(This post consists of a short overview article I recently wrote for Transform, a magazine for Environment and Sustainability Professionals, plus six related Questions and Answers.)
Reading many of today’s energy articles, it is easy to get the impression that our energy problem is a quality problem—some energy is polluting; other energy is hoped to be less polluting.
There is a different issue that we are not being told about. It is the fact that having enough energy is terribly important, as well. Total world energy consumption has risen quickly over time.
Figure 1. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects and together with BP Statistical Data for years 1965 and subsequent.
In fact, the amount of energy consumed, on average, by each person (also called “per capita”) has continued to rise, except for two flat periods.
Figure 2. 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.
There is a good reason why energy consumed has risen over time on a per capita basis. Every human being needs energy products, as does every business. Energy is what allows food to be cooked and homes to be heated. Energy products allow businesses to manufacture and transport goods. Without energy products of all kinds, workers would be less productive in their jobs. Thus, it would be hard for the world economy to grow.
When energy consumption per capita is rising, it is easy for workers to become more productive because the economy is building more tools (broadly defined) for them to use, making their work easier. Manufacturing cell phones and computers requires energy. Even things like roads, pipelines, and electricity transmission lines are built using energy.
Once energy consumption growth flattens, as it did in the 1920-1940 period, the world economy is negatively affected. The Great Depression of the 1930s occurred during the 1920-1940 period. Problems, in fact, started even earlier. Coal production in the United Kingdom started to drop in 1914, the same year that World War I began. The Great Depression didn’t end until World War II, which was immediately after the 1920-1940 period.
In the 1920-1940 period, many people, especially farmers, were not able to earn an adequate living. This is a situation not too different from the one today, in which many young people are not able to earn an adequate living. Strange as it may seem, this type of wage disparity is a sign of inadequate energy per capita, because jobs that pay well require energy consumption.
The 1980-2000 flat period was in many ways not as bad as the earlier one, because the lack of growth in energy consumption was planned. The United States changed to smaller, more energy-efficient cars in order to reduce the amount of gasoline consumed. Oil-powered electricity generation was taken out of service and replaced with other types of generation, such as nuclear. Heating of homes and businesses was changed to more efficient systems that did not burn oil.
The indirect effect of the planned reduction in oil consumption was a drop in oil prices. Low oil prices adversely affected all oil exporters, but the Soviet Union was especially affected. Its central government collapsed, at least partly because of its reduced revenue stream. Member republics continued to operate, somewhat as in the past. Russia and Ukraine cut back greatly on their industrialization, leading to less use of energy products. Population tended to drop, as citizens found better work prospects elsewhere.
Eventually, in the early 2000s, oil prices rose again. Russia was able to become a major oil exporter again, but Ukraine and other industrialized areas were permanently handicapped by the collapse. Countries affiliated with the Soviet Union (including Eastern European countries, North Korea, and Cuba) found themselves permanently lagging behind the US and Western Europe.
Recently (2013-2017), the world economy seems to have again reached a period of flat energy consumption, on a per capita basis.
Figure 3. Based on data of BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017, and 2017 UN Population Estimates.
In fact, in many ways the flattening looks like that of the 1920 to 1940 period. Increased wage disparity is again becoming a problem. Oil gluts are again becoming a problem, because those at the bottom of the wage hierarchy cannot afford goods using oil, such as motorcycles. Young people are finding their standards of living falling relative to the living standards of their parents. They cannot afford to buy a home and have a family. Governments are becoming less interested in cooperating with other governments.
Why is world energy consumption per capita flat, or actually falling slightly, after 2013? The answer seems to be diminishing returns with respect to coal production. Diminishing returns refers to the fact that while at first coal is inexpensive to extract, the cost of extraction rises after the thickest seams and those closest to the surface have been extracted.
A chart of China’s energy production shows how China’s coal production first rose as low cost made its usage advantageous, and then fell due to diminishing returns. China experienced a major ramp-up in coal production after it was added to the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Figure 4. China’s energy production, based on data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
As the extraction of coal progressed, China found itself with many mines with rising production costs. Coal prices did not rise to match the higher cost of production, so a large number of unprofitable mines were closed, starting in about 2012.
A major reason for the flat world per capita energy consumption starting in 2013 is the fall in China’s coal production after 2013. Coal production is falling in quite a number of other countries as well, as the cost of production rises, and as users become aware of coal’s environmental issues. Other sources of energy have not been rising sufficiently to keep total per capita energy consumption rising. A person can see in the China chart that wind and solar production are not rising sufficiently to offset its loss of coal production. (Wind and solar are part of Other Renewables.) This situation occurs elsewhere, as well.
What role do wind and solar play in maintaining world energy supply? The truth is, very little. While a great deal of money has been spent building them, wind and solar together amounted to only about 1% of total world primary energy supply in 2015, according to the International Energy Association.
A major problem is that wind and solar do not scale well. As larger quantities are added to electricity networks, more workarounds for their intermittency (such as batteries and long distance transmission) are needed. Bid prices for wind and solar give a misleadingly low impression of their real cost, unless the projects include many hours’ worth of storage to offset the impact of intermittency.
The key to rising energy consumption seems to be the falling cost of energy services, when efficiency is included. For example, the cost of delivering a package of a given size a given distance must be falling, relative to inflation. Similarly, the cost of heating a home of a given size must be falling. Governments must be able to tax producers of energy products, rather than providing subsidies.
Globalization requires ever-expanding energy supplies to meet the needs of a rising world population. To maintain globalization, we need a growing supply of energy products that are very cheap and scalable. Unfortunately, wind and solar don’t seem to meet our needs. Fossil fuels are no longer cheap to extract, because we extracted the resources that were least expensive to extract first. Our problem today is that we have not been able to find substitutes that are sufficiently cheap, non-polluting, and scalable.
A Few Related Questions and Answers:
(1) What is the biggest impediment to raising total energy consumption?
We cannot get the price of oil and of other fuels to rise high enough, for long enough, to encourage the production of the fossil fuel supplies that seem to be in the ground. What happens, instead, is that energy prices hit an affordability limit and fall back.
Figure 5. NASDAQ three month price chart for Brent Crude oil. Source: NASDAQ
The recent strike in Brazil over high diesel prices shows the kind of issues that occur. Oil prices are still far below what many oil exporters (such as Norway, Venezuela, and Iraq) really need, when needed taxes are included.
Of course, the problem with not being able to get prices high enough also discourages the use of alternatives to fossil fuels, such as wind and solar.
(2) Aren’t wind and solar low-cost approaches?
It is easy to think that wind and solar will be huge improvements over burning fossil fuels directly for fuel, but nearly all of these analyses overlook the problems that are added by introducing intermittency to the electric grid. The assumption was made in early analyses that with enough scale, intermittency in one location would tend to offset intermittency in another location. Also, it was hoped that electricity consumption could be shifted to different times of day.
There have been several recent analyses that look more closely at these assumptions. Jean-Marc Jancovici has shown that if sufficient storage is added for wind and solar to make it “dispatchable,” it takes an order of magnitude more physical resources to produce wind and solar compared to what it takes to produce the dispatchable nuclear electricity used in France. Both have low long-term operating costs. Thus, we would expect the true cost of wind and solar to be far higher than France’s nuclear electricity.
Figure 6. Source: Favorable to all scenario from https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/100-renewable-electricity-at-no-extra-cost-a-piece-of-cake/
Roger Andrews, writing on Euan Mearns site Energy Matters, shows that some recent solar and wind auction prices appear to be far below actual costs, when reasonable minimum cost assumptions are used.
Regarding “Demand Response” as a solution to intermittency, Roger Andrews shows how little time of day pricing for consumers affects consumption curves. It appears that people don’t stop eating dinner after they get home in the evening, no matter how high the cost of electricity is at that time.
Interruptible supply is another way of reducing demand. This link describes some of the issues encountered when interruptible supply was tried on a large scale in California.
(3) Can’t we simply get along using less energy? That is what everyone tells us is possible.
The historical record in Figure 2 doesn’t give much indication that this is possible. Whenever there is even a small drop in energy consumption per capita, it seems to have an adverse effect. On Figure 3, even the small dip in energy consumption per capita in 2008 and 2009 led to a serious recession in many countries of the world.
The people who talk about getting along with less energy haven’t thought through the likely ramifications of this. There would be fewer jobs that pay well, because jobs such as those for construction workers would disappear. The economy would shrink, because of the fewer jobs, in a much worse recession than the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
We know that in past collapses, one of the big problems was inability of governments to collect enough taxes. We would likely encounter the same problem again, if there are fewer people making high wages. Most of the tax dollars for the US Federal Government are paid by private citizens (as income taxes or as Social Security funding), rather than by corporations.
Figure 7. Sources of US Federal Governments Revenue, based on US Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
The last year shown on Figure 7 is 2017, which is before the recent corporate tax reduction. This change will tend to shift the burden on Federal Taxes even further in the direction of payroll related taxes.
(4) How about efficiency savings? Can’t efficiency savings fix our problem?
There are two issues involved. If we were really efficient at fuel savings, as we were in the early 1980s, oil and other energy prices would drop dramatically. This would push oil, coal, and gas producers worldwide toward bankruptcy. Governments of oil exporting countries, such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, would have difficulty collecting enough tax revenue. They would likely collapse from lack of tax revenue, substantially reducing supply.
A second issue is that historically we have been adding efficiency. In fact, efficiency is what has tended to make fuel more affordable. As noted in the article, energy use could grow, as the cost of energy services fell.
Figure 8. Total Cost of Energy and Energy Services, by Roger Fouquet, from Divergences in Long Run Trends in the Prices of Energy and Energy Services. The cost of energy services combines (a) the cost of energy with (b) the impact of efficiency savings.
Some of the changes we have been making recently go in the opposite direction of efficiency. For example, the recent article, Biggest Ever Change in Oil Markets Could Send Prices Higher, discusses a new regulation requiring the use of low-sulfur fuel oil for ships. Doing this would greatly reduce the quantity of sulfur being released to the atmosphere as emissions. This is not a change toward efficiency; it is a change toward higher cost of production, which is the opposite of efficiency. Regulators plan to use part of our energy supply to eliminate the excess sulfur before the oil is sold.
As undesirable as sulfur pollution is, the problem is affordability and higher cost. Wages are not high enough for workers around the world to afford the required higher cost of food (because food production and transport use oil) to support the new regulation. So, the likely result of the regulation is to push the world toward recession. Beyond a certain affordability point, it is hard to push oil prices higher, because wages don’t rise at the same time.
(5) Could you explain further why flat energy consumption per capita is not sufficient for the world economy–this amount really has to grow?
Perhaps looking at charts of recent trends in energy consumption of a few countries can help explain what happens when overall per capita energy consumption is flat.
Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies explains that economies often use “complexity” to work around problems as they approach resource limits. In the particular version of complexity tried in this case, manufacturing was increasingly globalized. Workers suddenly found themselves competing for wages with workers from much lower wage countries. Wage disparity became more of a problem.
When workers are increasingly poor, they can afford to purchase fewer goods and services. This can be seen in energy consumption per capita data. Figure 9 shows energy consumption per capita for three European countries experiencing difficulties. In all three, energy consumption per capita has been falling for several years. When manufacturing was sent to Asia, workers found themselves earning less, so they were able to purchase fewer goods made with energy products. Also, European products were less competitive on the world market, with the new competition from low-cost markets.
Figure 9. Energy Consumption per Capita for three European Countries, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy data and UN 2017 population estimates.
The countries that have been able to grow more rapidly in response to globalization (such as those in Figure 10) need to keep up their patterns of growth, or they start encountering financial problems because their prior growth was generally financed with debt. Without sufficiently rapid growth, they have difficulty repaying debt with interest.
Figure 10. Energy Consumption per Capita for five countries that recently have been growing rapidly. Based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy data and UN 2017 population estimates.
Brazil’s energy consumption per capita has recently fallen, and it is encountering severe problems. Argentina is a country with flattening energy consumption growth. China’s growth in energy consumption has slowed as well; we often read statements about its debt problems.
One of the problems that these rapidly growing countries encounter is currency fluctuations. As long as their particular country seems to be growing rapidly, the currency level of their country can remain high, relative to the US dollar or the Euro. But if obstacles are encountered, such as the low price of their major export, or slower economic growth, the currency of the country may fall relative to major currencies.
A falling currency relative to major currencies is a problem for these rapidly growing countries for three reasons. For one, imports become expensive. For another, any debt denominated in a foreign currency (such as the US dollar) becomes more difficult to repay. The reason why this is an issue is because rapidly growing countries often do not find enough credit available locally, so are forced to borrow internationally. A third problem with slowing growth and a falling currency relativity is that it becomes more difficult to attract new investment to the country. Instead, outside investors may decide to leave; they want to seek the next growth opportunity, in different, more rapidly growing country.
Turkey and Argentina both seem to be having problems with their currencies falling relative to the US dollar.
Another issue that makes flat worldwide per capita energy consumption unworkable is “diminishing returns” as resources become depleted. For example, wells for fresh water must be dug deeper, ores of metals include higher percentages of waste materials, and oil wells must be sunk in less convenient locations. These problems can be worked around, but they require increased energy consumption. All of these uses for energy products leave less for the rest of the economy. Thus, if we deduct the extra energy needed to compensate for diminishing returns, what at first looks like flat per capita energy consumption worldwide really equates to declining per capita energy consumption.
(6) Isn’t there anything that we can do to reduce carbon dioxide emissions?
The task of reducing carbon dioxide emissions is much more difficult than it appears to be, because the world economy requires energy consumption in order to operate.
The best thing I can see that an individual can do is reduce his or her consumption of meat and other animal products (fish, cheese, milk, leather). To offset, a major increase should be made in the consumption of vegetables that are filling to eat (such as potatoes, beets, carrots, beans, sweet potatoes, taro root, turnips, and corn). Some of these perhaps can be grown locally. Humans’ use of animal products adds to carbon dioxide levels, partly because of the quantity of food that needs to be grown and transported to feed the animals, and partly because of the direct emissions of some animals (including cattle, pigs, buffalo, chicken, sheep and goats).
In fact, cutting back on highly processed food of all sorts (particularly sugars, high fructose corn syrup, and oils) would seem to be worthwhile, as well. Growing, processing, and transporting the crops used in these highly processed foods all add to CO2 emissions.
Our problem is that we have grown attached to the flavors of these foods, and we have become convinced that they help us grow big and strong. While they may do this, they also set us up for problems in old age. Starchy vegetables have played a major role in the diets of long lived people. We may need to start giving them, and other less processed foods, a more prominent role again.
Chris Hedges: Scapegoating Iran
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/scapegoating-iran/
Iran has been a major power in the Middle East for a long time. It is on the opposite “side” from Israel.
Dear Gail,
from your fig. 1 I can see that coal and oil are almost the same in exajoules per year. But I also know that only a fraction of the oil (diesel/gasoline) is used directly as ‘locomotion power’ (in engines). Coal is used 100 % as ‘locomotion power’ in power plants – no other products from coal. When you use diesel or gasoline in engines much of the energy is wasted as heat and only maybe 25 % is converted into movement whereas the wasted energy in coal plants is smaller as coalfired powerplants convert the heat into movement much better, maybe 35 % as average.
If that is correct I would very much like to know how much ‘bigger’ coal is compared to oil if only ‘movement/locomotion power’ is considered.
I will let you figure these amounts out. These amounts are pretty much beyond our control. The EIA and BP “gross up” renewables, so that they are on the same “before losses” basis as other fuels.
The point that people miss is that most energy use is by businesses and governments. They look at the gasoline that they use while driving, and figure that saving a little gasoline will help overall usage a lot. They miss all of the energy that goes into the system as a whole.
I ran into the following chart in a report prepared by the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
https://china.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/misc/ced-9-2017-final.pdf
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/china-energy-balance-electricity-and-total-energy.png
This exhibit indicates that about 89% of China’s total energy consumption is for non-residential purposes. There is a separate sheet for petroleum. The percentage is also 89% for petroleum. The Chinese government converts all amounts to “Tons of Coal Equivalent,” since that is their primary fuel.
In the US, the following chart is an old natural gas breakdown I have available. Residential is only a small portion of the total. Industrial usage is dropping, as manufacturing is sent to China.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/us-natural-gas-use-by-sector-line.png
“As [auto] loan growth slows, [US banks] and other lenders have been tinkering with loan terms in an effort to gain more consumers. They are originating a greater share of loans with repayment periods of more than five years and, in some cases, extending loans to consumers who are stretching further to afford their purchases.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/auto-lenders-ramp-up-risk-to-win-more-customers-1528639200
The four horsemen of recession and stock market apocalypse:
“1. Oil price spike.
2. Fed interest rate spike and yield curve inversion.
3. Fiscal spending cutbacks by the national government.
4. Forward earnings dropping.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4180492-4-horsemen-recession-stock-market-apocalypse
“In the glut of cheap and easy money generated in the wake of the crash [of 2008], it has been the well-off, asset-rich and super-wealthy elite who have capitalised most as financial markets rocketed, while the cost of recovery has largely fallen on the unemployed, the less-well-off, lower-earning taxpayers and pensioners as fiscal austerity and debt deflation have taken their toll on growth and government finances. The burden should have been spread far more equitably.
“We are not out of danger yet…”
http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2150164/enough-car-crash-economics-global-recovery-has
This is not an easy article, but I think the author is correct. One of his charts puts the big drop in GDP in the first quarter of 2019, but I don’t think he says that in so many words in his article. He does say,
The shift from tax changes adding to the economy, to the tax changes adversely affecting the economy, starts in 2019. Also, he observes,
He also points out that high oil prices lead to a worse balance of payments and more funds from other sectors of the economy to the energy sector.
With higher interest rates, I am sure that it takes some skill to keep payments down, and not let default rates go too high. Some people will be “priced out”of buying a car.
Sometime about a year back I saw a promotion on a US financial institution web site that was offering an opportunity to free up some cash from the value of one’s car.
They seemed to be suggesting immediate cash availability against any car. Leased cars too.
I could perhaps understand such an idea for a collector’s vehicle, especially something that to some idiot might be worth more than its current value plus the cost of a huge refurbishment but an owner had no spare cash for the return.
But the implication was that any car at all was a potential cash source.
It struck me that the concept was total lunacy, at least on the face of it.
Leased cars too! I doubt it. That would be strange. But I suppose if the value of a previous loan was significantly paid down, it might be OK to do something equivalent to refinancing a home, or taking out a second mortgage.
So I can lease a car … and use the ‘equity’ in the vehicle … to obtain a (low interest?) loan?
The paper for these should be packaged and named Van Gogh Loans (for creativity) and sold to pension funds in Norway.
Let’s do the same with home leases!
But how often does any car, especially on finance, offer any equity value that could possibly be more than a few dollars at best? (Other than collector items as mentioned before).
In general cars are liabilities. If you own the thing outright but need cash then sell it. I really can’t envisage financing it being a sensible option at all. Certainly not for a few dollars.
You are right. It does seem strange!
“Finland has been a net borrower for the past ten years, with central government debt almost doubling since a low in 2008. Over that period, the Nordic nation lived through what policy makers dubbed “a lost decade” as the decimation of key industries — paper and consumer electronics — erased 100,000 jobs in an economy the size of Oregon.”
http://www2.gulf-times.com/story/595812/Debt-fears-are-mounting-for-the-eurozone-s-only-Nordic-member-Finland
“Higher oil prices are expected to cause a rebound in UK inflation, adding to expectations that the Bank of England will carry out the rate hike it delayed in May in the coming months.”
http://www.cityam.com/287285/higher-oil-prices-boost-uk-inflation-ecb-and-federal
“Italy’s new populist government will refuse to let a humanitarian boat carrying more than 600 refugees and migrants dock at any of its ports and has asked the tiny Mediterranean country of Malta to open its doors to the vessel, according to media reports.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/06/italy-shut-ports-boat-carrying-600-refugees-180610175926654.html
That “humanitarian boat/s” flotilla clearly induced demand for such immigration in the first place! Not operating NGO boat there equals no immigration on such scale anymore, that’s basic relationship, as the distance from NA shores to European ports is ~600km! Is it reasonable trying to cross such barrier with kids, women, etc. Hell NO!
Plus not mentioning the fact there are number of nearby countries with functioning port facilities within short distance to drop them off according to the maritime law, e.g. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, .. way before reaching the EU shore.
So, on all accounts and provided evidence it fits the smell test of very distasteful scam, organized, media coverage and paid by someone.. to achieve specific set of goals..
Hopefully, the next stage of development will include arrest of such crew on smuggling charges, not allowed refueling/port repairs, and vessel expropriation on piracy charges etc. Someone will have to launch comprehensive initiative first, Italy has got now very good opportunity to lead on this. Although it’s doubtful they are really up to it..
We’re frequently regaled with items on the news here in Ireland about how some Irish naval vessel has saved x people in a leaky tub on the Mediterranean today and delivered them to Italy. We’re supposed to feel proud of the way our sailors are doing the people smugglers’ job for them.
Reminds me of a story from Afghanistan when a huge new component for an electricity generating dam a long way from anywhere safe needed to be delivered in total secrecy. The huge part, about 100 tonnes if I recall correctly. Was intended to double the output of the dam and so ensure victory in the war with the Taliban.
Also provide power to run the women and children only theme park with various rides, big wheel and stuff, that someone had decided was vital to the social progress of the country.
The British Army engineers successfully transported the load in total secrecy and with no enemy contact over several days. Open plains, up into the mountains the convoy travelled apparently unnoticed. Mission accomplished!
However, some years later it was pointed out that the entire area had always been controlled by the Taliban and they had watched their spare unit all the way as it was being delivered for free. The unit had never been installed. All power produced by the dam was under the control of the Taliban and produced considerable revenue for them.
Things are rarely as they appear.
Interesting!
Developing story, Italians are just sending away yet another “humanitarian ship” with 800p on board, supposedly owned by German NGO. One wonders, isn’t there something strange about this German thing, this renewing appeal-zeal for self destruction (+taking into this maelstrom their wider family of European neighbors as well)..
A bit like the British: once a great very mercantile, imperial race, now utterly spineless and rudderless (the political classes) who can’t even control the immigrants in the suburbs of their major cities. I watched videos of the 2011 London ‘riots’ the other day (just theft and arson by low-life): it was quite pathetic to watch the emasculated police.
A festering sewer…. (the end of more)
It amazes me that there are people in the FW community — who can observe what is happening in countries like Venezuela — who can see the riots in the UK… and still believe that they will be left alone to harvest pumpkins when this ultimately goes down…
Apocalyptic is too kind….
UK doesn’t really do riots.
Boris’s water cannons were never used.
If you want a good riot on a regular basis France and Germany are the places to head for in Europe.
This was pretty good https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2016/aug/05/englands-riots-five-years-on-it-was-off-the-scale-video
Yeah, but that was about gangs making themselves feel big.
Not proper social riots at all.
These days the London gangs that evolved from those times are too busy fighting off newly arrived gangs from other parts of the world to become involved with proper riots.
At the end of the day gangs like these are formed because of social problems — lack of opportunity — poverty … so when they attack authority they are making a statement — this is not just anarchy for the sake of it — if you listen closely at one point there is a derogatory comment made against whitey….
They put on a better show than the Occupy Movement.. a few canisters of tear gas and those social justice warriors packed up their iphones and headed for the nearest fair trade organic latte shop… to upload photos onto FB….
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Maybe the elites think that population growth through immigration will solve problems…
Rate hike! The UK cannot stand a rate hike.
It seems like the Eurozone banded together the countries that were weakest, energy-wise. It is not surprising that several have problems.
“Saudi Arabia will host a regional summit to discuss the ongoing economic crisis in Jordan, where a proposed income tax rise recently triggered some of the largest protests in years.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/06/saudi-arabia-host-meeting-jordan-economic-crisis-180609145454848.html
“Bar a miracle all economic indicators point in the direction of a deepening economic and financial crisis. Sanctioning Iranian oil and financial transactions would serve a severe blow to Tehran.”
https://cyprus-mail.com/2018/06/10/iran-may-fast-be-running-out-of-options/
Governments need taxes from somewhere. Their promises keep growing, as population ages and other problems develop.
Electricity bills, meanwhile, rose by five times in 2018 alone.
“Speaking from his empty shop there, the 32-year-old Gutierrez says he and other sellers are feeling a sharp economic pinch from [Nicaragua’s] upheaval, which he says “every day is going to get worse.”
https://au.news.yahoo.com/nicaraguan-crisis-leaves-vital-street-market-economic-bruises-065010273–spt.html?guccounter=1
“Nearly 30 years after declaring Polio eradicated in Venezuela, the first case of the disease has been reported in the country as it reels from an economic crash crippling its healthcare system.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/10/venezuela-hit-first-case-polio-since-1989-country-falls-deeper/
“Brazil has fallen into its worst recession on record and public services have largely been put on hold until October’s general election. With jailed former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva barred from running, right-winger Jair Bolsonaro currently tops the polls.”
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/sao-paulo-rector-sees-no-end-sight-brazils-turmoil
When do we get to see a full on Mad Max situation in one of these countries?
Not good news– along with Pakistan and Nigeria, we add Venezuela.
The most efficient sun energy storing device:
http://sciencenordic.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/620x/sn_53.jpg
It is called forest. Its required maintenance by the humans can be zero and it obtains necessary nutriens from the deeper soil.
Nordic forest niche? Perhaps true..
In general, that’s debatable as savanna type settings, incl. meters of deep rich soil full of critters, grasses, multitude of stacked upon animal species layers is much better and diverse option. Moreover producing extra food for “self imposed – limited” humanoids to contemplate about it. Might eventually come to that, but more likely we blew it already, and or were designed by nature to blew it intentionally in the first place, as she got bored with past result and now seeks deep reset into another equilibrium state (my pet theory of humanoids as agents for terraforming).
‘While humans were thinking their thoughts and developing theories about the Earth, she was thinking hers….’
Doris Lessing.
So trump is going to negotiate with kim…. does this not sound very WWFish to anyone?
https://www.rt.com/usa/429342-trump-kudlow-trudeau-g7/
https://www.rt.com/usa/429342-trump-kudlow-trudeau-g7/
Well.. it’s off to the ovens with those Canadians!
And does anyone see any huge difference between the RT site … and any western MSM sites… other than a few gentle swipes … I really see nothing …
They could redeem themselves by publishing evidence of US false flags….surely with all the surveillance in play they would have something…
And btw – why has Snowden not dumped more interesting stuff on the table… so someone called Merkle frumpy….
That’s a very puzzling problem I mentioned recently and repeatedly in the past.
I’m assuming most of the logic behind it is simply the “honor among thieves” in broader meaning, which also includes the maxim why ruling upper structures have little to no incentive to talk about sources and methods about how they govern even about their “adversaries”. There is also the element of you don’t talk about my dirt laundry and vice versa in exchange..
Plus there is the over arching issue of every historical epoch being either under the umbrella of one dominating force or more dispersed environment of a multitude of competing players. Until recently the host nation for the global system, the US enjoyed both the military supremacy, as well as the status of preferred/subsidized consumer, as this era is on the way out this factor might be nullified.
=> Basically, don’t spill the beans (know-how) about how to control the masses!
Nevertheless, there is also *small probability of tactical prudence, as to deploy these tools only at the right moment with maximum hard hitting leverage. For example, imagine peaking internal US crisis and releasing more details into it for example on the peculiarly hot clouds from highrise bldg fires, and or faked past national pride boosting phantasmagorias in the space race, or just fraudulent activities of key figure heads..
—
* however, beyond certain date the information becomes stale and almost useless, apart from some science or politics aficionados people won’t be much ashamed or shocked anyway should it become common knowledge, so again effect nullified
Berlusconi had lots of stuff on people: it was revealed in his media just when he wanted it, not before – just the same with states…….
We don’t know exactly.
The way he was unexpectedly/swiftly allowed to re-enter high politics by the state actors (judiciary and other branches) as the new “populists” started challenging both domestic and international order, were rapidly rising in polls; tend to speak to me as much bigger hidden force likes to have him around as fall back political option into the future.
I see Tony Blair is still hanging around, like a vampire appearing at a virgin’s locked bedroom window, grimacing and hoping to be let in.
Ghastly apparition, but I think they know he is no use anymore, too obviously bankrupt politically.
It was interesting to watch the Thatcher movie… and see how she was discarded… she was a borderline bag line by the end of it all….
“honor among thieves”
+++++
None of this is a surprise to me. Pretty much every MSM is state run propaganda. And if you read any of Brandon Smith’s work at https://alt-market.com he makes a case that everyone of the major players are “globalists” and all working towards one goal, “a one world gov’t”, the same goal that George Soros is working on as well.
In a nutshell it’s basically the WWE/WWF of politics.
I would dearly love George Soros to die or sicken and leave the public sphere soon: no malice in it – although I naturally can’t stand him – but I am dispassionately curious to see who the next puppet figurehead will be for his cause of the ‘open society’.
I find it curious that so repugnant a figure, so unconvincing,and belonging to no country, is being used in this way -he must surely repel as many people as he convinces?
He is very old, and it must happen soon: whom do they have lined up for the job?
Much as I look forward to the end of the Elon Musk Show…….
Well, the trick is in the details and delegation of roles, as Soros’ NGOs are filled with handsome 25-40yrs old lieutenants doing the daily hiring, PR outreach and lobbying stuff. The recent situation seems like blown cover, when he must personally appear on telly defending his lost positions on the matters.. Not helpful one bit, but that’s his another miscalculation or perhaps a mere necessity as he is trying to secure kids-heirs of his mini empire against even bigger higher up systemic players, essentially that way kissing the ring of true power above him.
I kinda like Soros.
A mainstream player (we are well beyond reformist politics), but able to stick absurd players with major consequences:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-george-soros-broke-the-bank-of-thailand-2016-9?r=UK&IR=T
Lighten up a bit, my rabid, narrow friends—– this will be over soon.
Pretty much every MSM is state run propaganda.
I hope you are not including the BBC in that. Their integrity is beyond reproach.
BBC editorial values
1.2.1 Trust
Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest. We are committed to achieving the highest standards of due accuracy and impartiality and strive to avoid knowingly and materially misleading our audiences.
1.2.2 Truth and Accuracy
We seek to establish the truth of what has happened and are committed to achieving due accuracy in all our output. Accuracy is not simply a matter of getting facts right; when necessary, we will weigh relevant facts and information to get at the truth. Our output, as appropriate to its subject and nature, will be well sourced, based on sound evidence, thoroughly tested and presented in clear, precise language. We will strive to be honest and open about what we don’t know and avoid unfounded speculation.
1.2.3 Impartiality
Impartiality lies at the core of the BBC’s commitment to its audiences. We will apply due impartiality to all our subject matter and will reflect a breadth and diversity of opinion across our output as a whole, over an appropriate period, so that no significant strand of thought is knowingly unreflected or under-represented. We will be fair and open-minded when examining evidence and weighing material facts.
etc., ad nauseum.
I’m sure Nick Griffin will vouch for the BBC’s impartiality.
How often does BBC talk about North Sea oil and gas production and taxes on North Sea oil and gas?
Does it mention how the taxes that were previously collected will be replaced?
I’ve rarely seen a headline about it. Frankly, for the UK, it should be THE story – together with the current and growing retail collapse.
One seldom sees articles tying the UK’s economic resurgence under Thatcher to the coming online of North Sea oil….
The MOT needs to be very careful with this sort of thing…. if they inform the masses of the correlation … they will connect the dots… and despair will follow
Humans are quite sensitive beasts… they do like their routine….
If you think any news organization is unbiased then they accomplished their mission. News organizations part of the MSM are like DJ’s they play the music/news they want you to hear. And when they present debates they in most cases lean one way of centre. That’s not unbiased to me.
“The best way to tackle BBC bias is make it plain for all to see”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/05/tackle-bbc-bias-make-plain-see-nick-robinson
The Guardian posting an article about the left-wing bias at the BBC. That’s rich.
Of course I don’t really believe the BBC is unbiased. The clue was in the reference to Nick Griffin, former leader of the British National Party. When the BNP had gained in popularity sufficiently before the 2010 national election, the BBC’s own rules determined the party must be given a platform in a political debate program called Question Time. What followed was more like a gang rape than a political debate, as the whole program consisted of Griffin being attacked by the host, the other guests and members of the audience.
I detest the BBC for any number of reasons: for the supposedly intimidating letters I’ve been receiving for over a decade threatening to send someone round if I don’t get a TV licence; for the removal of Have Your Say from all but sports reports after too many people were posting comments contradicting the BBC’s agenda; for the lack of any real news in an attempt to divert and dumb down the population; most of all for their claims of impartiality when they so blatantly kowtow to the marxist, anti-white, multi-cultural agenda of the left.
However very recently the BBC has become a great example of how social mobility works.
The castigation of the board for enabling apparently tax dodging employment arrangements quickly followed by the unequal pay (males paid more than females for, apparently, the same job) correction campaign nicely illustrates how social mobility can work.
Reducing the pay of the higher paid ‘stars’ under moral pressure to match more closely that of the lower paid journey persons is an excellent example of social mobility in a tax funded institution. But will the populace work that out?
The BBC is MSM. All content published comes from the Ministry of Truth. It is agenda driven
He isn’t the same guy who used to be talking about British policemen and other assorted thugs abusing homosexual men.
https://youtu.be/Ojnv3fegkfM
This is foooking Grrrrrreat!!!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-10/watch-chaos-erupts-tommy-robinson-protest-police-chased-down-street-1000s-rage
isn’t this guy is who was talking about Pakistani guys
abusing white girls in uk
‘Grooming’ underage girls…. raping them … etc etc…
It is apparently not permitted to say bad things about people who are committing these crimes because it might cause blowback against the refugees flooding into the EU…… and that might result in race riots (even though race riots are inevitable due to this re tar ded policy of blowing up countries… then allowing the blowed up to charge over the borders in big numbers… because they are going to be good for GDP? … maybe they will smash a lot of windows and burn a lot of cars??? that would be outstanding … I am waiting….)
Just like it is not acceptable to state that Asia Argento is a trollop who drove Anthony to strangle himself….
This is how the MSM works…. they do not inform… that is not the point.
isn’t funny that British people are crying about it
when British guys did the same thing to Pakistani girls for almost for 200 years
hummmm….. good point about the irony.
Tit for tat…. we have the makings of race wars!!!!
Free what’s his name… free what’s his name!!!
We need more inflamors….
Xabier — get ready to jump a train to spain….. it’s all on now
Ya but they are brown… not really people… they do not count…. I think the term is wog….
Many years ago I was in a pub in Bangkok … and there was a saloon type swinging door in the washroom … and as I was exiting the door bumped against a Thai fellow who was coming in … and as one would I said sorry about that bud….
Coming out behind me was a Brit… who confronted me and said ‘we don’t say sorry mate – not to them’
You want to take people like that and smash their faces into the swinging door a few times while mumbling is it ok to say sorry because you are white?
But you don’t … because a Thai jail would suck.
http://static.trustedreviews.com/94/00003337b/e81c_orh500w750/BoB-16×9-small.jpg
Alas this f789er is soon gonna burn…. and all this poison that humans exude….is gonna go up in a massive plume….
Hal… a … f789ing … loooo jah!
And btw – Asia Argento…. you are gonna get yours…. yes you are…. 🙂
Ya but they are brown… not really people… they do not count…. I think the term is w-o-g….
Many years ago I was in a pub in Ban.gkok … and there was a saloon type swinging door in the washroom … and as I was exiting the door bumped against a Thai fellow who was coming in … and as one would I said sorry about that bud….
Coming out behind me was a Brit… who confronted me and said ‘we don’t say sorry mate – not to them’
You want to take people like that and sm.ash their fa.ces into the sw.inging door a few times while mumbling is it ok to say sorry because you are wh.ite?
But you don’t … because a Thai ja.il would s.uck.
Alas this f78.9er is soon gonna burn…. and all this poi.son that humans ex.ude….is gonna go up in a massive plu.me….
Hal… a … f7…89ing … loo..oo j.ah!
And btw – Asia A..rgento…. you are gonna get yours…. yes you are….
? I thought British officers were mostly gay? 🙂
https://nataliaantonova.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/cannot-handle-the-hysterical-laughter.gif
isn’t funny that British people are crying about it
when British guys did the same thing to Pakistani girls for almost for 200 years
Do you have any evidence that thousands of Pakistani girls as young as eleven were systematically abducted, imprisoned and gang raped by British men?
It seems their are not grooming Ms Primrose…..
Of eight victims covered in the trials, six were white and two were of African heritage, while the perpetrators came from a diverse range of backgrounds including Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Iranian, Iraqi, Kurdish, Turkish, Albanian and Eastern European.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/grooming-gangs-uk-britain-newcastle-serious-case-review-operation-sanctuary-shelter-muslim-asian-a8225106.html
CNN host Bourdain jokes about poisoning Trump
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/350857-cnn-host-bourdain-jokes-about-poisoning-trump
https://imgur.com/a/BXujhgS
Off his rocker.
Come on Tony…. why would you want to poison the jester… then we’d just be left with despair… and that is no fun…. as you have demonstrated… we can see where despair leads…
He should have hemlocked Asia Argento … no doubt about that
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5807979/Asia-Argento-embraces-Hugo-Clement-shared-attack-Harvey-Weinstein-Cannes.html
Peak demand is here..It’s really happening people! Ev’s are taking over!
https://i.imgur.com/pb4JJHW.gifv
Recently saw a 19th century colonial illustration of native people in the Caribbean. A man rode a donkey that was well packed. The woman walked behind with a heavy weight balanced on head… one hand clutching the donkey’s tail as it helped pull her along. I thought it was a brilliant use of physics (a term she would not have known).
The donkey was helping pull a walking lady with a large load on her head?
I’m not sure his the physics of that would work.
However, if the lady was perhaps blind then holding the animal’s tail would make a lot more sense.
A conversation with an optician recently informed me that many people in Africa (where the optician volunteers regularly) have poor eyesight by their mid 30s. But little or no access to eyecare or even basic off the shelf reading glasses.
At that point the people start to fall out of the economy, especially if the work they do is relatively intricate and at close distance. Like sewing clothes for example. So women, and the families they would otherwise be better able to look after, are hit quite hard for want if a supply of ready reader spectacles that are probably made for a few cents.
Presumably they have to hope that a large family will produce some offspring who, at an early age, can learn the tasks that the mother is no longer able to fulfil.
Americans Owe Other Countries Far More Than They Owe Us—And It’s Getting Serious
Two former U.S. Treasury officials argue the historic gap may require a weaker dollar
Unprecedented U.S. borrowing from other countries compared with what they borrow from the U.S. is fast approaching danger levels, former U.S. Treasury officials warn.
“Never in history has one country owed so much to the rest of the world,” says Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics.
The U.S. is borrowing to finance America’s trade deficit, pushing the country deeper into the red.
Mr. Gagnon and Peterson colleague Fred Bergsten say the Trump administration may have to push down the value of the dollar to cut an expanding U.S. trade gap.
Foreign ownership of U.S. debt such as Treasury and corporate bonds outpaced American claims on foreigners by $8.4 trillion in the last quarter of the year, new data posted this week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows. That’s a deficit worth 45% of America’s gross domestic product.
It is projected to hit 53% by 2021, but could accelerate if the Trump administration cuts taxes and Congress expands the budget deficit.
It is also nearing a zone that few countries have survived unscathed.
No economies of even a modest size have had a borrowing deficit above 60% of GDP without a major reversal in their trade balance, “often accompanied by severe financial stress,” Gagnon says.
The data–officially called the net international investment position–can act as an indicator of excessive and unproductive borrowing in an economy.
Borrowing itself isn’t a problem, especially if a country has major commodity reserves sought by global buyers, such as Australia.
But an unhealthy portion of U.S. borrowing from abroad finances consumption instead of investment in new domestic production that can fuel economic expansion.
At some point, credit bubbles pop, which can trigger turmoil in housing, financial, labor and other markets.
Because the U.S. borrows entirely in its own currency—averting an exchange-rate mismatch that hurts many countries–it will likely avoid a worst-case scenario, Mr. Gagnon says.
But the U.S. and foreign economies still face serious adjustment costs, he warns, that only rise as a needed shrinking of the trade deficit is delayed.
He estimates that to stabilize the borrowing deficit at 50% would require halving the trade gap to 2% of GDP by 2020 from its current projected path towards 4%. Such a feat would require a 14% depreciation in the dollar, he says.
The Trump administration says it plans to cut deficits by negotiating better trade terms with other countries, including by using higher import tariffs and investment restrictions as leverage.
But raising trade barriers would likely be economically harmful and have little effect on the trade deficit, Mssrs. Gagnon and Bersten argue.
Instead, the U.S. should encourage an orderly decline in the foreign exchange value of the dollar, they say. Other countries may not initially be keen to join a coordinated intervention because it would mean their currencies would appreciate.
That’s why the U.S. may need to act unilaterally to get the process started, the Peterson economists say, replacing a decadeslong “strong dollar policy” with an “appropriate dollar” policy.
https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2017/03/31/americans-owe-other-countries-far-more-than-they-owe-us-and-its-getting-serious/
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/10/oil-markets-rising-supplies-from-us-russia-in-focus.html
“That implies that U.S. crude output, which is already at a record-high of 10.8 million barrels per day (bpd), will also rise further.”
be a you
two nite
bay bee
Running on fumes.
https://twitter.com/sahouraxo/status/1005814576959643650
Sarah makes some excellent comments…
the Obama admin brought Creeping Collapse to Ukraine…
if I lived in Crimea…
I would have voted the same way…
The Russian State was founded in the Ukraine:
“The Rurik dynasty or Rurikids was a dynasty founded by the Varangian prince Rurik, who established himself in Novgorod around the year 862 AD.The Rurikids were the ruling dynasty of Kievan Rus’ , as well as the successor principalities of Galicia-Volhynia , Chernigov, Vladimir-Suzdal, and the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and the founders of the Tsardom of Russia.They ruled until 1598 and the Time of Troubles, following which they were succeeded by the Romanoversus They are one of Europe’s oldest royal houses, with numerous existing cadet branches.As a ruling dynasty, the Rurik dynasty held its own in some part of Russia for a total of twenty-one generations in male-line succession, from Rurik to Feodor I of Russia , a period of more than 700 years.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_4Hum9CeLE
Crimea? Has been part of Russia about as long as the US has existed as a State, with over 90% of the population being Russian.
This psychopath is the descendant of that dynasty
Sumarti Ningsih was found dead, and Seneng Mujiasih near death, on November 1, 2014, in a luxurious one-bedroom apartment in Wan Chai, Hong Kong.[1] Mujiasih, who was pronounced dead shortly after being found, also used the name Jesse Lorena Ruri.
The apartment was rented by Rurik George Caton Jutting, who was convicted of their murders on 8 November 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Sumarti_Ningsih_and_Jesse_Lorena
It doesn’t matter if your dog fights dirty … as long as he wins.. because you get to eat
Putin told me that he’s still not tired of all the winning…
#winning
the Fed changing its approach?
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/08/fed-has-surprise-that-could-mean-early-end-to-interest-rate-hikes.html
“Instead of reducing the balance sheet from its peak of $4.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion or so as some Fed officials indicated, the impact could be far less — perhaps, some suggest, to $3.5 trillion or even a little more.”
and that’s only what is “on their books”…
their off balance sheet secrets could be many trillions higher…
Maybe they are starting to get some sense regarding unwinding the balance sheet and raising interest rates.
but I do like a bit of schadenfreude:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/10/bitcoin-tumbles-10-percent-after-news-of-south-korea-crypto-exchange-hack.html
hacking, and:
“The decline followed a report on Friday from The Wall Street Journal that U.S. regulators are investigating potential price manipulation at four major cryptocurrency exchanges.”
price manipulation?
what a surprise, that hundreds of billions worth of unregulated market assets would be prone to manipulation…
humans are bad enough even when regulated…
0 would be entertaining.
I use chemicals? Prove it! Syrian President Assad brands gas attacks ‘fake news’ and calls Theresa May a ‘colonialist and a liar’ in astonishing face to face interview..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5825159/Syrian-President-Assad-brands-gas-attacks-fake-news.html
Looks like the the Daily Mail is fast becoming my go to source for reliable journalism… first the tart story on Asia Argento .. and now this ….
Who would have thought
Sometimes the ‘gutter press’ does better than the ‘distinguished organs’……
After sitting at the death beds of a thousand individuals, Stephen has accumulated a wisdom regarding the process of dying that is perhaps unmatched in our modern times. His views and insights are extraordinarily powerful and extremely well-delivered in the movie.
Stephen is a blunt yet thoughtful man, and my own interview with him (Living with Meaning) remains one of my all-time favorites.
At one point in Griefwalker, Stephen was lobbed what I’m sure the interviewer thought was a soft-ball question. From memory, and I last watched the movie a few years ago so I’m certain to have this inexactly recalled, it was along the lines of “So, Stephen, you’ve learned how to ease people through the process of dying. How is that done?” I guess the idea was that after being so steeped and skilled at shepherding people through the process of dying, Stephen had arrived at some tidy formula for making it as gentle as possible.
Without blinking Stephen said, “Oh no. Dying for most people these days is horrible.” After a few shocked fumbly moments by the interviewer, and I confess to having been shocked too, Stephen continued, explaining that the physical process of dying can certainly be managed easily and well with palliative care, but the emotional journey can be quite terrifying (at first).
The reason why is because most people spend their entire lives pretending as if death is somehow avoidable. So when they find themselves dying, they suddenly have to confront the fact that they may have forgotten to fully ‘live’ during their one and only shot at life.
More https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-09/facing-horrible-future
Here’s the thing…
Doomie Preppers – and I was in that camp for some time — have this obsession with living forever…
We’ve got doomie preppers on this site who are in their late sixties – some into their seventies…
People who spend their days fretting about getting that fence completed … buying more gear for the apocalypse… weeding and milking and making compost…
WUT THE F&*?????
You are already 90% f789ing dead already …. and you are going to spend what little time you have left — chasing eternal life????
Need I mention that the chase is futile? Disease violence starvation radiation … we cannot over come .. we cannot over come…..
Anyone who lands on this site and lurks… and gets it into their mind to doomie prep…. kill that thought right now….
Got stuff you always wanted to do? Do that instead. Don’t p iss your funds away on a new shovel… p i ss it away on an experience here and now…
What you don’t want to have happen is when death visits — and it will soon after BAU goes down … is that you are agonizing about the situation … because you realize that you have wasted the previous years and months KNOWING that BAU was coming to an end… you wasted your time on pointless bu ll sh it… when you could have been doing so much more…
The doctor has given you the death sentence… use the time wisely… enjoyably
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/Aurelius-on-death-2018-06-08.jpg
Given how well Mark Orel had raised his only son and heir, I don’t think there is much to be gained from whatever he has to say.
and what has Marcus been doing lately?
Raising children is an entirely random process at the best of times, still more so when the heir will become an emperor with limitless power.
I’ve seen so many perfectly nice people have ghastly children.
I think that’s called Affluenza. A surprising percentage of our global Intelligensia I would describe as unpleasant and unhappy people. These are the people with eating disorders, speech disorders, on are on some kind of antidepressant, are major consumers of illegal drugs and are the ones demanding participation trophies.
These are circumstances of affluence.
I agree. We really need to live now, while we have a chance. Obsessing endlessly about somehow fixing things up to get us over the hump is likely not to be all that helpful, because our problem is a permanent one.
But at the same time, if someone really thinks that it would be helpful, and has figured out a way to finance his get-away place, I am not as willing to criticize. It might be helpful for a little while, and it may be what he/she feels like is the best way to live now. But I draw the line on expecting the government to finance this silliness. This is just another way to tax the poor to help a few of the rich.
Its time to do whatever spins your wheels, and don’t put a stick in someones else’s and all will be good.
Unhappily, this world has far too many people running around with big sticks looking for other peoples spokes. Idle hands, do-gooders and the de.v.ils play-a-round.
I worry a little at how irrational and violent the Green Groupies will get when they realise that wind and solar are not the answer, and that Elon Musk is a nutjob.
They’d top themselves if Avocados hit 10 bucks a piece….
I tie this into the culture of — a 95 year old needs the treatments to keep him alive to 100 — or the baby without a busted heart needs to be kept alive…..
Nobody can accept death…. even a busted up 70 year old sits next to his wood burning stove… clacking away looking for the best deals for more ammo on Amazon….
This may give them purpose … and perhaps this is about the only joy they can find in life (really?) …
This message is not so much for those lost souls…. rather it is for those who do enjoy life … who conclude that life is going to be interrupted permanently by an early death… who are contemplating setting up a charge account at Wally’s World… and embarking on something they really do not want to do…
Do not waste your money or your time … on a futile enterprise…. only to arrive at death’s door with profound regrets…
Instead keep buying these instead
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/assets_c/2016/05/20160502-avocado-toast-vicky-wasik-ricotta-14-thumb-1500xauto-431676.jpg
Or go disco dancing …
or prep like there is no tomorrow…
though I should rephrase that…
prep like crazy, if that’s what floats your boat…
“do whatever” does include prepping…
(smacks his lips, having finished the piece of dark chocolate… 70%, by the way)…
I think the point of the article was that the deathwhisperer found that people who agonize when the moment comes do so because they realized they had wasted their lives on pointless drivel…
Imagine the level of despair that will greet the doomie preppers when the electricity goes off… they pop a bottle of champagne and toast the moment ‘alas – the great adventure has arrived!!!’
Then a few days later the hordes are over the fence — raping the DPs dotter and wife… before stewing them…. sending him into the garden to pick salad for them… and then … when the garden is picked clean … and the animals are all eaten….
There is that moment… right before the guy with the snake tattoo on his right forearm draws back the blade .. where the DP sputters and cries… then howls in despair…
FFFFFF77777777788888888888888888999999999999999999999999! I wasted the last 10 years hording pickling jars and pulling weeds when I could have been _______. Fast Eddy – you are forgiven… you were right!
Alas… as we know … even if the evidence is shoved in the face of someone proving that they were wrong … they will never ever admit to being wrong…. but they will die with many regrets.
Fast Eddy … on the other hand …. will go to the grave…. without a whimper….
In fact I’ll probably say to the reaper ‘what took you so f789ing long — I was running out of cool sh it to do!’
There was a girl named Hannah who was born without a windpipe. Although born in Canada , she had a Korean mother so a Korean broadcasting station offered to help her.
Soon, an Italian doctor working in Sweden , Dr. Machiarini, offered to help. He built a windpipe for her.
The girl perished a few months later. Later, it was found that Machiarini built windpipes for 7 other patients, and all of them died. He was disgraced.
I say that he did something useless. Those who are meant to die should do so, I have to say.
Our world is built around the premise that many more will be born than will live to maturity. The best-adapted will survive.
Our use of energy seems to be a trial and error way of trying to circumvent this plan, to the extent possible. I suppose that these are eight examples of the trial and error approach. As long as we are adding ever-more energy use, this approach to medical care adds jobs. We are able to take care of the people whom we save (adds jobs!), many of whom are permanently disabled. Whether or not these disabilities continue into the next generation is not a big concern.
But at some point, the cost of medical care becomes absurdly high. It has already reached that point in the US. There is a need to say, all of this spending cannot make sense. Even if we can save all of these people, we cannot support such a large population of disabled people, over the long term. But no one can say this.
In reading Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death I realized most people want a life with heroic purpose. Most cultures started with something religious and eternal. Secular western nations replaced that with a substitute of progressiveness – technological progress will see us live like gods in the future and our social progress gives us moral purpose. Threats to this have turned into “wind and solar will save us” and green groupieness.
Prepping is another response – a plan for a heroic response to troubled times.
Sadly Fast Eddy I don’t think the bucket list offers much solace. It’s better than nothing. The satisfaction of looking reality in square in the eyes while standing on one’s own powers without denial or evasion can be satisfying. Few people have truly been able to do so and it is an accomplishment, given our proclivity to denial.
🙁 that book is not on audible…
Anyway… my strategy is to cram as many exciting experiences into as short a time as possible… which will ultimately lead to exciting experiences becoming boring … which will make life so mundane (even though in most people’s eyes… said life must be marvelous)… that when death comes … it is pretty much welcome…
The travel thing is starting to get old… long haul flights and all that jazz are putting me off… I am sure I will get bored with skiing… now that I can ski every day if I choose…
Kinda like a billionaire’s wife going to the high end shop and just buying what she wants … day after day… then tossing all of it on the street for bums to fight over… because the baubles have lost all meaning…
Of better still…. the emperor who has 5000 of the sexiest concubines… who loses interest in sex… because he has had the finest of the finest day after day….
Actually … I have to think about that second comment further…. I was in Macau when I was in my late 20’s with the brother in law of Stanley Ho — on some property deal…. we’d been to have a look at the project and were having lunch and this guy was telling me about a wealthy Macau guy that he knows who was into his 60’s… yet every day after he left the office…. he stopped in at one of the saunas and partook of the flesh…. every single day (he chuckled…) —- so perhaps that never gets old????
Maybe I need to shift the whole lot to Macau????? Hmmm… nah… Madame Fast would cotton on to my motives and that would be the end of that….
Do we really care about the future of mankind? I think the time span that makes moral sense to most people is two generations, so far as the youth of ones grandchildren coincide with ones own decease.
Couldn’t agree more, well said !
“The doctor has given you the death sentence… use the time wisely… enjoyably…”
or not…
be wise or be foolish…
prep or squander…
post on OFW or plan on buying a Tesla…
climb a mountain or watch TV…
sure, a person might have great regrets on their deathbed…
so what?
I mean, I could spell out what is so ridiculously obvious:
a person’s dying days are just a prequel to the nothingness of eternal death…
and that gives the ridiculously obvious conclusion:
do whatever… it’s all erased by infinite time anyway…
ps: I think the right way to live is basically by the logic of the so-called golden rule (which is found in various forms in many religions)…
my “do whatever” is to pursue happiness, but within that context, to try to not decrease the happiness of those whom I encounter daily… and hopefully to increase theirs as well…
but all of that will be erased soon enough…
Given the path I have been down…. I feel that there is value in my message in deterring people from making the same mistakes.
If someone would have pounded the same drum on this site when I joined 5 years ago or so…. I would send that person a case of the finest whiskey as a thank you.
Oh the cash that has been p issed down the toilet on this silliness… the only thing that keeps me from despairing over this is the fact that I am not bankrupt and those funds were going to be worthless anyway…
But still….
I wholeheartedly agree with you Eddy on the futility of prepping for the big one and of grasping for immortality. But on the other hand, all the unnecessary consumption linked to prepping has undoubtedly helped keep BAU chugging along. Just think of how it’s kept up the demand for canned food and shotgun cartridges?
I suspect that it was my rants that took down Remington…. I must temper my comments on this topic … otherwise Cambells Soup might be next!!!
And then martenson descends into steaming pile of dog shi t with these comments…
The revolution underway is already being conducted in places like our own site Peak Prosperity, as well as Charles Eisenstein’s, Charles Hugh Smith’s, Zerohedge, Jim Kunstler, and Craig Murray’s as well as countless others not named here. Each of these sites is committed to telling narratives that run counter to what the guardians in the MSM would like you to hear.
Each of these alternative websites is saying, in its own way, Hey the old way doesn’t even make sense anymore, is shot through with logical inconsistencies, and in many cases lacks even basic morality. Collectively, they’re offering an invitation to see things differently, and to begin acting differently.
Our challenge is to remain focused, to promote the new ideas, and to be the leaders that are needed in these changing and difficult times. Our adversaries are those peddling fantasies that serve only to pacify our growing inner discomfort as the world dies around us, as well as those who seek to diffuse, distort and decay the new messages either for corporate or political ends.
Our various social media platforms are a slithering mess of ever-changing algorithms (making it hard to know who you are or aren’t reaching with any given post), paid trolls, and bots programmed to deceive, slide, and/or derail any given conversation.
Which means we’ll need to be alert to those tactics and find other ways of remaining in touch. You’ll need to trust your own instincts, and avoid the numerous and sophisticated ways that we are being made to feel powerless, isolated, and even a bit crazy for thinking the things we do.
My personal strategy is to (severely) limit my time on Facebook, use Twitter only for data and never opinions, and then comment at sites like Peak Prosperity where the moderation is heavy and bots and trolls are quickly booted.
This movement will consist of good people taking right action. People who are willing to lead because they know it falls to them and they are not afraid to stand out and be different for…
Taking the right action? Taking the right action? The right action is to pursue growth… there is no other action ….
This is the sort of garbage commentary that is produced by those who are paralyzed by fear… there were similar comments posted on Surplus Energy the other day… highly intelligent people… swindled by the horror of the coming apocalypse…
Is it not better to go down with intellectual dignity intact? Rather than like some screeching moaning DelusisTANI running about without one’s head?
I have no offspring… I do not know how it feels…. Mr DNA has given up on me… I am of no use to him… so he does not hassle me
I’ll put it down to that
Martenson – “Our challenge is to remain focused, to promote the new ideas, and to be the leaders that are needed in these changing and difficult times.”
yes, he is quite delusional…
Or wrote that while on an intense acid trip….
Anyone who self-identifies as a ‘future leader’ is almost certainly a nut job.
Sounds like we set our own purpose, and challenge ourselves to live up to it. And we are the judge and jury of how well we did/are doing.
Maybe it’s the prior overexposure to the West Roman Empire doom/collapse literature studied ~20-30yrs ago, or something else, anyway I’m just partial to the school of *protracted, painful collapse sequencing process.. at least from the experience of single lifetime human experience..
Although, I’m aware of nowadays incomparable higher leverage through JITs, overpop, dead soil, depleted water tables and near surface ore deposits, NPP sites, ill health of the pop, and multitude of other striking differences.
My informed guess is as follows, unevenly spread of the collapse wave not only in terms of IC vs 3rd world proper, but also differentiated within the IC realm of given countries-economies. In particular most European societies determined as unable to “circle the wagons” for attempted plateau operations, Asians are likely perform better in the near/midterm.
Several waves of ongoing rapid depop events followed by short “stabilization” phases, each on the order of ~15-25% power depop. Simply, there is just too much material laying around from the IC years that could be reused for quasi medieval society to put a floor on “very things” for some time..
Is it possible to plan/meaningfully prep for it in advance, **nope, especially for the transitioning/cascading through the phases, too much turbulence ahead, but if you are of healthy pedigree and have enough “luck” with location, Mr. DNA is going to try it against all the odds. But in the same vein, that means some people might get caught to live through the early phases without a clue, especially if it’s mixed together in popular narrative with some major war/disease/.. accompanying event, that’s probably what FE repeatedly mentions as kind of fate to avoid at all costs (slavery,..).
—
* protracted doesn’t mean equal time on the way out as up, nor quasi BAU, rudimentary Seneca Cliff profile with rapid slowdown bias is to be expected
** there are available coping strategies but the target group is so limited, percentile and less of current pop so it’s virtually impossible to jump on this bandwagon unless you are already living it today
I generally agree, but think some preparation remains prudent, if financially feasible. We have to admit, no one knows precisely how this will play out. Shale has certainly been a surprise over the last 10 years. A very respectable amount of preparations can be assembled for 5 or 10k. It very well may be futile. I do know that I sleep better knowing I have some options available if we get decline instead of collapse. Ive been busy vacationing too, however.
There is an issue, for example, of whether we will find ourselves without electricity for a few days. Or whether banks will be temporarily closed, as the financial folks try to work out a bailout plan. Even if problems are worked out for a time, there may still be very short-term disruptions.
We in the Southeast US know that there is a chance that gasoline will be in short supply, if there is a hurricane that disrupts gasoline shipments from Texas and Louisiana. Georgia is “at the end of the line,” so it tends to get left out, if pipeline inputs are disrupted. An accidental pipeline break will produce the same effect.
Lewis Grizzard (hat tip to Gail’s Atlanta roots) once said the only things you need for the end of the world is a bottle of champagne and 2 glasses.
But make it a magnum, to do it in style.
… to wash down a few tabs of Fentanyl.
One can prepare for the bumps, but not for the chasms.
I agree. All this prepping comes from not accepting that we will all die some day. Not much different from my cornucopian friends believing that progress in medicine will make them live to 150 years of age. “And then what?” I ask. The conversations stutters on about further advancements, downloading the mind into a computer etc…
People just can’t face it. Better to endlessly keep themselves distracted with careers, holidays, redecorating, doomer prepping…
In their pursuit of longevity … most people forget to live.
Amazon Is Defined by Billions and Millions; Median Salary Is $28,446
https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-19/amazon-is-defined-by-billions-median-salary-is-28-446
https://imgur.com/a/4pLU7mw
I must confess to being an enabler of Mr. Bezos’s crimes against humanity. I ordered two books from Amazon this morning that would have been difficult to obtain otherwise.
I am a big supporter of Audible… which is owned by Amazon
I am looking forward to a world made by hand. We should move as soon as possible to minimize damage to Gaia. Go, Donald, a few nukes will speed the process.
from a green groupie who is pro nuclear, pro AI, pro 99.99 cull.
there’s a 99.9% probability that you’ll be part of the 99.9 cull, so careful what you wish for, Ed.
Just as there was one thing left in Cassandra’s box; hope. There is one thing left after the cornucopia of technology; spent nuclear fuel pools. They are a feature not a flaw. They are a 99% cull, a gift to Gaia. We should have a spent fuel appreciation holiday with dancing around the pools.
Who/what is Gaia?
Gaia is Earth, or Mother Earth.
See James Lovelock and his theory of a self-regulating planet Earth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia#Modern_ecological_theory
What the hell?
Without the energy from the Sun, the Earth is a dead rock…
There Will Be Another Financial Crisis
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-29/the-next-financial-crisis-will-also-be-a-buying-opportunity
The headline shown in the link says “will be a buying opportunity.” This is the way the MSM pitches all problems. Look for the silver lining.
Climate change is another great opportunity to spend money (and use fuel, in making their products) to save the earth.
The Fed is on its QT program and is now sucking in dollars from the global economy and destroying them. The program is deflationary. The Fed is like black hole producing deflation today.
The EM are falling like dominos and have called the Fed to end the QT program.
The fx traders are saying that the Fed has only just started and will soon increases the speed of the QT program. “Soon the EM will call the Fed the biggest terrorist organization on the planet”.
You may be right. Of course, the high interest rates will eventually produce adverse results in the United States as well.
The long-term downward trend in interest rates has allowed earnings to be much higher than they really are. No one know what earning would look like, without the downward trend in interest rates.
At the same time, companies in the US in total do not seem to be earning positive profits right now, when a person takes away the impact of the tax cut and all of the share buybacks. Some of the higher interest rates will spill over to lower demand for homes, cars, motorcycles, and new factories. This can’t come out well. Neither can the higher interest costs for the US government.
Higher interest rates are deflationary as well. The Fed’s inflation expectations haven’t materialized, expect for in energy and industrial commodity prices.
A trade war with tariffs, penalties and sanctions will be extremely deflationary as well.
Lots of debt defaults will add to deflation as well.
That’s the winner.
https://i.redd.it/rjy85feoa5311.jpg
Trump was elected because he was not an Obama.
Not the Mama!
https://media.tenor.com/images/e1f4e427532105f494873cf3bf9f5aeb/tenor.gif
Obama was elected twice– lets see if Trump can do it.
(I have never voted for either one)
https://imgur.com/a/mPJSORt
I also have not voted for either one of them. I did earn that in New York when we had curtains and a draw handle it will not let you leave if you do not case at east one vote. Happily there is always some thing like dog catcher.
learn
It’s being stage managed…. we got our hope and change … that made people feel a bit better … but as things get serious… as hope vapourizes…. we are left with despair….
For that we get a clown… to distract us… to blame….. and Oxycontin…
Perhaps the final act involves a strong man (religious?)… however I have serious doubts about that…
The system would not be able to survive that sort of situation …. the wheels would quickly fall off.
https://imgur.com/a/EBFGGac
Perfectly stated.
Of course it is obvious to some where the ultimate power resides….
https://twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/1005477243437580288
Trump spent the G-7 meeting railing against high tariffs that do not exist..
Trump is here to entertain… to distract… nothing more…. don’t expect much more
To get us away from the ridiculous ideas of the Obama administration.
He’s not doing badly. He fools a lot of people.
I don’t understand all this vitriol… It’s not as if he’s blown up Iraq or Libya or started the war in Syria or something heinous… must be the hair… people really hate the hair…
Of course he is just a front man… so we should not read anything into his slender war experience
Obama served Hope burgers and expected to get exact Change. He had a nice grin.
Mission Accomplished.
And hopefully Trump can be as successful
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2015/09/20150916_obo.jpg
Yanis Varoufakis says capitalism is dead, democracy is crumbling and we’re ruled by debt
https://www.alternet.org/global-economy-just-giant-debt-scam-heres-what-financial-elite-doesnt-want-you-know?platform=hootsuite
I’ve been aware of Varoufakis when he was first on Henwood’s program on KPFA, before he was a member of the Greek Parliament (long analysis, a hour at a time).
A interesting intellect– he drove the EU players crazy.
Yes. but his “boss” PM Tzipras was the weak link as he folded, besides I doubt the majority of Greeks were ready to suffer real consequences of EU/German/IMF pressure.
Anyway, they are still living beyond their means on artificial prop up support from the EU, so in that light Varoufakis was dangerous element threatening to cut “the good days” prematurely short..
Romanian sewer workers accidentally discovered a cave which was sealed for 5.5 million years. Movile Cave is filled with evolutionary distinct exotic creatures (albino crabs, worms) which feed off sulfur-producing bacteria
In the south-east of Romania, in Constanța county close to the Black Sea and the Bulgarian border, there lies a barren featureless plain. The desolate field is completely unremarkable, except for one thing.
Below it lies a cave that has remained isolated for 5.5 million years. While our ape-like ancestors were coming down from the trees and evolving into modern humans, the inhabitants of this cave were cut off from the rest of the planet.
Despite a complete absence of light and a poisonous atmosphere, the cave is crawling with life. There are unique spiders, scorpions, woodlice and centipedes, many never before seen by humans, and all of them owe their lives to a strange floating mat of bacteria.
In 1986, workers in communist Romania were testing the ground to see if it was suitable for a power plant, when they stumbled across the Movile Cave. Romanian scientist Cristian Lascu was the first to make the dangerous descent.
To enter, you must first be lowered by rope 20m down a narrow shaft dug into the ground
Since then the cave has remained sealed by the Romanian authorities. Fewer than 100 people have been allowed inside Movile,
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150904-the-bizarre-beasts-living-in-romanias-poison-cave
beautiful this cave is older than homo sapiens
this show if these species will remain health even after we are gone from earth
plus there aren’t even any traces of radioactive metals from the Chernobyl nuclear
accident
Does the “mat of bacteria” account for the non presence of radioactive metals?
http://www.irsn.fr/FR/popup/Pages/tchernobyl_video_nuage.aspx
The animated map of cesium spreading over Europe..
Although Romania was hit a bit more than others, the most affected was obviously neighboring Belarus, Ukraine and other Soviet Republics. Also sane-informed people skipped eating mushrooms fort that season in Scandinavia, Baltica, CEE etc..
Doesn’t it continue to spread even today?
Sorry, bad English, I meant to say we intentionally skipped few mushroom seasons after that accident in the late 1980s, but you would get perhaps more carcinogens and other pollutant through ordinary stuff like inhaling car and smokestack exhausts anyway..
Thanks. I can’t read French, and so don’t understand the sequences. My impression is of a horror movie when some monstrous blobs spreads and spreads. If we get that from one nuclear accident, when there are thousands potentially in the lineup, then we are very clearly on the path to extinction. How this isn’t universally apparent is what’s mysterious.
One has to have an extreme case of cognitive dissonance to not recognize the implications of 4000 spent fuel ponds… on fire….
I liken it to the soldiers in Cambodia who placed magic amulets on their necks and walked into machine gun fire believing the amulets would protect them from the bullets….
Interesting! There were a lot of species living in the world before we ever came along, as well.
Wow, what interesting stuff. First of all I admire those that are brave enough going down that hole and then dealing with creepy crawlers and then jumping into a black lake where you can barely see in front of you. Yikes !
I’m claustrophobic and can stand creepy crawlers. 😀
Study: Fake news may have won Trump the election
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/03/study-fake-news-may-have-won-trump-the-election/
Which fake news?
Trump is “willing to destroy the world”: George Soros
https://nypost.com/2018/06/09/trump-is-willing-to-destroy-the-world-george-soros/
I love you George, but where’s my $oros bucks! I’m at nearly every Antifa protest and I’m forever shilling for open borders, but despite what Alex Jones promised — you ain’t paid me a penny!! Pay up, George.
George is smart, he is using leverage, directly only paying for lieutenants and up, through all these NGOs he has been nurturing for decades.. While the foot soldiers are poor expendables-fools as always..
It’s kind of interesting how the old historic patterns pop up again though.
How the same countries defending the South Eastern vector of Ottoman Turks bound invasion to Europe are about to start pulling together nowadays.. Namely, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Poland, Bohemia and Bavaria seems to be slowly warming up as well. This can’t be kept under the lid anymore, hence ricocheting into internal EU relationship dynamics.
Uber and Lyft to “own” world transportation:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/09/uber-and-lyft-are-racing-to-own-every-mode-of-transportation.html
“Uber and Lyft are racing to own every mode of transportation — they’re getting close…”
“they’re getting close”…
funniest thing I have read all day…
“Uber and Lyft each want to be the all-encompassing transportation platform of the future, shepherding people around the world on land, through the air or by water.
The companies offer eco-friendly, flexible and even high-end options in different markets around the world.”
though “eco-friendly” might be funnier…
Paying their drivers $3.00 per hour.
On top of that they don’t pay local taxes (cripple tax revenue of regular taxi services), apart from the hourly wage have to add the payments on the car itself, in summary it’s a deeply disturbing non sense on every level. Although very specifically targeted at claiming swift market share take over in this particular segment, resulting in share price growth, which is further boosted by owner’s share buyback operation, which is partly or fully financed by new money issuance from the banks..
Another nice fraudulent humanoidisch scheme as ever.. but this time it’s prolly more about the overall stock market/system viability prop up game than only enriching few insiders, although that’s a side benefit as well.
As I tend to remind ourselves for few next years, don’t be taken over by the approaching steam roller as we are smoothly transitioning from the X,000% to XY, 000% debt levels.. Moreover, lets not even dare now to apply logic from the earlier times of funnily smallish xyz% debts to evaluate the situation.
The fact that these people are willing to sign up for this work … and continue working … just shows how very desperate people are….
If not this … it’s a cardboard box beneath a bridge….
The end of days cannot come soon enough for billions of people…. the end of misery will be welcome
Chicago suburb passes an assault rifle ban, $1,000 per day fine if you don’t turn in your weapons.
http://wgntv.com/2018/04/03/deerfield-bans-certain-semi-automatic-weapons/
wow…
if only we could get this enacted nationwide…
that would solve all the gun problems…
You are just scared of reasonable laws – to keep guns out of the hands of lunatics..Because in general – many on the right would lose their guns..
1 person – 1 vote – 1 gun
In europe about all gun crimes is performed with illegal weapons.
Iran: Oil Prices Could Jump To $140 On U.S. Sanctions
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Iran-Oil-Prices-Could-Jump-To-140-On-US-Sanctions.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5807979/Asia-Argento-embraces-Hugo-Clement-shared-attack-Harvey-Weinstein-Cannes.html
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/06/05/13/4CE6D01A00000578-0-image-a-6_1528203430021.jpg
Interesting how the MSM has completely ignored that this was likely the trigger that caused Bourdain to off himself…
There are only a few stories — and no accusations…
Not that I care — other than this demonstrates how the MSM controls what people think.
What power!
I wonder how Asia is really feeling about all of this though…
Not too good I’d imagine. However, they probably broke up and were trying to time it for his show etc. I’m guessing he thought there were other reasons for the breakup and she didn’t think he would take it so hard. Not her fault. People break up all the time.
I know it’s getting old…
but, you know…
EM and AH have broken up many times…
https://i.redd.it/js77ugp6c0311.jpg
Look at that expression on Bolton’s face.
Trump, its expected, he is a former game show host, and salesman.
there is only one alpha male in the above picture…
well, two actually, if we count Merkel…
https://s.hdnux.com/photos/73/70/00/15695923/5/1024×1024.jpg
Larry Kudlow looks like he needs a few lines– something that history says he is quite familiar.
Kudlow isn’t even an economist, but he plays one on TV
Kudlow does not have either a graduate or undergraduate degree in economics and has not written scholarly papers on the subject.
Kudlow argued in 2002 that invading Iraq would create an economic boom in the United States.
In December 2007, while the Great Recession was beginning, Kudlow insisted “there ain’t no recession” and the “Bush boom continues.” Kudlow wrote, “There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0.”
In July 2008, seven months into the recession, Kudlow was still arguing that there was no recession or housing crisis, arguing that America was “in a mental recession, not an actual recession.”
In September 2008, Kudlow argued that lower oil prices would “make it much easier for people to pay their mortgages on time,” thus abating the growing credit crisis.
Kudlow’s “heroes of the recovery” were President George W. Bush, Bush’s treasury secretary, the Bush-appointed Fed chairman, and “the business investment capitalist.”
Kudlow “argued that banks that manipulated benchmark interest rates were actually the victims, rather than criminals,” according to The Nation. “This is Alice in Wonderland logic,” wrote Eliot Spitzer.
Kudlow said that he was “grateful” that the “human toll” from the Fukushima nuclear disaster was worse than the “economic toll.” He later apologized.
Kudlow credited the tea party with economic gain during the Obama administration.
In a rant about President Barack Obama’s first 100 days, Kudlow accused the former president of declaring “war against investors, businesses, and entrepreneurs,” and “replacing the rule of law” with “political decisions.”
In 2009, Kudlow warned about a “federal Taliban [being] unleashed against small businesses.”
While discussing a policy of the Federal Reserve in 2009, Kudlow lit a dollar bill on fire.
Kudlow and Fox Business regular Charles Gasparino discussed whether Obama’s treasury secretary used “the Soviet style” or “the Don Corleone style” of persuasion.
Kudlow called the “higher income inequality” of the modern era a “falsehood” and denounced Obama’s “tired, banal, and boring” policy focus on the issue.
Kudlow argued that the country began stress tests on banks in 2009 because the Obama administration needed a villain.
Kudlow suggested Trump’s “protectionist” trade policies could cause an economic depression but endorsed Trump anyway.
Kudlow claimed that “the best way to raise wages is to slash the business tax rates.”
Kudlow has frequently argued that marriage is a silver-bullet solution to poverty.
Kudlow lectured single parents about poverty despite admitting he had “virtually no knowledge in this field.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2018/03/13/trump-s-pick-national-economic-council-cnbc-host-who-gives-bad-financial-advice/219619
You can’t make this stuff up..
Ya but he does enjoy a line of blow ….
And he has tee vee experience….
So he will entertain us!
Its all just kabuki theatre.
These guys and gal are all just playing their part in a play, that is handed down from above.
+++++++++++++++
In the spirit of Jeremy Bentham, founder of modern utilitarianism, peoples happiness should be declared the main aim of politics. Based on the central ide of the Enlightenment, that prosperity and well-beeing fall entirely into the sovereign domain of political reason and moral sense.
https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11179.html
If we are going to keep the economy “together,” we need the wages of non-elite workers to be high enough. There should not be so many people dropping out of the work force. How we accomplish that is hard to imagine. Human labor is about the most expensive kind of energy that there is.
“… prosperity and well-being fall entirely into the sovereign domain of political reason and moral sense.”
well, that says it all…
every country should vote for way more prosperity in their next elections…
Aren’t we pretending happiness is the goal? People vote for whoever makes them happy.
Didn’t a certain Austrian start a progam called “Strength Through Joy” ? His persecution of a certain group made some people happy. After all, you can’t please ALL the people all the time – so why not persecute a few to please the rest?
When averaging happiness, how do you count dead data points?
Adam, this is why democracy is evil. Happily, the U.S. is a constitutional republic. The constitution defending the rights of all even the minority.
“A man who claims to know what is good for others is dangerous.”
– Nisargadatta Maharaj
I emailed Professor Douglas B Reynolds PhD, Oil and Energy Economics, University of Alaska.
And I asked him if our upcoming oil shortage will cause an economic collapse?
He replied;
“Yes, it will be like that, but may be worse with other extenuating circumstances such as war or the decline of international trade. Hyperinflation as happened in the Soviet and Post Soviet economy is a certainty.”
https://imgur.com/a/rktmHdt
MASTERMIND I assume—–
Without oil, this all goes fast.
However, there are trending changes towards the possibility of yet another period of quasi BAU extension. Namely, demographic slump guaranteed for all major IC hubs incl. China, already occurring now or in few years time. Also, inbound social changes as young don’t aspire to consume as much (no carz, living with parents, ..), moreover push towards at least partly authoritarian rule, which means stuff gets done as opposed to previous period of inaction (circling the wagons)..
In summary, stagnation or slightly choked off energy supply may get you still some additional mileage given this strange set for newly defined reality as listed above..
Again it’s not about JITs overnight collapsing, no it’s rather about “redoing the pipework” instead as to squeeze additional 1-3 decades out of this precarious situation..
And it would not be the first time in history people have done that..
The feedbacks are complex—-
But like the passenger pigeon, it could happen fast.
We shall probably see.
NO.
That would result in a deflationary death spiral.
How many times does this need to be repeated? Isn’t it obvious?
https://imgur.com/a/7D6xD8g
Leonardo might have been able to ‘see’ flying machines and trebuchets. But would he be able to see if IC would collapse fastly or slowly?
If the world collapses in 2024 due to a deflationary death spiral, is that a fast collapse?
If the world collapses in 2027 due to deflationary death spiral, is that a slow collapse?
As time (no. of revolutions around our star) passes on, the lines between the two collapse sub-genres starts to get blurred.
Well, FE, be my guest, I’m not denying the long term prospect, simply predicting the following period of “further stretching the time” of stagnation – early phase of pre-collapse and descent before the real uncontrollable unraveling motion sets in. The deflationary death spiral will be postponed at least for a fraction of the current IC global core, i.e. subsection out of ~2,5B during this process.. Optimistic guesstimate up to two decades, likely and realistically say not beyond late 2020s – early 2030s..
Our most recent history shows that the slightest slowdown of our current economy by just a few percentage points brings an immediate chaos of unemployment and global destabilisation. Yet somehow that won’t apply to a permanent ‘downsizing’; that seems to follow a different set of social rules, as if we can do it and still retain a civilised existence. And of course without downsizing wages too much. We will still expect to eat, buy ‘stuff’ and carry on in employment and even retain our wheels, with the strange certainty that as long as we have wheels, we will have prosperity by involving ourselves in the exchanges of trade that will not differ much to what we have now.
http://www.endofmore.com/?p=1464
Notice how the moment the CBs get a whiff of de-groth … they thunder in with tax cuts, bail outs, stimulus… etc…..
Think about that
“Also, inbound social changes as young don’t aspire to consume as much (no carz, living with parents…”
the younger generations can say all they want about not “aspiring” to consume…
but, they want MORE than all previous generations…
almost all humans want more…
human nature does not change…
but of course…
they may want more, but they aren’t going to get it…
“human nature does not change…”
It is human nature to fracking adapt, gramps. Now go back to sleep before the xanax wears out.
It’s not about “wants” look at the real on the ground situation. It’s like species re-adapting itself to suddenly changing conditions, e.g. phasing in different digesting, smaller bodies with respect to changing habitats etc. It’s a process, not overnight dying, although obviously many sub species, even whole groups of species, didn’t make it from the long term macro zoom out perspective. That’s all I’m saying, this site needs dissenting arguments against the universal overnight (personal scale) doom scenarios.
Similarly, the example of contemporary young is fitting as they evidently try adapt on the go, hence staring in their pocket computers 24/7/365, not driving carz, living with parents, cutting on frivolous outgoing expenses etc. And guess what, “the economy” compensates via further printing strategies and changes to the old sacrosanct rules of supposedly market driven postulates.
It is temporary maneuver indeed, very likely doomed to failure, but we are swimming through this slow burning process, not jumping from one solid physical state to another.
Fluid, fluid, fluid..
Dub & Brent both finished the week down for the month (http://oil-price.net/) — might this be the beginning of July-2008 redux?
Perhaps. The July, 2008 down period corresponded to peak US debt of several types (credit cards, morgages, and perhaps some others). I don’t think we are quite at peak debt this time, but we don’t know that until after the fact.
Of course, relationships could be different. It could be rising interest rates that are pushing the system down, rather than peak debt this time. Last time, rising interest rates took quite a while to work through the system, before they, together with rising oil prices, brought down debt levels.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/19-raising-short-term-interest-rates-reliably-induces-recession.png
It is hard to know, until after the fact, unless there is major force a person can see. The big drop in oil prices in 2014 corresponded to the end of US quantitative easing.
The US is decaying, not growing. Not even close..
https://imgur.com/a/ZGh54N7
okay, so 97 quadrillion btu’s in 2010…
97 in 2015…
97 in 2017…
at that rate…
by 2030…
the USA will be at 97 quadrillion btu’s…
OMG!
Doesn’t work like that 🙂
https://twitter.com/bopinion/status/1005285707210993664
The people who put together this report did not understand China’s energy problem.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/china-energy-production-to-2016-bp.png
Coal executive drafted orders for Trump to withdraw from Paris climate accord
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/coal-executive-drafted-orders-for-trump-to-withdraw-from-paris-climate-accord-20180608-p4zk7j.html
G7 Protestors Burn Flags And Throw Flares, Face Off With Police As World Leaders Meet For Summit
https://www.inquisitr.com/4933898/g7-protestors-burn-flags-and-throw-flares-face-off-with-police-as-world-leaders-meet-for-summit/
http://media.steampowered.com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/02/02bcbb37cc8123ef9ffadb4d771417a8b2b946be_full.jpg
I just read on the back of a cereal box
can you believe that cereal boxes still exist? I’m surprised that they haven’t dematerialized the boxes or digitized cereal grains so that cereal could be beamed to us over the internet, straight into our veins, but I digress.
that a healthy cereal brand is attempting to source the grains that make up their cereal from organic farms. A bold claim was made that just as much food can be grown organically as is currently grown with industrial chemicals. Unsurprisingly, nothing was mentioned by cost or prices.
Here’s a link that contains roughly what I saw on the back of that dinosaur product, boxed cereal.
https://transitional.kashi.com/en_US/What-Is-Certified-Transitional.html
Reply
Someone recently said to me ‘I don’t understand why anyone would eat anything but certified organic food’
I SH IT you not.
In the words of the late U.G. Krishnamurti, “it makes their sh%t expensive”.
Hillary trolls Trump with Russian hat during Yale commencement
https://nypost.com/2018/05/20/hillary-trolls-trump-with-russian-hat-during-yale-commencement/
https://www.godlikeproductions.com/sm/c3549d16.gif
The Mossad got Trump elected Potus. The e.l.d.e.r.s rule. Who controls the Mossad? MI6 and the Brits. They control everything.
http://observer.com/2018/06/muellers-investigation-into-trump-russia-turns-focus-on-israel/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Oh and by the way: It was the British government who decided to Brexit. Who got the blame? The voters and the puppet in Kremlin.
Now comes the destruction of EU.
Yeah. Britain rules the world. The strangest people in the world that I have ever countered.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CVb2tnFN5AA
King Crimson? Boy was that a surprise— didn’t know anyone would know.
I once owned that one on vinyl…
I usually adore “strange” music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSn-qsFyj7E
good thing those Brits were so strange!
If you dont have 3 drummers your band sucks
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Norways-EV-Adoption-Starts-To-Affect-Oil-Demand.html
Norway driving «green» and paying with oil revenues.
One of the things that people miss is the fact that there is a lot of oil use that is not private passenger autos. There are trucks, busses, trains, boats, motorcycles, airplanes, machines that create roads and tunnels, diesel backup for electricity, and petroleum that is used for purposes other than burning (lubrication, for example). If one-third of private passenger cars are now EVs, but before the change, private passenger auto only used, say, 40% of total petroleum, then the slice removed would be (1/3 x 40% = 12%). If, thanks to subsidies, people have more left to spend, they may spend it on vacation travel or other oil uses.
Right
Now balance the time it would take to create 40% EV penetration in the auto market including infrastructure. Then balance that against natural decline rate of conventional oil.
Can’t close the gap ever. It’s impossible.
The order of magnitude would require all ICE car manufacturing to end immediately. But it can’t because there isn’t enough infrastructure to build EV cars even if they were inclined to do it.
In basic energy terms it’s simply too late there isn’t enough energy available to make the switch even if it could work and it can’t.
Everything is a catch 22 trap.
If you build them you can’t power them. If you power them you can’t build them.
If you consume what’s left of the fossil fuels in a quest to transition to renewables there won’t be enough power to maintain them.
+++++
UC Davis Peer Reviewed Study: It Will Take 131 Years to Replace Oil with Alternatives
(Malyshkina, 2010)
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es100730q
University of Chicago Peer Reviewed Study: predicts world economy unlikely to stop relying on fossil fuels (Covert, 2016)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.1.117
Who is this Peer family? Their all Debbie downers. Where is the American spirit of innovation and technological achievement? I say in no uncertain terms that Peer Reviewed studies should be banned! They are simply Un American and offensive to American ideals. If there is something that I really can’t stand it’s people who study and know the facts and are determined to force their beliefs on me. It is my right as an American to maintain my personal ignorance. And furthermore I will fight for that right. The men who fought and died in the Great Revolutionary War have not died in vain. It was for freedom, the freedom to be untethered by constraints of logic and reason. The freedom from science and physics. The freedom to go where no man has gone before.
I am so thrilled we are all americans soon.
You may find that call of the vehicle makers see short to medium term benefits in investing in EVs and, for many markets, ditching ICE.
Especially true for China it seems.
For one thing the regulations relating to emission controls will keep marching forward even as the science and engineering hits the limits of relatively easy gains to achieve the results demanded.
Pure EV’s, mechanically, are relatively simply things. Or could be.
Think more in terms of a multipurpose electrical storage device that happens to have wheels, a guidance system and passenger/goods carrying capacity, thus offering more efficient use of its utility, and see whether you can come up with a new economic model for energy capture, storage and deployment that might just buy a couple of decades.
China has a lot of coal, but much less oil. They would prefer electric, because it is a coal-based solution. The pollution is not in the city, either.
And transport is a big growth area for China. Has been for a while but further to go before the theoretical efficiency and flexibility gains become uneconomic.
China Government Study: China’s Oil Production is About to Peak in 2018 & Coal in 2020 (Wang, 2017)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12182-017-0187-9
China’s oil and coal production have already peaked! This is one reason that China is having so many problems.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/china-energy-production-to-2016-bp.png
Let’s do the math for a moment. China bought 24,000,000 cars last year. Of those 600,000. 2.5 % of vehicle sales were EV. Is it because EV are cheaper? Without the carbon credits the amount would probably be 0%.
So I’m living in rural China my neighbors just bought an EV so I had to as well my only dilemma is I only have access to about 2kw at my house. So I have to decide between running my refrigerator or charging my car. Happily I love kimchi so there is no downside to my life style except I’m back to bucketing water.
Oh what am I thinking my new EV is actually an electrical storage device all I’ll need to do is plug it into itself. Problem solved onward and upward nothing can stop human innovation or can it?
Yes, it”s related to that pesky old Jevon’s paradox. Basically any efficiency gains fall soonish on the altar of filling the void for another expansion-growth elsewhere..
So true…Although I am not a boat repair person I did fix one once it was a post Panamax big boy. Fuel tanks were huge I almost turned down the job because they did not have a MSDS on the fuel.
Easy being green when suddenly cars are 50 % off.
We don’t know the exact micro sequencing of events into the future..
For example, it’s quite possible that within next decade or two, there will be great mishmash between availability of gasoline, diesel, LNG/LPG etc.. So, for instance if you buy full electric or plugin extended car at some bottom/subsidy price level ~nowadays, you can expect ~8-15yrs of service out of it.. Obviously on the condition the grid or alt renewable charging is still in working order, also you are effectively betting not being expropriated/looted in the future etc..
Simply, it might make an important difference for someone somewhere, as universal solution it’s likely bogus scenario though. Plus there are lighter less energy demanding options for personal transport anyway..
2 decades I want to party with with YOU
Walking needs to be high on people’s list of light, less energy demanding options for transport. It is even based on renewable energy: food.
To bad most food depends on non-renewable stuff.
Right! Keeping up food supply will be a problem.
A controlled “reduction” of food consumption as a campaign to “fight” obesity might be one way to mask a productivity shortfall for a decade or so.
The foods people are currently eating are too “energy dense,” especially in the United States. W have a lot of processed food based on oils, cheeses, sugar, and white flower. We also have way too many snack foods. Restaurant servings are far too large to eat. If we could go back to less processed and less energy dense foods, our health would be better. The problem is that there is no going backward.
I don’t think the economy will stick together well enough to work on a controlled reduction of food consumption, but I could be wrong.
I recall some interesting times in restaurants in the USA some years ago.
But the huge portions offered in the US are not so common in the UK and we apparently still have an unaffordable obesity challenge.
I doubt any action a social system might mandate would be supportable. But it could be a useful smoke screen into which to kick the real can (that there is not enough energy and FF derivatives for the food industry to support the world population) and so delay the apocalypse for, perhaps, a generation.
For a while that might be one less spinning platter to balance.
Correct, but I was more pointing towards luxurious modes of personal transportation such as donkey/pony cart..
Firstly animal power would not be allowed in most existing city developments due to pollution considerations and lack of anywhere to keep them.
Secondly the land required to keep them at the necessary energy levels would probably make the eroei figures unsupportable. At least until a few billion humans had “left for Mars”.
I used to discard the EV as just another flimsy future tech gimmick in the same basket as the other Big Green renewable utopian stuff. But now I finally have realized your point that these things could be considered pure tax-breaks/subsidies for us non-elites to keep up consumption.
And now I am unsure if the ship has sailed regarding getting in on the good years of EV, before incentives like free charging/parking gets revoked or the price of electricity and grid maintenance gets too high.
What makes you think that there care any good years and these are they?
The upmarket “totally Tesla” product looks good if you can work within their charging infrastructure and range constraints and travel enormous mileages each year. Or maybe if you live somewhere with cheap electricity and very highly taxed ICE fuels. Norway for example. But then Norway has long been a very expensive place to live and much of its economy is based on FF products that it “owns” and a relatively small population.
Other than that there are only niche applications and virtue signalling to push the market along.
All of this will be somewhat moot once the coming ban an all types of “plastic” has been implemented. Look around and see what you would not have in such a situation.
Those of us who can afford electric cars, with subsidies, really are in the elite. (I don’t have one.)
The typical person in the world cannot afford a car at all.
The typical US citizen cannot afford a new US car of any kind–perhaps a used car. There are a bunch of used electric cars around (cheap!), but you have to have a place to plug them in.
Let’s precise the terms and claims a bit, I hope we don’t try to claim here that last year’s ~17M US car sales are elite bound consumption only ? It has been bought on credit as in most places, correct, but that’s separate discussion as the fin system is propped up and working at the moment and likely into near future.
The over reliance on automobiles in the US is indeed peculiar in cross comparison to other major IC hubs, evidently translates into geopolitical implications, just looking back at key events of several past decades. This trend will continue, as long as the US (and the global fin superstructure) is willing to continue and still can effectively twist arms, others would have to keep curbing their consumption, simply go without or less in order for the US roll on..
In non US context with shorter distances traveled, EVs don’t tend to consume as much juice during nightly/off peak charging, usually slots of total ~4-6hours available..
Apple to make 20 percent fewer new model iPhones this year – Nikkei
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-warns-suppliers-lower-parts-102119720.html
Apple inches closer to $1tn mark as Wall Street tech panic dissipates
Tech’s stock market dominance is no longer a Wall Street fear as Apple is close to becoming first company valued at $1tn
I have never understood why people want to buy Apple products at the prices they expect to charge.