Many people expect energy shortages to lead to high prices. This is based on their view of what “running out” of oil might do to the economy.
In this post, I look at historical data surrounding inadequate energy supply. I also consider some of the physics associated with the situation. I see a strange coincidence between when coal production peaked (hit its maximum production before declining) in the United Kingdom and when World War I broke out. There was an equally strange coincidence between when the highest quality coal peaked in Germany and when World War II broke out. A good case can be made that inadequate energy supply is associated with conflict and fighting because leaders recognize how important an adequate energy supply is.
Some of my previous analysis has shown that if we view energy in terms of average energy supply per person, the world as a whole may be again entering into a period of inadequate energy supply. If my view is correct that inadequate energy supply leads to increased conflict, the recent discord that we have been seeing among world leaders may be related to today’s low supply of energy. (My energy analysis considers the combined energy supply available per person from fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables. It is not simply an oil-based analysis.)
The physics of the low energy situation may be trying to “freeze out” the less efficient portions of the economy. If successful, the outcome might be analogous to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991, after oil prices had been low for several years. Total energy consumption of countries involved in the collapse dropped by close to 40%, on average. The rest of the world benefitted from lower oil prices (resulting from lower total demand). It also benefitted from the oil that remained in the ground and consequently was available for extraction in recent years, when we really needed it.
The idea that oil prices can rise very high seems to be based on the oil price increases of the 1970s and of the early 2000s. While oil prices can temporarily rise very high, it is hard to make a case that they can remain high for an extended period. For one thing, high oil prices tend to cause recessions and lower employment. In such an environment, affordability of energy products is lower, and oil prices tend to fall. For another, it is easy for the Federal Reserve to get oil prices back down by raising interest rates. In fact, the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates right now.
In my opinion, we should be more concerned about low oil prices than high because we live in a world economy with huge debt bubbles. Debt bubbles are part of what enable today’s high employment. Debt bubbles support employers that are close to the edge financially; they also support buyers who would not be able afford automobiles or college educations, if loans were to become more expensive because of higher interest rates. Employment in the affected industries would be cut back, leading to recession.
Because of these issues, pricking the debt bubble is likely to lead to a major recession and, indirectly, lower energy prices, as in late 2008 (Figure 12). These lower prices are not good news because energy providers of all kinds need fairly high energy prices to survive–probably equivalent to oil at $80 per barrel or higher. If energy prices stay persistently low, the world is likely to see much lower oil supply, in part because oil exporters need the tax revenue that they obtain from high-priced oil to fund their programs.
A Self-Organizing Economy Needs Energy to Fulfill Its Promises
The problem that has arisen many times in the past is that energy supply becomes inadequate, relative to what the economy needs to operate. This energy shortfall is virtually never explained to the public. It is only apparent to the occasional researcher who realizes that this might be the issue.
The amount of energy that a networked economy needs to operate depends on:
- The number of people alive at the time,
- The industry that has been put in place, and
- The promises, such as retirement promises, that have been made to citizens.
Adequate energy supply is important for jobs and their pay levels. A rising supply of energy per capita tends to add jobs. The Asian countries shown in Figure 1 are some examples of countries where rising energy supply has given rise to more non-agricultural jobs.
Figure 1. Energy consumption per capita based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 total energy consumption data and UN 2017 Population Estimates of three selected countries. Energy consumption includes oil, natural gas, coal, and many smaller types of energy consumption, including wind and solar.
The jobs added rarely pay high salaries compared to those in the developed world, but they have helped raise the standard of living of those who have obtained them.
A falling supply of energy consumption per capita tends to make jobs that are high-paying more difficult to obtain. If energy per capita falls, there may still be a reasonable number of jobs, but many of them won’t pay well. High energy jobs such as building new schools and resurfacing roads tend to disappear, while jobs requiring little energy consumption, such as waitress and bartender, are added. Figure 2 gives some examples of European countries that have seen declines in energy consumption per capita in recent years.
Figure 2. Energy consumption per capita based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 total energy consumption data and UN 2017 Population Estimates of three selected countries. Energy consumption includes oil, natural gas, coal, and many smaller types of energy consumption, including wind and solar.
When jobs that pay well become more difficult to find, a significant share of the population starts believing that there is no room for additional immigrants, regardless of how needy they may be. This seems to be part of the dynamic many countries have been encountering recently.
If growth in energy supply is inadequate, other physics-related issues also arise:
- Inadequate economic growth, because it takes energy to create goods and services
- A tendency toward debt defaults, and the resulting deflation of asset bubbles
- Downward pressure on wages, in situations where machines or lower-paid workers can be substituted for somewhat routine work
- Difficulty collecting adequate tax revenue
- A tendency toward aggressive behavior between countries and actual wars
Physicist François Roddier has examined how economies allocate resources when there is a problem with scarcity. He finds that when there is inadequate total energy supply, this shortage is reflected in growing wage and wealth disparity. Thus, the goods and services made possible by energy supplies are disproportionately allocated to a small proportion of individuals at the top of the economic hierarchy, while those at the bottom receive a falling share.
He likens the increasing share of wages/wealth going to the top to steam rising. At the same time, he sees the falling share of energy consumption going to those at the bottom of the hierarchy as freezing out those who are contributing the least to the economy. Using this approach, some portion of the economy can be maintained in a period of temporary energy scarcity, even if the most vulnerable parts are lost.
How a Few Past Low-Energy Problems Resolved
First Low-Energy Consumption Period: Following Peak Coal in the United Kingdom, 1913
Figure 3. United Kingdom coal production since 1855, in a figure by David Strahan. First published in New Scientist, 17 January 2008.
The UK problem in the 1914 time-period was a coal problem. The coal whose delivered cost was lowest had been produced first. It was near the surface and geographically close to where it was ultimately to be used. Many types of costs rose as the easy-to-extract and deliver coal was exhausted. For example, more worker-hours were needed per ton of coal extracted.
If the costs of extracting and delivering coal rose, a person might think that these higher costs would be passed on to consumers as higher prices. (This is the hypothesis behind the ever-rising oil price theory.) Thus, a person might expect that coal prices would rise because coal companies needed more revenue to handle what was becoming an increasingly inefficient mining and delivery process.
This wasn’t the way it really worked, though, because customers couldn’t afford the higher costs. The wages of most citizens didn’t rise because the amount of goods and services the economy could produce depended upon the quantity of coal that was produced and delivered. If the economy were to take workers from outside the coal industry to compensate for the industry’s higher need for labor, it would further act to reduce the economy’s total output, because the new coal workers would no longer be performing their previous jobs.
Mining companies (sort of) solved their wage problem by paying miners an increasingly inadequate wage. Strikes by workers and lockouts by employers became an increasing problem in the 1910 to 1914 period. Probably not coincidentally, World War I started in 1914, just after UK coal production hit its peak in 1913. The war provided jobs for miners and others who could not otherwise find jobs that paid a living wage. Workers leaving for the war effort left fewer for mining.
Ultimately, World War I worked out well for the UK. The fact that it was on the winning side allowed the UK to remain the dominant world power until 1945, despite its declining coal production. Being dominant, the British pound sterling remained as the world reserve currency. This status made it easier for the UK to borrow, allowing it to import coal, even when it otherwise lacked funds to pay for it.
Second Low-Energy Consumption Period: 1920 to World War II, in the United States
The situation here seems to be more complex. The low energy problem that underlay World War I hadn’t really been resolved; it had mostly been moved elsewhere. Also, Germany, which was the other major European coal producer besides the UK, was reaching a peak in its predominant type of coal production, hard coal (Figure 4). Because of the these issues, European demand for imported goods from the US dropped dramatically. In particular, the US had been a big supplier of food to Europe during World War I, but this source of demand disappeared after 1918, when soldiers returned to their fields.
Figure 4. Hard coal production in Germany 1792 to 2002. Chart by BGR.
With respect to US demand for coal, the big issue besides low demand from Europe was internal US demand. Mechanization was starting to replace unskilled workers, both on farms and in factories. Mechanization of farming created a double problem: it added more food than was really needed, and it created a combination of winners and losers. The winners were those with the new mechanization who could produce food cheaply; the losers were those who still used processes that required much more manual labor. Available food prices fell far below the non-mechanized cost of food production. City dwellers were also winners thanks to the lower food prices.
Wage disparity became an increasingly serious problem in the 1920s (Figure 5). Workers with low wages could not afford to buy many goods and services. The laws of physics requires energy consumption (“dissipation”) whenever heat or motion are produced. Thus, physics requires that energy products be used in the manufacturing and delivery of goods and services. Following this logic through, the low wages of workers displaced by mechanization further acted to reduce demand for US energy supplies, over and above European coal problems.
Figure 5. U. S. Income Shares of Top 1% and Top 0.1%, Wikipedia exhibit by Piketty and Saez.
Debt levels grew in the Roaring 20s, partly driven by the apparent advantages of the new mechanization. In 1929, the debt bubble began to collapse, showing the underlying weakness of the economy.
The problems of the late 1920s to 1930 bore a striking resemblance to those of today. Wage disparity had become a major issue because of displacement of many workers mechanization and immigration. In response, tariffs were added: the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. Limits were also set on the number of immigrants, in the hope that reduced competition from immigration would help raise the wages of unskilled workers.
Eventually, the low-demand-for-energy problem was solved with World War II. The extra demand of World War II added many women to the work force for the first time. US energy consumption grew thanks to the war effort. The large wage increase about this time (Figure 6) primarily reflects the addition of many more workers to the labor force.
Figure 6. Three-year average growth in wages and in average personal income, based on data of the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income includes transfer payments such as Social Security and Unemployment Insurance. It also is net of taxes. The denominator in this calculation is total US population, so the changes reflect the effect of adding a larger share of the population to the workforce.
World War II was a winning strategy economically for the United States. Wages rose rapidly during the early 1940s, as did “Disposable Personal Income,” which is closely related. In addition, the US dollar took over as the reserve currency from the British pound in 1945. This gave the United States the power to import more goods and services (including oil) than it would have been able to if it had been more limited in its ability to borrow.
If we analyze US coal production, we see the interplay between geological limits and demand (really, what is affordable by consumers). With respect to geological limits, US anthracite coal hit an apparently geologically limited production peak in 1918. It hit when there was a fall-off in demand for imported food from Europe, so coal prices were almost certainly falling (Figure 7).
Figure 7. US coal production by type, in Wikipedia exhibit by contributor Plazak.
The US production of the second-highest quality coal, bituminous coal, rose rapidly between 1870 and 1918, when its production path suddenly changed to a jagged plateau, which lasted until about 1930. Coal production then dropped precipitously, as the economy sank, and did not rise again until the time of World War II. This pattern very much follows the “demand” pattern expected based on the earlier discussion. The wage disparity of the 1920s seems to have led to flattening production, with a steep drop with the problems of the 1930s. Looking out at 1990 on Figure 7, bituminous coal may have hit a geological production peak. Energy prices are this time were low (Figure 10), again pointing to low prices being associated with peaks in the production of a type of energy supply, not high prices.
Production of the two lowest qualities of coal (sub-bituminous and lignite) coal did not begin until 1970. The rapid ramp-up of coal supplies helped cushion the peak in oil production in the United States, which occurred (coincidentally or not) the same year, 1970. We see a shift toward ever-lower quality of energy resources, but we do not see a pattern of spiking of prices associated with peak demand. Instead, low prices seem to be associated with peaks in production.
Third Low Energy Consumption Period: Dip from 1980 – 1984, Related to High Interest Rates
A person might expect the peaking of US oil production in 1970 to have had a major impact on US energy consumption, but a much larger drop in energy consumption occurred in the 1980 to 1983 period, when the US raised interest rates to a high level, causing recession.
Figure 8. Chart produced by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis (FRED) showing a comparison of 10-year Treasury interest rates and the annual change in GDP rates (where GDP growth includes inflation).
The resulting dip in oil consumption sent oil prices from an average inflation-adjusted price of $110 per barrel in 1980, down to $32 per barrel in 1986. At such low energy prices, energy exporters have difficulty collecting enough tax revenue and obtaining enough funds for new wells. Only the sturdier exporting nations could survive.
The energy exporter that did not survive was the Soviet Union. It took until 1991 for the financial strains of low oil prices to collapse the central government of the Soviet Union. With its collapse, much of the industry of the Soviet Union permanently was destroyed, reducing energy consumption by close to 40%. Even thirty years later, the per capita energy consumption of the former Soviet nations remains far below its mid-1980s plateau level (Figure 9).
Figure 9. Per Capita Energy Consumption by Part of the World, based on data of BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 and 2017 UN Medium Population Estimates. The Russia+ grouping is the Commonwealth of Independent States, shown in BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018. It is slightly smaller than the former Soviet Union.
Analysis
Looking at these situations, there is little evidence with respect to UK and German coal production that geological peaks in production are associated with high prices. Instead, they seem to be associated with conflict among nations.
Apart from conflict, the other issue associated with peaks in coal production seems to be falling demand, and thus falling prices. The reason for geological peaks is likely to be inadequate profitability. Inadequate profitability occurs because rising costs of production and transport can no longer be recouped with higher prices. A person might say that the limit on rising coal production is the affordable price. It is reasonable to expect that the same is true for oil.
There is also little evidence that energy scarcity causes high prices, if energy scarcity is defined as low energy consumption per capita for all types of energy products combined. Instead, energy scarcity tends to cause wage disparity. Energy scarcity is also a concern for government leaders because they can see the need for an adequate supply of inexpensive energy, if they are to be able to compete in the world marketplace. Goods made with an expensive energy mix tend to be high-priced, and thus they tend to be noncompetitive in the world market.
Local customers are also unlikely to be able to afford goods made with expensive energy products, because the additional wages are being used to support what is essentially a less efficient type of production. There are many ways that energy costs can rise, including:
- Need for more human labor
- Higher wages for labor, perhaps because of more education or location
- Need for the use of more energy products in the making of new energy products
- Need for more debt financing
- Higher interest rates
- More machinery, including pollution-control equipment
- Need to lease land at higher cost
- Higher taxes
Regardless of where the extra costs come from, they don’t actually produce more of the energy products that are essential to making the economy operate as it should. The higher costs are simply a drag on the economy, which must be hidden in some way. Approaches for hiding the problem include reducing interest rates, outsourcing manufacturing to low-wage countries, and replacing some unskilled workers with computers or robots.
Prices seem to be tied more to what customers can afford than to the cost of production. Note that when energy supplies were low in the 1920 to 1930 period, oil prices declined. This pattern occurred because growing wage disparity led to more people who could not afford very many goods and services made with oil products.
Figure 10. Historical inflation-adjusted oil prices, based on inflation adjusted Brent-equivalent oil prices shown in BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.
Looking at Figure 11 below, we see a situation where US average wages seem to rise only if oil prices are low. If oil prices are high, it becomes more economic to send manufacturing to countries using cheaper energy products and offering lower wages. Such substitution leads to fewer US jobs and recession.
Figure 11. Average wages in 2017$ compared to Brent oil price, also in 2017$. Oil prices in 2017$ are from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018. Average wages are total wages based on BEA data adjusted by the GDP price deflator, divided by total population. Thus, they reflect changes in the proportion of population employed as well as changes in wage levels.
The Federal Reserve is very much aware of the fact that high oil prices lead to high food prices, and thus are a problem for the economy. It may also be aware of other issues related to high oil prices, such as loss of competitiveness in the world market.
The Federal Reserve has a powerful tool for fixing the problem of high oil prices–its Open Market Committee can raise short-term interest rates, and thereby make loans more expensive. For example, if interest rates can be changed so that auto loan interest rates rise from 5% to 6%, this makes automobile monthly payments more expensive, and thus reduces demand for cars. Indirectly, this reduces demand for oil, both for manufacturing them and for operating them.
In fact, the Federal Reserve seems to have been a major contributor to the Great Recession of 2007-2009. It first lowered interest rates in the early 2000s and helped create a debt bubble, particularly in sub-prime housing. It later raised interest rates. The higher interest rates plus high oil prices popped the debt bubble.
Quantitative Easing (QE) is a program that was added in recent years to adjust interest rates, over and above the impacts available from changes to short-term interest rates. Figure 12 shows that these interest rate changes seem to have had a close correspondence to turning points in oil prices. QE was added in late 2008 to reduce interest rates, and thus raise oil prices. Removing QE seems to have had the opposite impact.
Figure 12. Monthly average spot Brent oil prices based on US Energy Information Agency data, together with dates when the US began and ended Quantitative Easing.
What we are facing going forward is a debt bubble made possible by a long period of very low interest rates. The Federal Reserve now seems to be intent on popping this bubble by raising short-term interest rates and selling Quantitative Easing securities at the same time. If the Federal Reserve does succeed in popping the debt bubble, oil prices (as well as other energy prices) could fall very low again. If I am right, we can expect another major recession. It will be characterized by low demand, low commodity prices and layoffs in many industries.
Conclusion
The more a person looks at the story of how rising oil prices might allow oil extraction indefinitely, the less reasonable it seems. If the story about oil prices rising endlessly were true, we would have seen coal prices rise endlessly in Europe a century ago, when it was the dominant form of supplemental energy available. It didn’t happen.
Instead, what we need to be concerned about is the possibility of rising conflict. The energy situation may become increasingly like a game of musical chairs, if the amount available from sellers at an affordable price falls too low. The winners will attempt to obtain an adequate supply for themselves. It is not clear that this strategy can have winners, but perhaps I have not considered all of the possible outcomes.
One of the issues with inadequate energy supplies is the difficulty in obtaining adequate tax revenue. If tax revenue is an issue, there is likely to be a push to reduce donations to organizations that act to bring countries together, such as the European Union and the United Nations. Subsidies of all types are likely to be on the chopping block. Government services of all types are also likely to be reduced or eliminated, from bridge repairs to retirement programs for the elderly.
Most of us have never been taught about resource wars. The wide availability of fossil fuels eliminated the need to even think about a possible lack of energy resources, or other limited resources such as fresh water. Unfortunately, resource conflict may be back in some new 21st century version in the not too distant future.
Needless to say, I am not advocating conflict and cutting programs. It is just that energy problems and financial problems are very closely linked. This is the way that things seem to work out.
Election in Sweden
Communists 10%
Fascists 20%
Not enough votes to form a ComFascist government. They hate one another anyway.
Politics in Europe are becoming more radicalized each year. Probably not a good sign.
The developed world is becoming like poorer parts of the world.
In poorer parts of the world, diversity is a source of conflict.
When there isn’t enough to go around, people turn to ideologies, and scapegoats(people they can justify taking stuff away from) to explain alleviate their suffering.
What complicates things is that the underdogs , ALL OF THEM, are convinced they have no hatred in their hearts and claim they are never motivated by a desire for power and status.
Yes, like the sniper in the Spanish Civil War, who prayed that he could kill ‘Without hatred in my heart’!
It’s all about Justice and Truth, never ‘Gimme gimme’.
It must be comforting to be murdered by a truly moral person, motivated by the very highest ideals…..
I prefer the New Guinea tribesmen: ‘Your pigs are fatter than ours, so we want them!’ At least it’s honest!
Sweden already has a fascist government….it is called the radical liberal left.
No group has more to lose than the Left. They are urbanized and depend slightly more on BAU than rural people .
Divide and conquer. Detached garbage politics, and detached garbage electorate now gets it handed to them with the presumably “right wing” government.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dmf2wdhV4AAxrLR.jpg
Coal prices are up too in 2018 after the lows in 2015-2016.
Thermal coal:
US $75 per short ton
World $115 metric ton (1.1 short ton)
The U.S coal now costs $4 per million Btu, which is equal to the cost of production of thermal coal.
The cost to produce shale gas is also $4 per million Btu, but the price is $2.75 per million Btu today.
The global economy is red hot! Or…there is a shortage of coal supply after peak coal was reached in 2013…and now the global economy is on the verge of tanking on high energy prices?
https://m.investing.com/indices/dj-coal-chart
Half of European coal plants are free cash flow negative. EU is hell bent on phasing out coal with carbon taxes and environmental regulations…on top of rising coal prices, completion with natgas and renewables exposure to the grid.
Trump is trying to bail out uneconomic coal and nuclear plants by claiming national security and grid security protection.
Bloomberg claims that half of U.S coal plants are already being protected by the states to protect grid security.
If the coal plants weren’t somehow protected, we would be in the dark. We would be without the Internet. No one would know what was in their bank account, because the system would be down.
Minus $80 trillion give or take a few (public and private debt).
Maybe it’s best if we didn’t know what was in our bank account.
Coal prices generally rise with oil prices. Growing demand is growing demand for goods and services, and we use both coal and oil in the production and distribution of goods and services.
We need lots of demand to keep the debt bubbles from popping.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-08/global-trade-hit-rare-decline-supply-chains-seize
Global Trade Hit By Rare Decline As “Supply Chains Seize Up”
The economic picture is even more concerning now than it was in Jan 2016 IMO – such a lot of things that can go wrong or get much worse now – and *quickly*.
The reason why predictions of the demise of BAU have been wrong is that they are made based on data points that would normally trigger an economic crisis …. for instance… busting through specific debt levels… or declining corporate profits….
However this time is different — and we must acknowledge that…. different in that the CBs are involved in a globally coordinated effort to ignore and paper over all of the bad stuff….
This is unprecedented… in the past if a country got into trouble with its debt – it would generally be allowed to fail… pick the pieces up and start again…
Similarly with corporations — if they were failing they would be allowed to fail… creative destruction… trying to prop them up would be seen as a bad idea….
No longer….
But obviously this at some point fails — recall the Soviet Union…. it eventually came crashing down…. the tiny cracks became huge cracks… and there was nothing that could be done…. the bridge fell.
This reminds me of “Only you can prevent forest fires.” That mentality only prevents forest fires for a little while. Then the built up material that catches fire easily becomes a problem, and the fires are worse than previously.
It’s a bit different… we cannot allow a small forest fire to clear the brush … we can’t even allow a tiny spark….
Because that would set off the billion gallons of gasoline that is sitting in a pool next to the forest….
Interesting way of putting the problem!
billions of gallons of gasoline cooling thousands of hot spent fuel assemblies in pools scattered across the Northern Hemisphere.
“With the Trump administration about to slap tariffs of up to 25% on an additional $200 billion in Chinese goods, new data suggests that the global slowdown has already begun. Confirming our observations from two weeks ago, in which we showed that the latest freight data indicated global trade volumes are slowing…”
Not surprising, Gail, but imagine how much it’s going to slow down when the 25% hits 200 billion in Chinese goods. I think once we are in the first quarter of 2019 with Winter in the NH slowing business anyway, this trade war with China will initiate a deep recession. The trouble with that is once started there is very little CB’s can do at this point to jolt the economy back into a faster speed.
“billions of gallons of gasoline cooling thousands of hot spent fuel assemblies in pools scattered across the Northern Hemisphere.”
Gasoline? Wouldn’t that be a potential recipe for disaster? Water, they use water, right?
“This involves storing the spent fuel rods in a pool of water to cool them. In a spent fuel pool system, the used rods are stored under at least 20 feet of water.” I got that on a Google search.
More likely hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel powering thousands of pumping systems to pump water to cool thousands of hot spent fuel assemblies, which should have been built with “passive” (in other words “gravity assisted”) water supply facilities such as raised or highland reservoirs in the first place.
i was just kidding, and amplifying on FE’s earlier analogy.
I am afraid that you are right about first quarter of 2019, in the US. It looks like about the time when all of the stimulus disappears.
Outside of the US, it is not quite as clear to me. But we are almost at the fourth quarter of 2018 now, so any terrible problems of Europe or China would probably be evident.
I recall a calculus exam I had in college, 4 questions and it took me about 9 pages to do them. Got the test back and the professor put the answers on the board, I had all 4 answers correct but he had given me a 75.
After class I went to him and said he must have made a mistake because I had all the right answers but he’d given me a 75. The reason he gave me a 75 was because I left a step out of my work and therefore the answer was wrong.
His point and exact words were – “Without details the bridge falls down”.
I took a world religions course in uni…. and I wrote a paper that suggested protestant religions were ‘evolving’ in the direction of Satanism under the guise of adapting to the demands of modern society… .e.g. allowing lust and sexual gratification (pre-marital sex)…. birth control…. abortion… etc… rejecting guilt…
Actually if you read up on Satanism…. I guarantee…. you will find that society and most people have more in common with its teachings… than Christianity…..
To us, Satan is the symbol that best suits the nature of we who are carnal by birth—people who feel no battles raging between our thoughts and feelings, we who do not embrace the concept of a soul imprisoned in a body. He represents pride, liberty, and individualism—qualities often defined as Evil by those who worship external deities, who feel there is a war between their minds and emotions.
https://www.churchofsatan.com/index.php
https://www.amazon.com/Satanic-Bible-Anton-Szandor-Lavey/dp/0380015390/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302554576&sr=8-1/churchofsatan
I was … and am… convinced that these observations are correct….
The professor – a protestant minister… gave me a B — and thought I was playing a fast one on him… he also cited me for having no references…. I told him that there were no references because the paper was based on 100% pure original thought…. and that others could feel free to reference my paper… he went blank…
And I never got my PHD….
I think you are overly obsessed with the Catholic religion.
You should have visited some other churches long ago. They have quite different beliefs than what you are objecting to.
I would say that there are various misunderstandings in the Catholic religion, too. I would say it also tends to accept what the population wishes, like overestimating the value of the new offsprings in times of energy decline, when what we need is more machines. But, definitely, the celibate is the thing that makes it more close to the reality of the fate of the mankind and the need for reorganizing the system in such a way that a sudden collapse is avoided.
I have written it before: the atheitst tend to accept buddhism just for the same reason – celibacy.
Celibacy was very important for keeping the population from exploding. Many of the people who went to work for the church were extra children beyond the ones who could inherit a family’s farm. Both religions got something right. We are dealing with self-organized system. Church tend to pick-up what seems to be needed for that time and place. Cooperation was always needed. Messing with someone else’s family was not something needed.
WTF does she mean? Am I stoooopid…. why don’t I understand?
http://fortune.com/2018/09/09/goldman-bitcoin-fake-elon-musk-ethereum-tezos/
Bwahahahaha. In days of yore, she’d be splayed on a rack. Btw, I think I found a new job prospect, my old body can’t handle the plaster trade much longer.
I watched this all the way through. A doomer contemplating Rothschild purpose. I liked the Chardins.
good movie about central banks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY
I hope none of our posters live in NC.
Just saying—
I am
if it hits above Wilmington I should be in the clear. Otherwise, I just hope that no trees will fall on me
Good luck!
Outside Raleigh here. (Cary). Looks like I’m in deep sh i t. Actually, I have backup generator and a legal backfeed to the panel. Won’t flood here, but the wind and trees. Yikes.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-08/apple-permanently-bans-alex-jones-entire-platform
Hmmm…. this makes me suspect that Alex has something worthwhile to say….
With Zero and Alex, humor would be more appropriate.
You mean besides what he has been saying for the past 20 yrs?
Alex narrative is like dog poop mixed with smarties. The occasional sweet truth among the tinfoil excrement.
Like picking corn out of sh it?
Post BAU World:
I have a product that will make humans immune to spent fuel. And a machine (that I control with my mind) that converts tree leaves into delicious healthy organic food.
I am looking for volunteers (1000) that get to join me in a very remote jungle hideaway for the end game.
All members of my Cult must have IQs of under 80. All Sports Illustrated Swim Suit models get automatic entry without having to take the IQ test (because they all would pass anyway….) All other females will need to be smoking hot … and pass the IQ test (pass = sub 80 score).
All males will need to pass and also agree to be Eunich’ed….
I will be the only one with an IQ above 80.
Any children born who exhibit skills or try to innovate …. or who have IQs above 80 … will be thrown off cliffs.
Nice. There’s a wide variety of nuclear waste that I rarely hear about.
All those conditions are meant precisely to exclude me.
Boy, you’re mean. 🙁
R.I.P. Chinese Exceptionalism?
After decades of strong and steady growth, China has developed a reputation for economic resiliency, even as it piles up ever more domestic debt. But the prospect of declining exports, alongside a weakening currency, could derail its debt-defying trajectory.
NEW DELHI – From Argentina to Turkey and from South Africa to Indonesia, emerging markets are once again being roiled by financial turbulence. But let us not lose sight of the biggest and potentially most problematic of them all: China.
Over the past few decades, China’s growth has appeared to violate certain fundamental laws of economics. For example, Stein’s Law holds that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Yet China’s debt keeps on rising.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-economic-headwinds-by-arvind-subramanian-and-josh-felman-2018-09
The funny thing about this …. is that during the old norm … when there was abundant cheap oil…. this would NEVER have been allowed…. and it would have never been tried by China….
As the Reinhardt Rogoff book states – This Time is (never Different)….
Well it is obviously different now.
The Commanders fully understand that we are out of cheap oil — and that the only way to keep the train on the tracks is to unleash gargantuan stimulus packages (debt fueled) into the machine to keep it greased.
There are teams of experts working day and night to keep BAU alive. This is a globally coordinated effort between all the major players.
That is the only way you keep Stein’s Law at bay for so long….
At one time, almost everyone thought that Japan could go on growing at a phenomenal rate, forever. About 1990, the debt bubble stopped growing.
Even I could be ‘economically resilient’ so long as I could pile up debt like that!
A new line for borrowing maybe:
‘This isn’t a risk to you as the lender: it’s a substantial improvement in my ongoing resilience!’ ?
The piling up of the debt saves the human population from immediate collapse.
Life is a bit surreal at the end of the world.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_SIpeM1QQuk
Hurricane coming to East Coast, a major typhoon to Guam (I’m a former resident), and a smaller storm to Hawaii.
The East Coast should get interesting fast.
I guess it is September.
Fixing problems ramps up demand. Helps GDP (sort of).
Well—
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/21ef07842f294bdc3b53971de9af6d78a2c8c5d3b19248b7e03f6668accc0406.gif?w=800&h=635
Good to learn. There are simply nothing but problems to be fixed.
There are simply nothing but problems to be fixed.
Unless you have a predicament, rather than a problem.
(I’ll let you figure that one out)
The predicament could be in no one understanding the need or possibility to fix the problems. A behavior-caused predicament?
Updates on NordStreamII, as presented in TV so don’t take it for granted..
– construction ongoing in the shelf already, deeper see leg work intensifying soon
– construction to be finished by end of 2019
– official launch of operation since 2020
– existing terminal hubs NordStreamI on both ends are simultaneously being enlarged for ver II
– Denmark acting as the only hollyweird (US puppet) refusing to grand permission on the route, so small detour around their maritime boundaries had to be implemented, while Sweden and Finlad cooperating to directly working on it as well; well case of Poland is Poland enough said
– reported supposedly “surprising” downfall on UK+NL gas production while their demand is rising and will be partly matched from this enlarged pipeline as well
I live in Argentina which is one of the countries posted here. Let me tell you that a currency collapse is far different from a economic collapse. In Argentina, thus far, it is only a currency collapse. There is little evidence of any ecnomic trouble in the daily life of an Argentine.
It might be that the continued emerging market chaos will trigger a domino effect and begin to effect the real economy. If so, then at that point there will be blood in the streets. But, so far, it is not a big deal. We will see what happens over the next 1-2 years especially as this trade ware unravels.
Me, personally, I have my popcorn out so I am ready for the collapse.
Thanks for your on the ground report. It takes a while for effects to filter down, I expect. Supply chains are affected, but it takes a while for the effects to work through.
Yea, I was in Argentina recently.
The great wine, the excellent fly fishing, small, well educated population, etc.
The “real economy” seemed to be doing fine.
If the currency falls by 50%, but wages rise by 60%, then it’s OK.
Yooooo Hooooo…. Doomie Preppers … where are you DPs??????
Fast Eddy has something for you to watch …. listen to how the other customers hoot and enjoy this…
No Little House on the Prairie for you…. post BAU….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2018/09/07/an-angry-chick-fil-a-customer-sucker-punched-an-employee-it-did-not-end-well/?utm_term=.32a66c5cc86f
Humans. What a disappointment.
Then there are those …. who screech:
‘We have to do something – we have to save the species!!!!! – humans cannot go extinct – we are SPECIAL!!!!’
And here I am thinking …. what better outcome could we get from the end of BAU … than all other species survive The Ponds…. and ever single last human vermin … is eradicated…. if I were the last man standing … and the last woman standing looked like this:
https://static1.i4u.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/main_image_large/images/2016/02/sports-illustrated-swimsuit-2016-rookies.jpg
I’d grab her hand and pull her over the cliff…. (but of course not before….. you know…. )
I suppose I can attribute this desire to no go extinct to have children… I have none of those (thankfully) so I am able to comment on the situation more objectively….
The lack of workforce forces a restaurant in the Czech Republic to put up an appeal asking the customers to behave politely to the staff, as it becomes harder and harder to find a good staff than guests:
“”Prosím, chovajte sa slušne k našej obsluhe! Stále sa horšie zháňa dobrý personál než hostia.” Heslo, ktoré si na tabuli vyvesila jedna reštaurácia, platí v prenesenom význame pre všetkých českých zamestnávateľov.”
https://finweb.hnonline.sk/zahranicna-ekonomika/1806201-staci-ze-nepridu-opiti-ceski-zamestnavatelia-su-nuteni-brat-kazdeho
Check oil?
OIL (BRENT) PRICE COMMODITY
77.10 USD +0.47 (0.61%)
Been pretty flat lately—-
Sorry to hear that Duncan.
Cheer Up!!
Oil price has vacillated in a limited range now for quite some time, so it’s not surprising it hit a ceiling and flattened out.
Newest world order…
https://thetechjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Ship-Sinking.jpg
https://thinkprogress.org/trumps-trade-war-china-tariffs-deficit-ac44b1b7bf6e/
Trade war article. Won’t let me copy & paste, but bottom line is the US buys a whole lot more from other countries than it sells, thus there is a huge trade deficit that just keeps getting bigger. For example, the trade deficit in July alone was $337 billion, the highest in a decade.
50 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods now with another 200 billion set to initiate within a week. Businesses have been rushing to get their products off the list, but that window is closing soon. Many businesses are worried they will go out of business due to much higher prices via the tariffs.
The article seems to suggest that the US is so prosperous we naturally buy more than we sell, thus the big trade deficit. But Trump is determined to close the gap. Should prove interesting to see how this plays out.
There’s an old economic theory called Triffin’s Dilemma whereby the country with the reserve currency must carry a trade deficit in order to keep enough dollars in circulation to satisfy demand abroad.
I don’t know if this still applies since the FRN de-coupled from precious and became a totally unbacked computer entry currency.
This is a link to a paper on this subject. It is a December 2017 working paper. https://www.bis.org/publ/work684.htm
The Findings section says:
So there is some general kind of truth to it, and it has worked in practice, even though the logic doesn’t entirely work.
88,000 tons of radioactive waste and nowhere to put it.
Dn’t worry– it only has a half life of 24,000 years.
I’m sure the future is perfectly safe—–
Wonder what the doubling time is of the 88 tons of radioactive waste? 5 years? 7 years? Soon it will be 100’s of tons then 1000’s of tons then millions of tons LOL.
Just dump it out at sea, out of sight out of mind. So your fish will walk on all fours and grow a tail, they’re still edible.
If you dump it out to sea, the exponential rise in the amount of radioactive waste dumped each year will soon causes massive ocean levels to rises.
Surely there are so many desperate countries around the world, all it would take is to negotiate a price for said country to receive the nuclear waste. Heck, we’ll even use our own special containers and bury it for them. Call Venezuela, or Argentina, or Greece, how about Bangladesh or Lagos, Nigeria? Ok, how much do you want? You could probably have a bidding war between different desperate countries, and by bidding, I mean the low bid gets the contract. Some greedy well positioned leader would take the money, stuff it in a Swiss account, then let the radioactive material be transported and buried with a big smile on his face. That’s how our species operates so why not?
Or they will take the money and just dump the stuff in the nearest ditch…
“Or they will take the money and just dump the stuff in the nearest ditch…”
Yes, there is that possibility too.
What comes around goes around…. especially when the half life is thousands of years…
Keep in mind this is not spend fuel…. this is low level contaminated stuff…
Or just pretend to clean it up
A sprawling middle-class neighborhood is rising on the site of a former nuclear testing facility in San Francisco. But its future is uncertain amid new allegations of a botched cleanup.
The US Navy has learned that Tetra Tech, a government contractor tasked with the cleanup of radioactive contamination at the retired San Francisco Naval Shipyard, faked more soil tests than previously thought, in order to expedite the city’s largest redevelopment project. Workers swapped samples from areas known to be highly contaminated with dirt from clean areas.
According to investigations by Curbed SF and NBC Bay Area, almost half of the toxic waste-site cleanup was “suspect” or has “evidence of potential data manipulation or falsification.”
These findings could cause the project to be delayed many years. The Navy is expected to release the results of its investigation into Tetra Tech in a public meeting on January 31.
https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-shipyard-new-evidence-of-botched-cleanup-2018-1
How about this..,..
https://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/farallon/radwaste.html
Summary
Between 1946 and 1970, approximately 47,800 large barrels and other containers of radioactive waste were dumped in the ocean west of San Francisco. The containers were to be dumped at three designated sites, but they a litter sea floor area of at least 1,400 km2 known as the Farallon Island Radioactive Waste Dump.
The exact location of the containers and the potential hazard the containers pose to the environment are unknown.
The USGS developed computer techniques and contracted with private industry to enhance sidescan- sonar data–collected in cooperation with the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary–to detect objects as small as 55-gallon steel barrels while conducting regional sidescan-sonar surveys. Locations of probable 55-gallon containers derived from the enhanced sidescan sonar images were plotted on a map covering a 125-km2 area.
The U.S. Navy, the USGS, and the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary pooled their expertise and resources to verify the new computer enhancement techniques developed for detecting targets on sidescan sonar images the size of 55-gallon barrels.The acoustic intepretations were verified using the USN DSV (Deep Submergence Vehicle) Sea Cliff and the unmanned Advanced Tethered Vehicle (ATV).
https://antinuclear.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/graph-cancer-incidencd-rising.gif
Part of the US cancer problem seems to be the over-diagnosis of conditions that would never go anywhere, even if not treated.
Supposed thyroid cancer is one of these; supposed prostate cancer and supposed breast cancer are others. We have very aggressive ways of finding conditions that might, someday, if we lived long enough, turn into cancer. But the over diagnosed ones would likely never turn into cancer. They do generate revenue for the physicians.
There are no doubt reasons for the real incidence of cancer to be rising–including more overweight people, average age of citizens rising, and the fact that 100% of people do die of something. If you cure one thing, something else will kill people.
Your list, while extensive and accurate, ignores diet and other environmental factors which are in reality the primary factors in carcinogenesis.
I agree that diet is a big deal in addition. The American diet is terrible in many ways. We can’t even understand what all is wrong with the environment. The chemicals we use in manufactured products are very similar to those in our own bodies. There seems to be a cross over.
Also the capture of medicine (and scientific research) by capitalism is an underrated issue though you mentioned it. Almost of all of the medical system has now been completely subjected to the maximization of profitability rather than patient care.
This has been debated here numerous time already (like 100x), apparently to no avail. Blame yourself (voting preferences), your compatriots, and or political biz-elites. The solution for large (most) part of it exists, it’s called MOX fuel reprocessing and “breeder” reactors which burn it for grid electricity..
There are no tech solutions. Stop lying.
Strong words! And hurtful too. Calling other people a liar is considered to be so destructive to decorum and debate that in the Mother of Parliaments overlooking Westminster Bridge it’s considered a serious offense. Hence, MPs register their displeasure with phrases such as “The honorable member is being economical the truth.”
As I see it (in my opinion), Worldofhanumanotg is merely voicing his personal opinion on an issue that is complex and viewable from a number of perspectives. You may disagree with his opinions, but that doesn’t mean he was lying. It just means he’s lying in your opinion.
MOX fuel is doable and is being used to produce grid electricity in several countries. Breeder reactors are technically doable and two of them are being used in Russia today to produce grid electricity. Those are two facts that support his opinions.
Whether it’s a good thing that these things are being done is a matter of opinion. Whether they will help save BAU or help to ensure an even bigger mess when BAU goes down is a matter of opinion. Whether anti-nuclear sentiment is to blame for nuclear’s failure to work better is, once again, a matter of opinion. Whether or not there are or are not sufficiently good tech solutions to a host of nuclear issues is, you guessed it, a matter of opinion.
It’s a lot easier to crank out opinions than to establish facts. But let’s not lose sight of the facts.
Word association – WOH….. drivel… feeble…. diarrhea-flavoured pablum…..
. Opinions are not facts. If he did not present his opinions as facts,I would have gone easier on him.
If he wants to pretend that fast breeder reactors haven’t been explored because we voted against it in elections, I will insist that he’s lying.
There has been a lot of research and development on breeder reactors.They are currently significantly more expensive to run than traditional nuclear power plants.
Traditional nuclear power plants are already too expensive.
Nuclear power plants deliver plenty of energy but are very expensive.
What is needed is an affordable form of energy generation.
Fast breeder reactors cannot be a solution to keep a global economic system functioning if it is out of financial reach for most countries that participate in the global economy.
(updated)
Opinions are not facts. If he did not present his opinions as facts,I would have gone easier on him.
If he wants to pretend that fast breeder reactors haven’t been explored because we voted against them in elections, I will insist that he’s lying.
There has been a lot of research and development on breeder reactors.They are currently significantly more expensive to run than traditional nuclear power plants.
Traditional nuclear power plants are already too expensive.
Nuclear power plants deliver plenty of energy but are very expensive.
What is needed is an affordable form of energy generation.
Fast breeder reactors cannot be a solution to help keep a global economic system functioning they are out of financial reach for most countries that participate in the global economy.
It will be dumped into the ocean.
Wow – Musk is a walking disaster now:
“Tesla shares have plunged this morning after Elon Musk smoked marijuana and drank whiskey while discussing everything from drugs to the possibility we’re all living in a simulation, in a rambling two-and-a-half hour podcast appearance which was live-streamed on YouTube…
“Hours later, the company’s chief financial officer Dave Morton resigned citing ‘public attention’ on the company.
“Meanwhile, shares plummeted to nine per cent this morning, wiping $4.3billion off the company’s value. By mid-morning the shares had recovered to seven per cent down for the day.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6142193/Elon-Musk-smokes-JOINT-live-Joe-Rogan-Experience-podcast.html
I notice Dow is down about 150 too, perhaps related.
Musk seems to be deliberately knocking down the value of his own company
thats the only logical explanation for his antics
Either that or this is not calculated and he is legitimately cracking under the pressure of running a company that can’t turn a profit or produce a reliable product.
Chaos Erupts At Tesla: Stock Crashes, Bonds Implode After Heads Of Accounting, HR Quit
TESLA SHARES EXTEND LOSSES TO FALL 10%; BIGGEST LOSS IN 2 YEARS
Easy come, easy go.
Just hours after Elon Musk appeared on a comedy podcast, where he smoked pot, demonstrated his flamethrower and mused philosophically, Tesla’s chief accounting officer unexpectedly gave notice he’s resigning just one month into the job, citing the level of scrutiny on the electric-car maker.
“Since I joined Tesla on August 6th, the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations,” Dave Morton, former CFO for hard-drive maker Seagate Technology said in a Tesla regulatory filing.
“This caused me to reconsider my future. I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission, and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla’s leadership or its financial reporting.”
Morton’s departure comes just months after the last Chief Accounting Officer, Eric Branderiz, resigned from Tesla back in March of this year. The company spent a couple of months looking to fill the position, which they finally did in August of this year with Morton.
But wait, there’s more because not long after we reported that Gabrielle Toledano, the company’s chief people officer, said she was taking a leave of absence, she told Bloomberg News that she won’t be rejoining the company.
More https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-07/tesla-tumbles-after-chief-accounting-officer-quits-after-just-one-month
James Chanos Calls Tesla’s Equity ‘Worthless’ Renowned Tesla Inc. (TSLA) short seller Jim Chanos has just taken another swipe at the electric car maker, claiming that the company’s “equity is worthless.” … We think the equity is worthless.”Dec 15, 2017
https://youtu.be/gqsT4xnKZPg
There is no value to knock down…
James Chanos Calls Tesla’s Equity ‘Worthless’ Renowned Tesla Inc. (TSLA) short seller Jim Chanos has just taken another swipe at the electric car maker, claiming that the company’s “equity is worthless.” … We think the equity is worthless.”Dec 15, 2017
Dec 2017 shorts, again? While Chanos guy was chanosing, otherd were making ~600% gain on futures volatility..
Or he (Elon) discovered OFW and knows his efforts are in vain so he is enjoying the last remaining days of BAU
So we will be responsible for the demise of Tesla…
Excellent.
He’s a visionary. Now we know where the visions came from.
https://youtu.be/xnvPxvI8yXk
As a spokesperson for ‘saving the planet’ – up there with Gore and Leo and Krugman and Yergin and many others…. surely he has been briefed and asked to front for Tesla to help keep the con going… so he understands what is really going on….
It’s almost as if he realizes that BAU is about to succumb …. he doesn’t give a f789 anymore…. and the heat in the kitchen has fried his brain…
DPs…. winter is coming … endless winter….. it might be right around the corner…. (or it might not)… but this might be your only window to horde…. if I were a DP I would not be taking any chances… I’d be down at the Pak N Save loading up the trolleys….
But…BUT…. I realize the futility of it all…. and like Elon … I do not give a F789….. so I sit patiently… and wait…. for the 5 horsemen…. and hope…. that the suffering is not too horrible.
Predictions, predictions..
– Dr. Tim at Surplus ~10% everywhere)
– peak oilers saying 2021-3 shale bust no longer paperable over
– former high ranking RU intel <2028 (unipolar world over)
+ many others looking for the late 202X to mid 203Y window
can't recall Yankovici's at hand but was likely in that boundary as well..
For some reason didn’t display correctly the first one (ECoE) as prior 2025..
This is a strategy too complex for you peasants to understand. Musk has secretly patended batteries with 50+ year lifespan and wholly autonomous factories to make them, plus a wholly autonomous freely scalable globalised transport system that generates energy for itself. No wonder he is driving down his stock: this tech isn’t meant for the useless eaters but for “them”. Enjoy this illusory moment of schadenfreude because soon the weaponised UAVs will fly in and spray toxic rat faeces on your face. Sad!
Maybe you should try microloading LSD instead.
I’ll pass that on.
Why would it Elon’s renewable energy tech need to be scaleable if it’s only meant for a tiny number of wealthy people?
It’s you who is broadcasting feelings of sadness . It is you who is reacting to bad news about Elon by hoping we all get sprayed in the face with weaponized rat feces by robots .
If victory is close at hand, you would not resort to sad and desperate statements such as
“soon the weaponised UAVs will fly in and spray toxic rat faeces on your face.”
I hope you are kidding!
Even unweaponized rat feces would be bad enough!
I read once (sorry, no link) that people that become CEO’s do so in part for the things they don’t say. This is an example of what not to say for 2.5 hours. This is something you do in the privacy of your living room, hopefully with friends or relatives you think you can trust not to talk about it later to the media, Tweet it or put it on Facebook, etc.
Like Fast Eddy says, maybe Elon realizes the jig is up and he can no longer keep the charade up,
“It’s almost as if he realizes that BAU is about to succumb …. he doesn’t give a f789 anymore…. and the heat in the kitchen has fried his brain…”
I don”t think Elon has been any under any real heat. Telsa Motors might be nothing more than a government front to keep morale up. Elon was probably drinking and smoking all along but feels no need to hide this behind a public persona as a an innovator anymore.
Steve Jobs spent much of his time chasing tail, not working long hours on perfecting computer hardware and software in the early days of Apple.
I am 99.999999999999% you are correct — he had zero experience in managing a large enterprise (never mind very complex) before stepping into Tesla…
In fact he did he not even found Tesla ….
The company was conceived and founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.[9]
How can I get a gig as a poster boy for a TBTF hopium project?
“Expect more short-term pain, investors said, after emerging-market stocks tipped into a bear market. The MSCI Emerging Market Index closed down 0.3% in New York on Thursday. That took its decline from a high of 26 January to just over 20%, the threshold for a bear market…
“Emerging-market assets are under pressure from a stronger dollar and rising US interest rates, as well as American protectionism. Contagion concern has come to the fore in recent weeks as the most vulnerable developing economies — Argentina and Turkey — fell into crises.”
https://www.livemint.com/Money/JMk55YgEg8zZUzaSqGCXGN/Emerging-stocks-fall-into-bear-market-more-pain-likely.html
“The [Philippine] peso extended its slump Thursday, hitting the lowest level in nearly 13 years at 53.80 against the US dollar, in line with the fall of other Asian currencies and following reports that inflation rate accelerated to a nine-year peak. The peso shed P0.25 Thursday to close at 53.80 from 53.55 a dollar Wednesday. It was the local currency’s weakest finish in almost 13 years.”
http://manilastandard.net/business/banking-report/274885/peso-slumps-to-13-year-low-of-53-80-vs-us-dollar.html
“Australia’s dollar is finding itself in unusual company these days, getting sold along with former emerging-market darlings such as the Indonesian rupiah and Indian rupee.
“As a rout grips developing markets, the Aussie – viewed as a barometer for global risk appetite – is also bearing the brunt of investor angst.”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/out-of-favour-aussie-is-acting-like-an-emerging-market-currency-20180907-p502b5.html
“Construction companies say they can’t afford credit under President Mauricio Macri’s financial plan, which has raised interest rates to 60 percent. Argentina’s construction sector could be forced to shed some 40,000 jobs in the next few months because sky high-interest rates are making it difficult for businesses to finance projects, experts warn.”
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Argentina-Financial-Crisis-Could-Cut-40000-Construction-Jobs–20180906-0026.html
We in the US lose sight of how much higher interest rates can be in other countries. Buying a house becomes impossible, for example. No reason to build new homes, if no one can buy them. Principle applies to other buildings as well.
Good!
America is taking all the oxygen…. we can’t breath!!!!
Why do I have this feeling what happens in emerging economies will come back to bite us in the US like a boomerang in the back of the head.
“One of the paradoxes of this year’s trade tensions is that in many parts of the world, it doesn’t yet feel like a crisis.
“For all the turmoil in emerging-market currencies, equity investors in major markets seem … relaxed? The milestone passed with little fanfare, but the S&P 500 index closed at a record high of 2,914.04 on August 29. The day before, India’s Nifty 50 did the same. Other indexes in developed markets are only moderately below their January peaks.
“With President Donald Trump expected to start implementing the next round of tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods within hours, it’s tempting to think the global economy is riding out the turmoil. Tempting, but mistaken. Look closely: The slowdown has begun.
“Take trade volumes. It’s been extraordinarily unusual for the momentum of global commerce to head anywhere but up in recent decades. The only notable occasions when the world trade monitor compiled by the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis has turned down in a sustained way since 2000 have been on the eve of the 2001 and 2008 recessions and during the 2015 commodity slump.
“You can now add 2018 to that list, with the index coming in negative throughout the second quarter of this year…
“For a better picture of what lies ahead, have a look at the way the world’s container-shipping lines are planning for the future. Order books that ran in excess of 1,000 vessels before the 2008 financial crisis haven’t cracked one-fifth of that level since Trump came to power. If the global economy is going to ride out this latest round of tension, the merchant fleets on which trade depends aren’t seeing it.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-07/the-global-trade-slowdown-is-happening-now
“Beijing has laid the ground for another round of tit-for-tat tariffs in the US-China trade war as it declared its readiness to retaliate if Washington imposes a fresh set of duties on $200bn (£155bn) of Chinese goods, which could happen as soon as this week… Beijing’s economic ministry spokesman, Gao Feng: “If the United States, regardless of opposition, adopts any new tariff measures, China will be forced to roll out necessary retaliatory measures.””
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/06/china-retaliate-us-trump-imposes-new-tariffs-200bn-goods
“Russia is ready to take the emergency step of buying its own rouble debt if a new wave of US sanctions threatens to upend the market. “In a very stressful scenario when we see the conditions of a market failure” both “the central bank and the government have the tools to intervene on the open market to cushion the adjustment period,” Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev said in a Bloomberg TV interview.”
https://www.gulf-times.com/story/605150/Russia-ready-to-buy-own-debt-if-sanctions-spark-ma
“For the third time in a year, Turkish, Russian and Iranian leaders will convene in Tehran to discuss a road map for Syria’s Idlib as well as closer economic cooperation to ward off the impact of unilateral U.S. sanctions.”
https://www.dailysabah.com/economy/2018/09/06/turkey-russia-iran-to-hash-out-ways-to-fight-against-us-sanctions-in-tehran-summit
“Turkey is in the process of constructing a site for a Russian missile system despite warnings from the United States to not buy the platform, according to a source with firsthand knowledge of an intelligence report covering the subject.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/turkey-begins-constructing-site-for-russian-missile-system.html
The Long Emergency…. is transitioning into … The Final Desperation….
US is playing king of the mountain, when there is not enough energy to go around!
It’s that pesky, overactive, reptilian amygdala that conservatives have –
“Amygdala”…I don’t even know what that word means…darn Duncan, you sure are smart!
Amygdala a very old center of motivation (some might say emotion) in the brain. Mostly fight or flight.
And meanwhile the ‘liberals’ are focused on transgender bathrooms …. opening up borders to let the downtrodden in (because it’s only fair)…. and stopping the military from fighting for middle east oil (and letting the Russians and the Chinese gorge on it)….
I think I’ll take Cheney and Rummy over Bernie….
If interest rates are low enough, effect of US tax cut is still being felt, and companies are buying back their own shares at record rates, stocks should be flying high. What is there to worry about? Debt bubbles never pop!
He promised to MAGA…… relatively speaking…………
Where are they now?
I was just wondering about this guy…..
On 2 May 2008, Ağca asked to be awarded Polish citizenship as he wished to spend the final years of his life in Poland, Pope John Paul II’s country of birth.[20] Ağca stated that upon his release he wanted to visit Pope John Paul II’s tomb and partner with Dan Brown on writing a book.[21]
Ağca was released from jail on January 18, 2010. He was transferred to a military hospital in order to assess if, at 52, he was still fit for compulsory military service. The military found him unfit for military service for having “antisocial personality disorder”. In a statement, he announced: “I will meet you in the next three days. In the name of God Almighty, I proclaim the end of the world in this century. All the world will be destroyed, every human being will die. I am not God, I am not son of God, I am Christ eternal.”[22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmet_Ali_A%C4%9Fca
antisocial personality disorder?… he needs to be introduced to FW….
Sounds like a nut, however.
I can see he’s a big fan of Black Sabbath!
When you think about death do you lose your breath or do you keep your cool?
Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope do you think he’s a fool?
Well I have seen the truth, yes I’ve seen the light and I’ve changed my ways
And I’ll be prepared when you’re lonely and scared at the end of our days
https://youtu.be/DltDXOXtuRc
Elon is losing his breath……
Not what the world or markets need is more instability.
“Brazilian Presidential Candidate Bolsonaro Stabbed At Campaign Event”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-06/brazilian-presidential-candidate-bolsonaro-stabbed-campaign-event
He is a right wing nut case (not as crazy as nut&yahoo, but typical late stage capitalist nut).
Seems the injury was more significant than first reported. This is typical behavior of governments.
Why governments? Given that Lula has millions of supporters, I was surprised no one could hit the judges that condemnated him. Perhaps they finally got Bolsonaro instead…
If you look at the Lula case, it makes Orwell blush.
They know Lula would easily win.
The current right wing nut case can use this attack for his benefit.
The attacker was a friend of Jesus:
“Our agents there said the attacker said he was ‘on a mission from God,’”
I believe the problem is schizophrenia, or possibly an endocrine disorder. I know someone who was sort of paranoid and used to have somewhat similar beliefs (God is talking to me; I don’t want medicine because I have special knowledge that others don’t have; but she was not killing people based on these beliefs). The diagnosis was later found to be very low thyroid functioning, so she is now on thyroid medication.
“giving police a more free hand to shoot and kill while on duty.
While Bolsonaro has a strong following, he is also a deeply polarizing figure. He has been fined, and even faced charges, for derogatory statements toward women, blacks and gays.
He speaks nostalgically about the country’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship”
Why did call him a nut case, Duncan?
Do you know him personally?
Or are you trying to justify the stabbing?
Also, it’s a sad day when people are fined and prosecuted for making derogatory statements, don’t you agree? After all, you personally are in the habit of making derogatory comments. Don’t you think it would be unjust if you were prosecuted on that count?
This sounds serious. “Almost dead” and liver suffered severe damage don’t sound good at all. It does sound like people trying to get the result that they want, by killing off the opposition.
The current right wing “government” is controlling the electoral process.
This has little to do with “trying to get the result that they want, by killing off the opposition.”
how is this method different from attempting to impeach Trump, on the claim he is unfit for the office, after the Russian collusion in election meddling attempt has failed?
…after the collusion in Russian election meddling attempt…
My comments were automatic moderation per last day.
To recap, accidentally, I noticed this “Martin Schultz” character visited Lula in jail just few days ago these kind of bloated super apparatchiks don’t travel off season half across the world unless they absolutely must. In terms of longer term political realignments the Social Democratic (and allied) parties around the globe (now falling or near extinction everywhere) were the !preferred conduit! of most gov-biz-cb corruption in past decades, obviously in next larger cycle this will shift back to some entities on the ~right side of the spectrum.. that’s not political but empirical evidence commentary.
Lula was not clean by a long shot, not mentioning his surrounding circles, and Schultz is re-known water boy of many very bad things of the past era, including direct political corruption, off budget tricks, migration fanaticism etc. These too buddies were likely talking some geopolitics and shadow money.. and what to do next.. despite the recent attacks anyway (direct connection I’m not insinuating here – just illustrating the heightened tension situation)..
Hence the deduction, it’s getting serious in Brazil and her place within the global structures.
One of the most corrupt p#gs out there Martin Schulz (DE/EU), visited jailed ex-president Lula just few days ago.. Lula was kicked out of the possibility again reentering the race..
Perhaps Brazil now joining (Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey, Iran, ..) group of more instability.
..meant to say, apparently visiting in some “envoy capacity” assignment convening some important communication..
Well—–
“When Marielle Franco, on March 14, was assassinated, Brazil’s entire political class, across the spectrum, expressed horror, disgust & outrage – except Jair Bolsonaro, who pointedly refused to comment: “I have nothing to say.” His aide said: his opinion would be “controversial.”
Yes, we realy could need some new economic «models» https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/9/5/17816808/sustainability-26-trillion-global-commission-economy-climate
This is nonsense, you are right.
A microscopic look at why the world is running out of sand
Humans are using more sand than the Earth is naturally producing, and that’s a problem for the global construction industry. But it turns out that the usefulness of sand depends on the science of each tiny little grain. We went on a sand scavenger hunt to collect some samples, look at them under a microscope, and try to figure out why sand scarcity is such a problem.
https://youtu.be/V2349cn0-T0
omg there is nuclear power plant in pakistan near Arabian sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi_Nuclear_Power_Complex
which is earthquake zone place
if this nuclear power plant get busted
the saudi arabia will be gone for ever
which means no oil
even pakistani scientists are fear about this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/outcry-and-fear-as-pakistan-builds-new-nuclear-reactors-in-dangerous-karachi/2015/03/05/425e8e70-bc59-11e4-9dfb-03366e719af8_story.html?noredirect=on
What do you do when you are desperate for not-too-expensive, reliable energy? Wind and solar don’t work for this purpose. India is already needing to import coal, oil and natural gas.
The people want food, clothing, and the basic necessities of life. It is hard to say no.
I thought nuclear plants were too expensive for anyone to build these days.
No problem!
The government finances them at a loss, and takes responsibility for keeping the waste safe for 24,000 years.
Just like anything else, the higher and tighter safety standards and the more complex the regulations, the more expensive they are to build and run.
It is my understanding that the cost of nuclear plants depends to a significant extent on the amount of safety systems put in place. In most of the West, the safety requirements are such that the costs become ridiculous, especially after Fukushima. I don’t really know whether they protect against the correct things, either. For example, one big risk is being without outside electricity, but historically no one has thought that lack of outside electricity could be a problem.
The cost of nuclear historically has been a whole lot lower in other parts of the world, where super-duper safety features are not a big share of the cost. The nuclear power plants built years ago were often relatively inexpensive to construct. The plants in Fukushima were relatively inexpensive to construct, for example. I think most French ones were also.
Most of the safety needed would involve commonsense measures like ensuring outside energy that you suggest. They need good planning in a swathe surrounding the plant, and excellent evacuation plan, I imagine.
Evacuation in a lot of parts of the world be impossible. India and Pakistan would no doubt have a problem. Even Tokyo would have a problem.
2500 km?
What’s wrong with radioactive oil?
For those who believe this is survivable…. you might consider taking this opportunity to run up a few thousand dollars on the card… buying last minute provisions….
Something wicked this way cometh… me thinks
We will still be commenting on this blog this time next year
Very probably, but 9 years after next year we very probably won’t be.
Chronologically precise predictions will make fools us all… That being said, I strongly suspect that GFC 2.0 will be properly underway by this time next year.
2019 is going to interesting for sure.
Probably the first year we have issues with oil supply, from a geological perspective.
These are confusing times. Art Berman can’t make up his mind about which way prices will go:
“Higher oil prices are inevitable at some time sooner than later because of under-investment over the last several years of low prices. This is compounded by lack of big discoveries and ever-present geopolitical supply interruptions and outages…
“…The global economy is more fragile than ever as debt continues to grow and has not been successfully “inflated away.” A recession in emerging economies may move a delicate oil price-consumption balance toward over-supply. Combined IEA, OPEC and EIA market balance forecasts suggest this by mid-2019 or sooner.
“Slowing global economic growth in fact is probably the main downside factor for oil demand and price going forward…
“Prices are more likely to remain in the current $65-$70 range than to move much higher. The world has ample supply for now but tighter supply seems probable before year-end in a business-as-usual world.
“If the global economy weakens, it’s anyone’s guess where oil prices may go.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Shale-Wont-Trigger-The-Next-Financial-Crisis.html
I think we will be commenting on this blog for as long as our dear host keeps it alive.
Come on. I have homes in 5 countries and 4 states. Don’t we all. Honestly, what could go wrong?
I expect you are kidding.
Don’t make him mad :
“Trump’s presidential run was an attempt to prove his popularity – triggered by jealousy that, in 2015, NBC had offered pop singer Gwen Stefani a larger fee to appear on The Voice than it was paying him for The Apprentice. Moore said: “He’d been talking about running for president since 1988, but he didn’t really want to be president. There’s no penthouse in the White House. And he doesn’t want to live in a black city. He was trying to pit NBC against another network, but it just went off the rails.”
Maybe you should spend your time on https://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/
Obama Blasts Trump For “The Crazy Stuff That’s Coming Out Of This White House” And Not Denouncing Nazis
“This is not normal. These are extraordinary times.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/otilliasteadman/obama-blasts-trump
Obama… water-boy for the El ders…..
And then we have this — Orwellian … development :
‘Obama’s speech — at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was receiving an ethics award’
I wonder how the Libyans feel about this….
I found this interesting:
Is the President mentally deranged? He seems to be completely in control.
Is the American public to remove a standing President from office for his seemingly impulsive change-of-direction leadership. He is incalculable by design.
In an article published in the San Jose Mercury News entitled “Trump promised this kind of presidency – unpredictable, ad hoc and impulsive,” the report says “Trump has shown repeatedly he is prepared to ignore orthodoxy.”
Some time ago Trump said this about telegraphing US foreign policy:
“We must, as a nation, be more unpredictable,” he said during a major foreign policy address as a candidate one year ago. “We are totally predictable. We tell them everything. We send troops, we tell them. We are sending something else, we have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable, and we have to be unpredictable starting now.”
Says an article in The Wall Street Journal: In his campaign-season book “Crippled America,” he wrote: “I don’t want people to know exactly what I’m doing—or thinking. I like being unpredictable. It keeps them off balance.” He said a business associate described unpredictability as “one of my better qualities.” It’s clear that Mr. Trump thinks that, in most cases, being unpredictable is better than being transparent, especially when trying to keep enemies abroad guessing about American intentions.
Fortune magazine says it best: “But such surprising reversals shouldn’t be a surprise at all. They are the essence of who Donald Trump is.”
Trump is erratic by intention. He threatened war with North Korea to pressure that pretend country to abandon development of nuclear weapons. None of his predecessors dared to even tackle the problem. Come to find out President Trump found defense against North Korea to be one of the largest government outlays. Trump is a moneyman. He also wants out of NATO and out of the United Nations because they are huge drains of federal funds.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/09/bill-sardi/trump-insurrection/
Oil producing nations still hurting:
“Inflation in Venezuela broke the 200 per cent barrier for a single month in August, bringing it to 200,000 per cent over the last year, the sidelined opposition-controlled parliament said on Wednesday (Sept 5)… It means prices have increased by almost 35,000 per cent since the start of the year and 200,000 per cent since August 31, 2017.”
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/venezuela-breaks-200-monthly-inflation-record-opposition-says
“Growth in Saudi Arabia’ non-oil private sector has slowed to its lowest rate on record so far in 2018, according to the latest Emirates NBD Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI). While the growth of the private sector rose in the last three months compared to the first five months of 2018, it is the slowest on record for the first eight months of any year since the survey started.”
https://www.arabianbusiness.com/politics-economics/403686-saudi-arabias-non-oil-private-sector-growth-weakest-on-record
“The Iranian currency hit a new low against the US dollar as the country’s economy continues to weaken amid fears that the re-imposition of sanctions by the United States would stifle the oil exports from the country… The Iranian public has also been vocal about the weakening economy with protestors hitting more than 80 urban centres in the country, which has led to several deaths.”
https://www.thenational.ae/business/economy/iranian-rial-hits-record-low-against-dollar-on-mounting-economic-woes-1.766554
Let’s put aside the beginning of the end and ask a question:
If cooked food is what made us human…. if I feed my dog only cooked food for a few months…. will she be able to speak?
A question worthy of Ali G, FE. 😀
No. But if you eat dog food you will be able to bark. My source says India is the next to fall.
“My source says India is the next to fall.”
I do indeed.
My source says Argentina will be next to fall
or Egypt
Could be Pakistan– but India is a given.
Argentina? Don’t think so– rich country, small population.
No, but when she learns how to make a fire and cook her own meals, she will give you a melancholic look and say: Sorry Eddy, but I’m hungry.
Europe starting to look like another emerging market:
“Currency crises in Brazil and Argentina, economic turmoil in Turkey and a trade-war scare in Asia have rocked European equities, as some of the region’s biggest companies have significant exposure to these regions. The 30-day correlation between MSCI Europe and MSCI Emerging Markets has risen to 0.8, the highest in almost seven months, and up from 0.1 seen in June.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-05/as-pain-spreads-europe-s-looking-like-another-emerging-market
“Average UK advertised salaries have dropped month-on-month for the third consecutive month, as employers show signs of concern over the impact of a no-deal Brexit, according to Adzuna… In line with signs of salary stagnation, UK vacancy counts have also seen a slide in recent times, with a drop of 7.2% in full time advertised jobs between August 2017 and August 2018.”
http://www.onrec.com/news/statistics-and-trends/brexit-anxiety-hits-the-uk-job-market-as-advertised-salaries-slump
“The European Commission — the executive arm of the EU — requires government spending to not exceed 3 percent of a member country’s gross domestic product (GDP). But there have been confusing and conflicting messages from Italy’s leaders over whether they will stick within these budget parameters or not… Italy has already had a warning shot from ratings agency Fitch which cut the outlook on Italy’s debt rating on Friday to “negative” from “stable,” citing concerns about the government’s “new and untested nature” and its pledges to increase spending.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/italys-2019-budget-guide.html
I keep saying “demand” is all-important. Falling salaries/fewer vacancies are not a good sign.
Europe doesn’t/t need this!
“Asian shares skidded for a sixth straight session on Thursday, oil slipped and safe-haven gold gained with investor confidence shaken by turmoil in emerging markets and jitters over a potentially severe escalation in the U.S.-China trade war.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asian-shares-a-sea-of-red-on-trade-emerging-market-anxieties-idUKKCN1LM04D
“The U.S. trade deficit rose to a five-month high in July, with the politically sensitive gap with China hitting a record high, which economists said could embolden the Trump administration to aggressively pursue its “America First” agenda.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-tradefigures/weak-exports-push-u-s-trade-deficit-to-five-month-high-idUSKCN1LL1ME
“The [Chinese] government’s moves to improve investor confidence come as the Chinese stock market has recorded the worst performance of any major financial market so far this year, and as fears grow that the US will escalate trade tensions further by imposing tariffs on an additional $200 billion of Chinese imports as early as this week.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/china-economy/article/2162937/china-tries-prop-investor-sentiment-amid-worries-over
“Worst performance of stock market” soon becomes popping of debt bubbles, I fear.
“Argentina is in an economic freefall… Walmart announced this past week that it was closing 13 stores in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, including its flagship store at DOT, which was shuttered within a day. There weren’t any employees at the store on Wednesday.”
https://abcnews.go.com/International/walmart-stores-shuttered-overnight-argentina-faces-financial-collapse/story?id=57618138
“The Indian rupee has fallen to an all-time low against the dollar.. The rupee fell to 71.785 per dollar on Wednesday, although it recovered somewhat to trade at 71.915 to the dollar in early Thursday trading.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/indian-rupee-dollar-exchange-rate-all-time-low-investors-emerging-markets-a8525156.html
OMG….. Wal-Mart closing. This is serious. What am I supposed to do when they close my Wal-Mart????? There are none of those cliffs to drive off like they used to show on OFW It’s all flat ground around here . I don’t understand the stuff about debt and central banks and what ever it is that the government subsidies. But Wal-Mart closing i understand
OMG. We’ll bring in 2020 around the campfire.
There are some really fancy Walmarts in China. I was impressed. It seemed to play a different role in China than the US. Walmart had really nice grocery stores in China, besides a lot of other merchandise.
The discussion is about Argentina. I don’t know what role Walmart plays in Argentina, but it may very well fill an important shopping niche.
“Emerging Market economies are in serious trouble. Increased US borrowing, which is helping the US economy and its stock market for now, is hurting many other countries’ currencies. Current EM problems can indeed merge into a much larger global debt crisis, just like the subprime crisis became a global financial crisis.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4204186-em-crisis-can-lead-global-debt-crisis-just-like-subprime-back-2007
“Chinese stocks are is in a bear market. Turkey’s currency has collapsed. South Africa has stumbled into a recession. Not even an IMF bailout has stemmed the bleeding in Argentina… The trouble could spread, infecting other emerging markets or even Wall Street. That’s what happened two decades ago during the Asian financial crisis. “There is a fear of contagion, similar to 1997-1998,” said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors.
“That has already started to happen.”
https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/05/investing/stocks-emerging-markets-argentina-turkey/index.html
“For stocks, it’s 222 days. For currencies, 155 days. For local government bonds, 240 days. This year’s rout in emerging markets has lasted so long that it’s taken even the most ardent bears by surprise. Not one of the seven biggest selloffs since the financial crisis — including the so-called taper tantrum — inflicted such pain for so long on the developing world.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-05/emerging-markets-go-to-goodbye-from-good-buy-as-selloff-persists
“Investor anxiety about a missed debt payment by one of the world’s largest developing nations is jacking up the cost of credit-default swaps from the “BATS” — Brazil, Argentina, Turkey and South Africa — to multi-year highs. Analysts are taking note. Turkey and Argentina have “substantial” medium-term default risks…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-05/default-fears-mount-for-bats-as-emerging-market-pain-deepens
“Investors are sticking to the long-term investing mantra and know that emerging markets will go through periods of volatility, or the worst is yet to come. Because investors have not bailed on emerging markets positions — and it has been a popular trade this year, second only to the iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF (IEFA) among all ETFs, with $10.7 billion in new assets — the exodus could still be in the making.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/investors-not-selling-emerging-markets-and-thats-surprising-or-scary.html
Ouch!
My life is starting to flash before my eyes….
I do hope that never happens to me, FE. Most of mine has been dreadfully embarrassing.
flashing in the highlands is not recommended (midges etc)
“Despite the volatility and brief correction earlier this year, the U.S. stock market is back to making record highs in the past couple weeks. To many observers, this market now seems downright bulletproof as it keeps going higher and higher as it has for nearly a decade in direct defiance of the naysayers’ warnings.
“Unfortunately, this unusual market strength is not evidence of a strong, organic economy, but of an extremely unhealthy, artificial bubble economy that will end in a crisis that will be even worse than we experienced in 2008.
“The reason for America’s stock market and economic bubbles is quite simple: ultra-cheap credit/ultra-low interest rates…
“Low interest rates/low bond yields have enabled a corporate borrowing spree in which total outstanding nonfinancial U.S. corporate debt surged by over $2.5 trillion, or 40% from its peak in 2008. The recent borrowing boom caused total outstanding U.S. corporate debt to rise to over 45% of GDP, which is even worse than the level reached during the past several credit cycles.
“U.S. corporations have been using much of their borrowed capital to buy back their own stock, increase dividends, and fund mergers and acquisitions – activities that are known for boosting stock prices and executive bonuses. Unfortunately, U.S. corporations have been focusing on these activities that reward shareholders in the short-term, while neglecting longer-term business investments – hubristic behavior that is typical during a bubble…
“In a bubble, the stock market becomes overpriced relative to its underlying fundamentals such as earnings, revenues, assets, book value, etc. The current bubble cycle is no different: the U.S. stock market is as overvalued as it was at major generational peaks. According to the cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings ratio (a smoothed price-to-earnings ratio), the U.S. stock market is more overvalued than it was in 1929, right before the stock market crash and Great Depression…
“To keep it simple, the current U.S. stock market bubble will pop due to the ending of the conditions that created it in the first place: cheap credit/loose monetary conditions…
“The Fed claims to be able to engineer a “soft landing,” but that virtually never happens in reality. It’s even less likely to happen in this current bubble cycle because of how long it has gone on and how distorted the financial markets and economy have become due to ultra-cheap credit conditions.
“History has proven time and time again that market meddling by central banks leads to massive market distortions and eventual crises. As a society, we have not learned the lessons that we were supposed to learn from 1999 and 2008, therefore we are doomed to repeat them.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2018/09/05/disaster-is-inevitable-when-americas-stock-market-bubble-bursts/#d4ec0351b82c
“A new study from Northwestern Mutual has found that many Americans are sinking in debt, and don’t expect to climb out of it any time soon; the study found that more than one in 10 Americans say they will be in debt for the rest of their lives. The reality, however, may be bleaker.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/northwestern-mutual-how-many-americans-say-theyll-always-be-in-debt.html
The Federal Reserve is not good at engineering soft landings.
The Germans are clearly delusional … or at least they were…. when major manufacturers threaten to leave due to high power costs…. reality hits home….
How to Kill an Industry
Germany’s massive push into renewable energy has a dark side. As green policies drive up the cost of power, entire industries are shrinking.
https://global.handelsblatt.com/companies/how-to-kill-an-industry-479057
This article is a couple years old, but it makes an important point. Germany is losing industry to other countries, including the US, because of its higher cost of power. Its citizens are also suffering from the high prices.
No, actually we are not suffering. We don’t need that much electricity. Winter is not to cold, summers are not to hot. Most people live in appartments. We don’t use tumble driers, washing machines, stoves, etc. are very, very efficient now. Refrigerators are in a reasonable size. A four-person homestead actually needs 3000 kWh/year.
Of course you do not need much electricity…..and your industry will utilize little hamster cages to generate the power they require to operate.
LOL!
+++++++++++++++
That is an ideal response…. when faced with a total f789ing re tar d
the germans are delusional since 1933
Hm, they are still expanding their cheap labor factories in CEE, Balkans, Russia, and even inside the US (Mexi work).. and repatriating the mega profits home.. to burn it maniacally in their pet projects such as otherwise collapsed demand in Southern Europe or their chief domestic delusion of UBI for migrants and ballooning additional costs/services..
What a system, yuck!
Well, the Huns finally got an Empire that has lasted longer than 6 years……
Just getting back what Woodrow Wilson stole from the victorious German Empire back in 1918. Several countries in Eastern Europe have no reason to exist.
The problem with this claim, is that for example, historically Austria always in the end prevailed, and had better politics (and everything), now they have got (baby) Metternich v2.0 in power for decades.. Or Poland can probably now roll over the Bundeswehr in few days/hours, but why would they, better wait to further new german-muslim-african induced self destruction..
99.00 mbpd july 2018 according to http://euanmearns.com/oil-production-vital-statistics-september-2018/
Can we reach 100, 110?
This is a new record for Total Liquids, breaking the previous record set in November, 2017.
Based on peak oil talk that has been going on since my interest in the topic in 2005, there didn’t seem to be anyway it could ever hit 99 mbpd, but here we are, so I say yes, we can hit 100, then 110, then who knows maybe 120, 130? There sure ended up being a whole lot more oil out there than peak oilers previously thought. There must have been a lot of information geologists type posters didn’t have.
The geologists really didn’t understand the problem. The problem tends to be an affordability problem, if the oil price gets too high. But if the average cost of energy in the mix (including oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, etc) can stay low enough, and there is enough growing debt at a low enough interest rate, the would-be peak oil problem can be hidden for a long time. Actually, there seems to evidence that total energy per capita is flattening out, which is the problem causing all of the fighting. So we are getting to the end of the situation where oil supply can continue to rise. And raising interest rates tends to make the problem worse. Selling QE securities adds further problems.
It has been the availability of coal and natural gas that has allowed the average energy price to stay low enough, so far. Ramping up of coal in China and elsewhere really helped. Also, the low prices that subsidized renewables seem to have acted “sort of” beneficial, temporarily, as they are working on collapsing the electric grid system. The US has hidden the subsidies better than most countries; the subsidies are to a significant extent reducing the tax liability of big companies, instead of directly hurting the system elsewhere. In Europe, the subsidies get fed back into the rates, especially those of individual citizens. The subsidies under the European approach tend to damage “demand” for goods and services in general.
“You exhibit a total misunderstanding of the significance of a currency collapse across the EMs.” Fast Eddy
What am I, a banker?
Why exactly are the EM currencies collapsing?
The Fed has been acting as the central bank of the world through Zirp and QE. Now the Fed is turning the tide and lightening through rising rates and QT.
The investments in the EM will now prove viable or not.
You don’t need to be a banker… just need to have an IQ above room temperature…. or a grade 3 education … and you’d be able to comprehend this
Fine. This is the easy part of the equation.
The hard part is show that there are no viable investments left due to falling net energy from energy production, which is the root cause of the deflationary pressure on all assets.
All assets are becoming worthless. Some at a faster rate. A nations collapsing currency is a measure of far down they have fallen of the net energy cliff. Venezuela is the prime example.
Some nations will soon no longer exist, since they are too energy intensive to keep alive. Something leaner and more brutal will try to replace them. Syria and Yemen are fine examples of the next phase.
jupiviv said:
“the ruling clique, who used to indulge in unimaginable luxuries, continued to live as befitted their new status as petty kings/warlords, until they didn’t”
Also, you’re talking essentially about the changing fortunes of a dynasty, not a civilisation, let alone an era. For most of history, the vast majority of people experienced no radical alteration in the energy/economic dynamic of their lives due to barbarian or other invasions.
I answer:
The ruling clique in Nanking did live quite well. They were not petty kings or warlords – their standard of living did not decline at all.
It was not a dynasty – it was six dynasties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Dynasties
with the capital at Jiankang (Nanking).
Of course, the face of Emperors changed but the ruling cliques didn’t. In other words, when an emperor failed to fulfill the need of the ruling clique, he was replaced by someone else.
But the Civilization did survive. It did look like the Chinese Civilization was going to die, but the Nanking govt did keep the flame alive for 280 years, which is not a short time – it is still longer than the entire life span of USA, even if we start counting from 1776.
The majority of people, as peasants, didn’t really care – they just hoped the new oppressor was a bit less harsh than the previous one. Still, the customs of the conquerors did spread over time.
Did you even read the page you linked? The six dynasties weren’t coterminous, and nothing is mentioned about their standard of living (if that is even measurable in this case). Also, nothing is mentioned about Chinese civilisation itself risking death. Instability, invasion and war don’t necessarily imply collapse.
You are equivocating the natural cycles experienced by any society/civilisation/economy with the end of our current, globalised, FF based civilisation and economy due to the depletion of the vital resources and infrastructure that sustain it. The correct comparison is with civilisations where something similar did happen, like late antiquity or the Puebloans.
The six dynasties were conterminous, except for a short hiatus between 280 and 306 (The Western Jin Empire, which conquered Wu on 280, began its own disintegration on 300 CE, and although it nominally held all of China till 316, by 306 it lost control over most of its supposed boundaries.)
I have studied this era for a long time. The Six Dynasties era was full of crazed emperors doing all kind of antics, which means there were enough resources for these people to run crazy. And the northern barbarians failed to conquer them, which means there were enough resources to hold them off. It would get too tedious for people not from Asian background so I only tell what is really needed.
The nomads had no taste over Chinese civilization , but the survival of a Chinese regime at Nanking meant more stuff were being produced in Chinese by those who followed the old customs, which kept it alive. It was like “How the Irish Saved Civilization” situation.
The Puebloans just moved away when their environment no longer supported them. Same story. They will move to somewhere else, and since virtually educated person on earth at least reads English somewhat, and virtually every technical paper is in English, there will be plenty of place to go.
Brent 77.14
Brent 77.14!
Brent 77.14 OMG!
isn’t it supposed to go over 80?
so sad…
77.09
Since just about every currency is losing against the dollar, oil is getting more expensive for all nonmericans, like $100 expensive soon!
India. The Biggest Risk In Emerging Markets?
https://www.dlacalle.com/en/india-the-biggest-risk-in-emerging-markets/
Notice how fast this sort of thing spreads….
That limits to growth thing again. Darn. Imagine the energy consumption if even half of India and China lived like folks here in the US. Growth is certainly over at this point. Contraction is all that lies ahead. Question is who or what will break the camels back.
Brexit? We need gambling odds.
My bet has been on India going first for a long time. Intuitively the mix of problems there is the most intractable, although this is irrelevant given the rest of us are lagging by mere seconds so to speak.
my money also has been on India for awhile…
more relevant is how long the “lagging” will go on until it reaches where each of us are in The Core…
2019 is “mere seconds” away…
looks like “we” will make it through 2018 intact…
though “THE story of 2018” is looking with more certainty to be the EM meltdowns…
I know what a deer feels like… looking into the headlights…. it’s like – I can see the car approaching… and I am just waiting for it to hit me…. I am paralyzed… unable to move out of the way
A bit like vertigo
It’s worse, FE: unlike the dazzled deer, we know just what is happening to us.
At least it liberates the mind from all the trivial crap……
India’s big problem is the rapidly growing amount of fossil fuels that it needs to import.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/india-energy-consumption-by-fuel-plus-consumption-to-2017.png
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2018/09/how-can-they-lie-to-us-so-blatantly.html
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2018/08/so-you-think-science-will-save-world.html
Ugo Bardi’s latest couple of articles are excellent, probably the best I’ve read from him recently. But wait, the guy is clearly left-leaning, exhibits typical left-wing distaste of Trump/alt-right bs, yet is sceptical of centrist/left media stuff as well? How are the alt-right text-chat crusaders supposed to call him out on his hypocrisy? It’s not fair!
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-empire-of-lies.html
A 2016 article linked in the penultimate new article, which is also excellent.
“Today, every statement from a government, or from an even remotely “official” source, seems to generate a parallel and opposite statement of denial. Unfortunately, the opposite of a lie is not necessarily the truth, and that has originated baroque castles of lies, counter-lies, and counter-counter lies. Think of the story of the 9/11 attacks in New York. Somewhere, hidden below the mass of legends and myths that have piled up on this story, there has to be the truth; some kind of truth. But how to find it when you can’t trust anything you read on the Web? Or think of peak oil. At the simplest level of conspiratorial interpretation, peak oil can be seen as a reaction to the lies of oil companies that hide the depletion of their resources. But you may also see peak oil as a scam created by oil companies that try to hide the fact that their resources are actually abundant – even infinite in the diffuse legend of “abiotic oil”. But, for others, the idea that peak oil is a scam created in order to hide abundance may be a higher order scam created in order to hide scarcity. Eve higher order conspiracy theories are possible. It is a fractal universe of lies, where you have no reference point to tell you where you are.
Eventually, it is a problem of epistemology. The same that goes back to Pontius Pilate’s statement “what is truth?” Where are we supposed to find truth in our world? Perhaps in science? But science is rapidly becoming a marginal sect of people who mumble of catastrophes to come. People whom nobody believes any longer after they failed to deliver their promises of energy too cheap to meter, space travel, and flying cars. Then, we tend to seek it in such things as “democracy” and to believe that a voting majority somehow defines “truth”. But democracy has become a ghost of itself: how can citizens make an informed choice after that we discovered the concept that we call “perception management” (earlier on called “propaganda”)?”
https://www.oftwominds.com/photos2018/Currencies9-18.jpg
Slip sliding away…..
…a dollar shortage was predicted yonks ago by one of the blogs I occasionally read, but now I can’t recall.
Yep, that appeared in the recent CHSmith’s article, not a totally bad list since the industrial world ranking #1 hell hole in self destruction mode Sweden is right there..
There is plenty of middle class backpatters over here indeed. The hypocrisy will be brought down hard by the el’ Trumpo realpolitik.
Not that the Swedes are putting up a ‘fight’ with ‘elections’ coming up in a few days now.
https://i0-wp-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/i0.wp.com/wordsporn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/1515781705_890_20-popcorn-memes-for-when-youre-just-here-for-the-comments.jpg
is still growing in south Africa
mg.co.za/article/2018-09-05-sa-energy-will-still-be-two-thirds-coal-in-2030-radebe
is still growing in india
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/indl-goods/svs/metals-mining/coal-india-supplied-12-more-coal-than-last-year-to-the-power-sector/articleshow/65674505.cms
is still growing in germany
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/06/635911260/germany-turns-to-brown-coal-to-fill-its-energy-gap
From the latter article:
“(Expanding coal production) is undermining progress the country (Germany) has made in expanding cleaner, renewable energy production. ” – Ummm, no. You need coal to expand “renewables”. All those wind turbines do nothing to displace coal consumption. Not only is coal needed to build and maintain the “renewable” infrastructure, coal is needed to generate electricity when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. So, the more wind an solar you put on the grid, the more coal fired power plants you need to offset the intermittency of “renewables”.
https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2018/08/06/2751254_nicholson_brown_coal_image_4_custom-9b538b74c08642ddd8712bbcc90c180913ce787b-s800-c85.jpg
Climate protesters discuss how to save the village of Pödelwitz, Saxony, from being demolished to make way for a brown coal mine.
These people are clueless.
See my last post….
I think Germany is starting to figure out that adding wind turbines and solar panels is like adding parasites to the electric grid!
Leaches that feed off of the benefits of fossil fuel powered electricity.
The spare power will be funneled into the batteries of the plug in hybrid vehicle transition scheme currently ongoing.
I estimate there will be a ban on selling pure oil burner passenger cars and trucks within a 3 year period in most of Europe.
Is it a tractable way forward? Doubtful, when the real mass transport is rail bound or is self powered or electrically assisted self powered.
http://evworld.com/press/navigant_ecyclesales_graph.png
https://dakrolak.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/303739_10100231881269949_1718702824_n.jpg
The so-called “Soros kids or orphans” mostly young fanatics (or half wits) dispersed through the Red, Green, Social Democrat, Piraten, and even many notionally conservative liberal parties across Europe and the World..
And he is not the only, apart from such donors many gov budgets directly fund this..
Oh cut them some slack. I once had a positive vision of solar and wind.. then the gov’t money trough schemers inundated my area with solar farms, which often have rabbit tobacco growing through the panels because they skimp on the lawn mowing of 100s of acres. Furthermore they’re all fenced off, which means more peril for wildlife.
I recall the debates in doomerosphere at the highest peak of Energiewende propaganda sturm, how on Earth is somebody gambling money on buying these worthless coal companies in Germany, when everything from now on is wind and sun.. lolz,
..apparently another trade of the century..
PS official German gov doctrine today is to massively up natgas electricity a little bit of coal, and not so much aggressive growth on renewable anymore (aka stop)..
The fact that renewables are part of the German energy mix is proof they do have their place in an energy mix. The fact that EV’s are part of the transportation mix is proof they are viable. The transition to renewables will occur in fits and starts, but as giant Tesla batteries are added and other renewables tech improvements occur, the transition will continue. It may not even be a case in which renewables carry the whole load, but certainly countries like Germany and states like California will test how much of a transition is possible. At least give them credit for trying instead of giving up and presuming it can’t be done. How many people in 1900 would have thought autos would replace most horse drawn carriages by 1920? How many people in SF in 1920 would have thought just 17 years later a bridge (the golden gate) would replace the need to ferry autos and trucks? How many people in 1975 would have thought most people would have personal computers in the near future? How many in 1960 would have thought satellite dishes would in most cases replace giant roof top antennas. Maybe these examples are all not as challenging as a transition to renewables, but it’s certainly worth considering how fast things can change unexpectedly.
Remember, postulating something is impossible, doesn’t make it an absolute truth. Many possibilities exist if people continue to refine, improve and test. Or as Mariel Hemingway says to Woody Allen, “You need to have a little faith in people.” In this case, have a little faith in the transition. We’re going to find out here in CA just how far it can be taken.
“The fact that renewables are part of the German energy mix is proof they do have their place in an energy mix.”
I think the fact that renewables are part of the Germany energy mix is mostly proof that Germany is desperate for an energy solution. Germany will subsidize a pseudo energy solution for a very long time, annoying its neighbors greatly with its unwanted bursts of electricity.
Where did all the r e tards like Chrome Mags etc come from? Is there a sale on Re tards somewhere?
I’ll buy all of them and stick them in a sack with a brick and dump them in the Marianas Trench… on second thought no need for the brick…. plenty of stones in their heads already
Why proof of viability?
Existence does not prove that at all – it might just be a fantastic global mal-investment.
Speculation often brings things into existence which have no real substance.
Indeed most probably a malinvestment of a massive scale, specially since there is not a lot of dispatchable power to compensate for the intermittency in Germany, say for example, compared with Sweden and Norway.
But the Germans certainly got what they asked for in terms of energy and immigration policy.
Go Mutti, Go!!!!
👏🏻
Sunshine is the only income we’ve got. Fossil fuels are stored Sunshine. Too many people for the income. Too many people for the income. 7 billion + people doesn’t work on this planet. Too many people…… Too many people…… Too many…
Coal isn’t dead. It’s not even dying
Coal is clinging to the top spot in power generation, accounting for as much of the world’s electricity as it did two decades ago, despite heightened concerns about climate change and a slowdown in financing for projects involving the dirtiest of fossil fuels.
U.S. exports of coal more than doubled in 2017 and are set to grow this year, according to the Energy Information Administration. Countries across Asia and Africa are expected to increase their use of coal for expanding power generation through 2040, says the EIA
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-coals-power-persists-1535976000
The key is to keep cost down. No matter how polluting coal is, it is very often the lowest cost alternative.
Should have noted the article I saw describing a particularly carbon absorptive plant. So I’m mixing up my own thoughts with what I sort of remember. The plant goes next to carbon-exhaust outlets. It absorbs a lot of the carbon, then must be discarded. My particular slant on it would perhaps be miles of exhaust conduits with little holes in the piping. Absorbing plants draped over a mesh casing for the tubes absorbs a lot of the carbon and is buried, to be replaced by another set of already started plants “scrubbers.”
And… AND …. in spite of that not so little fact….
There are those who holler ‘how can G W be a ho ax… how could it be possible for so many people to be involved’
Wake the F789 UP!
Year after year after year — there are these BS conferences – the right people fly in on the latest oil powered private jets… eat dinner — drink wine — bang high priced escorts…. sign documents promising to TO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS NOW!!!!
And then they go back — and watch as record amounts of coal are stuffed into the ovens…
You’d really have to be seriously f789ing reta rd ed —- not to see through what is an obvious charade…
It’s actually comical if you really think about it….. The Onion would have a difficult time topping this
Try watching this without laughing.
“Solar panels. Solar panels everywhere.”
https://youtu.be/_ZwguLJVxsM
I think Elon Musk is actually having a very public nervous breakdown now:
British cave rescue hero Vernon Unsworth’s girlfriend today reacted with fury over claims by billionaire Elon Musk that he is a child rapist. Woranan Ratrawiphukkun, 40, who has been with Unsworth, 63, for seven years and runs her own nail salon, said Musk’s claims that he married a 12-year-old child were ‘laughable’.
The Tesla CEO, 47, originally called Mr Unsworth a ‘pedo guy’ after he criticised the submarine he provided to save the 12 boys and their teacher from being crushed in a cave…
“Musk’s increasingly erratic behavior on Twitter – including an announcement he later retracted that Tesla would be taken private, causing trading in the company’s shares to be halted – led to a New York Times interview in which he confessed to be exhausted from constant work…
‘”I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you f****** a**hole,’ Musk’s email read.
“‘He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time.’
“Musk added: ‘I f****** hope he sues me.'”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6132427/Elon-Musk-accuses-British-cave-diver-moving-Thailand-child-bride.html
Ms. Rat should first take a name which can be pronounced by English speakers before pressing her claims.
What an odd comment, Kulmthestatusquo. It is her partner, Vernon Unsworth who is initiating legal action – in the US, the UK and Thailand, I gather. The latter nation could impose a custodial sentence on Elon Musk if he is found guilty.
I would be most unhappy if I were a Tesla shareholder.
“Tesla’s stock and bond prices dropped on Wednesday after chief executive Elon Musk renewed an attack on a British caver whom he had previously insulted on social media and a day after Mercedes unveiled a challenge to the electric car maker.
The stock dropped 2.8 per cent to $280.74, the lowest level since late May, following a 4.2 per cent decline on Tuesday after Mercedes introduced its first fully electric car in Stockholm.
“The $1.8 billion high-yield bond Tesla issued a year ago hit a record low price on Wednesday. It also became more expensive to insure Tesla’s bonds against default.
“Tesla’s stock has lost a quarter of its value since August 7, when Mr Musk tweeted that he had secured funding for a previously undisclosed plan to take Tesla private.
Musk on August 24 abandoned that plan, but he faces lawsuits and a US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the factual accuracy of his tweet that funding for the deal was “secured.” The incident is weighing on investor confidence and has hurt the credibility of Mr Musk, long viewed by Tesla supporters as its most valuable asset.
“Also raising concerns about Mr Musk’s leadership and focus as Tesla struggles to increase production of its Model 3 mass market sedan, BuzzFeed News reported late on Tuesday that Mr Musk, in an email to the news site, called British cave diver Vernon Unsworth a “child ra*pist.””
https://www.thenational.ae/business/markets/tesla-bond-and-stocks-slump-as-investors-concerns-grow-1.767524
“More than 18,000 car owners in the UK identified the Tesla Model S as the least reliable car out of 31 brands and 159 models.
“Motoring magazine What Car? gave the Tesla Model S a reliability rating of just 50.9%, with owners identifying issues with the car’s electrical systems and bodywork… owners reported bent seat frames, broken door handles, and failures with parking sensors.”
http://uk.businessinsider.com/survey-uk-drivers-say-tesla-model-s-most-unreliable-car-2018-9
With Tesla’s current financial problems, which direction would you expect this problem go: better or worse?
I noticed a link on Facebook to this 2015 article from National Geographic called “Apocalypse Pig: The Last Antibiotic Begins to Fail”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/11/21/mcr-gene-colistin/
The article goes on to talk about the fact that the drug is being widely used in agriculture in China. It goes on to explain how resistance to this drug is building up and seems to be easily transferrable among bacteria. These bacteria affect humans as well. (Or perhaps the explanation is a little more complex that this.)
I found this very recent article from India as well:
https://www.newdelhitimes.com/use-of-colistin-in-poultry-farms-must-be-stopped-immediately/
The above article talks about the need to stop the use of Colistin in poultry farms in India. The article says:
It goes on to say,
The concluding paragraph starts:
Just more evidence that we can’t keep our complex and artificial world running too much longer before we reach the crisis stage.
Much more urgent: African pig disease. Now in China. No remedy, all pigs are usually dying. In Europe it is comming its way from the east to the west. Countries are building fences to prevent wild pigs to spread the disease. But is is hopeless, beause the virus is spread by sausage and things like that. Romania is so badly infested this summer, they consider to not raise and let enter any pigs for all a year.
‘It’s not if, it’s when’: the deadly pig disease spreading around the world
Swine fever has made its way into China, home to half the world’s pigs. Farmers in Estonia are already counting the cost
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/03/its-not-if-its-when-the-deadly-pig-disease-spreading-around-the-world
Just wait till BAU goes…. there will be no way to treat or eradicate these diseases… they will spread like wildfire…
Here in NZ we have this: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/104276676/mycoplasma-bovis-cow-disease-to-cost-farmers-278m
Not to worry though…. every cow will be shot and eaten soon after the shops are emptied….
Pork is a big source of protein around the world… imagine if… most of the pig population was wiped out… that drove the price of other meats through the roof … causing food riots… and taking down BAU…
How funny would that be!
Revenge of the piggies, after being abused for so long.
Screaming away while their throats are cut; made to live in disgusting sties, when they prefer to roam free in the woods….
Almost tempted to cheer!
Is it really a problem except for the pig farmers?
Stop eating factory produced meat products altogether.
I can not see the problem here.
When the going gets tuff, the Tuff get going
Mudgirls: Meet the women building their own sustainable homes
They have worked to spread the word that even a new mother can build her own home, and it can be earth-friendly
https://www.salon.com/2018/08/25/mudgirls-meet-the-women-building-their-own-sustainable-homes_partner/
Ive always lived pretty week to week,” she says. “Most people I know do, so I figure most people I know are two weeks away from being homeless. They have no inheritance, no parents to pay their bills.” It’s all about “relying on your own resourcefulness.”
Kenny is part of the Mudgirls collective, a non-hierarchical natural building group of 11 women, with no boss. Together, they make decisions collectively, swap administrative roles, host workshops, and build houses.
The British Columbia, Canada, based collective came together ten years ago out of their own primal need for housing and concern for the future of the planet
Clare Kenny is a natural builder. She uses natural and up-cycled salvaged materials to build houses, incorporating everything from straw bales to old tires.
“If I had money, I wouldn’t have thought of this technology at all. Because I had no money, no skills, I was led into this path. How can I build a house with no money, and no one to do it for me? It’s super cheap—even free.”
“We felt some urgency around this,” the collective writes in their book, “Mudgirls Manifesto.” “We were a bunch of urbanites and new mothers with no money and few skills. We needed to provide shelter for our families, believing that the world was going to end next year. If this was going to actually happen, we were going to have to enter into a whole new set of relationships with materials, culture, and economics in order to make it happen.”
The world, of course, didn’t end, but what was born is shifting how we think about building, and it’s giving women access to the ability to build their own homes in a way that was, not so long ago, unthinkable in the Western, male-dominated, hyper-capitalism world.
Doesn’t matter how well they build the house. The landowners will destroy them with flamethrowers, with the police, paid by the locals (=landowners), looking the other way.
When this system unravels ….land titles will be meaningless, no police to come to enforce “laws”. Besides that was not the point of my post at all…just shows there are world’s without money… necessity is the mother of adapting.
Please read the full article before commenting….just saying.
CTG should know lessons from thousands of years of Chinese history.
When order broke down, there was no shortage of people who claimed to be Emperors. They were usually connected to the local gentry who wanted to live secure and comfortable. After a series of fights during which a lot of excess mouths were destroyed, there was a new Emperor who promised reforms, and after a couple of generations things much flowed the same was as the old dynasty.
The biggest collapse occurred during around 310 CE when nomads, some of them Caucasians (for example, ‘the Jie people whose king Shi Le overthrew the West Jin dynasty which ruled all of China), took most of Chinese heartland.
Order was quickly re-established at Nanking, which was like New York in the year 1800 back then. An Emperor was quickly crowned, and two members of the most important ruling clique set up shop there. At there the ruling clique, who used to indulge in unimaginable luxuries, continue to live as how they did before. Rebellions by peasants were quickly suppressed by the remaining troops of the Empire. Tao Gan, ancestor of the poet Tao Yuanming, was very good at destroying the rebels. The old order survived at Nanking until 589 CE, There were some changes of Emperors, but the old institution continued.
We will see a repeat of this. There will be a “United States”, with the capital in somewhere defensible, most likely at Dallas, and continuing to pretend to follow everything we now have.
The big difference is that China was not dependent on electricity the way we are. It was not dependent on international shipping of oil and of materials for computers and batteries. It was not dependent on continued melting of metals at very high high temperatures.
The Three Gorges Dam will provide electricity for quite a long time. Chongqing (Chunking), near the Dam, was where Chiang Kaishek had moved his capital to during the Sino-Japanese war and Mao Tsetung also temporarily moved his capital during the 1969 confrontation with USSR when Peking was threatened to be nuked.
China has had metallurgy since the ancient times, which made large scale warfare possible, and although its coal has largely depleted, it would still be enough to sustain a civ of maybe 60 million, which was how many people China had around the time of Augustus.
It will still need replacement parts, and I am sure that the grid needs computerized controls to maintain it. If any part of the chain breaks, the system fails.
We are mostly talking (over each other seems) about the future redistribution around the scrap pile of the failed legacy system. Your analysis of how we got here in the first place is sound, nitpicking about timing and sequencing is as usual the job of the commentariat..
True, the situation in mainland China is extraordinarily disgusting because of the level of over reach on every aspect (overpop, pollution, temporary shoddy infrastructure, drudgery for frivolous crap exports, cultural degradation, ..) vs. the initial conditions decades ago still *favorable against say already largely very depleted IndoPakistan area.
Partly by induced scam and partly by own desire (joint forces), catching up to their HongKong/SARs brotherly enclaves, not mentioning the peer pressure of neighbors, they jumped as the last ones on that crazed modernization rocket just to be spitted out in short order on the down slide..
—
* from “irrelevant eco/footprint focused” viewpoint of pampered quasi supremacist leaning westerner; it’s their own country to degrade, but the pollution is somewhat international liability and asset afterall..
also kind of interesting is that the most advanced – skilled civilizations and cultures in prolonging ~autarky: China/Korea/Jap eventually had to surrender to the madness as well, albeit with measurable differences at the end point nevertheless..
who can believe that on this pale blue dot planet
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/PaleBlueDot.jpg
a manic species rules over it
Kulm, good points, although besides depending on the climate options (the ~same, trigger to cold, or warm) the US is likely going to restructure mostly on the
nature determined patterns: agriculture, fisheries, forest, perhaps even surface coal mining accessibility..
The dwellings, as mostly ply-board and bit of plumbing and copper wires is to be quickly scavenged / removed into the favorable regions described above and or partly abandoned..
All of your previous attempts at comparing historical events to the autistic techno-dystopian theory of collapse seemed to involve ad hoc gap-filling. So I’m going to assume this one does as well, and therefore suggest you amend this:
“the ruling clique, who used to indulge in unimaginable luxuries, continue to live as how they did before”
To this:
“the ruling clique, who used to indulge in unimaginable luxuries, continued to live as befitted their new status as petty kings/warlords, until they didn’t”
Also, you’re talking essentially about the changing fortunes of a dynasty, not a civilisation, let alone an era. For most of history, the vast majority of people experienced no radical alteration in the energy/economic dynamic of their lives due to barbarian or other invasions.
The terms dynasty, era, and civilization are often used interchangeably and this is not necessarily an error. Yes, we know what their dictionary definitions are, but dictionaries are for pedants. In the case of China, the Song Dynasty ruled throughout the Song Era and the culture they developed is often described as Song Civilization. Ditto the Ming, and the Tang. According to one way of referring to Chinese historical chronically, eras last as long as the Dynasties that give rise to them. In another way, the eras are longer than the periods, which are in turn longer than the Dynasties. Vagueness abounds.
In the case of Japanese history, the word dynasty is very seldom used as the Imperial Family forming a single dynasty are considered to go all the way back to the sun Goddess Amaterasu Omikami. So instead history is measured in terms of periods and eras. The eras can be very short. The current Heisei one finishes up next year when the present Emperor retires. It will be the end of an era.
Chinese civilization rose and fell and stumbled around like a gorilla that had been hit on the head with a wooden club not quite hard enough to knock it out but enough to make it stumble around numerous times, and its detailed history cannot be adequately summed up in a blog comment. Indeed, even Gibbon would have had trouble doing it justice, particularly as he didn’t read Chinese, and also because by the time he finished The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he had only a few years remaining to him, and they were plagued by ill health and a particularly irritable condition that makes me wince to read about.
Wikipedia describes his decline and fall thus:
Gibbon is believed to have suffered from an extreme case of scrotal swelling, probably a hydrocele testis, a condition which causes the scrotum to swell with fluid in a compartment overlying either testicle. In an age when close-fitting clothes were fashionable, his condition led to a chronic and disfiguring inflammation that left Gibbon a lonely figure. As his condition worsened, he underwent numerous procedures to alleviate the condition, but with no enduring success. In early January, the last of a series of three operations caused an unremitting peritonitis to set in and spread, from which he died.
So your point is that, like definitions, civilisations can experience change. I completely agree. Btw, you’re spot on about Gibbon’s death.
CTG says we are too interconnected, too dependent on each other (food supply from the other side of the world?), too brainless (cannot think critically, aka stupi.d), no knowledge on survival skills, too dependent on financial systems, electricity, medication, etc to be too worried to revert to feudalism. Anyone knows how to farm or rear chickens? In meaningful numbers? Ask any city dwellers if they know.
I just dont understand why people still romanticize land before technology… as iuf we can do it. I know 100% fir sure people within 100km of me cannot do it
From my experience… if you don’t feed chickens protein rich food … they lay no eggs… they also seem to die for no apparent reason.. on a regular basis… they lay very few eggs in the winter even if you feed them the good stuff…
Chickens will soon go extinct once BAU ends… hungry people will kill and eat them
The land isn’t there to grow food. It’s there to look at. It makes scenic tourism work. Food in these troubled times is grown in greenhouses by people who know what they are doing. Amateurs not allowed. We are never talking about collapse. That’s the end. We want to avoid that. Careless, thoughtless, ugly things are not helpful in keeping civilization alive. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be where we are.
The beginning of the end? From Charles Hugh Smith::
The Global Financial System Is Unraveling, And No, The U.S. Is Not Immune
http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/us-markets/the-global-financial-system-is-unraveling-and-no-the-us-is-not-immune?post=189191
The melting down of EM currencies is just the symptom of an illness. The illness is too much debt and asset bubbles that are now deflating.
Don used to say that without energy all the assets will turn worthless. The root cause of this meltdown is perhaps the invisible falling net energy from energy production that we can’t measure, but is there and is bringing down the entire economic/energy system.
JP Morgan’s top quant warns next crisis to have flash crashes and social unrest not seen in 50 years
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/09/04/jpmorgan-says-next-crisis-will-feature-flash-crashes-and-social-unrest.html?__twitter_impression=true
Just MSM…nothing about the coming apocalypse.
“If markets fall by 40 percent or more, the Federal Reserve would need to leap into action to prevent a spiral that led into depression, Kolanovic said. That could lead to unconventional actions, including direct purchases of equities, a move that Japan’s central bank has already taken.
“Suddenly, every pension fund in the U.S. is severely underfunded, retail investors panic and sell, while individuals stop spending,” Kolanovic said. “If you have this type of severe crisis, how do you break the vicious cycle, the negative feedback loop? Maybe you stimulate the economy by cutting taxes further, perhaps even into negative territory. I think most likely is direct central bank intervention in asset prices, maybe bonds, maybe credit, and perhaps equities if that’s the eye of the storm.”
Some interesting insights there, although he doesn’t talk about currencies, which are looking like the weakest link.
Hmm, deflationary death spiral anyone?
The Plunge Protection Team is already purchasing equities…