects in the shadow of collapse is hardly very convincing.
Instead, we will be desperately shoring up and defending what we can, as everything degrades at varying rates depending on location.
We already have a subset of people living this lifestyle. They are the single unwed mothers who collect the equivalent of $50,000 per year in benefits. They do not “own” anything. They rent an apartment, the rent is paid by free benefits. They send their children, for which they collect generous benefits, to school, the ride being supplied “free” by the school system on a school bus. The children are then provided “free” meals by the school. Their medical care is provided “free” by the state system. The food they buy is “free” courtesy of debt cards, replenished monthly by the state. If there is anything lacking, they will demand more. They may or may not own a car. So here we can see the future of the utopian city. Everything is free. No mention is made of who pays for this.
In what country or state is this the case?
Exactly – self driving cars, though I don’t think they are possible, ultimately would represent rent-seeking.
https://imgur.com/a/rdTHm
yes, manufactured and powered by fossil fuel.
Hahahahahahaha, Where’s the windscreen?
Someone should stick that guy in a rocket that goes into geo-synchronous orbit to watch a spherical earth constantly and quickly passing by so he can ponder that and he can wonder how NASA got him up there.
That would be cruel, like sending a dog or a monkey up.
Bitcoin down in two weeks from $5,000 to $3,200.
https://www.coindesk.com/price/
it’s a BUYING opportunity!
hurry, everybody!
these prices won’t last!
“any trader trading bitcoin” will be “fired for being stupid.”
DIMON: BITCOIN IS A “FRAUD”; “WORSE THAN TULIP BULBS”
DIMON: BITCOIN WILL EVENTUALLY BLOW UP
DIMON: BITCOIN WON’T END WELL
DIMON: WOULD FIRE ANY TRADER TRADING BITCOIN FOR BEING STUPID
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-12/bitcoin-tumbles-after-jamie-dimon-calls-it-fraud-would-fire-anyone-trading-it
More interesting is the cause, which has been “supposedly” Chinese politburo -> China gov -> crack down on various bitcoin exchange platform hubs or whatever they call it..
Now, watch for the consequences, if this from now on stays subdued “mid-long term” we can come to different conclusion about the nature of the system (the beast) as opposed to the outcome in which various e-coins shake off this particular event in no time and eventually continue to growth and infest the system..
Gail said
>I have a few questions. Why can’t people eat what they have been eating in the past? It is not like they will be healthier for eating a “western diet.” And I thought that India, China, and Africa already have over half of the world population. They seem to, based on US population estimates as of 2015.
For the people living in the poorer countries, that kind of phrase will strike as Marie Antoinette’s misattributed quote, “Let them eat brioche”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3973410/
This movie is about two Dalit kids in the poorest slum of India, trying to eat a slice of pizza which cost their entire monthly earning.
The people living in these countries will think that “hey, you ate these Western foods for centuries, and you say we can’t eat them? f’k that!”
For these people, Western food is the sign that they have arrived, and they can live like Westerners.
https://www.amazon.com/Hungering-America-Hasia-R-DINER-ebook/dp/B002JCSCRU/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505428450&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=hungry+for+america+diner
This prof documented how horribly the immigrants from Italy, Ireland and some people in Eastern Europe ate. They were barely above starvation back home, and as a result when they could eat better in America they ate as much as they could.
You can’t blame these people trying to eat better, although I agree that these people should not be eating like that.
Or perhaps maybe I should have said, “Why don’t we work on holding population down?” and educating people who now eat meat to eat less of it? I doubt this would be successful, but it would seem more likely to work than adding wind and solar.
Sometimes it seems to me like we know too much about diet – or maybe that we were hoping there is some perfect food to eat. Interesting book Food Morals and Meaning shows people have always been obsessed with food psychologically and tend to moralize diets https://www.amazon.com/Food-Morals-Meaning-Pleasure-Anxiety/dp/0415376211
People think eating more carbs is bad for them – which may be true for teath, insulin etc. Eating lots of meat is maybe bad for you – same for fat. Maybe we’re too anxious about what we eat because we can’t deal with the complexity of nature and like to think we’re controlling our health more than we realistically can.
I always like Julia Child – who lived into her 90’s on a philosophy “A little of everything, no seconds, and no snacking.”
My grandfather lived to be 95 putting peanut butter on doughnut holes for breakfast and eating pan fried hamburgers for lunch. He never did any exercise his whole life except walking every day to have a cup of coffee with his friends at the fire house he used to work at.
Anyway – I think the barrier to any kind of change (less children, lower consumption) is convincing people they are not going to get the future they were hoping for. A tall order indeed.
Know to much but do to little?
Only those who have been truly hungry can appreciate the longing for meat.
I took her phrase more to mean, why go disturbing people who were doing OK left alone and trying to get them to substitute bottled milk for breast feeding, etc.? I agree that once people are brought into the western sphere (and hyped with how superior it is) they’ll want what they’ve been told is the “best.”.
Have not seen their arguments in detail.
But the intro premise is a bit faulty, in fact the first generations of immigrants were rather frugal and kept purposefully this very virtue afterwards, only the 3rd and later “spoiled” generations fell into the obesity and decadent opulence trans..
North Korea just fired another missile over Japan. Claims the media!
It seems that Kim’s gone ballistic. We must pray he doesn’t go postal.
I too feel a certain unreality about these launches. As an independent nation, NK gets no benefit at all out of firing missiles over Japanese territory. All it does is gives the US a pretext for any regime change measures it wants to put into effect.
We can hypothesize the launches as possible fake news that didn’t actually happen, or we can take it as evidence that NK is as much under the El-ders rule as every other country and is launching missiles in order to get raise tensions and possible to get bashed. Or we can view Kim Jong Un as a much more realistic reincarnation of Caligula than George Bush ever was.
Make no mistake, NK is a garrison state that has been on a war footing for the past sixty-odd years, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that it is an impoverished and resource-poor nation with a very low and deteriorating level of food security. Unlike Iraq and Libya, it has no oil to speak of and it does possess WMD, so for the US to attack it would cause more problems than it solved, but if NK continues to make a serious nuisance of itself, attacking it would be a great way for the US to mess up the current Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.
Yep, especially the concluding part about the chaos theory card, that’s why to counter it is Putin flying all over like crazy in recent weeks, even personally offering to Japan joint projects like undersea tunnel to make Japan proper continental country.. connecting it to upgraded trans Siberian cargo train route.. etc.
Which type of progressive are you … DelusiSTANI? MORE on? Koombayist? Green Groopie? Snowflake?
What type of progressive does it make me if I think society will become progressively hungrier and more irradiated?
Not sure progress… should ever be used in conjunction with hungrier
I’m a prog rocker.
http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/indias-coal-plants-run-at-3-year-high/
Oops don’t tell FE. The third pole is having “seasonal difficulties”
https://wolfstreet.com/2017/09/14/so-exactly-which-households-got-the-spoils/
https://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/US-household-income-2016-by-income-level.png
Once oil shortages hit, and they soon will, everything will fall apart. And I do mean everything. Everything. THIS IS NOT A DRILL!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WxBFL1kvHqg/UNvzIznoQiI/AAAAAAAAAHg/F_zeE-1UqKo/s1600/brace%2Bfor%2Bimpact.jpg
http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/53c822606bb3f7c32a83c18f/graphic-photos-show-wreckage-of-malaysia-airlines-crash-in-ukraine.jpg
On second though…why bother….
http://www.ecohustler.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/starving.jpg