The world economy seems to be seriously ill. The problem is not overly high oil prices, but that does not rule out energy as being a major underlying problem.
Two of the symptoms of the economy’s malaise are slow wage growth and increasing wage disparity. Tariffs are being used as solutions to these issues. Radical leaders are increasingly being elected. The Bank for International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund have raised concerns about the world’s aggregate debt levels. The IMF has even suggested that a second Great Depression might be ahead if major banks should fail in the manner that Lehman Brothers did in 2008.
Figure 1. Ratio of Core Debt Growth (non-financial debt including governmental debt) to GDP, based on data of the Bank of International Settlements.
If the economy were a human being, we would send it to a physician for a diagnosis regarding what is wrong. What really is needed is a physician who has a wide overview, and thus can understand the many symptoms. Hopefully, the physician can also provide a reasonable prognosis of what lies ahead.
Individual specialists studying the world’s economic and energy problems tend to look at these problems from narrow points of view. Some examples include:
- Curve fitting and cycle analysis using economic data by country since World War II, as is often performed by economists
- Analysis of oil supply based on technically recoverable reserves or resources
- Analysis of fresh water supply problems
- Analysis of population problems, including rising population relative to arable land, and rising retiree population relative to working population
- Analysis of ocean problems, including rising acidity and depleting fish stocks
- Analysis of the expected impact of CO2 production from fossil fuels on climate
- Analysis of rising debt levels
In fact, we are facing a combined problem, but most analysts/economists are looking at only their own piece of the problem. They assume that the other aspects have little or no influence on their particular result. What we really need is an analysis of the overall economic malady from a broader perspective.
In some ways, the situation is analogous to having no physician with a sufficient overview of where the world economy is headed. Instead, we have a number of specialists (perhaps analogous to a psychiatrist, a urologist, a podiatrist, and a dermatologist), none of whom really understands the underlying problem the patient is facing.
One point of confusion regarding whether today’s oil prices should be of concern is the fact that the maximum affordable oil price seems to decline over time. This happens because workers around the world increasingly cannot afford to buy the goods and services that the world economy produces. Inadequate wage growth within countries, growing globalization and rising interest rates all contribute to this growing affordability problem. To make matters confusing, this growing affordability problem corresponds to “falling demand” in the way economists frame the issues we are facing.
If we believe the technical analysis shown in Figure 2, the maximum affordable West Texas Intermediate oil price has declined from $147 per barrel in July 2008 to $76 per barrel recently. The current price is about $62 per barrel. The chart suggests that downward price resistance might be reached at $55 per barrel, assuming no major event occurs to change the current trend line. Any upward price bounce would appear to leave the price still much lower than oil producers need in order to reinvest sufficiently to allow future oil production to be maintained at current levels.
Figure 2. Down sloping diagonal line at the top of chart gives an estimate of the trend in maximum affordable West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil prices. The downward trend line starts in July 2008, when oil prices hit a maximum. This high point occurred when the US real estate debt bubble started unwinding. Later maximum points correspond to points when oil prices stopped rising and crude oil reservoirs started refilling. Chart prepared by Amit Noam Tal.
Thus, our concern about adequate future oil supplies should perhaps be focused on keeping oil prices high enough. It takes a growing debt bubble to keep oil demand high; perhaps our concern should be keeping this debt bubble high enough to allow extraction of commodities of all kinds, including oil. Figure 1 seems to show a recent downward trend in Debt to GDP ratios for the Eurozone, the United States and China. This may be part of today’s low price problem for commodities of all types.
Needless to say, climate analyses do not consider the severity of our energy problems, nor do they consider the extent to which there is a connection between energy supply and the ability of the economy to operate as usual. If the real issue is a near-term financial crash that will radically affect future fossil fuel consumption, the climate analysis will certainly miss this event.
The Real Nature of the Limits to Growth Problem
To truly understand the headwinds that the economy is facing, we should be looking at the combined effect of all of the limits that the individual specialists have been studying. We might also include other issues not listed. The 1972 book The Limits to Growth presents an early computer model of how at least some of the limits of a finite world might be expected to play out.
Figure 3. Base scenario from 1972 Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in “Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil” http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/2009-05Hall0327.pdf
This early approach reflected an engineering view of the problem, considering expected diminishing returns with respect to resources of all types. Other considerations included likely resource needs based on prior economic and population growth trends and efficiency gains. The Base Scenario shown in the 1972 book (Figure 3) showed collapse taking place about now–in other words, in the early part of the 21st century.
In the time since the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis was prepared, there has been a major discovery relating the importance of energy to the economy. Ilya Prigogine tackled the problem of the physics of thermodynamically dynamic open systems, earning a Nobel Prize for his efforts in 1977. When energy flows are available, many structures, called dissipative structures, can grow and change over time. Examples include plants and animals, hurricanes, stars (they expand in size, then collapse at the end of their lives), ecosystems, and economies. These structures are utterly dependent on energy flows. The economy needs energy in almost the same way that humans need food. Without sufficient energy flows, the world economy will collapse.
It is because of the laws of physics and energy flows that markets are able to set price levels. Indirectly, physics sets the maximum affordable price for energy products based upon the total quantity of goods and services individual workers can afford. These maximum affordable prices may be invisible, but they are very real. Economists may talk about “demand” for energy products, but the real issue is affordability: “Will the laws of physics allow prices to stay high enough to provide the commodities the world economy needs?”
It is because of the laws of physics that debt can play a major role in the economy. Debt can provide time-shifting services if an economy does not have sufficient energy supplies to permit the equivalent of bartering of finished goods and services for new capital goods. Debt can allow future goods and services (manufactured with energy products) to serve as payment for capital goods and other goods purchased using debt. Thus, debt acts as a promise of future energy supplies. These future energy supplies may not, in fact, actually be available at prices that consumers can afford. This is why debt bubbles so often collapse and have a devastating impact on economies.
In theory, the new physics discoveries might also be added to the Limits to Growth model. If this were done, I would expect the downslopes in Figure 3 to be much steeper. Also, the date when the population decline starts would likely move forward, relative to other declines. The actual dates of the declines would of course be expected to change as well, because of updated knowledge regarding resources, population, and other factors.
Including the physics aspect of the economy would lead to many periods when sharp changes take place. When these sharp changes take place, there might be wars, collapsing governments, and epidemics, all causing large numbers of deaths. Debt bubbles might pop, causing deflation and widespread banking problems. These types of events are similar to those that economies have experienced in the past. There is no reason to expect that today’s world economy will have unusual lasting power.
Of course, modeling one piece of the economy at a time, as described at the beginning of this post, leaves out such troublesome implications. Economists tell us all we need to worry about is price fluctuations as the economy substitutes one product for another. If a person has blinders on, perhaps this a good description of the world we live in. Otherwise, the model leaves a lot to be desired.
Implication of the Laws of Physics Being in Charge of How the Economy Operates
Politicians would very much like us to believe that they are in charge. They would like us to believe that adding more technology can solve all of our problems. They would like us to believe that citizens can make a significant difference by voluntarily cutting back on their own energy consumption. They would also like us to believe that countries can cut back on their debt levels without the whole Ponzi Scheme unraveling.
Anyone who has watched bread rise in a bowl can see the implications of growth within a finite structure. It doesn’t take very long for the volume growth of bread dough to exceed the space available. Even if the bread maker pushes the dough back down again, the effect is only temporary. The bread dough quickly rises again to overfill the bowl it is in.
One possible implication of the 2008 financial (and oil price) crash is that we are very close to limits, right now. Regulators can try to fine tune how the economy operates by raising and lowering interest rates (sometimes using Quantitative Easing (QE) in the process), but they are, in some sense, playing with fire. Figure 4 shows the dramatic impact that popping the real estate debt bubble seems to have had in 2008. It also shows the impact that adding and removing QE has had.
Figure 4. Figure showing collapsing debt bubble at the time US oil prices peaked. Figure also shows the use of Quantitative Easing (QE) to stimulate the economy, and thus bring oil prices back up again. Ending US QE seems to have had the reverse effect.
By raising interest rates, regulators could easily send part, or all, of the world’s economy to a financial crash that is worse than 2008’s. Or the economy could again reach limits, by itself, with just a little economic growth. In some sense, the world economy is very close to filling the bread bowl, as it was before the 2008 crash pushed it back down.
The World Economy Is Reaching Limits in Many Areas Simultaneously
Many people believe that we are reaching limits in at most a few areas of the economy, such as “running out of oil.” The evidence suggests that because of the networked nature of the economy, we are really reaching limits in many places, simultaneously. The following represent some problem areas:
(1) Too Low a Return on Labor for Workers Whose Jobs Are Easily Exportable. With globalization, workers are indirectly competing with workers around the world regarding who can produce goods and services most cheaply. They are also competing with computers and robots that can easily replicate their functions. The net impact is a world where a large share of the citizens find themselves living at a level not much above the subsistence level. In more developed countries, young people may live with their parents longer and may delay having children almost indefinitely, because wages are not keeping up with living costs. Many studies have shown rising wage disparity. In some ways, the wage disparity now seems to be as bad as in the 1930s.
Figure 5. U. S. Income Shares of Top 1% and Top 0.1%, Wikipedia exhibit by Piketty and Saez.
(2) Interest Rates. Interest rates are the lever that economists like to adjust upward or downward to try to stimulate the economy or push the economy downward. Short term interest rates, up until about the end of 2015, were at the level they were at during the Depression of the 1930s.
Figure 6. Monthly average 3-month term treasury bill rates in chart prepared by FRED. Amounts shown through October 2018. Grey bars indicate recessions.
Raising interest rates is like adding a little more dough to the already over-full bread bowl. With these higher interest rates, borrowers need to pay more for monthly payments, making the strain on their finances even worse than it was previously. Figure 6 shows that raising interest rates very often creates a recession. In fact, the Great Recession of 2008-2009 seems to be the result of an increase in short term interest rates. This time we are being told that the increase will be gentle, but if the bread bowl is already overly full (in the sense that affordability of the output of the economy is already way too low, for many workers), what difference does “gentle” make?
(3) Return on Capital Investment/Added Debt. Falling long-term interest rates between 1981 and 2016 seem to be an indirect reflection of falling long-term return on capital investment. If capital returns had been higher, there would be more demand for debt, forcing interest rates up to levels closer to where they had been when the economy was growing more quickly.
Figure 7. Monthly average 10-year US Treasury interest rates in chart prepared by FRED. Amounts shown through October 2018. Grey bars indicate recessions.
Another way we can look at how productive the addition of debt has been is by comparing the debt increase each year with the GDP increase (including inflation) each year. We use current year GDP as the denominator in both calculations. Figure 8 shows the indications for what the Bank for International Settlements calls “Core Debt” (that is, Total Non-Financial Debt, Including Government Debt).
Figure 8. Dollar Increase in US Core Debt as % of GDP, shown beside GDP dollar increase, as percentage of ending GDP. Amounts based on FRED data.
Comparing the red and blue lines on Figure 8, GDP rose fairly reliably in the pre-1981 period, as the amount of core debt rose. The core debt increases tended to be higher than the GDP increases, but not a great deal higher. Thus, the US ratios on Figure 1 could be close to 1.0 in early years.
Once interest rates started falling after 1981 (see Figures 6 and 7), core debt growth and GDP growth greatly diverged. I expect that quite a bit of this change was related to asset price inflation as interest rates fell. With lower interest rates, assets of all types started becoming more affordable. Thus, a greater number of buyers could be expected, driving up prices of assets of all kinds, including homes, stores, and factories. Owners of these assets could “take the equity out” as prices rose and could use the equity to purchase other goods and services. In theory, these activities might somewhat stimulate the economy. Figure 8 suggests that the benefits of these activities with respect to the “goods and services” portion of the economy (red line) were slight at best, however.
Figure 9. Dollar Increase in US Financial Debt as % of GDP, shown beside GDP dollar increase % of ending GDP. Amounts based on FRED data.
Figure 9 shows Financial Debt amounts corresponding to the Core Debt amounts shown in Figure 8. At first glance, it appears that Financial Debt (blue line ) has provided no benefit whatsoever for the Goods and Services part of the economy (red line). But clearly the bankers who created these financial products benefitted from the income they received from them. So did the low-income home buyers who bought homes that they could not really afford in the early 2000s. Home building was stimulated, and inflation in home prices was stimulated. Banks benefitted by being able to transfer their problem home loans to unsuspecting buyers. Whether this whole arrangement had any net benefit to the economy, other than to create pseudo-solutions for people who could not really afford the homes they were purchasing, is doubtful. But when the economy is near limits, strange solutions to stimulating the economy are attempted.
(4) Commodity Prices. If we have a supply problem with one kind of commodity, we likely have a supply problem with many kinds of commodities at the same time. The reason why this happens is because the prices of many types of commodities tend to move together, in response to general market conditions. This is why the US government talks about inflation in oil and food prices as a separate category of Consumer Price Inflation.
If prices for commodities are generally low, as they have been since 2014, this means that commodity investors have received low rates of return for several years. With low rates of return, producers of many commodities have cut back on reinvestment. With inadequate reinvestment, supply crunches are likely to occur across a broad spectrum of commodities simultaneously. A recent Wall Street Journal article says, Supply Crunch Looms in Commodities Markets. The article mentions copper, zinc, aluminum and nickel. Other articles talk about oil in a similar fashion.
The question becomes, “Can consumers bid up the prices of all of these minerals sufficiently, to encourage enough reinvestment to solve the world’s commodity supply problem?” Food prices would likely need to be bid up as well, because oil is used heavily in the production and transport of food.
It was possible to bid up commodity prices in the 1970s, because the economies of the United States, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet Union were all growing rapidly. Also, women were joining the labor force in large numbers. It was possible to bid up commodity prices in the 2002 to 2008 era, because China and other Asian nations were rapidly ramping up their demand for goods and services of all kinds.
Figure 10. China energy production by fuel plus its total energy consumption, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 data. The difference between the production figures shown and the black line consumption total is imports.
Now we are facing a much different situation. China is in much worse shape than most people recognize because its coal supply seems to have passed peak production. This has happened because the cheap-to-extract coal is mostly depleted, making it unprofitable to increase coal production without significantly higher prices. Imported coal and natural gas are expensive options. China also has a serious debt problem.
Because of China’s problems, the country will necessarily need to cut back on manufacturing, road building and home building in the years ahead. (This would happen, with or without Trump’s tariffs!) For some minerals, China currently represents over 50% of the world’s demand. China is the largest oil importer in the world. It is doubtful that China can make major cutbacks in its use of commodities without lowering prices for many commodities worldwide.
Persistence of Outdated Models
We are dealing with a situation where a large number of people suspect, at least vaguely, that the world economy is like bread dough about to outgrow its bowl, but this is not an issue anyone really wants to quantify. Everyone wants solutions; they don’t want a better delineation of the problem. Repeated publication of climate change forecasts is, in a sense, a denial of the possibility that we may be facing resource limits that are close at hand. Such publication is saying, in effect, that the closest limit that citizens need to worry about is the climate limit.
Also, the reliance of researchers on the past work by others in the same field tends to reinforce what are essentially incorrect models. Cross-pollination across fields is difficult, given the technical nature of today’s academic research. Furthermore, it becomes increasingly difficult to properly model a situation that is very complex and depends upon non-linear interactions.
Putting All of These Issues Together
The focuses of today’s narrow research can give a surprisingly distorted overview of where the economy is. A few areas in particular stand out:
(a) The choice of the word “Demand” instead of “Affordable Quantity” makes it sound like the buyer has more control over purchases than he really does. Growing demand seems to depend on continually increasing debt. This is the reason for the debt bubble problem.
(b) Framing the energy problem as “running out of oil” makes it sound like searching for substitutes will be a fruitful area for solution. Because of the affordability issue, this search is futile unless the substitutes are truly cheaper, when all costs are considered. Declining availability of many minerals because of persistently low commodity prices could be an issue as well.
(c) If limits are being reached in many areas simultaneously, incentives for countries to co-operate seem likely to go downhill quickly. Bullies who claim to be able to obtain a bigger share of the shrinking total supply will tend to be elected.
(d) The physics tie between energy and the economy makes major energy consumption cutbacks virtually impossible, without risking economic collapse.
(e) Adding technology isn’t really a solution to the debt problem, because it tends to make the affordability problem worse. The problem is that while adding technology seems to lead to more employment for a few elite workers, it tends to displace lower-wage workers at the same time. The spending of lower-wage workers is really needed if adequate demand for commodities is to be maintained. Additionally, the ownership of the technology-related capital goods tends to be concentrated among the elite; this further shifts wealth from the non-elite to the elite.
The long term prognosis for the world economy seems pretty grim, when all of these issues are put together. Defaulting debt and a resulting collapse in asset prices of all kinds is of particular concern. The default of subprime housing debt was an issue in the US at the time of the Great Recession; the next round of defaults is likely to start elsewhere. Debt defaults could start fairly soon, perhaps in the next 6 to 12 months. The more hostile political situation we have been seeing recently seems to be evidence that limits are close at hand.
“In a report published this morning, HIS Markit research has concluded that UK business confidence is at its lowest levels since the inception of their business survey in 2009, “October data from the IHS Markit Business Outlook survey signal that UK private sector companies have become less confident about the year-ahead growth outlook”.”
https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/news/23608/uk-business-optimism-hits-lowest-point-since-records-began-is-brexit-to-blame.html
“Italy’s banking association (ABI) on Monday warned that the country’s economy would suffer if the sovereign borrowing costs remained at the high level recorded in latest months due to political uncertainty…
“The higher the spread, the lower the market confidence, and the more Italy would have to pay to borrow money.”
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-11/20/c_137618077.htm
“Although the exposure of European banks to Greece has been dramatically reduced, the continent really can’t afford another crisis in the country.
“It’s already struggling to contain Italy’s budget deficit and faces the impact of Brexit, while leaders in France and Germany are having a rough time at home.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/another-greek-tragedy-could-play-badly-for-europe-taking-stock#gs.vxGcDuU
Higher interest rates are pretty much guaranteed to lead to debt bubbles popping.
“Beyond the United States, the world’s leading economies appear to be faltering. World No. 2 China recently showed a slowdown in consumer spending and in lending, while No. 3 Japan and No. 4 Germany both contracted in the third quarter. What does this mean for U.S. policy?
“…China and the world’s other major economies are most likely to react to economic slowdown with stimulus of one form or another. To the extent that stimulus is monetary, this will mean lower interest rates and, in turn, pressure for currency depreciation against the dollar.
“This currency pressure will also come from global investors redirecting their funds from their own slowing economies to the relatively booming economy in the United States. That, too, will push up the dollar…
“These pressures to swing investment toward the United States and allow currencies to depreciate against the dollar will cause a particular problem for the Trump administration, which has treated trade deficits as the star it uses to navigate its trade policy…
“That problem is likely to be exacerbated as major global economies slow in absolute terms, and especially relative to the United States. U.S. trade deficits will grow and the Trump administration will become even more convinced that the country is being cheated…
“The final policy concern about slowing global economies is that economic torpor could prove contagious. While the Trump administration has tended to view China predominantly in the context of the bilateral relationship, China’s economic boom and voracious demand for natural resources as inputs propped up growth in countries such as Australia and Brazil.
“Slowing economic giants can pull their partner countries down with them, and global economic slowdowns are rarely beneficial for U.S. growth. Downturns can be even more problematic if they expose deep-seated problems in critical countries, such as excessive debt.”
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/417379-global-economic-slowdown-will-expose-trumps-trade-ignorance
“The escalating US-China trade war and Brexit have exposed the extent and complexity of global supply chains and ultimately the dangers of acting unilaterally, Fukunari Kimura, chief economist at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, told an audience in Dublin on Monday. He said the international division of labour with products being produced across multiple jurisdictions would make the economic consequences of a trade war more severe than in the past.”
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/us-china-trade-war-and-brexit-expose-complexity-of-global-trade-1.3703315
It seems like we are at/past peak world economy. That is what pulls the whole system down.
Agreed – Tim Morgan says it’s (likely) all downhill from here. Not sure about the math under the hood but his basic approach of prosperity equaling what we can afford per capita after essentials (food/shelter etc.) seems realistic. https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
Yes, that is exactly the problem. In fact, too many people cannot afford food and shelter. Young adults live with their parents much longer. We have homeless college students, who try to sleep on couches in lounges. It is those without jobs and those with jobs that pay poorly who are especially badly off.
Seems like the essentials (transportation, housing) are also the most stressed in terms of diminishing marginal returns. Very little has changed in residential construction or auto’s in the last decades – certainly nothing to make them more affordable. Perhaps in housing cordless power tools have been the last productivity breakthrough.
Construction costs have gone up. Construction costs include the cost of building materials. It is not a widely shared fact about why housing is so expensive.
Even without a housing bubble to keep demand high, the wages of most workers are too low to pay for the full price of a newly built home.
Ran into a guy from Auckland in the pub on Friday … one of his businesses is in Queenstown … a small hotel comprising multiple cottages … he mentioned he had consent to double the number of cottages but that he would not build anymore because the build costs had DOUBLED in roughly 5 years since he built the first units….
“More adult millennials are moving home to save money, and its making them more depressed, new research reveals.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6410835/More-millennials-moving-home-making-depressed-studies-find.html
Oil and stocks certainly underlining the ‘downhill from here’ feeling today:
“Oil prices dropped sharply on Tuesday, snapping a four-day winning streak amid concerns about rising global supplies as OPEC weighs a possible cut in production.
“Growing fears of an economic slowdown, which saw global stock markets tumble again, added further pressure on crude…”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/20/oil-markets-opec-crude-supply-in-focus.html
There is an assumption in what is otherwise a good article that there is another path available…. basically a Steady State Economy….
This is what happens to those who step too close to the Rayburn and recoil when the realize it is chock full of burning coal….
Just FYI!!!!!
“It would be far too costly to engineer maximum resilience throughout a central grid. The goal is to make the central grid reliable enough, then add more resiliency to key facilities like hospitals and data centers. In other words, microgrids expand the benefits of the grid.”
Hospitals and “data centers” would seem to need special attention of some sort, starting with some extra thought.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/11/14/the-renewable-energy-revolution-one-microgrid-at-a-time/
It would be sort of nice for the Internet to be resilient as well. Also, fresh water treatment centers and the electric power pumping oil and some natural gas pipelines. There are many, many weak links to the system. Pumps where fuel for autos and trucks are sold are electric powered. People with electric cars would sort of like to have a way of recharging them, as well.
And then there is that aluminum smelter in Australia that a multi-billion dollar battery could power for… 8 minutes…
“The Outlook For The Global Economy Has Deteriorated”: Oil, Copper, & Lumber Signal The Next Economic Downturn Is Here
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-outlook-for-the-global-economy-has-deteriorated-oil-copper-and-lumber-are-all-telling-us-the-next-economic-downturn-is-here
I guess, but Monday is over so it’s all good. This entire situation and all the bad news that keeps getting posted just needs a little more debt to get issued. Ok, maybe a lot more debt but honestly, what is the difference?
cue Beatles music:
It’s getting better all the time
I used to get mad at my school (No I can’t complain)
The teachers who taught me weren’t cool (No I can’t complain)
You’re holding me down (Oh), turning me round (Oh)
Filling me up with your rules (Foolish rules)
I’ve got to admit it’s getting better (Better)
A little better all the time (It can’t get no worse)
I have to admit it’s getting better (Better)
It’s getting better since you’ve been mine
Me used to be angry young man
Me hiding me head in the sand
You gave me the word, I finally heard
I’m doing the best that I can
I’ve got to admit it’s getting better (Better)
A little better all the time (It can’t get no worse)
I have to admit it’s getting better (Better)
It’s getting better since you’ve been mine
Getting so much better all the time
It’s getting better all the time
Better, better, better
It’s getting better all the time
Better, better, better
I used to be cruel to my woman
I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved
Man I was mean but I’m changing my scene
And I’m doing the best that I can (Ooh)
I admit it’s getting better (Better)
A little better all the time (It can’t get no worse)
Yes I admit it’s getting better (Better)
It’s getting better since you’ve been mine
Getting so much better all the time
It’s getting better all the time
Better, better, better
It’s getting better all the time
Better, better, better
Getting so much better all the time
When demand falls, it falls for many things at once.
We need a sequel to Being There…
In the garden…. when the water is no longer available… and it becomes a desert …. and nothing grows … in the garden…. and when the radiation spills into the garden… whatever is left alive… dies… and there is no more garden.
Dismal UK Housing Market Posts First Annual Decline In 7 Years
For years, the UK housing market, and especially the London real estate bubble – just like junk bond spreads – appeared invincible. And, just like the US junk bond bubble, it burst in November, when UK housing prices fell from a year ago for the first time since 2011, with the decline led by London and more expensive properties across the country. According to Rightmove, the average asking prices slipped 0.2% to 302,023 pounds, or $387,000, the first annual drop in 7 years.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-19/dismal-uk-housing-market-posts-first-annual-decline-7-years
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/uk%20rightmove%20yoy.jpg
The drop was even more pronounced on a monthly basis: in the largest November drop in prices since 2012, Rightmove said the average price of property coming to the market was down by 1.7%, or £5,222, on the month alone. The biggest falls were in London, where the typical asking price fell by £10,793 (a fall of 1.7%) and in the south-east of England, where prices were down £8,647 (2.1%).
Ouch!
Remember when the local news story was ‘cat rescued from tree’
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-18/chipotle-caught-lying-after-firing-racist-manager-backpedals-after-internet-outs
At least some people can remember the rapid growth era of the 50s and 60s, when practically every graduate with a high school or college degree could find a job that paid well, with little effort. Wives could stay home and raise a family. Wage disparity was not a huge problem.
Europe and Japan were progressing as well, as was the Soviet Union. They were not at the same level, but with cheap oil and other energy products, the world economy could “boom.”
I wonder if Metallica might consider covering this…
https://youtu.be/y3KEhWTnWvE
oh, look:
Bitcoin at $4,800
is that a Black Friday sale price?
or is that black humor?
Wow … going down to 1 degree C
https://www.metservice.com/towns-cities/queenstown
Throw another crate of coal in the Rayburn!!!
G W = H O A X.
Your brain won’t allow you to believe the apocalypse could actually happen
https://io9.gizmodo.com/5848857/your-brain-wont-allow-you-to-believe-the-apocalypse-could-actually-happen?utm_medium=sharefromsite&fbclid=IwAR0m6eIVdUzPku5T4hG2UKJqLhKQnzg9KvVjEKPRNRWBKyRUEIeUF1efVyI
I can believe the following result of a scientific study:
Behold… every doomer in OFW are depressed. Let us drink to that… cheers.
No, not I: I never suffer from depression, although I have been accused of ‘smiling like an idiot’ even when in receipt of bad news.
To which my response is: ‘Yes, it’s bloody bad news, but life isn’t meant to be a picnic and what’s the point of a long face?’
At worst I often feel a – passing -dismay at the sheer screwed-upness of human beings, but that isn’t depression.
A golden rule is to excise any depressives from your life, as it’s catching – this includes family. You can never help a depressive, so it’s simply not worth trying.
Clinical depression isn’t more realistic and clear-sighted: it utterly excludes and perception of beauty – and the truth is that this is both a dangerous and very beautiful planet, not Hell.
I don’t think that I am ever depressed. When I receive bad news, I may be a little “down” for a day, but I bounce back pretty much immediately.
But I don’t think very many people can even think about collapse. Especially the younger generation finds this hard to accept.
https://www.psycom.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/kubler-1024×806.jpg
I’ll add a 6th:
JOY at realizing … the thing that caused the grief… is actually a reason to celebrate.
I think everybody here got a little depressed when they learned that the world is ending. The upside is that we can enjoy the small things each day, not worrying about our pension savings or vying for promotions.
And I remember, I, I, I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized, like I was shot, like I was shot with a diamond, a diamond bullet right through my forehead.
… and I thought about the implications…… and I realized… this is an Extinction Event!!!
The lovely planet is about to witness the last of these vile basturds being born!!! These destroyers … these torturers…..
https://i2.wp.com/www.kveller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/iStock_67004755_LARGE.jpg
Yes —- the vile beast is about to be dead!!! Sing along … sing along!!!
https://youtu.be/9Jn8K8EA7-Q
And the 8th day….. Fast Eddy … wept tears of joy… when he realized that the Empire of Evil … was defeated!!!
https://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01705/tears-of-joy_1705860i.jpg
And he laughed hysterically
https://nataliaantonova.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/cannot-handle-the-hysterical-laughter.gif
Why?
Because the humans had planted a poison pill inside their species… they celebrated their genius… from the first human to discover fire …. to the first organic farmer ….right up to the ultra more on … Elon Musk…. and their genius … their ‘intelligence’ made them eat themselves from the tail to the head…
And any humans who dared stand in the way of ‘progress’ … who rejected farming … who rejected the machines… were slaughtered… were mocked as backwards imbeciles….
That their ‘genius’ did them in …. well that is god damn amusing!!!
https://blog.chron.com/texanschick/files/2012/04/yee_haw.png
Only educated, stoic minds can accept collapse.
Ordinary minds would deny it.
+++++++++++++++
“Ultimately our neurological bugginess could serve an adaptive function, which is preventing us from becoming so depressed about the impending apocalypse that we can’t get out of bed in the morning.”
not “could serve an adaptive function”…
but absolutely does serve an adaptive function…
we know that soon we all will enter the nothingness of eternal death…
so why get out of bed in the morning?
because our “neurological bugginess” tricks us as it tries to compel us to be positive and continue eating and reproducing…
and now that we know this AND know that IC will inevitably collapse sooner or later (and we die before during or after)…
how then should we live?
do whatever…
on a related note, and a repetitive one:
we humans discount the future, and that is a psychological “bug” that serves as a good adaptive function…
I am optimistic about tomorrow and the rest of this week and the rest of this year…
I am somewhat mildly optimistic about 2019…
I have very little to say about 2020 as it is too far into the future for me to have any plans or much thoughts about…
I am very pessimistic about the future of BAU beyond 2030…
even if IC doesn’t collapse by 2040, reasonable life expectancy data suggests that I will be dead by then…
but I have the alarm set, and I will be getting up for work in the morning…
why not?
since I’m optimistic about tomorrow…
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Natural-Gas-Price-Explosion-Bankrupts-Traders.html
Natural Gas Price Explosion Bankrupts Traders
By Irina Slav – Nov 19, 2018, 9:30 AM CST
“A Tampa, Florida based options trading firm, OptionSellers, went dark this weekend after it informed its clients of a “catastrophic loss event,” resulting from a short squeeze on the natural gas market. According to the letter, the short squeeze took place at a rate “truly beyond anything I [president James Cordier] have seen in my career. It overran our risk control systems and left us at the mercy of the market. The market obviously had no mercy for traders shorting natural gas; last week, on Wednesday, natural gas shot up 18 percent to the highest since 2014, on the back of forecasts about cold weather that drove traders into a frenzy as they bought more gas to cover their short positions, probably opened on reports of ample supply in the United States. Cold weather this time of the year is hardly a surprising piece of information, but it somehow managed to surprise traders betting on a price fall in natural gas. Since the start of the month, according to CNBC, natural gas has gained as much as 48 percent, and according to CME Group, trade in the commodity on Wednesday hit an all-time high of 1.2 million contracts.”
As long as is it only traders, and not the derivatives markets. Big changes in currency relativities seem likely create major problems for derivatives.
Shorts have had a easy game for quite a while.
That appears to be changing.
Blood will be flowing.
(But MAY 2019 is still open for the game)
Since Crazy Eddy has recently seen fit to conjure up his ghost, we might as well remind ourselves of what old Noam had to say about the “science” Mr. Lippmann created:
“As we have stressed throughout this book, the U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit—indeed, encourage—spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness.”
The “elite consensus” doesn’t, and has never, existed. What is really at work is the reticence of human beings in general to question the very foundations of their way of life, or BAU. If one asks enough questions eventually one will entail oneself.
I used to like Gnome… but now I just think he is another stuuuupid moreon…. as I am sure Bernays would also.
Lol…if you had actually read Bernays you might know why he would call all of us on OFW *dangerous* mo-rons. Today he’d have been a techno-disney-topian policy mogul. Go ahead and educate yourself:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24432722-take-your-place-at-the-peace-table
I don’t think so.
I think he’s be by my side … anonymously …. along with the other jackals (the CORE) smashing in the heads of the stuuuupid more ons that attempt to hijack FW….
If anything, he would have a great deal of respect for the very few on FW — who despite being bombarded with propaganda (PR) from cradle to grave — have managed to see through the matrix….
He was rather vociferous in his dismissal of just about everyone … repeatedly calling them stuuuuuupid f789ing id iots.
Remind you of anyone????
If he is somewhere looking down on FW …. he is smiling whenever the word DelusiSTAN is posted… because it is his creation.
Oceans of idjits…. even if you provide them with the truth … they will continue along their Path of Re tar Dation.
Bernays must have marvelled at that!
You seem to think he was an evil genius bent on thought control for all save those edgily nihilistic enough to join his secret evil cabal.
That is one of the many reasons he would have nothing but contempt for you.
Evil? Not at all….
Genius? Most definitely.
In case you missed it… I agree with him … just about everyone on this planet is stuuuuupid…. and I might add… dangerous…
There is nothing more dangerous than a crowd of stuuuupid humans…. they will tear you apart in seconds…
And that is why humans need to be controlled… that is why real democracy has never been permitted…
It would only end in tears… and chaos… and violence….
Fortunately because humans are stuuuupid… they are easily controlled… the tools of control are the MSM… the education system… religion … debt … and if those don’t work… open fire on the basturds with live ammo ….
Yes you agree with the edgily nihilistic version of him you have created, which pretty much amounts to fictional evil genius. The fact you don’t think its evil doesn’t make it realistic.
Bernays wanted a small group of well-meaning and enlightened people like himself to implement a liberal/progressive/socialist utopia for everyone. So yeah, deranged mo-rons like yourself wouldn’t even be worthy of his disgust.
I reckon Eddy were alive … and he was following FW…. he’d reach out … and ask Fast Eddy to Join the Team.
We have a great deal of common ground…. we agree that most people are stuuuupid more-ons … who deserve nothing more than condescension … we agree that they are as easily controlled as rats in a maze … we agree that they are very dangerous… making it critical that they be told what to think and do….
I could of course never vie for the top spot in the matrix machine…. because I have a normal nose…
Bernays today would be decrying Trump and calling for car-bon taxes+re-newables wave, and he’d STILL be smarter than you.
I think you can impale yourself, but you can’t entail yourself.
America’s largest bridal store “David’s Bridal” files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/11/19/davids-bridal-bankruptcy/2053083002/
America’s largest Toy store, Guitar store, mattress store, and bridal store..All file for bankruptcy this year..Dropping like flies..
I AM THE MOB on Mon, 19th Nov 2018 8:46 am
America’s largest bridal store “David’s Bridal” files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Are you the same?
This was 8:46- yours was 9:46
Reasons
Women are empowered to work and therefore will not get married and start families unless the suiter earns very high wages.
Toys are bought for children. Less women are having less children.
People usually buy a new mattress for children or if they are getting into a serious relationship.
Bridal stores profits, I imagine, are driven by heterosexual marriages.
Two lesbians wearing tuxedos doesn’t do much for bridal stores.
Gay couples don’t buy into tradition and a lot of what bridal stores play into is tradition.
A lot of heterosexual people of child-bearing age are too poor to afford a traditional marriage.
Music software has devalued real musical instruments.
Comments are welcome.
Mrs DNA
Chromosome XX female
Chromosome XY male
Chromosome YY do not exist
The female is the original and true life form.
Earliest life forms were as-exual, just like the vast majority of life forms today. Viruses aren’t even cellular.
Some insects turns asexual and the females start to clone them selves. The soon dominate the area, but are at risk to die out from viruses, since they are the same, with same immunity against viruses.
Goldman Sachs believes the US economy will slow to a crawl next year
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/19/goldman-sachs-believes-the-us-economy-will-slow-to-a-crawl-next-year.html
“Growth is likely to slow significantly next year, from a recent pace of 3.5 percent-plus to roughly our 1.75 percent estimate of potential by end-2019,”
This is not something I would get excited about.
“Goldman sees the Fed raising rates this December and then four more times in 2019. It will do so because inflation will reach 2.25 percent by the end of next year because of tariffs and increasing wages, the bank predicted, noting there was also a chance of an “inflation overshoot.”
Things could be rough next year. Feather those nest eggs people.
Don’t feather the nest eggs with things that will lose value with higher interest rates. That is practically everything.
France’s Macron: Europe must prevent ‘global chaos’
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46254393
The title is “Frace’s Marcon: Europe must unite to prevent ‘global chaos.'”
In other word, an EU falling apart would create global chaos.
“More Chinese companies could default on their debts issued in U.S. dollars, experts warn. They say that the rising cost of borrowing and a weakening Chinese yuan could see more firms fail to meet upcoming payments.
“Tai Hui, chief market strategist for Asia Pacific at J.P. Morgan Asset Management in Hong Kong, stressed that he currently sees no systemic risks, but noted that financial strains often begin in one area before spreading. “I think the government needs to be very mindful of some of these potential links,” he said, adding that the property sector should be foremost in mind.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/19/china-corporate-bonds-experts-warn-of-more-defaults.html
“No wonder the rise in oil prices has started to reverse. A slowdown in China followed by the US deprives the global economy of its two biggest engines. If the world economy is akin to an airliner, those two engines are not just necessary for lift-off – they are needed to keep the plane in the air.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/18/oil-price-tumbling-warning-turbulent-times-world-economy
Right! Not enough demand!
We haven’t even gotten to the rough patch of tariffs between US/China beginning in Jan. 2019, but then again it could be oil traders are anticipating that ahead of time. My take on it is Trump sees the tariffs with China as one of his signature efforts (possible achievements), so it seems unlikely he’ll back off and China seems very stubborn to make any changes. I read something last evening in which a Chinese consultant for US/China goods, said China won’t bend.
“… borrowing by governments and corporate entities on Wall Street reached US$6.8 trillion in 2017. Global total debt hit US$247 trillion in the first quarter of 2018. These are unprecedented numbers and the associated risks are high.
“An important financial barometer is the Damocles Index. The Index has called to attention the risk of exchange rate crises for Argentina, Egypt, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine. Apart from South Africa, the other six countries are already in or facing a currency crisis and seeking assistance from the IMF.”
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/11/17/is-an-asean-currency-crisis-looming/
“Turkish economic activity is slowing rapidly following a currency crisis that peaked in August. The lira has lost about one third of its value this year, pushing up inflation to 25.2 percent, the highest level since 2003, and bringing a surge in interest rates on loans and credit cards.”
https://ahvalnews.com/turkey-retail-industry/turkish-retail-sales-drop-most-global-financial-crisis
“Argentina’s economic crisis and runaway inflation has eroded most people’s purchasing-power to the point where they can’t make ends meet at the end of the month, let alone afford a lunchtime snack in Roberto’s shop.
“Even for those who have a declared, tax-paying job in a country with a massive black economy, it’s difficult to make wages last until the end of the month.”
http://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/pessimism-on-the-streets-as-argentines-feel-the-pinch.phtml
“President Moon Jae-in of South Korea on Sunday called on the International Monetary Fund to step up efforts to fend off growing instability in global financial markets, his office said. In a meeting with IMF Director Christine Lagarde in Papua New Guinea, Moon expressed concerns that capital outflows from emerging economies and lack of global liquidity may trigger a worldwide financial crisis.”
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20181118000103
Excellent! I am hoping to see a bigger currency crash in the next couple of weeks to the point where I can buy a steak dinner for under USD1.00 when I visit. The sun of a bi tch basturds are fixing hotel prices in USD 🙁
Fasteddystrifetravel.com
Fasteddystrifetravel.com/turkeydeals
Don’t you get the Freud discount? You know, I’m crazy, give it to me for free now or I will cause a scene.
“Asia-Pacific leaders failed to agree on a communique at a summit in Papua New Guinea on Sunday for the first time in their history as deep divisions between the United States and China over trade and investment stymied cooperation.”
“These two countries [China and the US] were pushing each other so much that the chair couldn’t see an option to bridge them,” said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/19/trade-war-apec-fails-to-reach-consensus-as-us-china-divide-deepens.html
“China has fired an apparent trade warning shot at Australia by targeting one of its key grain exports in the wake of the weekend’s heated APEC meeting at which tensions between Beijing and Washington deepened, setting the stage for a showdown at the upcoming G20 summit.
“Beijing announced on Monday it would investigate Australia’s $1.8 billion barley exports to China under “anti-dumping” rules that forbid selling at artificially low prices.”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australian-agriculture-exports-targeted-as-global-trade-tensions-deepen-20181119-p50h0v.html
So it is not just US vs China in the trade war. China needs higher grain prices for its farmers to be able to raise grains profitably.
I keep thinking of that verse from Revelation you used a while back, Gail:
“The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore…”
The verse from Revelations was used to describe the collapse of Babylon. A collapse could happen again.
Looks as though Trump has opened Pandora’s Box, (probably after molesting Pandora, poor girl).
In the original tale, Hope was meant to be found left at the bottom of the box after all the evils of the world flew out…..
“Financial markets are headed for an unusually bad year, with the overall global bond and equity universe shrinking by a cumulative $5tn since the start of 2018 — the biggest contraction of capital markets since the financial crisis.
“Parallel declines in both bonds and equities are rare, as stocks tend to do better when growth is robust and fixed income thrives more in subdued or poor economic conditions. In 2008 the global equity market shrank by more than $18tn, even as the bond market was buoyed by investors desperate for the relative safety it offers.
“But 2018 is starting to look like an inflection point for the post-crisis market era, as central banks have started paring back monetary stimulus. The Federal Reserve has led the charge, lifting even three-month Treasury yields to a 10-year high of 2.37 per cent this week. That has left almost every major asset class nursing losses in 2018…”
https://www.ft.com/content/343736c0-e9b0-11e8-a34c-663b3f553b35
“Signs of stress are mounting in the corporate-bond market, where rising interest rates and lackluster demand for new debt have investors questioning whether a long run of favorable borrowing conditions for U.S. companies is ending or merely hitting a rough patch.
“The amount of extra yield, or spread, that investors demand to hold investment-grade U.S. corporate bonds instead of benchmark U.S. Treasurys in recent days reached its highest level in nearly two years, while spreads on junk-rated bonds hit a 19-month high.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/debt-market-slowdown-troubles-investors-1542568103
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-19/deutsche-bank-last-week-dress-rehearsal-credit-problems-ahead
The way I understand this article, it says there are a lot of BBB bonds that look like they will be downgraded in the near term. This would put below investment grade, likely suddenly raising their interest rates.
I wonder what automated stock and bond buying and selling programs will do, when they figure out this pattern. (I tried to add as “sarcasm” tag, but the WordPress doesn’t allow that.)
I cannot find any warning that a “second Great Depression” is looming in the IMF World Outlook. The Guardian writes: ‘In a separate analysis, as part of the IMF’s annual economic outlook, it warned that “large challenges loom for the global economy to prevent a second Great Depression’.”
I did not find that in the report itself. There it reads: “The policy efforts of the past decade helped forestall an even worse outcome with deeper output and employment losses. After faltering at times over the past 10 years, the global economic recovery experienced a long-awaited synchronized growth upswing in 2017–18. Nevertheless, large challenges loom for the global economy. The extraordinary policy actions to prevent a second Great Depression have had important side effects. The extended period of ultralow interest rates in advanced economies has contributed to the buildup of financial vulnerabilities, as discussed in the April and October 2018 GFSRs.”
You have quoted a statement that avoids saying that the actions taken to avoid a Great Depression may not have done anything but delay another Great Depression by being vague and misleading. This is what people learn in graduate school, how to be non-specific and inconclusive,that way no policymakers or think tank people in academia can be blamed for the next downturn.
If only it was a Great Depression the CBs are fighting off…
One just inserts ‘postponed’ in the place of ‘forestall’.
A magnificent postponement of the the inevitable: I hope everyone enjoyed the last ten years, it was a generous reprieve……
We – the privileged – may look back on these as the Golden Years of full stomachs and safety.
Thanks for highlighting this paragraph of language intended to obscure as much as enlighten. If a person substitutes “postpone” for “forestall,” a much clearer view is given.
I looked up GFSR. They are “Global Financial Stability Reports.” This is a link to the October 2018 version. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/GFSR/Issues/2018/09/25/Global-Financial-Stability-Report-October-2018
The following is the IMF’s summary, with paragraph breaks added for readability. Also, I added emphasis for some of their words:
So, in summary, IMF says that near term risks have increased somewhat. Medium term risks remain elevated. And global regulatory reform should give a more resilient financial system. This is a report intended to reassure, not to alarm people.
These people would watch a sunami rolling in and merely say:
‘Risk is somewhat – but only somewhat, mind – elevated in the near to medium term.’
We must never forget…. ‘when it gets serious – you have to lie’
https://www.stevespanglerscience.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/salt1.jpg
in its crystalline form, it’s amber colored and a different crystal system than the one pictured. please don’t ask me how I know.
Tanks, all, for discussion! Just wanted to point out that the source for the citation seems to be unreliable – though it was published by the Guardian! A citation must be (at least more or less) a citation and not an interpretation. Maybe someone has access to the mentioned “separated analysis”? I think a critical discussion of sources helps the credibility of the matter.
it wasn’t a wave, but it was a high water mark. one of my fav books.
Fast Eddy,. You just don’t get it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPLE82Co634
We can construct a prosperous future for ourselves for as many people we want, whenever we want to. All we need to do is attune our minds so that we are dreaming the same dream.
Capitalism has created its own religion, as far as I can see. He who dies with the most toys wins! Based on everything that happens occurs by chance according to Darwin.
Research from physics says we can no longer think of the universe as a machine. More like a dream.
Regarding your 3 aphorism, the last one is the most enigmatic. Why not explain it in more
depth?
I was listening to the first part of the talk. The speaker mentions the Heisenberg uncertainty principle as being in a totally different direction from the certainty that Darwin’s theory seemed to provide.
I was expecting this, the video, to be complete nonsense since it was suggested to me by algorithms after viewing a video about breatharians but it is, like most philosophies, promising more than it can deliver. Natural selection cannot explain everything , the world is not a machine, but I also don’t think reality is the product of major Dream and many small, insignificant dreams, Many dreams are too unpredictable to form a basis for reality.
Self-organization of pretty much the whole universe seems to work in almost miraculous ways. The earth and its contents could not possibly be here, without a long list of seeming coincidences. I know that this blog would not exist without a long list of coincidences. The system looks very much like it has been “rigged” by a very intelligent planner. I see evidence of this frequently.
When I examine my life journey … and the many decisions I have made … why did I not choose such and such a path (on many, many occasions) when it most obviously made far more sense that the paths I ended up choosing… yet if I had not chosen the paths that I did … I would not be where I am now… because many of those decisions would have resulted in a completely different end game….
It does make me wonder if this is not all a very complex digital game… and we are the players…
If that is the case… then is there a way to contact the controller and ask him for the private jet as part of the path? It doesn’t respond to prayer… nor screaming in frustration…. not even please….
Perhaps you need a different approach.
What will be will be…. it is destined…. I either will or won’t … it’s out of my hands….
So I don’t do anything the right way.
I could learn to do something on the computer that would make for more efficiency. But I’m obviously not going to learn. If I were, I would have learned already or be in the process of learning now. I’m not going to learn it even to save the world. Why? Just because. It is the result of will. Will, I believe is what gets done. It isn’t personal. I seem to merely drift like a leaf blown in the wind, moving as the wind directs. The wind is whatever makes me act as I do. Often, what I do is simply what I feel like doing.
Whatever will happen… is inevitable
I would rather someone say there is an intelligent design than the observable universe for humans is made up of dream(s). Whether the intelligent designer has implicit guidelines for how humans should live remains to be seen. I remember seeing Progressives (Modernists) try to stop intelligent design being taught alongside evolution in grade schools across America… because it was anti-science. (supported a belief in God)
I wondered at some point how anti-science intelligent design was…was it just something to protect the fragile ego of Christians at the expense of science as Progressives had suggested?
Years before that…some scientists had suggested that there is a low probability of solar systems and planets nearby that can support anything close to what we call life. They suggested that intelligent life would be unlikely on any life-supporting planet because intelligence was not an inevitable outcome of evolution.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/alone-in-the-universe
Progressives have no problem with the idea that alien life is common and the Earth is just one of many, many planets with intelligent life and is insignificant on its own.
Intelligent Design says the opposite. It suggests that Earth is special and humans ever more so. To Progressives this is going backwards. It is anti-Modern.
recent discoveries of planets surrounding stars and an increasing number of them found in the “habitable zone” around stars and probably also containing water make the Progressives ideas more plausible than those of the Intelligent Design folks.
Could be that the MSM is making all this stuff about planets with water… it all feeds into the hopium that says we have options once we finish burning this sucker out
‘They’ guarantee it!
“Brutally Cold Temperatures” Threaten To Devastate Black Friday Sales
As investors eagerly await channel check reports on this upcoming Black Friday shopping bonanza to confirm the US consumer is still propping up the economy, there could be some unexpectedly bad news that may disappoint Wall Street.
First, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has released new weather models that indicate a massive blast of arctic air could spread across the mid-Atlantic and North East regions during the upcoming holiday week, crippling shopping intentions and keeping millions of Americans away from their favorite retail outlet of choice.
ECMWF- Possibility of record cold temperatures through Black Friday
“A passing storm system will drag the coldest air of the season into the Northeast just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Temperatures will range from 20 to 30 degrees below average for the time of year later this week, leading to brutally cold conditions for many on both the Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-18/brutally-cold-temperatures-could-stifle-black-friday-sales
https://www.sott.net/image/s23/463956/full/fake_news_polar_bears.jpg
“A passing storm system will drag the coldest air of the season into the Northeast just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Temperatures will range from 20 to 30 degrees below average for the time of year later this week, leading to brutally cold conditions for many on both the Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-18/brutally-cold-temperatures-could-stifle-black-friday-sales
https://www.sott.net/image/s23/463956/full/fake_news_polar_bears.jpg
Too cold?! Where’s their hunger for MORE?!
It’s too funny the way the economic fate of nations is said to hinge on the weather these days. Too hot, too cold, too wet….
When people are more insulated from the weather than at any previous time in history.
It’s not like they are going to walk down to the mall.
People will use the weather as an excuse to avoid exercise (6 people at our ball hockey match yesterday – 4 at M Fast’s Zumba class)….
But if anything, bad weather is an excuse to go to the Mall… to engage in the favourite past time of the masses – shopping!!! Get in the warm SUV … and into the kkklimate kontrolled mall…
Stuff your face with shi t food in the food court … buy more sh it you don’t need… then jump back into the SUV and drive the 3 blocks back home.
when people get used to a better way of being—they want to stay that way
i dont want to go back to having no central heating/transport etc
and that applies to everybody
all these idiots who demand the freedom of the frontier wouldnt want its diseases
Let me introduce you to the Founder of DelusiSTAN
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/theenlightenmentforworldhistory-161101183245/95/the-enlightenment-45-638.jpg
On a book tour of the UK last week, Diamond, 75, was drawn into a dispute with the campaign group after its director, Stephen Corry, condemned Diamond’s book as “completely wrong – both factually and morally – and extremely dangerous” for portraying tribal societies as more violent than western ones.
In a lengthy and angry rebuttal on Saturday, Diamond confirmed his finding that “tribal warfare tends to be chronic, because there are not strong central governments that can enforce peace”. He accused Survival of falling into the thinking that views tribal people either as “primitive brutish barbarians” or as “noble savages, peaceful paragons of virtue living in harmony with their environment, and admirable compared to us, who are the real brutes”.
But Survival remains adamant. “The clear thrust of his argument is that there is a natural evolutionary path along which human society progresses and we are simply further along it,” said Mazower. “That’s extremely dangerous, because it is the notion that they’re backward and need to be ‘developed’. That thinking – and not that their way of living might be just as modern as any other way of living – is the same thinking that underpins governments that persecute tribal people.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/03/jared-diamond-clash-tribal-peoples
In the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, tribal fights – sparked by disputes over land, resources and other grievances – lead to dozens of deaths and thousands of displacements each year.
https://www.icrc.org/en/papua-new-guinea-tribal-fights
It would appear (isn’t it obvious) Jared is right:
https://youtu.be/Ug_qx_zZlG0
wrangleraw52
Published on Feb 28, 2009
While working deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, I witnessed feuding tribe’s clash over the outcome of a volleyball tournament! They were all very quick to grab their machete’s!
https://youtu.be/JaJGsPISCCA
Noble… my ass!
What they need are referees… rules… and
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/171758242369-0-1/s-l1000.jpg
Then put it on the teevee!
Kill ’em all!
“My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)… but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that…
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
reference or link?
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas.
Ownership of land and of capital goods (like machinery, factories, and homes) is certainly a big source of inequality.
If all goods are close to commodities (stone age?), the wages of people can be virtually equal. There is maximum benefit from the commodities in this way.
1:21:50
‘If the circumstances favour it…if they cyclical counter-forces that would otherwise inhibit it have ceased to operate… it manifests itself spontaneously and reveals man as a savage beast that has no thought of sparing its own kind’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyfyMtuXvZA
‘cease to operate’
i.e. civilization ….
BAU…. energy….
If CNN and the NYT attack Trump…. (and these are real attacks – not just Kabuki)…
Then Trump must be good.
https://imgur.com/a/ZpUXOyB
Freud begins this work by taking up a possible source of religious feeling that his previous book, The Future of an Illusion, overlooked: the “oceanic feeling” of wholeness, limitlessness, and eternity.[2] Freud himself cannot experience this feeling of dissolution, but notes there exist different pathological and healthy states (e.g. love) where the boundary between ego and object is lost, blurred, or distorted. Freud categorizes the oceanic feeling as being a regression into an earlier state of consciousness — before the ego had differentiated itself from the world of objects. The need for this religious feeling, he writes, arises out of “the infant’s helplessness and the longing for the father,” as there is no greater infantile need than a father’s protection.[3] Freud “imagine[s] that the oceanic feeling became connected with religion later on” in cultural practices.
The second chapter delves into how religion is one coping strategy that arises out of a need for the individual to distance himself from all of the suffering in the world. The ego of the child forms over the oceanic feeling when it grasps that there are negative aspects of reality from which it would prefer to distance itself. But at the same time as the ego is hoping to avoid displeasure, it is also building itself so that it may be better able to act towards securing happiness, and these are the twin aims of the pleasure principle when the ego realizes that it must also deal with ‘reality’. Freud claims that the ‘purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle'[4] and the rest of the chapter is an exploration of various styles of adaptation that humans use to secure happiness from the world while also trying to limit their exposure to suffering or avoid it altogether. Freud points out three main sources of displeasure that we attempt to master: our own painful and mortal existence, the cruel and destructive aspects of the natural world, and the suffering endemic to the reality that we must live with other human beings in a society. Freud regards this last source of displeasure as “perhaps more painful to us than any other”,[5] and the remainder of this book will extrapolate on the conflict between the individual’s instinct for seeking gratification and the reality of societal life.
The third chapter of the book addresses a fundamental paradox of civilization:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents
“Psycho-analytic work has shown us that it is precisely these frustrations of sexual life which people known as neurotics cannot tolerate”.[7] So Freud begins the fifth section of this work, which explores the reasons why love cannot be the answer, and concludes that there exists a genuine and irreducible aggressive drive within all human beings. And while the love instinct (eros) can be commandeered by society to bind its members together, the aggressive instinct runs counter to this tendency and must either be repressed or be directed against a rival culture. Thus, Freud acknowledges there is irrevocable ill-will within the hearts of man, and that civilization primarily exists to curb and restrain these impulses.
Sports?
Uhhh??? Who stole my fast eddy and turned him into a psycho babbling freak. Please return the old fast eddy, we will not ask any questions.
That’s it… don’t suppress your inner id iot… otherwise you will end up with neuroses!
Back to the discussion of Mr DNA … this is what he wants… however civilization is inhibiting him:
Freud enumerates what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individual’s quest for instinctive freedom and civilization’s contrary demand for conformity and repression of instincts. Freud states that when any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it creates a feeling of mild contentment.
Many of humankind’s primitive instincts (for example, the desire to kill and the insatiable craving for sexual gratification) are clearly harmful to the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments if these rules are broken. Thus our possibilities for happiness are restricted by the law. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that gives rise to perpetual feelings of discontent among its citizens.
Freud’s theory is based on the notion that humans have certain characteristic instincts that are immutable[citation needed]. These include, most notably, the desires for sex, and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authority figures and sexual competitors, who obstruct the individual’s path to gratification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents
So basically you just regurgitate esoteric-sounding stuff from the internet to show us all how much more edgy and woke you are?
If one was a more-on … I could see how one might interpret those posts that way.
Or, one has read the actual books and finds those posts laughably inaccurate. Stooopid..i..ty is incomparably better than half-literacy. The choice before you is obvious.
Precisely and why my business dream is to own a gun/ ammo/ liquor / porn shop.
This explains why I so enjoy killing DelusiSTANIS. Fortunately FW is a magnet for them … so they are easy to find … otherwise I might repress these urges and…
http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2013/03/28/28-01-jack-nicholson-the-shinning.nocrop.w529.h314.jpg
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/db.jpg
Way too close to zero.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/danske-whistleblower-points-finger-at-deutsche-bank-in-testimony
Alongside weakening house prices and the return of home inspections (who’da thunk it?), there has been a curious level of weakness in stocks like Home Depot and Lowe’s – both of which saw recent downgrades by Wall Street analysts:
(Investors Business Daily): Home Depot stock was cut to neutral from outperform and had its price target slashed to 204 from 222 by Credit Suisse analyst Seth Sigman, who also downgraded Lowe’s stock to neutral, while its target was cut to 111 from 115.
“Our key concern is that home prices will continue to moderate, at least temporarily, as higher rates weigh on affordability, and inventory creeps up,” Sigman said in a research note.
Without a major demand problem apparent, he noted that the pace at which home prices moderate will indicate if the recent rate-driven housing market weakness is the “beginning of a soft landing, or something worse.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/10_1.jpg
(CNBC): What started as a blip is now a year-long slump for Manhattan real estate. And it shows no signs of turning around.
Total real estate sales in Manhattan fell 11% in the third quarter compared with a year ago, marking the fourth straight quarter of double-digit declines, according to new data from Douglas Elliman Real Estate and Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants.
It was also the first time since the financial crisis that resales of existing apartments fell for four straight quarters.
Prices fell, inventory jumped and discounts were higher and more common. Real estate brokers say the Manhattan real estate market is suffering from an oversupply of luxury units, a decline in foreign buyers and changes in the tax law that make it more expensive to own property in high-tax states.
“We’re in reset mode, and I think we still have a little way to go,” said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel. “It’s way too early to think about the market seeing significant improvement.”
The average price of a Manhattan apartment fell 4 percent during the quarter, to $1.93 million, while the median price fell 5% over the last year to $1.1 million. There is now a seven-month supply of apartments, up from five months in the third quarter of 2017.
…and Manhattan is just a highly visible local symptom of what is looking more and more to be a national disease:
(Reuters): Sales of new U.S. single-family homes fell to a near two-year low in September and data for the prior three months was revised lower, the latest indications that rising mortgage rates and higher prices were sapping demand for housing.
Though housing accounts for a small share of gross domestic product, it has a bigger economic footprint. That is raising concerns that protracted housing market weakness could eventually spill over to the broader economy. Residential investment contracted in the first half of the year and is expected to have declined further in the third quarter.
“It is increasingly apparent that homes are getting too expensive to afford both on price and on financing costs,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. “One thing is for certain, the economy cannot grow at a sustainable 3 percent pace for long if new home sales continue to tumble.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-18/grant-williams-briffits-squeans-blurgits-plewds
If both housing and auto sales are doing badly, we have a real problem ahead!
We begin with the stealth deterioration of the U.S. housing market.
The collapse of the housing market just a decade ago was the epicentre of the most turbulent period in the global economy since The Great Depression.
It’s extraordinary that we seem to need reminding of the depths to which our collective despair sank in the dark days of 2007-2009, but all that lovely printed money courtesy of the world’s central banks has clearly dulled the senses (just as it was intended to do).
By way of a reminder, the U.S. housing sector was, at the time, ‘systemically important’ – important enough that its decline brought the entire world to the brink of catastrophe and, though I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, I have to tell you that nothing has changed.
OK, so maybe some things have changed in the financial circus that surrounds the U.S. housing market, but its importance remains undiminished.
As you can see from the chart below, the NAHB Unbridled Optimism Index Housing Market Index has turned down in the last few months after a series of wobbles. This index measures the views of respondents to the question of whether the market for new homes is good or not.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/williams1.jpg
The respondents are all homebuilders.
Noticeably, their views on housing began souring in June of 2005, long before the depths of the 2008 Credit Crisis.
We’ve seen similar pullbacks in sentiment going back to 2013 and each time optimism has returned, but this time, something else is occurring alongside the about-turn in sentiment; homebuilders’ stocks are getting battered.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/williams2.jpg
Lately, the S&P500 has begun catching down to this key driver of the economy but it will be important to keep watching the homebuilders for signs of continued weakness.
Elsewhere in the housing sector, starts are in the process of breaking, testing and re-breaking the trendline they’ve ridden higher since the 2010 low and that, of course, has much to do with the steady increase in interest rates which is having the inevitable follow-through into mortgage rates which in turn is feeding through into the number of applications for mortgages.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/3_0.jpg
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/4_0.jpg
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/5_0.jpg
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/6_0.jpg
You’d be hard-pushed to call this rocket science (or even ‘remotely unpredictable’) and yet the stealth decline in housing has been more or less completely ignored (at least until now).
Housing permits (which had been robust) have also fallen off a cliff in the last five months so respite from the faltering housing market is proving hard to find.
Anecdotally? Also not good. Manhattan real estate is suffering just as a slew of new condos (built with QE-level financing) are about to hit the market:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-18/grant-williams-briffits-squeans-blurgits-plewds
These are pretty dreadful indications for the housing market!
41+ minute mark… ‘something inside us called it’
YES sigmund!!! Let me give you a better name for that beast….
Mr DNA!!!!
‘Unknown … completely unconscious… it … controlling us… driving us in ways we don’t understand… that we try to sublimate’
‘Civilization asks us to control it/ID….’
Tying this excellent lecture into the current issue at hand…. watch what happens when civilization vapourizes… when there is no advantage to controlling Mr DNA… when in fact Mr DNA will takeover when each of us is face with a life threatening situation …
Mr Rogers will turn into Jeffrey Dahmer…. because Dahmer was always lurking beneath the surface of Mr Rogers
The tells for cognitive dissonance
Once your actions and your self image get out of sync, the result is often some kind of rationalization. Here are a few ways you can tell if someone is experiencing cognitive dissonance and taking action to resolve it:
“Speechless”. When a person that is otherwise very vocal becomes temporarily tongue-tied.
Personal attacks. Making a personal attack without reason or argument.
Irrational explanations. Offering a wide variety of explanations for an observation.
https://medium.com/zero-infinity/cognitive-dissonance-3e6f63c36a
Let’s try an experiment:
KKKLIMATE DATA FAKED
by John Bates (leading kkklimate scientist)
In the following sections, I provide the details of how Mr. Karl failed to disclose critical information to NOAA, Science Magazine, and Chairman Smith regarding the datasets used in K15. I have extensive documentation that provides independent verification of the story below. I also provide my suggestions for how we might keep such a flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards from happening in the future. Finally, I provide some links to examples of what well documented CDRs look like that readers might contrast and compare with what Mr. Karl has provided.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/c limate-scientists-versus-c limate-data/
https://youtu.be/XRNuTHEmgKU
Absolutely brilliant! I’ve never read (or listened to) this before, and now I am laying on the comfy couch taking it in sentence by sentence. It’s fascinating stuff, but it’s over 3 hours long, and I am feeling sleepy. My eyelids are heavy… Psychoanalytic….. Ego….. Unconscious mental entity… 3, 2, 1, zzzzz
I am listening to it for maybe… the fifth time…. it is fascinating stuff.
Here’s a shorter clip about Jung’s premonition of a global catastrophe. Should be right up your street, FE. 😀
I only listened to a bit of it. I have a hard time finding an extra three hours. Is there a printed version available?
Listening to Bernay’s daughter … Bernay’s thought everyone was stuuuuupid….
Nothing has changed Eddie… and the country – DelusiSTAN – that you created… is still around
Held…
Anyway …
Democracy is Bull Sh it…. it is dangerous… can cannot be allowed.
https://journals.openedition.org/erea/2538
Sorry Gnome…. Lippman was right … humans are STUUUUUPID…. irrational…. and what they think MUST be controlled.
Look around you – isn’t it obvious?
https://youtu.be/jCUouHTLWeg
“humans are STUUUUUPID…. irrational…. and what they think MUST be controlled.”
No one can control who is in control or what it is that they control.
And you are a perfect example of what Lippman and Freud and Bernays…. were referring to.
You’re a dime a billion.
Democracy and Its Discontents: Walter Lippmann and the Crisis of Politics (1919-1938)
Aside from this, what is most important to remember is that Liberty and the News was, as the title itself suggests, a book on liberty, where Lippmann addressed the classical theories of John Milton and John Stuart Mill. Both these authors offered what Lippmann considered an inadequate theory of liberty because they both posited doctrines whose premises offered the bases for subsequent exceptions. Lippmann instead clearly stated “that the traditional liberties of speech and opinion rest on no solid foundation” and that in Milton’s and in Mill’s thought “liberty is to be permitted (only) where differences are of no great moment” (Lippmann, 1920, pp. 11 and 17). Their notion of liberty was based on that of indifference, which was “too feeble and unreal… to protect the purpose of liberty” (Lippmann, 1920, p. 21).
In 1922 Lippmann published his most famous book, Public Opinion. Strongly influenced by Plato’s theory of knowledge, Lippmann argued that no one, from the man in the street to the journalist and to the President of the United States, could have a first-hand, adequate knowledge of the exterior world. Using the works of Graham Wallas and the psychology of Sigmund Freud, Lippmann illustrated the characteristics of a plurality of pseudo-environments, radically different from the external world, where every individual collected his stereotypes and all the information coming from the outside. In effect, people have a hard time in understanding the complexity of contemporary world. For this reason, Lippmann expressed his doubts about the existence of authentic public opinion, a view that was shared by people who were well informed and interested in public affairs. Lippmann offered a short definition of what he meant by “public opinion”:
The imperfect public described by Lippmann could not be the real substratum of democracy. This is the core of the book’s pars destruens. Lippmann argued that the classical theory of democracy as conceived by Rousseau and, even more importantly, by the American Founding Fathers, was based on the “myth of the omnicompetent citizen”. Only these “omnicompetent citizens” could develop an authentic public opinion, or volonté generale, capable of directing the course of government. This was a theory that could only fit the needs of very small communities, but was completely inadequate for great twentieth-century democracies and larger states. Lippmann believed it was a myth and that “life is too short for the pursuit of omniscience” (Lippmann, 1925, p. 35).
This was probably the main reason for its lack of critical success and readership. Nevertheless, the book is probably one of the most interesting ever written by Lippmann. Here he observed that the common man “has been saddled with an impossible task and that he is asked to practice an unattainable ideal” (Lippmann, 1925, p. 10). As he had argued in Public Opinion, he insisted on the fact that people can influence the government in quite a feeble way and only when elections come. Besides then, the only power of public opinion is to check the work of the Congress and the Government:
I guess I won’t be cutting the lawn today!!!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/01AvTgkOg2GUCdlVve1gduAs5n0=/620×817/smart/filters:quality(70)/arc-anglerfish-syd-prod-nzme.s3.amazonaws.com/public/7GA3BTGENJFOFDP6W64GV6NBAA.jpg
last photo taken by FE before slamming into rock cut at end of road, on snowy day in NZ summer.
notice like all crazy NZ drivers, he drives on wrong side of road.
Snow is falling in central Queenstown disrupting flights and closing the Crown Range as a late wintry blast hits the lower South Island.
This comes as the MetService has confirmed heavy snow is likely to fall in inland Southland, Central Otago and inland Clutha for the next two days.
Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) confirmed at about 8.15am that the Crown Range was closed and trucks were working to clear it following heavy snow overnight.
QLDC said there had also been reports of snow in Fernhill.
A flight due to arrive at Queenstown Airport at 7.55am from Christchurch was cancelled, as was a flight set to leave Queenstown for Christchurch at 8.20am.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12162475
The thing is … it is no ‘later winter’ … so it’s not a late ‘wintry blast’ …. it’s nearly summer… and we’ve only had 3 maybe 4 snowfalls (outside of on the mountains) the entire winter…
And looking out the window this is not the heaviest yet…. it’s a winter wonderland… i may go outside and make a snowman!
Yet no mention about go-dam n who rming in that story…. it’s still winter according to the nzh… this is normal ….
And apparently a very cold winter is in store for the US and Canada….
Al? Al??? wTf Al? What happened to the 7m sea rise? And I thought that by now we could put an egg in a pan .. place in outside… and it would fry
Al?????
Why we should stop trying control cocaine sales
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p06gqbn4/why-buying-cocaine-helps-the-government
Buying cocaine adds to GDP.
The US has a terrible epidemic of people on opioid pain killers. In some sense, this helps the economy as well. Health insurance covers (part of) the cost of treatment centers to stay on to try to get off the drugs. That is part of the reason health care costs are so high.
High health care costs, due to an unhealthy population, further adds to GDP. A person understands why the situation tends to end badly.
All of that rehab insurance-money attracts some very unsavoury criminal types:
November 19, 2018… 735am…. Queenstown New Zealand… I am looking out my window and …
It is SNOWING. I wonder if the ski hills will re-open?
Will I find a single news story that uses this to call G W into question?
I guarantee you – not.
And in other news, there was no hurricane in America…. yet again.
https://youtu.be/w9QLn7gM-hY
They have that covered; its no longer G.Warmups, its Climax changing. Heads they win, tails u lose. This is Orwell/Huxley hybrid world.
Control the narrative at all costs.
Similarly for poorly diagnosed economic issues; there is an allowable narrative range and to retain credibilty you must not stray. An example is the use of negative growth, not contraction. And so it goes.
Yep … if a wall of ice 30 metres tall…. crept over Los Angeles… headed towards the equator… with Al Gore riding on top and hollering through a bull horn ‘IT WAS ALL A HO AX – GET THE F789 OUT OF THE WAY!!!!’
The duuummmm f789s would turn beet red with anger … and insist that this was expected… it’s called kkkklimax cccchange.l… NOT g o bool wo rming!!!
It really is beyond ridiculous… but no unexpected given… how absolutely f789ing stuuuuupid and easily manipulated the human vermin are…
https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04
The first minute of this is all anyone needs to know.
Hi Eddy from my castle in ChCH
Unusually cold weather – just an anomaly
Unusually warm weather – glowball worming
http://www.insidethegames.biz/images/2014/09/Olympic_gold_medal_Innsbruck_1976.jpg
A global food crisis may be less than a decade away
Sara Menker quit a career in commodities trading to figure out how the global value chain of agriculture works. Her discoveries have led to some startling predictions: “We could have a tipping point in global food and agriculture if surging demand surpasses the agricultural system’s structural capacity to produce food,” she says. “People could starve and governments may fall.” Menker’s models predict that this scenario could happen in a decade — that the world could be short 214 trillion calories per year by 2027
https://youtu.be/OzA6jRYjVQs
It is not about energy it is about data??? I disagree.
In many cases food is either mismanaged so it doesn’t get to the people in time before it begins to rot or food is just wasted which tends to be a western problem. I remember many years ago, going to a restaurant and being told by my friends to leave some food on the plate because if you eat all of your food it makes you look bad.
Well needless to say they lost. All the people starving around the world and restaurants throw away hundreds of pounds of food each night that could feed the needy or homeless.
The fact that population is rising in most poor countries runs counter to your claim that the needy and homeless are starving.
The rest of your ancedotes about food being thrown out are apocryphal.
Restaurants probably throw that food out because of regulations, or because it is food that can easily be spoiled.
I can’t imagine restaurants throwing away a lot of food away because that would hurt their bottom line.
I’m not saying that food shortages don’t exist, but that seems to be an economic problem that is not going to be wished away with a global central government distributing standardized food portions to every single human.
Most Communist countries had issues with food production which tells me economics, matter and it’s not just distribution that brings people to starve. Corruption exists everywhere. Why do some places face chronic hunger while others have less chronic hunger?
How will we survive when the population hits 10 billion?
By 2050, an estimated 10 billion people will live on earth. How are we going to provide everybody with basic needs
https://youtu.be/rmfzwwrCrrU
simple answr—they can’t
so 10bn will fight until theres 1 bn left
then they can
The coal and the population of Poland:
This chart is quite interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_of_Poland.svg
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland
It shows that the population first collapsed during WWII from 35 to 24 million people.
The economic collapse of Poland came around the same number of 35 million inhabitants around 1980. Now the population ceased to grow around 38 million inhabitants in 1990.
Poland is still close to 80 % dependent on coal as regards the electricity production. That is why this population limit copying the domestic energy source, namely the coal, is very interesting. Meanwhile the domestic coal production is falling, but the consumption still copies the production.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Coal_Balance_Poland.svg/2000px-Coal_Balance_Poland.svg.png
Meanwhile, the natural gas consumption was rising:
https://www.tititudorancea.com/lib/energy/87_7.png
The energy imports reached certain level and are not rising anymore:
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/poland-energy-imports-net-percent-of-energy-use-wb-data@2x.png?s=pol.eg.imp.cons.zs%3aworldbank&lbl=0&v=201811300000y
Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/poland/energy-imports-net-percent-of-energy-use-wb-data.html
Interesting! I think that this all ties in with affordability. Part of the problem is that energy consumption is closely tied in with job availability. If there are no jobs (or if they pay very poorly), energy consumption is low. People tend to leave for other places with better job opportunities. They don’t have as many children. Death rates tend to be higher, because the situation looks hopeless.
Also, the decrease about 1990-1991 ties in with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
I looked at the graph and the population collapse in Poland was huge after World War II. I know Russia was badly affected too. The US was far enough away from the action that it sailed through, and came out somewhat ahead, with all of the women added to the workforce, and the growing oil and gas industry.
I would say that the point is that the population simply reaches its limits regardless the amount of the energy that can be extracted. The consumption can not be pushed higher by no means.
There can be huge amounts of coal, oil or natural gas that can be extracted, but the population tends to collapse. That is also the reason why Poland did not start to use the nuclear energy. The use of nuclear, with its rising costs, would not stop the population from collapsing, and thus stop the collapse of the demand for energy.
Inability to accept the end of growth is the reason why people emmigrate also from Venezuela: they were accustomed to the growth of the population, but the extracted amounts can not support higher population. The ageing populations importing oil from Venezuela could find cheaper oil elswhere. We must bear in mind that the world population stopped to grow in 1988, but is only getting older since then (https://econimica.blogspot.com/2018/07/global-population-growth-ceased-in.html).
The human population simply degenerates before it consumes all what it theoretically could. Its tendency to growing addiction to the supplemental energy makes it more and more unfit to survive with the same levels of energy consumption.
Genesis 3:5: “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
I hadn’t noticed this. I am fairly certain these graphs are made from UN population estimates by 5 year periods -2017. I have the data. I could remake the charts. This is his birth chart. I copied it over to OFW, so it doesn’t disappear if he decides to close down again.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/global-births-5-year-periods-econimica.png
In our village, the new plots for the house construction were made reorganizing the strips of the fields. The people (some of them also from the depopulating villages in the upper parts of the valleys in our surroundings) were eager to build on such cheap plots, so they built the new houses. But the problem came, when they wanted to move to the new houses and connect to the electric grid: it was not that easy. They had to wait more than one year till the project of the electric grid extension was created, approved and realized.
It is cheaper to import natural gas and consume instead of the domestic coal, when the populations are ageing. And it is also cheaper to stay living where the electric grid is instead of moving to the place where no grid electricity is present. It also confirms the fact that living off-grid is not cheap. If they could live off-grid, these new houses would surely remain disconnected. But no, living off-grid is not cheap, so they eagerly waited for the supply of the cheaper grid electricity.
The extension of the existing energy grids vis-a-vis ageing populations brings higher costs to the individuals and the corresponding energy supply companies. Its these device costs that constitue one of the limits of the current populations: addding new consumers connections is not economical and cheap when the new consumers just appear somewhere else, where the construction boom was induced by the low interest rates of the mortgages and the low prices of the plots, while they disappear in other parts of the grid.
Without immigration, all white countries wouldn’t have population growth. Fertility rate for white non hispanic American women is 1.7 https://www.statista.com/statistics/226292/us-fertility-rates-by-race-and-ethnicity/
Maybe it’s because fossil fuel usage in these countries isn’t rising? Or maybe people now are lazy, and prefer to have better car, or go on vacations more often, than to have childern?
Too many young people going to school forever. When they finish, they still don’t earn very much, and need to pay back debt. Or they spend every spare minute playing video games, instead of socializing.
Sounds like Gail is blaming men for all of this.
As if women are all desperate to have children with any man passing by.
Socializing may help with social skills but it doesn’t make one attractive on its own.
No amount of religious attendance will make a woman have a number of children with an ugly man, especially if she has free agency.
If it weren’t for the educational-industrial complex, which I disaprove of, or games to keep young men from starting trouble we would have hit population limits in developing countries a lot sooner. Prior to the rise of video games and credentialism , there were a lot more men hanging outside, and when they weren’t forming gangs and preying on the weak, they were getting women pregnant. Bringing things back to where they were before decades ago means society will have to be more lenient of violent crime because it will be more common.
Combine that with a civilization that’s imploding and you will have the social situation in India…It’s good that people have activities to replace child-rearing because if that is the only purpose a society allows for them and the jobs and wages that they need to do all this doesn’t exist…it will cause men to lash out.
I figure we’re heading in that direction anyway. With that said,
https://i.amz.mshcdn.com/kItrhX_Gm0uzFx2k39e-PE2MQMQ=/http%3A%2F%2Fa.amz.mshcdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F12%2Fvergara-14.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fc/7f/bb/fc7fbb0a412840edcccd75d31991da5f–street-game-city-streets.jpg
coming to a neighborhood near you along with a higher birthrate.
MG, Poland has same level of Actual Individual Consumption per capita, as Slovakia, at 76% of EU average: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/8990152/2-19062018-BP-EN.pdf
The rise of the energy production capacities, like the new blocks of the nuclear power plant in Slovakia, are the reason why Slovakia became the new car production center in Europe. The surplus electricity that can not be consumed by the private consumers is thus consumed by the industry.
First you need to have the energy sources, then you can produce something.
The energy supply chain of the coal is too complicated in comparison to the natural gas grid or electrical grid. That is why the best way is to convert the coal to electricity where it is mined and transport it as electricity via electrical grid. Transporting energy dense nucelar fuel is easy, so the nuclear power plants can be located anywhere.
I’m afraid next year Poland’s industry will be crushed by rising electricity prices, because of more expensive carbon dioxide emissions permits. Having nuclear plant is a big advantage now in Europe. We started to build one in late 1980’s, but then there was the Chernobyl, and big drop in electricity demand in early 1990’s, so it was abandoned. Now it’s too expensive, and one or two reactors wouldn’t make a difference anyway for such a big country.
https://www.newsweek.com/carl-bernstein-calls-change-white-house-briefings-says-trump-manipulates-1220839
One last linked article before I go to work on Sunday. My own business, so I suppose it’s self inflicted labor, but when you work for yourself every day is an opportunity to put in some time. That stated, I think whether people are pro or anti Trump they most likely agree he is incredibly great at manipulation. A funny line during Sat. Nite Live was, “The democrats may have won the House, but Trump still controls the Judiciary, the Senate, Space & Time and our perception of Reality.”
“CNN political analyst Carl Bernstein thinks journalists should change the way they approach White House press briefings after Trump’s reaction to the Jim Acosta controversy.”
“We need to be rethinking how we conduct these briefings and what our response is to the press conferences and briefings when the President of the United States basically uses them as an occasion to lie for agitprop and to manipulate the press,” he shared.
“He noted members of the press should come up with new ways to control the conversation during their time in the White House. “I don’t think we should necessarily be running them verbatim from beginning to end. I think it’s like giving him free airtime during the campaign. I think we need to reevaluate how we engage with the President, not get ourselves manipulated.”
Good luck on that front. Trump controls, manipulates and will not allow any other form of communication that the status quo, so it’s just a situation that will remain exactly as is, no matter how much push back is attempted.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/16/to-prevent-world-war-iii-avoid-delusions-about-china-and-us-leadership.html
The Author of this article make some interesting points:
Delusion #1: U.S.-Chinese military conflict is inconceivable
“Today,” writes strategist Graham Allison, “the intensifying rivalry between a rising China and a ruling United States could lead to a war that neither side wants and that both know would be even more catastrophic than World War I. Those tensions have increased in no small part due to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s increased flexing of economic and military muscle, and President Trump’s determination to push back, born more by a sense of grievance than of history.”
Delusion #2. Europe is fine, and U.S. presence there of reduced significance
“Europe is not fine, and U.S. presence has rarely been more urgently required. The current picture has contradictions. The U.S. has increased its commitments and NATO has lifted its performance in the face of the Russian threat, which is good. Not good are divisions between key European allies and President Trump alongside strains within Europe.”
Delusion #3. The Middle East’s problems can be contained
“The lesson of global terrorism and the refugee waves that have inflamed European politics is that what happens in the Middle East doesn’t stay in the Middle East. A growing U.S. confrontation with Iran, the ripples from the brutal Khashoggi murder in Saudi Arabia, and ongoing civil wars in Yemen, Libya and Syria have significantly increased the immediate risks.”
Delusion #4. U.S. global leadership is assured
“The window is closing on our ability to shape a future to our liking. The United States has dynamism, resources, human capital and sources of attraction that could extend its global leadership. However, with China on track to surpass the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy, it has far less leverage and relative resources than it had in 1945.”
Looking at history, wars happen when there are not sufficient resources for economies to be maintained. A variety of things go wrong to make this situation occur.
The collapse of Czechoslovakia in the mid of the 20th century: the communist labor camps
“Najviac táborov bolo zriadených v blízkosti uhoľných a uránových baní.” (The most of the labor camps were located in the vicinity of the coal and uranium mines.)
https://history.hnonline.sk/nove-dejiny/1843966-prach-a-smrt-v-uranovych-baniach-komunistickymi-pracovnymi-tabormi-presli-tisice-ludi
http://www.slavime100let.cz/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/1949/gulagy/dekada-1949-gulagy-02.jpg
Prací ke svobodě = Arbeit macht frei
Real freedom is being free from the taint of bourgeois imperialism.
So, an ideologically-correct labour camp does in fact set one free!
“Real freedom is being free from the taint of bourgeois imperialism.
So, an ideologically-correct labour camp does in fact set one free!”
– a good joke, when we know that the supplemental energy that you have at your disposal makes you free, not you working more…
Operation ‘No Deal’ — army plans for troops on street
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/operation-no-deal-army-plans-for-troops-on-street-cc5c55kq8
I suspect the troops will come onto the streets… if anyone were to actually attempt to implement the Brexit vote….