Since the late 1990s, globalization has seemed to be the great hope for the future. Now this great hope seems to be dimming. Globalization sets up conflict in the area of jobs. Countries around the world compete for development and jobs. If there is not enough cheap-to-produce energy to go around, huge wage disparity is likely to result.
We know from physics and history that economies need to grow, or they collapse. The wage disparity that high-wage countries have been experiencing in recent years is evidence that the world economy is already reaching energy limits. There are no longer enough jobs that pay well to go around. Any drop in energy supply is likely to worsen the job situation.
Most observers miss this problem, because they expect high oil prices to signal energy limits. This time, the signal is low wages for a significant group of workers, rather than high oil prices. This situation is possible in a networked economy, but it is not what most people look for.
Unhappy citizens can be expected to react to the wage disparity problem by electing leaders who favor limits to globalization. This can only play out in terms of reduced globalization.
History and physics suggest that economies without adequate energy supply can be expected to collapse. We have several recent examples of partial collapses, including the Great Depression of the 1930s and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Such collapses, or even more extensive collapses, might occur again if we cannot find energy alternatives that can be quickly scaled up to replace oil and coal in the very near term. These replacements need to be cheap-to-produce, non-polluting, and available in huge quantities.
The story that the economy doesn’t really need a growing supply of very cheap-to-produce energy is simply a myth. Let’s look at some of the pieces of this story.
[1] The world economy needs to grow or it collapses. Once all of the nations of the world are included in the world economy, one obvious source of growth (incorporating nations that are not yet industrialized into the world economy) disappears.
The reason why the world economy needs to grow is because the economy is a self-organized system that operates under the laws of physics. In many ways it is like a two-wheeled bicycle. A bicycle needs to roll quickly enough, or it will fall over. An economy must grow quickly enough, or debt cannot be repaid with interest.
Also, government promises may be a problem with slow growth. Pensions for the elderly are typically paid out of tax revenue collected in that same year. It is easy for a mismatch to take place if the number of younger workers is shrinking or if their wages are lagging behind.
Figure 1. Author’s view of analogies of speeding upright bicycle to speeding economy.
I explain a little more about my bicycle analogy in Will the World Economy Continue to “Roll Along” in 2018?
Economies throughout the ages have collapsed. In some cases, entire civilizations have disappeared. In the past 100 years, partial collapses have included the Great Depression of the 1930s, the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Economic collapses are analogous to bicycles falling over.
[2] A growing supply of energy products is extraordinarily important for keeping the world economy operating.
We can see in Figure 1 that the energy of the person operating a bicycle is very important in allowing the operation of the bicycle to continue. In the world’s economy, the situation is similar, except that we are facing a problem of a world population that is continually growing. In a sense, the economic situation is more like a rapidly growing army of bicycles with riders. Each member of the economy needs goods and services such as food, homes, clothing, and transportation. The members of the economy can collapse individually (for example, growing suicide rate) or in much larger groups (collapsing government of a country).
Figure 2. World population according to the United Nations 2017 historical estimates and Medium forecast of population growth after 2017.
In an economy, we have a choice regarding how much energy to use. If more energy is used, workers can have many tools (such as trucks and computers) to leverage their productivity. If all goods are made with few energy inputs other than human labor, most workers find themselves working in subsistence agriculture. The total amount of goods and services produced in such an economy tends to be very small.
If supplemental energy is used, many more jobs that pay well can be added, and many more goods and services can be created. Workers will be rich enough that they can pay taxes to support representative government that supports many services. The whole economy will look more like that of a rich nation, rather than the economy of Somalia or Haiti.
Individual nations can grow their economies by using available energy supply to create jobs that pay well. Globalization sets up competition for available jobs.
If a given country has a lot of high paying jobs, this is likely to be reflected in high per capita energy consumption for that country. There are two reasons for this phenomenon: (1) it takes energy for an employer to create jobs, and (2) workers can use their wealth to buy goods and services. This wealth buys more goods and services made with energy products.
[3] One measure of how well the world economy is doing is world energy consumption per capita. On this basis, the world economy is already reaching limits.
Figure 3. World energy per capita and world oil price in 2016 US$. Energy amounts from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017. Population estimates from UN 2017 Population data and Medium Estimates.
It is clear from Figure 3 that energy consumption tends to move in the same direction as oil price. If “demand” (which is related to wages) is high, both oil price and the amount of energy products sold will tend to be high. If demand is low, both oil price and the amount of energy products sold will tend to be low.
Since 2014, energy consumption has remained quite high, but oil prices have fallen very low. Today’s oil prices (even at $70 per barrel) are too low for oil producers to make adequate investment in the development of new fields and make other needed expenditures. If this situation does not change, the only direction that production of oil can go is down, rather than up. Prices may temporarily spike, prior to the time production falls.
Looking at energy consumption per capita on Figure 3 (above), we notice that this amount has been fairly flat since 2011. Normally, in a growing world economy, a person would expect energy consumption per capita to rise, as it has most of the time since 1820 (Figure 4).
Figure 4. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent, divided by population estimates by Angus Maddison.
The fact that energy consumption per capita has been nearly flat since 2011 is worrying. It is a sign that the world economy may not be growing very rapidly, regardless of what government organizations are reporting to the World Bank. Some subsidized growth should not really be considered economic growth. For example, some Chinese cities have been buying off the country’s housing glut with borrowed money. A better accounting would likely show lower GDP growth for China and the world.
Looking more closely at Figure 3, we note that energy per capita hit a high point in 2013, just before world oil prices began sliding downward. Since then, world energy consumption per capita has been trending downward. This is part of the reason for gluts in supply. Producers had been planning as if normal growth in energy consumption would continue. In fact, something is seriously wrong with demand, so world energy consumption has not been rising as fast as in the past.
The point that is easy to miss is that (a) growing wage disparity plus oil gluts and (b) high oil prices are, in a sense, different ways of reflecting a similar problem, that of an inadequate supply of truly inexpensive-to-produce oil. High-cost-to-produce oil is not acceptable to the economy, because it doesn’t produce enough jobs that pay well, for each barrel produced. If oil prices today truly represented what oil producers (such as Saudi Arabia) need to maintain their production, including adequate tax revenue and funds to develop additional production, oil prices would be well over $100 per barrel.
We are dealing with a situation where no oil price works. Either prices are too high for a large number of consumers or they are too low for a large number of producers. When prices are low, relative to the cost of production, we tend to get wage disparity and gluts.
[4] The reason why energy demand is not growing is related to increased wage disparity. This is a problem for globalization, because globalization acts to increase wage disparity.
In the last section, I mentioned that demand is closely connected to wages. It is really wage disparity that becomes a problem. Goods and services become less affordable for the people most affected by wage disparity: the lower-paid workers. These people cut back on their purchases of goods such as homes and cars. Because there are so many lower-paid workers in the world, demand for energy products, such as oil and coal, fails to grow as rapidly as it otherwise would. This tends to depress prices for these commodities. It doesn’t necessarily reduce production immediately, however, because of the long-term nature of investments and because of the dependence of oil exporters on the revenue from oil.
Figure 5 shows that China and India’s energy consumption per capita has been rising, leaving less for everyone else.
Figure 5. Energy consumption per capita comparison, based on energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2017, and UN 2017 Population Estimates.
A major way that an economy (through the laws of physics) deals with “not enough goods and services to go around” is increased wage disparity. To some extent, this occurs because newly globalized countries can produce manufactured products more cheaply. Reasons for their advantage are varied, but include lower wages and less concern about pollution.
As a result, some jobs that previously would have been added in developed countries are replaced by jobs in newly globalized countries. It is probably not a coincidence that US labor force participation rates started falling about the time that China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Figure 6. US Labor Force Participation Rate, as prepared by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Lower wages for unskilled workers may also occur as the result of immigration, and the resulting greater competition for less skilled jobs. This has been a particular concern in the UK.
[5] Adding China, India, and other countries through globalization temporarily gives a boost to world energy production. This boost disappears as the energy resources of the newly added countries deplete.
Both China and India are primarily coal producers. They rapidly ramped up production since joining the World Trade Organization (in 1995 for India; in 2001 for China). Now China’s coal production is shrinking, falling 11% from 2013 to 2016. Both China and India are major importers of fossil fuels (difference between black line and their own production).
Figure 7. China’s total energy consumption compared to its energy production by type, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
Figure 8. India’s total energy consumption compared to its energy production by type, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
China and India’s big surge in coal production has had a major impact on world coal production. The fact that both countries have needed substantial imports has also added to the growth in coal production in the “Other” category in Figure 9.
Figure 9 also shows that with China’s coal production down since 2013, total world coal production is falling.
Figure 9. World coal production by part of the world, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
Figure 10 shows that world GDP and world energy supply tend to rise and fall together. In fact, energy growth tends to precede GDP growth, strongly suggesting that energy growth is a cause of GDP growth.
Figure 10. World three-year average GDP growth compared to world three-year average energy consumption growth. GDP data is from the World Bank, based on 2010 US$ weights of GDP by country; energy consumption is from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
If a growth in energy consumption is indeed a primary cause of world economic growth, the drop in world coal production shown in Figure 9 is worrying. Coal makes up a large share of world energy supply (28.1% according to Figure 12). If its supply shrinks, it seems likely to cause a decline in world GDP.
Figure 11 shows energy consumption growth on a basis comparable to the energy consumption growth shown on Figure 10, except for different groupings: for the world in total, the world excluding China, and for the combination of the US, EU, and Japan. We can see from Figure 11 that the addition of China and Japan has greatly propped up growth in world energy consumption since 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization.
Figure 11. Three-year average growth in energy consumption, for the world total; the world less China and India; and for the sum of the United States, the European Union, and Japan. Energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
The amount of the “benefit” was greatest in the 2003-2007 period. If we look at Exhibit 10, we see that world economic growth was around 4% per year during that period. This was a recent record high. Now the benefit is rapidly disappearing, reducing the possibility that the world energy consumption can grow as rapidly as in the past.
If we want world energy consumption per capita to rise again, we need a new large rapidly growing source of cheap energy to replace the benefit we received from China and India’s rapidly growing coal extraction. We don’t have any candidates for a suitable replacement. Intermittent renewables (wind and solar) are not candidates at all. According to the IEA, they comprised only 1% of world energy supply in 2015, despite huge investment. They are part of the gray “Other” slice in Figure 11.
Figure 12. Figure prepared by IEA showing Total Primary Energy Supply by type from this IEA document
Academic studies regarding wind and solar have tended to focus on what they “might” do, without considering the cost of grid integration. They have also overlooked the fact that any energy solution, to be a true energy solution, needs to be a huge energy solution. It has been more pleasant to give people the impression that they can somehow operate a huge number of electric cars on a small amount of subsidized intermittent electricity.
[6] On a world basis, energy consumption per capita seems to need to be rising to maintain a healthy economy.
When energy consumption is growing on a per capita basis, the situation is similar to one in which the average worker has more and more “tools” (such as trucks) available at his/her disposal, and sufficient fuel to operate these tools. It is easy to imagine how such a pattern of growing energy consumption per capita might lead to greater productivity and therefore economic growth.
If we look at historical periods when energy consumption has been approximately flat, we see a world economy with major problems.
Figure 13. World per Capita Energy Consumption with two circles relating to flat consumption. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent, divided by population estimates by Angus Maddison.
The flat period of 1920-1940 seems to have been caused by limits reached on coal production, particularly in the United Kingdom, but also elsewhere. World War I , the Great Depression of the 1930s, and World War II all took place around this time period. Charles Hall and Kent Klitgaard in Energy and the Wealth of Nations argue that resource shortages are frequently the underlying cause for wars, including World Wars I and II.
The Great Depression seems to have been a partial economic collapse, indirectly related to great wage disparity at that time. Farmers, in particular, had a difficult time earning adequate wages.
The major event that took place in the 1990 to 2000 period was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The central government collapsed, leaving the individual republics to operate independently. The Soviet Union also had strong trade relationships with a number of “satellite” countries, including Cuba, North Korea, and several Eastern European countries. In the next section, we will see that this collapse had a serious long-term impact on both the republics making up the Soviet Union and the satellite countries operating more independently.
[7] The example of the Soviet Union shows that collapses can and do happen in the real world. The effects can be long lasting, and can affect trade partners as well as republics making up the original organization.
In Figure 14, the flat period of the 1980-2000 period seems to be related to intentional efforts of the United States, Europe, and other developed countries to conserve oil, after the oil price spikes of the 1970s. For example, smaller, more fuel conserving vehicles were produced, and oil-based electricity generation was converted to other types of generation. Unfortunately, there was still a “backfire” effect related to the intentional cutback in oil consumption. Oil prices fell very low, for an extended period.
The Soviet Union was an oil exporter. The government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, indirectly because with these low oil prices, the government could not support adequate new investment in oil and gas extraction. Businesses closed; people lost their jobs. None of the countries shown on the Figures 14 and 15 have as high energy consumption per capita in 2016 as they did back when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Figure 14. Per capita energy consumption for the Soviet Union and three of its satellite countries. Energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017. Population data from UN 2017 Population data and Middle Estimates.
The three satellite countries shown on Figure 14 (Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland) seem to be almost as much affected as the republics that had been part of the Soviet Union (Figure 15). This suggests that loss of established trading patterns was very important in this collapse.
Figure 15. Per capita energy consumption for the three largest (by population) republics that made up the Soviet Union. Energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017. Population data from UN 2017 Population data and Middle Estimates.
Russia’s per capita energy consumption dropped 29% between peak and trough. It had significant fossil fuel resources, so when prices rose again, it was again able to invest in new oil fields.
Ukraine was a major industrial center. It was significantly impacted by the loss of oil and gas imports. It has never recovered.
The country that seemed to fare best was Uzbekistan. It had little industry before the collapse, so was less dependent on energy imports than most. Of all of the countries shown on Figures 14 and 15, Uzbekistan is the only one that did not lose population.
[8] Today, there seem to be many countries that are not far from collapse. Some of these countries are energy exporters; some are energy importers.
Many of us have read about the problems that Venezuela has been having recently. Ironically, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. Its problem is that at today’s prices, it cannot afford to develop those reserves. The Wikipedia article linked above is labeled 2014-2018 Venezuelan protests. Oil prices dropped to a level much lower than they had been in 2014. It should not be surprising that civil unrest and protests came at the same time.
Figure 16. Monthly average spot Brent oil prices, through December 2017, based on EIA data.
Other oil producers are struggling as well. Saudi Arabia has recently changed leaders, and it is in the process of trying to sell part of its oil company, Saudi Aramco, to investors. The new leader, Mohamed bin Salman, has been trying to get money from wealthy individuals within the country, using an approach that looks to outsiders like a shake-down. These things seem like very strange behaviors, suggesting that the country is experiencing serious financial difficulties. This is not surprising, given the low price of oil since 2014.
On the oil-importer side, Greece seems to frequently need support from the EU. The lower oil prices since 2014 have somewhat helped the country, but the basic shape of the energy consumption per capita chart makes it look like it is struggling to avoid collapse.
Figure 17. Greece energy per capita. Energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017; population estimates from UN 2017 Population data and Medium projections.
There are many other countries struggling with falling energy consumption per capita. Figure 18 shows a chart with four such countries.
Figure 18. Energy consumption per capita for Japan, UK, Italy, and Spain. Energy consumption from BP Statistical Review of World Energy; population from UN 2017 Population data and Medium Estimates.
In a sense, even though oil prices have been lower since 2014, prices haven’t been low enough to fix the economic problems these countries have been having.
China is in a different kind of situation that could also lead to its collapse. It built its economy on coal production and rapidly growing debt. Now its coal production is down, and it is difficult for imports and substitution of other fuels to completely compensate. If slowing growth in fuel consumption slows economic growth, debt will become much harder to repay. Major debt defaults could theoretically lead to collapse. If China were to collapse, it would seriously affect the rest of the world because of its extensive trading relationships.
[9] Leaders of countries with increasing wage disparity and unhappy electorates can be expected to make decisions that will move away from globalization.
Unhappy workers are likely to elect at least some leaders who recognize that globalization is at least a small part of their problems. This is what has happened in the US, with the election of President Trump.
The hope, of course, is that even though the rest of the world is becoming poorer and poorer (essentially because of inadequate growth of cheap-to-produce energy supplies), somehow a particular economy can “wall itself off” from this problem. President Donald Trump is trying to remake trading arrangements, based on this view. The UK Brexit vote was in a sense similar. These are the kinds of actions that can be expected to scale back globalization.
Conclusion
Having enough cheap energy for the world’s population has been a problem for a very long time. When there is enough cheap-to-produce energy to go around, the obvious choice is to co-operate. Thus the trend toward globalization makes sense. When there is not enough cheap-to-produce energy to go around, the obvious choice is to try reduce the effects of globalization and immigration. This is the major reason why globalization can’t last.
We now have problems with both coal and oil. With the decline in China’s coal supplies, we are reaching the point where there are no longer enough cheap energy supplies to go around. At first glance, it looks like there is enough, or perhaps even a superabundance. The problem is that no price works. Producers around the world need higher oil prices, to be compensated for their total cost, including the cost of extraction, developing new fields, and the tax levels governments of exporting countries need. Consumers around the world are already having trouble trying to afford $70 per barrel oil. This is what leads to gluts.
We have been told that adding wind and solar to the electric grid can solve our problems, but this solution is simply absurd. If the world is to go forward as before, it somehow needs a new very large, very cheap supply of energy, to offset our problems with both coal and oil. This new energy supply should not be polluting, either.
At this point, it is hard to see any solution to the energy problems that we are facing. The best we can try to do is “kick the can” down the road a little farther. Perhaps “globalization light” is the way to go.
We live in interesting times!
The Federal Reserve inflated stock prices for years and now comes the scary unwinding
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-federal-reserve-inflated-stock-prices-for-years-now-comes-the-scary-unwinding-2018-02-05?link=sfmw_tw
Well, this is got to be a game changer really? Reading this actually stopped me dead cold in my tracks and makes me think HMMMMMMMM, what’s really going on?
This I think is serious, truly serious and may be behind what is occurring. If this actually happens and goes worldwide except every dollar and currency throughout the world to collapse and be replaced with this.
David Janczewski, director of new business at The Royal Mint, explains:
“Distributed ledger technology is a game changer and supplying gold on a Blockchain has been on our minds for some time. But only after partnering with CME Group did we feel we had the right fit and proposition.”
CME Group will manage the trading platform handling transactions in the digital asset, which will be open all year around. Investors will have a full claim on the underlying commodity, meaning they’ll have the option of converting the digital holding into physical gold.
A particular advantage of a digital holding, although not exclusive to RMGs, is that investors don’t need to worry about the cost and inconvenience of storing gold. Spot traders have to pay management and storage fees whereas holders of RMGs will not have to pay these charges.
“Innovation is at the heart of CME Group’s business, and the work we have done on RMG with The Royal Mint is a testament to CME Group’s progress on the application of digital assets and distributed ledger technology to financial markets. By collaborating with The Royal Mint, we have set a new milestone in the digitization of value,” said Sandra Ro, digitization lead at CME Group.
The initial offering will be made available through investment providers, and The Royal Mint claims further RMG may be issued subject to demand.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/her-majestys-royal-mint-launches-gold-trading-on-blockchain
” Investors will have a full claim on the underlying commodity, meaning they’ll have the option of converting the digital holding into physical gold.”
b w a h a h a h a h a…
this is the epitome of a bogus claim…
there are 100 to 1,000 times the amount of “paper gold” in world markets than actual gold…
this is a scheme to make money…
nothing “game changing” about that…
blockchain is just sophisticated software… don’t get too impressed…
by the way…
there are now 1,514 cryptocurrencies in the world today…
is that a game changer too?
One limit to this is the electricity being on. Without electricity, the holder of physical gold has nothing.
For the year, the Dow is down merely 1.5%. I mean, what horror. The last time this sort of debacle happened was way back in ancient history of January and early February 2016.
The Dow is not even in a correction (defined as -10% from its recent high). But that messy Friday and Monday, following a record 410-day streak without a 5% decline, did break the recently pandemic illusion that you cannot lose money in stocks.
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/02/05/so-what-do-i-think-about-the-crash-in-stocks/
Interpretation: the el ders sending out a message…. to those who think the markets can only go up …. fingers singed a little…. markets corrected…. then the march upwards will begin again….
Mike Ra
Feb 5, 2018 at 9:30 pm
The economic powers have staged this to put a lid on equities for now. It will remain volatile for another week or too and then they’ll work behind the curtain to settle things out a bit.
This will also help in the bond sell-off that was occurring since investors were moving money from bonds to stocks causing the steady rise.
As I’ve said many times before, the markets are fully manipulated by the CBs, Treasury and their high paid minions (GS and JPM). They do it with all sorts of tricks (futures, flash trading, etc.). The only thing they can’t protect against would be a real swan disaster where the all investors race for the exits due to an event that would likley be non-financial.
In that scenario, just like 2008, they would wait for the selling to burn itself out and then buy the market back up.
+++++++++++++++++++
wow, great news!
I thought that The Collapse was coming this week…
whew!
I was preparing to say my fond farewells to all of my co-doomers here at OFW…
well, then…
let’s party like we all live in Philly!
quasi-BAU tonight, baby!
Burn and smash tonight! Burn and smash!!!
whatever floats your boat.
The only thing collapsing this week is the market for Bitcoin.
$6,200…
b w a h a… oh, never mind.
FE, I suspect you are correct and back up my hopes on the note WB sent to read “The End of Money.” You have put your neck out, if you are wrong, you lose all credibility on this forum. You are are not a loud mouth even though you try to play one on TV.
I lose to credibility whatsoever if I am wrong as I am only interpreting the situation based on the facts that are available — and I am seeing only the tip of the iceberg at best …
What I do lose if I am wrong … is my life.
The market is still hopelessly overbought. it needs to come down further. Then we’ll see if CB’s have still got the minerals.
https://youtu.be/c8Fi08u8bh8
Does anyone not love Buckethead????
https://www.last.fm/music/Buckethead/_/Big+Sur+Moon
who or what is Buckethead?
now that I’ve said that, I gave it a listen…
I think this signals the near demise of IC…
wink wink…
but really, don’t we all just love endless bars of 32nd notes?
how much of Steve Howe and his group Yes have you ever listened to?
Steve Howe compared to Buckethead is like gold compared to coal…
really, this must be the end of IC.
https://www.last.fm/music/Buckethead/_/Whitewash
Steve Howe does alright i suppose, the trouble is I can’t think of one of his tracts that feature the guitar. Satriani, Steve Vai, Steve Morse, and Bucketed play the guitar and have some backup. Howe seems to want to just be in the background – be the backup.
Different genre? For example:
https://www.last.fm/music/Steve+Howe/The+Steve+Howe+Album/Double+Rondo
Anyway, how could one get any energy from gold?
He’s my favorite guitarist – been following him since Monsters & Robots. I came to enjoy his somber music more than his metal.
My personal opinion….. everything has a limit. It is just that we don’t know what the limit is. If there are another 2-3 days of drop (many people say it is the deep state pushing Trump for releasing the memo), then it may be too late for the CBs to come in and save the financial system. At that time, pumping in trillions may be too late because the confidence is gone.
Analogy – you can try to bend the bamboo. You can keep bending it and until point where it breaks and it will never get back to its original position anymore…
What more in this case, it is global thing and not just USA.At a blink of an eye, I can buy stocks in USA, Germany or Japan. Unprecedented convenience and it is this same pathway that the blowback will come back quickly…
“What more in this case, it is global thing and not just USA…”
and that “global currency” named Bitcoin is at $6,500…
b w a h a h a h a h a…
Thanks for your view. Hopefully, we won’t need to find out. I wish the budget situation were fixed. Also the Dreamers / Wall problem.
My message to the Elders!
Full Spanish translation of the article can be foung at:
Nueve razones por las que la globalización no puede ser permanente
http://rumbocolision.blogspot.com.es/2018/02/Gail-Tverberg-energia-globalizacion-colapso-enero-2018.html
Thanks for translating this!
Be familiarised with the new generation of Iraqi/Middle Eastern OPEC/M officials (starting from 1:10) – sarcas 🙂
The rest of the video talks about how smuggled supplies of narcotics coming from Iran are so massive, they are enough to drug each and every individual in Iraq.
What Energy Market people are referring to in their analysis and papers, and they think we are still in the Rockefeller’s days?
Iraq is expected to increase its oil exports to 11 million barrel/day by 2022, exceeding Saudi and Russia. 15 million b/d doesn’t sound unrealistic, which may cover for oil depletion in Saudi/Russia.
Some think the video is promoted by the same armed bodies the documentary criticises, to allow the ‘eco-system’ take note on who is in charge over the region, including oil exports!
Even if our oil problem could be fixed, we would still need a cheap, high quantity replacement for coal.
Sinking an oil-exporting nation in narcotics and armed militias will never make our problem with Energy easier, Gail.
This model of controlling oil-exporting nations may viciously creep into more nations – and it is a strong indication on how FF reserves are severely depleting.
Energy analysts should make very clear that World’s oil supplies are not flowing in the market owing to real abundance, but to the thousands of dead bodies falling every day somewhere across oil-exporting nations.
The forum here is expecting Collapse to occur any minute. Well, the video above clearly shows that Collapse is already between us, growing in size by the minute.
‘Energy analysts should make very clear that World’s oil supplies are not flowing in the market owing to real abundance, but to the thousands of dead bodies falling every day somewhere across oil-exporting nations.’
A small price to pay….
There are too many rats on the planet anyways — and not enough to go around — so unfortunately some have to drown (or be incinerated by a bomb)
Better them than me.
TINA
Drowning and incarceration are all already in action there, but Iraq is 35 million, killing them all wouldn’t make it for anybody ‘to go around’ any easier, though, FE.
At some stage, there were 12+ Air Forces bombarding Syrian and Iraqi cities since 2016, including the Russian and Norwegian Air Forces. Has anybody heard ever of Norway being having an Air Force or that peaceful green country, imaged in the media as not willing to kill an ant – is capable of bombarding cities full of civilians, at all? 🙂
They made Syrian and Iraqi cities a shooting range for their young pilots 🙂 🙂 🙂
What ‘Imagine no countries’? A civilian under bombardment from 12 Air Forces sure feels he is in ‘no country’ and there is no heaven, only hell! 🙂 🙂 🙂
I agree that narcotics and armed militia will not help the problem. Of course, the whole Middle East is suffering from inadequate oil prices, and because of this, inadequate tax revenues. This is the reason for all of the violence.
No-tax-revenues doesn’t mean civilians are to be air bombarded, I think? Taxes are collected at peace time. No peace, no taxes.
If they only stop air bombardment against civilians, that would not be a bad thing. Taxes can come second! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Below scenes are on the newest air raid, freshly happened hours ago;
Maybe the local populations are keenly aware that any hope for a better future (for them) is to regain control of their natural resources ? In such a scenario any foreign multinational can expect resistance pretty much every step of the way.
My point is: bribes & corruption can probably only work for as long as local population is either ignorant or has something substantial to lose. Otherwise anybody seeking to make a run with large oil reserves would have to bribe everyone (=socialism 🙂 ) ?
Dow is going crazy all over the place!!! Just for a moment it was -1000.
http://money.cnn.com/data/us_markets/
Closing numbers in on markets day: Dow -1102, Nasdaq -273, S&P -113
That’s not a market crash, but it does represent some strong panic. That link has an article about Trump; since he took credit for the market’s rise, should he also take responsibility for it’s decline?
Late adjustment to Dow, -1175.21
The Down must have changed after markets seemed to be closed. Now reports are Dow -1,175, or -4.6%.
Looks like we posted at the same time, Gail, lol. That’s a big number, -1175. One other website has the close at -1178.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/05/investing/stock-market-today-dow-jones/index.html
“It was the scariest day on Wall Street in years. Stocks went into free fall on Monday, and the Dow plunged almost 1,600 points — easily the biggest point decline in history during a trading day. Buyers charged back in and limited the damage, but at the closing bell the Dow was still down 1,175 points, by far its worst closing point decline on record.”
“The White House said through a spokesman that “markets do fluctuate in the short term,” but it stressed that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.”
Oh, so don’t worry about it then. All the FUNDAMENTALS are strong. The White House has spoken, period. Go back to what you were doing before the last 2 days of trading.
Perspective… context… are everything….
The Dow fell 4.6% today to 24,345. This 1,175-point drop, as it was endlessly repeated, was the biggest point-drop in history – but irrelevant given how relentlessly inflated the industrial average had become.
The percentage drop today, combined with the drops of last week, took the Dow down just 8.5% from its all-time high on January 26.
For the year, the Dow is down merely 1.5%. I mean, what horror. The last time this sort of debacle happened was way back in ancient history of January and early February 2016.
The Dow is not even in a correction (defined as -10% from its recent high). But that messy Friday and Monday, following a record 410-day streak without a 5% decline, did break the recently pandemic illusion that you cannot lose money in stocks.
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/02/05/so-what-do-i-think-about-the-crash-in-stocks/
The entire tax cut rally has now been obliterated
https://imgur.com/a/tsjei
The PPT can easily halt any slide in the markets — they have been doing it regularly for a decade now https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/plunge-protection-team.asp
They have unlimited firepower…
So if the market is down 5% … the el ders have decided to walk down the market 5%….
If this was a genuine panic and the PPT had lost control…. these markets are in massive bubbles… so surely we would see a far bigger fall than 5%…. the markets would implode… as they did in 2008….
Keep in mind the el ders allowed Lehman to fail… that was not an accident… there was an agenda…. nothing of any substance has been allowed to fail since
FE, if one sells, what does one buy? The dollar is a means of exchange, but not much
of store of value and the US is so far in debt that interest coverage has to become an issue. You have your neck out on this one, I’ll give you credit for that.
I think that the accounting problem is so many assets that are being depreciated are not being depreciated quickly enough and when they are scrapped, there will not have been the cash-flow to pay the creditors. This is Gail’s reason there is no way to go backward. The assets are sunk and cannot make sufficient return to cover new ones so the capital/labor ratio declines to subsistence. Well, it is a good story.
Have you met Gail in person? Charming, we have chatted briefly twice at various meetings.
Dow plunges more than 1,100, largest single-day point drop in history
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/dow-drops-1500-points/story?id=52854673
https://imgur.com/a/mszm3
Why do you insist on bringing this partisan political trash to FW?
http://money.cnn.com/data/afterhours/
Pre-market has the Dow set to go down 1300 points tomorrow. Of course it can change between now and opening bell.
This is rather exciting … almost like a roller coaster ride….. hopefully it does not result in this
http://modernwhiz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/10-Deadly-Roller-Coaster-Accident.jpg
Lol. Is that real?
“Why do you insist on bringing this partisan political trash to FW?”
You’ve got a lot of nerve after all the postings you’ve put up about HRC and her husband Bill. That certainly was partisan and political, but it’s somehow ok for you?
That is not partisan – I am equally mocking/dismissive of HRC and Trump.
One is a clown – the other is a monster. Both are puppets.
Although I must admit – I do prefer the clown over the monster…
I want to be entertained! Trump gets the nod in that respect
However if HRC were to do this more often if she had won — that might have been fun
I can’t post links on the Dow, because their causing problems, but the difference between the high and low today so far is ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED NINETY SIX, SIXTY FIVE. (1596.65)
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=qb14WrzqCKuXjwT1jprwBA&q=dow&oq=dow&gs_l=psy-ab.12..35i39k1l2j0i131i20i264k1j0i131k1l2j0l4j0i131k1.703.2119.0.4806.4.3.0.0.0.0.177.512.0j3.3.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..1.3.511.0..46j0i46k1j0i20i264k1.0.uS_GwVrpSWY
Dow -820 points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ah, my post is being moderated. I’ll skip the link, Dow down 820.
Now, the stock market (Dos) is down over 800 points. It seems to have been down over 1,000 points. This is one WSj article: https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2018/02/05/u-s-stock-sell-off-makes-emerging-market-rout-look-orderly/
For those not paying attention:
The Dow has lost 1,000 points in two days
correction….it is down 1088 in less than one day.
Dow sinks by triple digits as global equities rout persists
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-poised-for-fresh-selloff-as-dow-futures-slide-120-points-2018-02-05
So much for replacing the Fed and the reserve currency…. anyone who is still in the money on this joke … and is keeping the faith and not cashing out NOW…. is very very steewwwpid.
Oh and anyone who bought on their credit cards…. expecting it to go to $50,000 of more …. enjoy bankruptcy
Bitcoin Selloff Accelerates as Credit-Card Issuers Extend Ban
Lloyds joins U.S. banks in prohibiting purchases with cards
Biggest cryptocurrency falls by more than $1,300 on Monday
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-05/cryptocurrencies-no-haven-as-bitcoin-slides-amid-stocks-rout
Bitcoin BAN: India rocks cryptocurrency by OUTLAWING digital currencies from system
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/914799/bitcoin-india-cryptocurrency-finance-minister-Arun-Jaitley-Ponzi-scheme
thank god my country banned this stupid currency
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=OJ14Wom1GMiwjwSjtLbYDQ&q=dow&oq=dow&gs_l=psy-ab.3..35i39k1l2j0i131i20i264k1j0j0i131k1l2j0l4.11349.12180.0.13335.5.3.0.0.0.0.165.481.0j3.3.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..2.3.481.0..46j0i46k1j0i20i264k1.0.OQwsnEG59iA
After the Dow going up in early trading, it is now down 370 pts. and changing quickly. Should be interesting to see how it ends up at close in 3 hours.
Actually, 470—
DI, it is constantly changing, so from when I posted to when you posted 1/2 hour later, it went to -470. Now it’s changed again LAST I looked and it was -820. (subject to change)
‘I wake up … from nightmares:’ Why Whole Foods workers are hating life
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article198441939.html
Chevron, IBM, Coca Cola, Merck, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Verizon or ExxonMobil———
Be glad you are not in any of these currently.
Well, the dog races are down a bit-
“Stocks slip further as banks sink; Wells Fargo plunges”
Prediction: last seconds of BAU – stock markets hit record highs — then the lights go out — and the stock exchanges go dark
I have the same intuition. Everything will be running wide open throttle then, very suddenly, things will change overnight. No one knows what will break or happen. But, I instinctively feel something will break or happen that will disrupt commerce completely and permanently. Credit cards will not work. Banks will not be able to dispense cash. Trust will evaporate almost immediately. With no ability to pay, access to fuel will be cut off. Workers will not be able to get to job sites. Deliveries are interrupted. Food is cleared out of supermarkets via looting. Confusion and panic will be the new order of the day. Very shortly thereafter, a critical point will be quickly passed where there can be no recovery from. The population numbers will simply overwhelm any government response or any attempt of reversing the collapse of trust.
“But, I instinctively feel something will break or happen that will disrupt commerce completely and permanently. Credit cards will not work. Banks will not be able to dispense cash. Trust will evaporate almost immediately. With no ability to pay, access to fuel will be cut off. Workers will not be able to get to job sites. Deliveries are interrupted. Food is cleared out of supermarkets via looting. Confusion and panic will be the new order of the day. ”
Maybe the central government will come up with a band-aid after a period of confusion, so having enough order and foreplanning to hold on locally for a month or so could keep us going for a sufficiently long time. I haven’t done what I should have, and stash away a fair amount of cash. That should help with local trade. I live in a community where people advertise what they have to give away, trade or sell.
The new normal is beginning to feel… normal ….. it feels like the CBs can keep this going for a lot longer….
and for usa should focus on social collapse of the country
for ex usa school shootout is higher than Iraq or Afghanistan
Parents of many of the children are not doing well. Mothers often not married to, or supported by, the fathers. Often the parents are drug addicts, and have difficulty holding down jobs. Children often don’t get adequate food and home. Needless to say, homework isn’t supervised. There aren’t books to read.
Even in higher-income households, parents often do no respect the wishes of teachers. Family trips take priority over school schedules. “Talking back” to teachers, instead of obeying what they say, is encouraged.
The situation becomes so difficult to deal with that many higher income parents send their children to private schools, where these problems are less.
This is a different problem that the school shootings, but related.
Back when schools were smaller, and parents knew the teachers, there were few issues of this kind. Now, with students bussed long distances to huge schools, school operation is theoretically “more efficient.” But with all of the children coming from families with problems, it makes for a huge problem.
“Mothers often not married to, or supported by, the fathers.”
Single mothers are definitely a major problem. I remember reading a study which discovered that, when corrected for single mother households, the black overrepresentation in US prisons is drastically reduced. Mothers rearing children alone create a very unstable childhood, especially if they have multiple sexual partners as well.
Unfortunately this is a political talking point, so the welfare of the children is ignored by both sides in favour of discussions about gender roles, i.e., the welfare of the mother.
I can relate to this. I work with a lot of children and many seem to have focus issues. They don’t have the same attention than children of even 10 years ago. A few are addicted to computer games and the parents seem unwilling to limit their exposure to electronics.
But the teachers themselves have similar problems. *They* communicate in shorthand, and don’t seem to know how to write in simple sentences. The tests they have to teach to don’t ensure that they know and teach such simple things. What you describe is indiscipline. The teachers lacked that discipline themselves and have no idea what it is, much less know how to instill it.
Education is never neutral. It is preparing students for a place in the “world order.” In the ghetto, that world order is a lifetime in the penal system. In a rich area it might be to fit into the tech industry. Neither extreme is working with a sensible view of the world. Everybody reacting or set on automatic. No coherence to anything. No concept of order…
So, to summarize – we have reached our peak
Seems like nine way to say globalization requires a cheap growing energy supply. Without it you return to isolation.
Exactly! With cheap growing energy supply, we can make globalization work. (Actually they need to be non-polluting as well.) Otherwise, we soon reach limits of many kinds. One of them is pollution limits from coal (breathability of the air). Another is inadequate fresh water supply. Another is growing wage disparity.
With isolation, we lack many things we have grown accustomed to. We cannot repay debt with interest or support our retirees.
unfortunately humankind is not conditioned to accept limits
only to have limits forced upon us
i was think why we even care if some guy talking about who is alpha or beta
do you think persons living in India slums or venezuela or Yemen
or gary indiana give a shit about these things
when he thinking how to survival very single day
Reading Jordan Peterson’s book, “The 12 Rules” my answer is yes. There are a lot of people which implies men striving to have a woman and women striving to have a man. Seems pretty basic and correlates well with the population size.
but is this is really important issue right now in this world
for ex pop is increase over 80 million every year
or economy of the world which right now is running on cheap central bank money which any day can collapse
or nonprofit unconventional oil which any day can have oil production collapse any day
The Jordan Peterson is relevant in terms of the big picture…and it is likely related to the end of more.
As more ends, we are seeing a movement towards extreme liberalism…. militant liberalism…. illogical liberalism….. attempts to create laws that crush all voices that are not in line with this movement….
And Peterson is fighting against this stewpidity.
However he is finding that facts and logic are like trying to beat a DelusiSTANI to death with a feather pillow…. perhaps I should email him with some other strategies.
First world men who are insecure about their masculinity worry a lot about who is alpha or beta.
Men who might reasonably be described as “alpha” tend not to feel any need to listen to self help hucksters like this Petersen guy.
Self help books are for people who need a kfucnig lot more than a self help book.
Speaking of Dr Tim Morgan, here’s a very good link posted on his latest article by one Donald, who because of this relevant contribution can safely be said to *not* be Crazy Eddy.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301379
“Our advanced societies can only continue to develop if a surplus of energy is available, but it has become clear that photovoltaic energy at least will not help in any way to replace the fossil fuel … photovoltaic technology would not be a wise choice for helping to deliver affordable, environmentally favourable and reliable electricity regions of low, or even moderate insolation, since it involves an extremely high expenditure of material, human and capital resources.”
“Research and development should however, be continued in order in future to have more efficient conversion from sunlight to electricity and a cheaper, more reliable PV-technology offering increased efficiency and a longer, failure-free lifetime. The market will then develop naturally.”
They’ve plagiarised Gail! Well, that or they are looking at the same reality.
The only thing of which we can be certain is that the quality and durability of manufactured goods will steadily decline – already clearly visible and getting worse.
Actually I’d add another certainty: that governments and vested interests -political and commercial – will push false solutions on us, which will probably make things even worse.
while your overall comment is true—I would take issue with a few points—-The Titanic ”steadily “declined steadily” for the first 2 hours or so—then the last few minutes were spent tipping rapidly to 90 degrees and then straight down—and panic and death for 1500 people—the rest survived only because other ships turn up to rescue them
we wont have ”alternative solutions pushed upon us”
we will vote for and demand them–and politicians /economists will promise them—and collectively we will believe them
why?
because there’s nothing else available. Politician navigate by past experience like the rest of us. They/we know no different
privately we may know there’s nothing else, on here we may say the same thing, but that collective optimism will sweep everybody back towards the stern of the Titanic
Or we can sit in the first class saloon and play cards till it’s all over.
“Or we can sit in the first class saloon and play cards till it’s all over.”
I suppose strippers won’t be available when there is no future they can spend their tips in.
Slight correction on the survivors of the Titanic sinking, the ONLY reason they survived is because they were in LIFEBOATS, ALL of those in the water or trapped on the ship, DIED.
Good point. Have yourself a lifeboat.
i try to follow a certain rule for writing stuff if i can
1500 dead meant just that—a detailed explanation as to the why and wherefore of their death would have been superfluous to the point i was trying to make
also–the sea was flat calm
wealth also bought survival—they were, in many cases, given first access to lifeboats
the exact total was 1517—
all that was unneccessary to the titanic analogy
The WSJ has an interesting article today regarding Japan and all of the quality problems it has been happening. These problems are very much tied to the low prices available in the marketplace. When the market will not provide a high enough price for goods, Japan has been cutting costs on quality. Also, there more workers are being hired as low-paid contract workers, without lifetime employment. Employees previously has been given a great deal of discretion in how to improve the manufacturing process. Now these same employees are using their discretion to cut corners on quality, so as to provide adequate quantity at the available price. It seems to me that wage disparity is growing.
The article is called Companies Everywhere Copied Japanese Manufacturing: Now the Model Is Cracking..
“When the market will not provide a high enough price for goods, Japan has been cutting costs on quality.”
That’s a shocker but fascinating, much like the dwindling packaged food sizes here in the US with the same price. One of the suggestions is that austerity will be required on the way down (from peak oil), and isn’t reduced quality of products and quantity of food (for the same price) constitute forms of austerity? Apparently it isn’t something that can be avoided as energy cost rises.
Among the “solutions” foisted on us is “building and paving-over as the solution to everything.” Within that model is creating “single use” developments–commercial separated by long commute distances from residential use. Commercial use seems to provide quicker financial return and more taxes than residential use. But the commutes cause expensive commute delays and commute complexities that are expensive. They also put more carbon where it is not needed. Carbon could be used to make mixed uses produce better or more. Carbon could be used to enable more productivity laterally and internationally. That model would be one of low profit and high volume. By squeezing more people into and getting more work out of existing buildings, there is less demand for wood (deforestation) which sequesters carbon. It is a waste of time and energy to put emphasis on replacing carbon (which I gather is impossible) with so called renewable, while completely ignoring land use and development.
I’ve been tracking Facebook development and it’s relationship to carbon emissions and congestion. On asking what they’re doing to foster telecommuting, I got this:
“…more details related to telecommuting question. We have a dedicated transportation team that actively works to offer transportation alternatives to reduce traffic on our local streets. We have an aggressive TDM program that allows for about 50 percent of our employees to commute to work by public transit, shuttle, bike, carpool, etc. and not use a single occupancy vehicle. We also have some employees that will work from home on occasion but much of their work requires them to be present here in Menlo Park.”
They are piling up concrete at a nearby (adjacent) new town they’re building. Whether this site will house any significant number of workers, I don’t know yet.
TDM = Traffic Demand Management
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_demand_management
Ferroni, lead author of the article, is an elderly researcher, whom I have met. He lists himself simply as “Energy Consultant” with no company mentioned, in Zurich, Switzerland. The second author seems to be self-employed as well. It is only nonaffiliated authors who can say what is really happening (assuming they understand the situation).
drtimmorgan
on February 5, 2018 at 6:20 am said:
The first quote says, I think, that things would be a lot better if we (a) gave up on consumerism, and (b) stopped obsessing about private car ownership. I agree, entirely, but I can’t see how we persuade the public about this, or overcome the vested interests involved with both.
…. I am speechless… Tim is losing it
He’s reluctant to face up to the looming chasm. It’s consumerism and status-driven greed or bust for this global economy.
What is true for Apple is apparently true for the rest of the smartphone industry: Sales are falling as users opt to hold on to their old phones longer, presenting a challenge for the pattern of near-constant innovation that has seen Apple and its rivals produce new models every year.
According to the Guardian, the rising cost of new phones as Samsung and others join Apple in pushing the top end of the market to higher prices appears to be hurting overall sales – though total sales figures have been insulated by the higher cost of each individual unit sold. Data from Strategy
Analytics shows global smartphone shipments shrank year-on-year from 438.7 million to 400.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2017 – a 9% drop.
That’s the biggest drop on record. According to the SA data, even iPhone sales declined by 1%.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-04/global-smart-phone-sales-drop-9-biggest-ever-quarterly-drop
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/246/959/153.jpg
I’ve seen worse….. 🙂
Cell phones maxing out, especially in China. Doesn’t look good for world economy. What do we go to next for growth–Uber self-driving cars?
We know that private passenger auto sales didn’t grow much in China either: 1.4% 2017 vs 2016.
Excellent
The madness of the university campus…. death to liberals
This guy is a self-esteem coach for conservatives pretending to be a modern day Chesterton – reinventing philosophy and theology to fit the BAU-based modern mentality – free-duhhhhmb and democracy. Both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard opposed precisely this tendency of hypocritical self-conceited revisionism, which underpins all modern ideologies.
You are a f789ing total idi ot
Ad hominem attacks are not useful. Jordan’s new book seems insightful and the ideas well thought out. Nietzsche as I recall died in the street, hugging a dying horse and was himself probably insane.
So could you give a succinct example of “self-conceited revisionism?” And a similar example of a modern ideology to which it applies.
I wasn’t making ad hominem attacks. What I said applies to Peterson’s ideas.
‘Self-conceited revisionism’ refers to both history and human nature being revised to fit the premise that growth/progress is both the means to and motive behind rational ideation. This is and has been done in all modern ideologies, regardless of other factors.
Nietzsche didn’t die in the street, he had a mental breakdown of some sort. He lived several years longer in the care of his sister.
Doctors who have looked at his medical records suspect he had brain cancer.
I am afraid I didn’t listen to all of this.
I have a sister (Lois Tverberg) who writes about better translations of what is in the Bible. A better translation for “Meek” would be one of the kinds of things she would look at.
With the energy problems of the period, it seems to me that there is a significant chance that a lot of what was happening was something close to a modern day famine, in Germany as well as Russia (1932-1933), (1946-1947). The underlying impetus for the idea of racial superiority and the Holocaust may very well have been “not enough to go around.” The idea would never have come up in a world of plenty, such as we have had since not too long after WWII. This is why the idea seems so shocking in today’s world.
I wonder if the people who got involved with this knew that starvation was a problem. The issue was either (1) Somehow reducing population, by finding an out-group that other people would somehow consider suitable or (2) Everyone starve, because there fundamentally was not enough food to go around, and the problem could not be fixed with available limited energy supplies. Germany coal supplies were not doing well either, especially during the Depression and during World War II. I understand that some of their coal mines were destroyed during WWI.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/hard-coal-production-in-germany-1792-2002.png
We know that when there are starvation problems with animals, equal sharing does not take place. Instead, the old and the weak are likely to die first. But here, it may have been clear that the population problem was huge, so the natural “old and sick first” wouldn’t work. The Holocaust seems to have started in 1933, which is the middle of the Great Depression. https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/TEXTLINE.HTM
Without the energy problem as context, it is hard to understand the situation.
It is my understanding that the Holocaust was all about a certain group that was in a parasitic relationship with Germany …. then stabbed the country in the back in WW1 doing a deal for a homeland and selling out their host…. this resulted in Germany losing the war… having to pay massive reparations … which impoverished the people…. which — as expected – gave rise to an extremist political party led by a man who promised to make Germany great again — part of that policy involved exacting retribution against the parasite.
This is as good an explanation as I have seen anywhere….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhFRGDyX48c
I could see a similar story playing out in America as BAU collapses…. there are a great many people who will blame the bankers….
BTW — I found this speech some years ago…. I was on a google mission trying to understand what could drive a man to want to kill millions of people…. my thinking at the time was…. they must have done something that really pi ss ed this man off….
It was very difficult to find anything of any substance…. the interweb was clogged up with stories about how the stab in the back was a ho ax.
But that only made me search deeper because when I see something repeated over and over … I know it is almost always a lie…
What irony … making using Mr Hitler’s strategy …
in any society, no matter how cultured you will find people willing to do the necessary dirty work of others.
germany and japan are perfect examples—highly cultured societies, industrious, seemingly a model to the world, yet when their leader began showing conquests of ”lesser people” they cheered them on–they were of course resource grabbing to prevent collapse of the home nation, to sustain outward thrust.—but few saw it in such a clear cut manner.
Even when it was obvious that Germany and Japan could sustain themselves and knew they we going to run out of resources, and lose the war they destroyed their own nations rather than admit the truth.
right now the usa is set on the same course—-but few see that either
for the first part of resource grab–the usa expanded over tribal lands and expropriated their resources–but they wey just ”indians” and didnt matter
for the 2nd phase, the usa and western world looted oil resources from the arabs.
—-that’s working its way through the economic system right now.
phase three will start when there’s no oil left anywhere else in the world, but the usa will still want to maintain its percieved rightful place in the world–ie dominant power.
They will do exactly what Germany and Japan did, begin to consume themselves, and it will be done through dictatorship—almost certainly theocratic
The USA will destroy itself, and recruit willing helplers to assist in that destruction.
There will be no shortage of volunteers.
An interesting parallel.
//////Even when it was obvious that Germany and Japan —-could—- sustain themselves and knew////
above should read couldn’t—doesn’t make sense as it is—NPagett
Hitler wrote Mein Kamp in 1924 – 24, and pointed the finger at who had to be «trown from the boat» and sacrificed. The idea of racial superiority was not new, the imperialisme in the 19th century was based on it. Hitlers crime was to apply the methods of colonization on the european continent itself with the aim of creating a Lebensraum for the Germans on the fertile black soils in eastern Europe and Russia. The historian Timothy Snyder has written extensively about how the focus on the industrialized killing in the deathcamps like Auschwitz is making us disregard that the main part of Holocaust were the mass killings during the military campaigne to conquer the Soviet. According to Snyder Hitler was familiar with scientific reachers which were about to bring about the green revolution. Altough he rejected the idea of a scientific approch to the ressource- and food crisis as a jewish lie. Hitlers Weltanschaung was a zoological anarchisme, which demanded colonization and extermination in front of an ecological crisis. For Hitler all history was the history of war between races fighting over limited ressources.
http://money.cnn.com/data/premarket/
Premarket action for the dow, nasdaq and S&P. This website will provide an indication of how the market will open yet keep changing as it nears the opening bell. If market opened now Dow would be -150 and change, nasdaq -20, S&P -15. What you’ll notice is the Asian stock market is not a leader but a follower of US markets. They are down because the US was down Friday. If US goes up Monday, guaranteed Asian stock indices will go up Tuesday.
Somehow this just doesn’t “feel” like the right time for a crash. Plenty of optimism still left to burn. If there is a US crash this year, it’ll be on a Monday in July.
2028-07-28 +/- 10 years.
Definitely on a Monday. You betcha.
Stocks in Hong Kong recovered some of the early losses but still retreated today.
The benchmark Hang Seng Index at close slid 1.09 percent, or 356.56 points, at 32,245.22. It plunged 2.72 percent to open at 31,715.56 points this morning following hefty Wall Street losses on Friday.
Meanwhile, the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index declined 0.43 percent, or 58.83 points, at 13,479.83.
Total turnover on the main board was HK$169.93 billion.
In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite Index opened 1.5 percent lower but rose 0.73 percent, or 25.42 points, to close at 3,487.50 while the Shenzhen Composite Index lost 0.84 percent, or 15.23 points, at 1,806.30.
Collapse will have to wait another day … or year… or who knows… perhaps another decade?
Tesla Model 3 Teardown By Engineering Firm Reveals Quality Flaws Like ‘A Kia In The ’90s’
https://jalopnik.com/tesla-model-3-teardown-by-engineering-firm-reveals-qual-1822678045
This is not some average car critic. He’s’ got an impressive background, which will mean nothing to the Tesla Sycophants.
Tesla Apologists will accept a bumper 1cm out of line with a fender…. will accept that the battery life collapses if you turn on the heater… will accept just about anything ….
Because they are pioneers — in the quest to save the world.
They are also MORE ons
One argument might be that the torn-down car was one of the hand-assembled ones, and for that reason is not up to quality standards. Nevertheless, for a car that people say really costs $50,000 the way Tesla is actually configuring them, this car seems to have an awfully lot of problems.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-valley-secretive-orgiastic-inner-sanctum
Total disruption!
Too much energy (or $) per person and too little good sense.
If a person has lots of money, they seem to want to go “over the top” in every way. Pleasure buys happiness, I suppose.
Money buys pleasure, but excess of pleasure actually inhibits happiness/contentment due to the interaction of the dopamine and serotonin mechanisms in the brain.
So basically if you have the resources to endlessly chase pleasure, you’ll keep doing that while becoming less and less happy and thus more addicted to the pleasure seeking behavior. It’s a vicious cycle that leads to this kind of nonsense.
https://www.thequint.com/news/world/cape-town-south-africa-water-crisis
‘From Cape Town to Kabul: Taps Run Dry in Crisis Cities’
“Water scarcity already affects more than 40 percent of the world’s population and is expected to rise due to global warming, with one in four people projected to face chronic or recurring shortages by 2050, according to the United Nations. Already hosting more than half the world’s people, cities are at the forefront of the problem, as population growth increases pressure on reserves, which are already stretched by too little rain and too much waste.”
The article goes on to explain water source problems in numerous different cities.
All we need is an infinite supply of virtually free energy to solve the water scarcity problem. We can desalinate sea water, and pump the water (uphill if necessary) to where it is needed. The necessary virtually free energy can be used to extract sufficient ore to make pipelines and motors, and provide fuel to operate these devices. Of course, if energy is not essentially free, and its supply not virtually infinite, this will not work.
Don’t you just love how they just arbitrarily stick in ‘due to XX XXXing’
That is how propaganda works… you just plant words in articles… creating this assumed association….
And because people are stewpid and easily controlled…. if you do this enough times …. they do not question the association — they just accept it.
Now those of you who have been suckered by this strategy…. you need to look in the mirror and say — am I stewpid… and the answer is probably yes.
Deja vu? It’s looking like 1987 again for the US economy
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/04/is-this-the-1987-us-economy-or-just-deja-vu
Globalization should not have come forth to begin with. It merely created billions of consumers and depleted more resources.
People like Rockefeller and Ford poured money into the Green Revolution for more consumers. Folks like Norman Borlaug were useful idiots who thought they were doing something good to humans, but thanks to them we are going to the crappers much faster.
There was someone from India who commented that Globalization helped that country. Instead, in my opinion, it put India into even a deeper shit. In 1941, the last census done by British Raj, what is now Republic of India had about 300m people. It now has at least 4.5 times as much as that after 77 years.
It would have been much better to the globe, and probably India too, that globalization did not come to India.
The problem without globalization is that each individual country starts to “run out.”
http://peakoil.com/consumption/peak-money-a-permanent-change
“Some of the media, government elites, and the financial world knew the 2008 financial crash was imminent but feigned surprise in public while planning their exit strategies and war-gaming how to manage and manipulate the crisis to protect their power (not just more profits). The financial meltdown is not a cyclical recession, it is a permanent economic shift. The End of Growth transcends ideologies and partisan politics.
Now that we are at Peak Everything we need to move beyond Peak Denial and Peak Blame to equitably share the shrinking economic pie. Even if transnational corporations were converted into democratic, locally owned cooperatives, we have still overshot Earth’s carrying capacity.
Using solar energy for twenty years (and wind power for ten) taught me that renewable energy could only run a smaller, steady state economy. Our exponential growth economy requires ever increasing consumption of concentrated resources (fossil fuels are more energy dense than renewables). A solar energy society would require moving beyond growth-and-debt based money.”
“to equitably share the shrinking economic pie.”?
Apparently he expects the humans to be swapped out for angels in this process.
Yeah, human nature does not seem to include equitable sharing, which means it’s going to reach a point of every man and woman for themselves. Kind of interesting from the standpoint that what will ensue on the way down will probably be the wildest, craziest slugfest ever, but how much of it will be documented in film or in writing for future generations? (presuming some make it through a bottleneck.) What would an aerial viewpoint video be like if say drones were flying just above the melee’s and putting them together in a film. It would probably be reach a point where it was to say the least, hard to watch.
We know it’s coming, the mass migrations, the loss of potable water, the dying crops, small and big incursions for resources, loss of human habitat near coastlines, human trafficking on a scale never before imagined and financial ruin from foreclosures and bankruptcies, currency hyper-inflation, raging fires, and loss of infrastructure all coming to a town we’re in or near.
>how much of it will be documented in film or in writing for future generations?
More likely in epic poetry or something like Homeric tradition to be passed down orally.
Why not written?
We are a few billion capable of scavenge a piece of paper and write it down.
Maybe in three thousand years someone can use a dishwasher manual as a rosetta stone to translate it.
interesting idea
i used to write dishwasher manuals
Yes. So if say the japanese written language survives somehow, they can in the year 3535 use your dishwasher manual to translate End of more to japanese and then to a modern language, and then learn what happened.
seems a reasonable assumption to me
How long do you think paper lasts? How many people do you think know how to make paper without a paper plant? How much spare wood will there be to waste on paper when it’s the only source of energy?
apart from clay or stone tablets
the most durable writing material so far is vellum
Yes, and even Vellum has a lifespan of 400-500 years or so. Paper is lucky to make it past 100 in dry conditions.
Is your dishwasher manual engraved in clay tablets?
We only inherited some small fraction of 1% of writings from Rome and even that was because there were monks laboring away in monasteries making copies on vellum. I don’t see that happening this time around. Even with Rome a lot of manuscripts only survived because they were in remote locations like Ireland or walled up in Constantinople. With globalization this is much less likely.
If we manage to not extinct ourselves I have a hard time imagining there won’t be any society anywhere with enough surplus to preserve literacy. Someone has to keep tab on taxes and debts.
Fairness and equity seem to mean that even the burnt-out druggie with a criminal record deserves first-class public housing. Many would beg to differ……
And tranny freaks should be called Zee’s …. and have their own public bathrooms….
And paedophiles and mass murderers are people too…. how dare we jail them!
We need to coddle them and help them express themselves…. because they are only like that because of a traumatic experience at some point in their lives…. all they need is to be shown empathy… love.
Koombaya… think of the damage that song has done
I’ve just pulled down Atlas Shrugged…. I need to re-read (listen) that to maintain my sanity
Or they were just selling records to ninth graders like me. Nothing new. I’m fairly certain he, her, it, or just plain Mick serves at her Majesty’s pleasure.
“Growth and debt based money” is just a symptom of a much wider problem. There must be hope of a “profit” of some kind, for any investment to be made. The faith in profit allows investments to be made, and encourages people to have more children. The fact that contraceptives are not free, and are fossil fuel based, means that we have a growing population to take care of, no matter how much a person might want a “steady state economy.” We don’t have, and never have had, a steady state economy.
Even if you look at the Middle Ages you see swelling populations in times of prosperity, followed by collapsing population in famines. There’s never a steady state.
that, in part, is our problem
back then there was indifference to death and suffering outside your immediate group/family, and even then it was accepted as inevitable
now we see it as a civic/humanitarian duty to preserve every scrap of life at any cost—which of course nature never intended to happen.
so when populations grow, we feel it necessary to preserve that growth and add to it—it gives us a general feelgood factor
hence we’ve got to 7.5bn–and the myth goes on that we can feed 10bn or more.
Try explaining that to a Koombaya-ist…. you’ll be referred to as Hitlerian
i just talk people to death
otherwise harmless
Nature abhors a steady state. Things are either shrinking or growing.
Priceless!
https://medium.com/@stianchrister/24-memes-that-sum-up-jordan-peterson-vs-cathy-newman-7c7b9229f2f
Why we can’t go backwards.
I suspect it is due to capital equipment not being depreciated fully and if it is not useable, there is no way to earn sufficient excess capital to purchase a more appropriate machine for the time. See my post to FE regarding doomstead, etc. Modern tractors are very, very temperamental when something breaks.
The Amish do all right, and they are a group, although they are advancing. Last fall saw a farmer with six horse power on his implement. If one breaks down, he can go backwards to five horse power. Take horse back to the barn and have him/her work on a replacement.
Beyond capital equipment many people simply lack the knowledge. Farmers don’t know how to run a draft team, much less train them or care for them, etc. Woodworkers may not know how to make many things without use of power tools. The list goes on and on and on.
We have become a nation of hair dressers and lawyers.
You forgot an important point. Farmers are now too lazy to raise, care for, water, feed and run a draft team. Factory agriculture is easy….you just fire up your combine, sit in air conditioned comfort and distribute chemicals. That’s it. I do not call these guys farmers….they are factory agriculture technicians.
I bike past orchards and other commercial farms whenever I ride….. they all have big signs ‘Hazchem’ and ‘Warning Spraying in Progress’ at the gates…. I sometimes see the farmers hauling these big blowers down the road — basically big fans that get hooked up to a supply of poison — which they then blast onto the crop…. the farmers are dressed in protective gear…..
Had… yes… had… now he has a toxic waste dump
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LIWbUjHZFTw/maxresdefault.jpg
I have a relative who farms. He has a tractor just for applying the fungicide, millicide, herbicide, pesticide. It sits apart from all other equipment. It is driven by the bottom of the barrel of immigrant labor suited up in full hazmat gear. p.s. He grows strawberries.
As a person running a farm for 30 odd years, some of the comments here about farmers are just so far off the mark.
Good farmers are very in tune with what is happening around them, while industrial farmers, the ones mostly quoted by other posters, are usually just workers for a corporation.
For example, most strawberry growers use the modern industrial methods, with managers in charge of millions of plants over vast areas. The Strawberry agricultural department recommends 18 fungicide and 16 pesticide applications per year on strawberry crops.
The largest strawberry grower I know (over 100ha and 4m plants/yr) will not let his grandchildren eat strawberries.
Then there are the smaller growers, many using close to organic methods, or organic, that know how to grow a crop, what the season is telling them etc. However these people need to have niche markets as the cost of production is higher. Industrial Ag is cheaper and sold in supermarkets.
The 7 Billion and growing population of the world cannot be fed by near organic means, but industrial Ag also cannot continue for long because of FF constraints.
Turning good quality Industrial Ag soils into near organic, is quite easy to do, if you know what you are doing. Most don’t know, nor will find the info in books written by hippies about going ‘organic’.
‘Turning good quality Industrial Ag soils into near organic, is quite easy to do, if you know what you are doing.’
I know a commercial organic grower who is trained in ag sciences who consults to the New Zealand government who would not agree with that — unless you are suggesting that years of organic inputs will revitalize ruined soil …. that is relatively easy .. however it is not a quick process
In Britain, at least, the horsemen were a breed apart, hereditary to some extent, and kept their craft ( and magic spells) to themselves to themselves.
And let’s not even get on to the subject of over-small gene-pools of draught horses and the old (hardy) breeds of farm animals …..
Oil (and gas) was our great catastrophe, and we didn’t even see it.
how could we see it
horses get tired and die
coal was virtually free and was forever
oops
Falling prices of energy services (cost of energy adjusted for efficiency gains in its use) since 1700 give the impression that the falling cost of energy services will power the economy forever.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/fouquet_average-price-of-energy-and-energy-services-in-the-uk-1700-2008.png
Horses needed preparation before ploughing/hauling, and lots of work after getting back from the fields – so farmers jumped at the time saving.
Keeping animals, which were often sick, going all day was a job in itself.
Tractors must have seemed almost miraculous after the hard times of the 1920’s and 30’s – the bottom of the agricultural slump in Britain.
The Amish are 100% locked into farming with petro chemicals… they will grow nothing when BAU ends
I was told this by an Amish farmer a few years ago
This depends on which Amish community you look at. They have varying levels of technology adoption.
Nah…. if they dont use petro chemicals to protect crops the banks won’t lend them money … and as this guy said — he had about a dozen kids… and they all want to farm… which means he must grow… and to grow you need debt…
The Amish are no different from anyone else…. they are completely plugged into BAU
They are NOT living the romantic fairy tale that we believe they are
There are different levels of Amish. The “old order” Amish are the closest to a simple life. Relying on animal power and horse drawn carriages is a step closer to resilience. New order Amish have adopted less stringent dress codes etc. Mennonites keep the faith but do not shun modern transportation and energy systems. It is difficult for even the old order Amish to stay completely separate from modern technology. I stayed for a week with an old order couple who were parents of some Mennonite friends of mine. The crafty codger had a phone in his workshop out back. He used it for his cabinet business. His house was still back to basics though and he had his horse and carriage.That was yrs ago though.
Finding land for kids to farm and start their life is very difficult for Amish I imagine. I saw a video of Amish working in a factory making RV trailors. The workers literally RAN from talk to task. They were really hustling.
The few that grow organically …. will meet the same fate as permie doomies…. post BAU…
The hordes will pile through the gates and over the fences…. killing and eating the farm animals… and tearing up the crops….
http://nexgenenergygroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Bugs-and-LED-Lighting.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UC6GShEiu_s/hqdefault.jpg
“if they dont use petro chemicals to protect crops the banks won’t lend them money”
The old order Amish don’t take on debt either. Or use insurance.
Do Amish use pesticides?
Most Amish farms are not organic, and most Amish farmers use a variety of pesticides and fertilizers
The perception of the Amish as an antiquated people, living close to the land, may cause some to believe that Amish farm without artificial means. However, the majority of Amish do rely on chemicals and fertilizers to boost crop yield and control pests. Amish, like most American farmers, have relied on artificial means for many decades.
http://amishamerica.com/do-amish-use-pesticides/
MarketWatch: The Amish didn’t have subprime mortgages, did they?
Craker: No, they did not. I met this one farmer, Amos, near Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania. He had saved $400,000 over the course of 20 years while raising 14 children and renting a farm for around $1,800 a month. He was about ready to put down $400,000 on a down payment on his own $1.3 million farm. They’re big on big down payments and being in as little debt as possible.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-financial-secrets-of-the-amish-2014-05-06
They likely die out, then.
If you’re pessimistic about the state of world today, Bill Gates and Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker have a message for you: “This bleak assessment of the state of the world is wrong. And not just a little wrong–wrong wrong, flat-earth wrong, couldn’t-be-more-wrong.”
http://megacancer.com/2018/02/04/gates-and-pinker-things-are-getting-better/
Please subsidized EVs… please MR Government can you build more charging stations
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2131964/has-hong-kong-pulled-plug-electric-cars
Duh … if they cannot compete without the government involved… the pi ss off.
Oh … and btw —- the electricity is coming from coal fired power stations….
I would so enjoy beating these MORE ons over the head with a baseball bat
Strange subsidy:
this is poverty in Finland will still look better than india but till cheap fossil fuels remains
https://youtu.be/VCuDkuDro64
in India you can sleep on the pavement if you are too poor to be anywhere else
Try that in finland and you’re dead
because the cold ground will suck the heat out of you until you die of hypothermia, or get runned over by a speeding Mercedes Benz…
With enough isolation you can sleep outside without heat source. And the cities could be serveral degrees warmer.
Not “fun” of course, but it is done today already.
If you pass out drunk lightly clothed it is another matter.
There are worse things than dying.
can you give some examples?
Full paralysis.
being permanently blind is a bummer, also, especially for those who used to have sight.
we have a family dog like that. she’s adapted (dogs are good that way), but you could detect the initial depression. her world has closed in on her. in the wild, she would not last a week.
Being enslaved… raped… tortured before dying … recall in the Belgian Congo… when the men did not hit their rubber quota their wives were raped and tortured.. man had their hands cut off…
Then there is slow starvation — disease … radiation sickness…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Street_dog-Gianyar_Bali-2009.jpeg
The sooner death arrives when BAU ends… the better…. it’s the main reason I am getting rid of this stuuuupid fu kking doomstead…. it will not be at all helpful post BAU .. and in the meantime I have to spend time maintaining it….. I do not want to linger eating pumpkins and apples… better to just be in a place where quick death is certain
I am not sure of death being certain, buy you sure are correct in describing a doomstead. Without running a full scale farm, I am not sure it can be done on a few acres. Yes, maybe grow sufficient food, but there are land taxes, etc.
Farming around here(I see the numbers on my land) is really tough and with equipment being computerized, it does not run without sensors, microprocessors, etc. Only the dealership can read the codes so fixing a large piece of machinery involves a $1,000 truck trip each way. I have a moderate BobCat and the oil change is close to $400, most of it is transpiration to and from service. Cutting grass is another trip.
Good luck.
I could never grow enough food to feed 4 people … even with BAU in full force… unless I were to spend big money on fencing for the entire 5 hectares…. now try keeping the weeds out on a a 5 hectare farm!
And post BAU — hahahahaha…. no f789ing way…. the hordes would be over the fence in minutes….
More money pis sed down the drain.
hordes hate hoarders
When I was in Mumbai, I got the impression that there were poor people everywhere. A queue would have gone on endlessly. Of course, beggars congregated around where they thought they might find well-off tourists, so it emphasized the problem.
This impression was not the same outside of Mumbai, but I still got the impression that almost everyone was quite poor, in a more rural area poor.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/auto-rickshaw.jpeg
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/workers-harvesting-rice-v2.jpg
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/woman-carrying-two-pots-of-water-on-her-head.jpg
In Finland, everyone has to be quite wealthy, or they cannot survive. This limits population growth.
I guess Finland like Sweden, “poor” starts at €100 and up, and then you get help with rent etc on top of that.
It used to be that only drug addicts were homeless, but the welfare system is crumbling fast. Probably slower in Finland.
If you have’t done your paper work correctly you could end up with €0, not €100+.
It’s like in Germany, poor means just under 60% median income. Minimum you are getting: 450 Euro, plus a modest appartment (45 m²), plus health insurence, plus minimum retirement assurance. For each child: plus 250 Euro, free health insurence, free school as for every kid, plus 10 m² in an appartment, warm school lunch for 1 Euro a day, each month 10 Euro for an activity like sport, music.
I’m sorry … I lost a zero.
€1000/month, that is for a pensioner who has worked minimum wage or not at all.
Corporate Bond Market in Worst Denial since 2007
by Wolf Richter • Feb 4, 2018 • 35 Comments
It’s just a question of how disruptive the adjustment will be, whether it will be just a painful sell-off or junk-bond mayhem.
Treasury securities have been selling off and Treasury yields have been rising, with the two-year yield at 2.15% on Friday, the highest since September 2008, and the 10-year yield at 2.84%, the highest since April 2014. Rising yields mean that bond prices are falling, and this selloff has been an uncomfortable experience for holders of Treasury securities.
But corporate bonds have been in their own la-la-land, and even Tesla, despite its cash-burn rate that should scare the bejesus out of investors, was able to sell $546 million in bonds last week – bonds collateralized by lease payments it receives from customers that have leased its cars.
S&P rates Tesla “B-minus,” a highly speculative rating just one notch above the deep-junk rating of triple-C. But no problem. Yield-desperate, risk-blind bond investors had the hots for these auto-lease-backed securities, according to Bloomberg:
The sought-after debt deal allowed Tesla to slash the risk premiums it would pay on the notes. They were sold to yield between 2.3 percent and 5 percent. At initial offered prices, investors had put in orders for as much as 14 times what the electric-car maker intended to sell on some slices of an asset-backed security, according to people familiar with the matter.
Junk-rated and cash-burning Netflix, or oil-and-gas companies drilling billions into their fracking endeavors, and many other junk-rated companies such as Fiat-Chrysler are in hog-heaven, with high demand for their debt, which pushes down the yield for investors and the costs of borrowing for the companies.
And the spread between average junk-bond yields and equivalent Treasury yields has now fallen to just 3.29 percentage points. That’s the premium investors demand to be paid for taking on the additional risk of junk bonds versus Treasury securities.
This is the narrowest spread since July 2007, just before credit froze as the Financial Crisis began to unfold, and numerous of these junk-rated companies, cut off from further funding and losing money as they went, ended up in bankruptcy court, an experience during which stiffed bondholders and other creditors re-learned to appreciate the notion of risk.
This chart of the BofA Merrill Lynch US High Yield Option-Adjusted Spread, retrieved from the St. Louis Fed, shows the minuscule premium investors are currently demanding for holding high-risk junk bonds versus nearly risk-free Treasuries, and just how far in denial the corporate junk-bond market is:
Investment-grade bonds, issued by the corporations that are deemed to be financially among the most stable, are showing a similar pattern.
The premium investors demand to be paid for taking on the additional risk of corporate bonds versus Treasury securities has now dropped to just 90 basis points (0.9 percentage points), according to the BofA Merrill Lynch US Corporate Master Option-Adjusted Spread index. This is the lowest since March 2007. During the subsequent Financial Crisis, major investment-grade rated corporations – including GE – suddenly couldn’t borrow anymore even to meet payroll, and the Fed, in its function as lender of last resort, began bailing them out with special loan programs.
The chart below of the BofA Merrill Lynch US Corporate Master Option-Adjusted Spread index, retrieved from the St. Louis Fed, shows the la-la-land that the corporate bond market thinks it’s in:
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/02/04/corporate-bond-market-in-worst-denial-since-2007/
More evidence that Wolf is a complete w.anker.
Paul Fillion
Feb 4, 2018 at 10:54 am
I don’t think you are crazy.
At least you understand that bad things are going to happen.
Most are sheeple, and oblivious.
Predicting exactly what will happen, when, and what is the best thing to do now to prepare for it is nearly impossible.
You are undoubtedly doing better than most.
3. If about 5% of the comments under one article are yours, it’s time to back off. So if the article has 80 comments and 4 are yours, it’s time to slow down. If you’re in a substantive constructive discussion with another commenter, some back and forth is OK. But once this discussion is starting to hog the comment section, or becomes argumentative, it may get blocked.
Strange things are going on. Clearly if a government needs a higher interest rate, so do other bond sellers!
The U.S. government is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year, an 84 percent jump from last year
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/03/the-u-s-government-is-set-to-borrow-nearly-1-trillion-this-year/?utm_term=.013e14b024ad
It seems like it would rather easy for estimates to be wrong, and actual borrowing needs much higher, say $1.5 trillion in 2018 and $2.0 trillion in 2019. Oops! Not enough tax revenue!
“Not enough tax revenue” … that’s a good one. HA HA HA. We are way past the stage where taxes covers cost of government.
boring
What It’s Like to Learn You’re Going to Die
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/11/the-existential-slap/544790/?utm_source=atltw
Sword of Damocles
According to the story, Damocles was pandering to Dionysius, his king, and exclaimed to him that Dionysius was truly fortunate as a great man of power and authority, surrounded by magnificence. In response, Dionysius offered to switch places with Damocles for one day so that Damocles could taste that very fortune firsthand. Damocles quickly and eagerly accepted the king’s proposal.
Damocles sat down in the king’s throne surrounded by every luxury, but Dionysius arranged that a huge sword should hang above the throne, held at the pommel only by a single hair of a horse’s tail. Damocles finally begged the king that he be allowed to depart because he no longer wanted to be so fortunate, realizing that with great fortune and power comes also great danger.[1][2]
King Dionysius effectively conveyed the sense of constant fear in which a person with great power may live. Cicero used this story as the last in a series of contrasting examples for reaching the conclusion he had been moving towards in this fifth Disputation, in which the theme is that virtue is sufficient for living a happy life.[3][4] Cicero asks, “Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms?”[5]
Sword of Fast Eddy
The threat of a sword of extinction hangs over our necks – held up by a single thread of central banker’s hair.
Any significant gyration of the stock markets brings fear that the hair is about to snap.
I’m impressed, you know classical literature. Nice.
“… the theme is that virtue is sufficient for living a happy life.”
if you assume a decent amount of food, clothing and shelter… plus health and safety…
in today’s world, that means decent energy resources…
“The threat of a sword of extinction hangs over our necks – held up by a single thread of central banker’s hair.
Any significant gyration of the stock markets brings fear that the hair is about to snap.”
sure… or the “sword” of a heart attack or stroke or car wreck etc…
though I’m not a nihilist (actually I believe in the logic of the Golden Rule), it is a fact that soon all of us will enter the nothingness of eternal death…
and the causes of our deaths will not matter at all…
but hey…
it’s Super Sunday!
I ask just one thing of the CBs… please hold this together so I can get one full ski season in down in Queenstown…. anything beyond that is … bonus.
okay, I will order them to do this…
you’re welcome.
and…
I ask just that the Patriots CBs intercept a few passes later today.
you said this last year
I’ll say it again next year too… if there is a next year
As a society, we ignored every warning sign, blew past every point of no return. In a world of limited resources life is a zero sum game,…
If a person knows what we do about our resource issues, it certainly does raise concern about a big drop in stock prices. We will see what tomorrow brings!
So far… much ado about nothing… no collapse….
Asia markets fell across the board in Monday morning trade, following a sharp decline in U.S. stocks on Friday amid a stronger-than-expected jobs report that sent interest rates higher.
In Australia, the ASX 200 fell 1.41 percent to 6,034.80 in late-morning trade, with most sectors trading lower. The heavily weighted financial subindex was down 1.26 percent, while the energy and materials sectors fell 2.39 percent and 1.96 percent, respectively.
The biggest banking names in the country fell: Shares of ANZ were down 1.48 percent, Commonwealth Bank declined 1.15 percent, Westpac was down 1.45 percent and the National Australia Bank fell 1.42 percent.
Major Australian miners were also down. Rio Tinto shares fell 2.1 percent, Fortescue was down 1 percent and BHP Billiton declined 2.66 percent.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 fell 2.33 percent in morning trade, while the Topix index was down 2.07 percent. South Korea’s Kospi index fell 1.58 percent.
Chinese mainland markets opened lower, with the Shanghai composite down 0.62 percent in early trade. The Shenzhen composite fell 0.82 percent. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index declined 2.01 percent.
Tesla Model 3 motor fails after 270 miles
http://teslaweekly.com/first-model-3-motor-failure-reported-tesla-engineers-on-their-way-to-investigate/
When a person looks at the about page for the Tesla Weekly, a person discovers, “We think the Model 3 is under-appreciated by almost all other media outlets, thus we want to give due attention to what we think is the most significant tech product since the introduction of the iPhone.”
A quick google search and I see nothing in the MSM about this …
It’s like how the MSM … whenever confronted with record cold temperatures… never mentions that this should not be happening given the planet is undergoing xxx xxxxx.
Funny that (well not really – this is how you get people to believe in ho axes)
He explains to Tesla Weekly, “The wife took it down the street 2 miles away to a meeting to show it off’
Let me complete that sentence…
…to show it off at the Koombaya organic fair trade coffee shop with the transgender bathroom.’
The only thing worse than a stinking liberal…. is a liberal driving a Tesla.
“Then she lost all propulsion and got the error on the screen that it needs serviced and may not start again”
I love it…it “BlueScreened” on her.
Do you think they are using Windows?
Gee, I thought they didn’t have any moving parts. So much for the solid state car!
Nine Reasons Why Globalization Can’t Be Permanent and Youtubian belief
systems cannot go forever – Energy, or the lack of it, and Entropy eating the effectiveness of decades-long socio-political messages!
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtubes-algorithm-distorts-truth – The Guardian.
Meanwhile, India is turning to Diesel like no tomorrow (see the petrochemicals used in the process along the World War I diesel engine, the same technology that’s still imported yearly from India into Iraq in substantial quantities for irrigation);
If Indian small farmers are affording this abundance of cheap finite FF making machinery and fueling them to feed cattle, the fuel might have, in fact, been looted 🙂 🙂 🙂
In Iraq, the Government claims recently the control over local oil exports in the autonomous Kurdistan region (600k+ b/d) and so the local regional government, according to local News. Both deny getting the revenue, though!
The likely future of the remainder of crude oil supplies is smuggled after being Bitcoined, or the last barrel will be sold for a US$ price equal to the sum of all previous world barrels traded since 1850s! 🙂 🙂 🙂
What Collapse? This is the best of Alchemy unknown to man seen in action, ever! 🙂 🙂 🙂
BAU tonight, baby!
you can say that again!
BAU tonight, baby!
interesting… what’s a Haiku again?
“A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression.”
shining like the stars
BAU tonight, baby
fossil fuel and cars
Industrial silage packaging…I am sure the average poor Indian farmer can afford this…this looks like a slick ad for the international market. Doesn’t seem to me to be anymore efficient than small round baling, except silage is wrapped intentionally.
I doubt the diesel engine powering that thing would even come close to EPA guidelines. They would insist on making it twice as complex even though it might only be produced in the 1000s qty per nation or state and would only be run a very small percentage of the time.
There used to be a small Indian made diesel generator engine made…very simple and reliable. You can no longer obtain this in the West.
Study: Limits to Growth was Right. Research Shows We’re Nearing Global Collapse (Turner, 2014)
Pg 14,
The close alignment between the LTG BAU scenario and observed developments over the last four decades, as well as the correspondence in the underlying dynamics described above, portend of potential global collapse. Although the general commentary on the LTG describes collapse occurring sometime mid-century (and the LTG authors stressed not interpreting the time scale too precisely), the BAU scenario implies that a relatively rapid fall in economic conditions and the population could be imminent. Indeed, other aspects of oil supply constraints explored in the following, indicate that the ongoing economic downturn of the GFC may be representative of an imminent BAU style collapse.
http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf
I’m sure The Collapse will be Monday.
Our collapse is like snow accumulating on a mountain side. Nobody knows what will be the snowflake that starts the avalanche, nor when it will start. We just know it will happen…
If stocks implode it will be the first step of the collapse of the global economy, which is itself the first step of BAU-collapse. One of my predictions for 2018 was that China will roll over, and that seems to be underway.
if China is rolling over, it seems to be proceeding very very very very slowly…
I think they will Burn More Coal and delay their rollover for a decade or so.
I am sure the collapse will be on a Monday.
indubitably…
probably Monday July 27, 2028…
maybe the week after that…
it’s hard to know precisely.
Give or take five years. But definitely a Monday.
Absolutely. I’ve been predicting Monday for years.
It’s 718am Monday here…. the lights are still on.
We are talking about Monday July 27, 2028 +/-10 years.
I’m leaving for tulum, Mexico tomorrow morning. If BAU could hold on until my vacation is done, that would be great.
Trump using kind of ‘racist language and terrifying expressions of popular nationalism’ that helped start First World War, historian Dan Snow warns
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-brexit-racist-populist-nationalism-start-war-wwi-dan-snow-historian-poem-to-remember-a8192036.html
Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by “a world of enemies”, “one against all”, that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.
-Hannah Arendt – The Origins Of Totalitarianism p.227
oh no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Trump has started WW3…
I’m sure that many millions have already dyed…
and probably a billion or two before the war is over…
thank you, Dan Snow!
The only thing dyed is the Donald’s hair.
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Look out below: The US dollar’s dive may get even steeper, a currency expert says
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/03/look-out-ahead-more-u-s-dollar-weakness-to-come-says-currency-expert.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain