Financial markets have been behaving in a very turbulent manner in the last couple of months. The issue, as I see it, is that the world economy is gradually changing from a growth mode to a mode of shrinkage. This is something like a ship changing course, from going in one direction to going in reverse. The system acts as if the brakes are being very forcefully applied, and reaction of the economy is to almost shake.
What seems to be happening is that the world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as predicted in the computer simulations modeled in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth. In fact, the base model of that set of simulations indicated that peak industrial output per capita might be reached right about now. Peak food per capita might be reached about the same time. I have added a dotted line to the forecast from this model, indicating where the economy seems to be in 2019, relative to the base model.1
Figure 1. Base scenario from The Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil with dotted line at 2019 added by author. The 2019 line is drawn based on where the world economy seems to be now, rather than on precisely where the base model would put the year 2019.
The economy is a self-organizing structure that operates under the laws of physics. Many people have thought that when the world economy reaches limits, the limits would be of the form of high prices and “running out” of oil. This represents an overly simple understanding of how the system works. What we should really expect, and in fact, what we are now beginning to see, is production cuts in finished goods made by the industrial system, such as cell phones and automobiles, because of affordability issues. Indirectly, these affordability issues lead to low commodity prices and low profitability for commodity producers. For example:
- The sale of Chinese private passenger vehicles for the year of 2018 through November is down by 2.8%, with November sales off by 16.1%. Most analysts are forecasting this trend of contracting sales to continue into 2019. Lower sales seem to reflect affordability issues.
- Saudi Arabia plans to cut oil production by 800,000 barrels per day from the November 2018 level, to try to raise oil prices. Profits are too low at current prices.
- Coal is reported not to have an economic future in Australia, partly because of competition from subsidized renewables and partly because China and India want to prop up the prices of coal from their own coal mines.
The Significance of Trump’s Tariffs
If a person looks at history, it becomes clear that tariffs are a standard response to a problem of shrinking food or industrial output per capita. Tariffs were put in place in the 1920s in the time leading up to the Great Depression, and were investigated after the Panic of 1857, which seems to have indirectly led to the US Civil War.
Whenever an economy produces less industrial or food output per capita there is an allocation problem: who gets cut off from buying output similar to the amount that they previously purchased? Tariffs are a standard way that a relatively strong economy tries to gain an advantage over weaker economies. Tariffs are intended to help the citizens of the strong economy maintain their previous quantity of goods and services, even as other economies are forced to get along with less.
I see Trump’s trade policies primarily as evidence of an underlying problem, namely, the falling affordability of goods and services for a major segment of the population. Thus, Trump’s tariffs are one of the pieces of evidence that lead me to believe that the world economy is reaching Limits to Growth.
The Nature of World Economic Growth
Economic growth seems to require growth in three dimensions (a) Complexity, (b) Debt Bubble, and (c) Use of Resources. Today, the world economy seems to be reaching limits in all three of these dimensions (Figure 2).
Figure 2.
Complexity involves adding more technology, more international trade and more specialization. Its downside is that it indirectly tends to reduce affordability of finished end products because of growing wage disparity; many non-elite workers have wages that are too low to afford very much of the output of the economy. As more complexity is added, wage disparity tends to increase. International wage competition makes the situation worse.
A growing debt bubble can help keep commodity prices up because a rising amount of debt can indirectly provide more demand for goods and services. For example, if there is growing debt, it can be used to buy homes, cars, and vacation travel, all of which require oil and other energy consumption.
If debt levels become too high, or if regulators decide to raise short-term interest rates as a method of slowing the economy, the debt bubble is in danger of collapsing. A collapsing debt bubble tends to lead to recession and falling commodity prices. Commodity prices fell dramatically in the second half of 2008. Prices now seem to be headed downward again, starting in October 2018.
Figure 3. Brent oil prices with what appear to be debt bubble collapses marked.
Figure 4. Three-month treasury secondary market rates compared to 10-year treasuries from FRED, with points where short term interest rates exceed long term rates marked by author with arrows.
Even the relatively slow recent rise in short-term interest rates (Figure 4) seems to be producing a decrease in oil prices (Figure 3) in a way that a person might expect from a debt bubble collapse. The sale of US Quantitative Easing assets at the same time that interest rates have been rising no doubt adds to the problem of falling oil prices and volatile stock markets. The gray bars in Figure 4 indicate recessions.
Growing use of resources becomes increasingly problematic for two reasons. One is population growth. As population rises, the economy needs more food to feed the growing population. This leads to the need for more complexity (irrigation, better seed, fertilizer, world trade) to feed the growing world population.
The other problem with growing use of resources is diminishing returns, leading to the rising cost of extracting commodities over time. Diminishing returns occur because producers tend to extract the cheapest to extract commodities first, leaving in place the commodities requiring deeper wells or more processing. Even water has this difficulty. At times, desalination, at very high cost, is needed to obtain sufficient fresh water for a growing population.
Why Inadequate Energy Supplies Lead to Low Oil Prices Rather than High
In the last section, I discussed the cost of producing commodities of many kinds rising because of diminishing returns. Higher costs should lead to higher prices, shouldn’t they?
Strangely enough, higher costs translate to higher prices only sometimes. When energy consumption per capita is rising rapidly (peaks of red areas on Figure 5), rising costs do seem to translate to rising prices. Spiking oil prices were experienced several times: 1917 to 1920; 1974 to 1982; 2004 to mid 2008; and 2011 to 2014. All of these high oil prices occurred toward the end of the red peaks on Figure 5. In fact, these high oil prices (as well as other high commodity prices that tend to rise at the same time as oil prices) are likely what brought growth in energy consumption down. The prices of goods and services made with these commodities became unaffordable for lower-wage workers, indirectly decreasing the growth rate in energy products consumed.
Figure 5.
The red peaks represented periods of very rapid growth, fed by growing supplies of very cheap energy: coal and hydroelectricity in the Electrification and Early Mechanization period, oil in the Postwar Boom, and coal in the China period. With low energy prices, many countries were able to expand their economies simultaneously, keeping demand high. The Postwar Boom also reflected the addition of many women to the labor force, increasing the ability of families to afford second cars and nicer homes.
Rapidly growing energy consumption allowed per capita output of both food (with meat protein given a higher count than carbohydrates) and industrial products to grow rapidly during these peaks. The reason that output of these products could grow is because the laws of physics require energy consumption for heat, transportation, refrigeration and other processes required by industrialization and farming. In these boom periods, higher energy costs were easy to pass on. Eventually the higher energy costs “caught up with” the economy, and pushed growth in energy consumption per capita down, putting an end to the peaks.
Figure 6 shows Figure 5 with the valleys labeled, instead of the peaks.
Figure 6.
When I say that the world economy is reaching “peak industrial output per capita” and “peak food per capita,” this represents the opposite of a rapidly growing economy. In fact, if the world is reaching Limits to Growth, the situation is even worse than all of the labeled valleys on Figure 6. In such a case, energy consumption growth is likely to shrink so low that even the blue area (population growth) turns negative.
In such a situation, the big problem is “not enough to go around.” While cost increases due to diminishing returns could easily be passed along when growth in industrial and food output per capita were rapidly rising (the Figure 5 situation), this ability seems to disappear when the economy is near limits. Part of the problem is that the lower growth in per capita energy affects the kinds of jobs that are available. With low energy consumption growth, many of the jobs that are available are service jobs that do not pay well. Wage disparity becomes an increasing problem.
When wage disparity grows, the share of low wage workers rises. If businesses try to pass along their higher costs of production, they encounter market resistance because lower wage workers cannot afford the finished goods made with high cost energy products. For example, auto and iPhone sales in China decline. The lack of Chinese demand tends to lead to a drop in demand for the many commodities used in manufacturing these goods, including both energy products and metals. Because there is very little storage capacity for commodities, a small decline in demand tends to lead to quite a large decline in prices. Even a small decline in China’s demand for energy products can lead to a big decline in oil prices.
Strange as it may seem, the economy ends up with low oil prices, rather than high oil prices, being the problem. Other commodity prices tend to be low as well.
What Is Ahead, If We Are Reaching Economic Growth Limits?
1. Figure 1 at the top of this post seems to give an indication of what is ahead after 2019, but this forecast cannot be relied on. A major issue is that the limited model used at that time did not include the financial system or debt. Even if the model seems to provide a reasonably accurate estimate of when limits will hit, it won’t necessarily give a correct view of what the impact of limits will be on the rest of the economy, after limits hit. The authors, in fact, have said that the model should not be expected to provide reliable indications regarding how the economy will behave after limits have started to have an impact on economic output.
2. As indicated in the title of this post, considerable financial volatility can be expected in 2019 if the economy is trying to slow itself. Stock prices will be erratic; interest rates will be erratic; currency relativities will tend to bounce around. The likelihood that derivatives will cause major problems for banks will rise because derivatives tend to assume more stability in values than now seems to be the case. Increasing problems with derivatives raises the risk of bank failure.
3. The world economy doesn’t necessarily fail all at once. Instead, pieces that are, in some sense, “less efficient” users of energy may shrink back. During the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the countries that seemed to be most affected were countries such as Greece, Spain, and Italy that depend on oil for a disproportionately large share of their total energy consumption. China and India, with energy mixes dominated by coal, were much less affected.
Figure 7. Oil consumption as a percentage of total energy consumption, based on 2018 BP Statistical Review of World Energy data.
Figure 8. Energy consumption per capita for selected areas, based on energy consumption data from 2018 BP Statistical Review of World Energy and United Nations 2017 Population Estimates by Country.
In the 2002-2008 period, oil prices were rising faster than prices of other fossil fuels. This tended to make countries using a high share of oil in their energy mix less competitive in the world market. The low labor costs of China and India gave these countries another advantage. By the end of 2007, China’s energy consumption per capita had risen to a point where it almost matched the (now lower) energy consumption of the European countries shown. China, with its low energy costs, seems to have “eaten the lunch” of some of its European competitors.
In 2019 and the years that follow, some countries may fare at least somewhat better than others. The United States, for now, seems to be faring better than many other parts of the world.
4. While we have been depending upon China to be a leader in economic growth, China’s growth is already faltering and may turn to contraction in the near future. One reason is an energy problem: China’s coal production has fallen because many of its coal mines have been closed due to lack of profitability. As a result, China’s need for imported energy (difference between black line and top of energy production stack) has been growing rapidly. China is now the largest importer of oil, coal, and natural gas in the world. It is very vulnerable to tariffs and to lack of available supplies for import.
Figure 9. China energy production by fuel plus its total energy consumption, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 data.
A second issue is that demographics are working against China; its working-age population already seems to be shrinking. A third reason why China is vulnerable to economic difficulties is because of its growing debt level. Debt becomes difficult to repay with interest if the economy slows.
5. Oil exporters such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria have become vulnerable to government overthrow or collapse because of low world oil prices since 2014. If the central government of one or more of these exporters disappears, it is possible that the pieces of the country will struggle along, producing a lower amount of oil, as Libya has done in recent years. It is also possible that another larger country will attempt to take over the failing production of the country and secure the output for itself.
6. Epidemics become increasingly likely, especially in countries with serious financial problems, such as Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela. Historically, much of the decrease in population in countries with collapsing economies has come from epidemics. Of course, epidemics can spread across national boundaries, exporting the problems elsewhere.
7. Resource wars become increasingly likely. These can be local wars, perhaps over the availability of water. They can also be large, international wars. The timing of World War I and World War II make it seem likely that these wars were both resource wars.
Figure 10.
8. Collapsing intergovernmental agencies, such as the European Union, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund, seem likely. The United Kingdom’s planned exit from the European Union in 2019 is a step toward dissolving the European Union.
9. Privately funded pension funds will increasingly be subject to default because of continued low interest rates. Some governments may choose to cut back the amounts they provide to pensioners because governments cannot collect adequate tax revenue for this purpose. Some countries may purposely shut down parts of their governments, in an attempt to hold down government spending.
10. A far worse and more permanent recession than that of the Great Recession seems likely because of the difficulty in repaying debt with interest in a shrinking economy. It is not clear when such a recession will start. It could start later in 2019, or perhaps it may wait until 2020. As with the Great Recession, some countries will be affected more than others. Eventually, because of the interconnected nature of financial systems, all countries are likely to be drawn in.
Summary
It is not entirely clear exactly what is ahead if we are reaching Limits to Growth. Perhaps that is for the best. If we cannot do anything about it, worrying about the many details of what is ahead is not the best for anyone’s mental health. While it is possible that this is an end point for the human race, this is not certain, by any means. There have been many amazing coincidences over the past 4 billion years that have allowed life to continue to evolve on this planet. More of these coincidences may be ahead. We also know that humans lived through past ice ages. They likely can live through other kinds of adversity, including worldwide economic collapse.
Note:
[1] Note that where the dotted line for 2019 is placed is based on where I see the 2019 economy relative to the downturn in industrial output per capita, based on a number of kinds of evidence, not all of which is cited in this article. The 1972 base model would give a slightly different timing of the downturn, a few years earlier. Also note that while the original “The Limits to Growth” book is no longer in print, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by the same authors is available for sale.
https://www.co2.earth/
Jan. 20, 2018 = 408.09
Jan. 20, 2019 = 413.21
5.12 (never seen that much of a difference before, but must just be an aberration).
Consider yourself a unique human– no others have lived with it this high.
Can we make it to 500?
Can we auction it off and make money off of it? Can we get people to pay a tax for it? Think about those questions for a moment. Then look at what we have in the world today: carbon taxes and carbon credits. It is always – ALWAYS – about the money.
“Can we make it to 500?”
oh… can we make it to 5 parts per 10,000?
I hope so!
the only way to get there is if BAU continues for the next decade, with IC continuing to be powered by the burning of FF…
getting to “5” would mean quasi-prosperity continuing at least to 2030…
Typo… 5 per 10000 would kill the planet.
5 per 1000 is healthy Picture a stack of 1000 sheets of paper and take away 5 sheets
I think it will take longer than 2030.
Art Berman’s latest article addresses the “drilling is becoming MOAR efficient!” argument:
http://www.artberman.com/alternative-facts-about-opec-u-s-shale-from-the-wall-street-journal/
“The Wall Street Journal confuses tight oil production growth with economic success.
“U.S. crude production has surged 20% in a year and nearly tripled in a decade thanks to advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. American output is rising at the fastest rate in a century. Earlier this year the U.S. eclipsed Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s largest oil producer.”
How dumb is it to increase oil production when you are losing money on every added barrel?
The Journal then trots out a sad attempt at proof of its impossible thesis (my Figure 2 below). It shows that rigs are becoming more efficient and that more oil per rig is produced as a result.
https://i0.wp.com/www.artberman.com/wp-content/uploads/Rig-Productivity-from-How-America-Broke-OPEC-WSJ-15-DEC-2018.jpg?resize=768%2C849
Think about that last sentence and look at their graph again—production per rig?
Rigs don’t produce oil. Wells do. This is nonsense!
The number of tight oil wells reaches new records every month as average well output decreases.
Giving the Journal a more-than-generous benefit of doubt about their chart, if more efficient rigs don’t result in positive cash flow for the oil companies, why is this chart even relevant?”
How dumb is it to increase oil production when you are losing money on every added barrel?
Some people have more money than sense.
Others have money to burn.
The Elites, the Elders, the Powers that Be, seem to have decided it’s worth burning some money to keep America pumping crude. The price of oil is important. But we can surmise that the value oil has to the US economy (or to the Exalted Ones bankrolling the enterprise) is much greater than the cost of subsidizing its loss-making production.
“How dumb is it to increase oil production when you are losing money on every added barrel?” – It isn’t so much a “dumb” thing as it is a “desperate” thing. Desperate to at least keep the standard of living one was born into.
for 100 years, oil had a tangible cash asset
it seems to me that that is still a fixation, so if you have access to oil, you can go on borrowing money against it
obviously this can’t go on
our collective collapse point might come when the lenders finally figure this out
For those who prefer to listen to Art rather than read him…
https://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/114710/art-berman-exposing-false-promise-shale-oil
“How dumb is it to increase oil production when you are losing money on every added barrel?”
Art touches on this in the podcast, suggesting that many of the shale oil field investors are of the mind that energy commodity prices will skyrocket at some point (so it’s okay to lose money now if they are sitting on such highly valuable resources later). Not sure if I agree, but helps to understand the mentality of the shale oil (oil shale? I always get them mixed up) investor…
It may be helpful to think about the situation this way: for any kind of energy, whether oil or electricity, there is a whole lot of infrastructure (pipelines, refineries, roads, transmission lines) and a very long chain of providers needed to keep all the parts operating, including computer controls and replacement parts for anything.
If the quantity of output falls, the overhead will not drop proportionately. The cost that the government will need to pay keep up roads, relative to the materials traveling on those roads, will increase a great deal. Taxes will need to be much higher as well.
So it is quite possible that the price to the consumer will be very high. Just look and both oil and electricity costs in the EU, especially where renewables are used. But this doesn’t mean than the producer will get a very high amount, certainly not very high relative to his rising costs. The situation may come out as badly as it does today, even if prices do rise to a high level. And it is hard to sustain high prices, if wages of workers are not very high. We have not had success maintaining high prices in the past. What make us think that we can raise the total price to the consumer very much?
Gail,
Your comment re-ignited an idea/question I’ve had for some time. I wanted to post it here on OFW in case you (or anyone else) had already considered it or had done any analysis/speculation on it.
I’m curious if perhaps those of us who assume “BAU” is coming to an end soon are missing something in terms of the excess/inefficiency within the system that could be re-purposed towards energy production (and ponzi finance). Namely, the exuberant amount of money that goes into things such as blockbuster movies, video games, sporting events (and sports-star wages), designer/label clothing and consumer goods, etc.
If a great deal of this energy/production/effort/money that is currently allocated within the system were re-purposed to energy and ponzi finance, would it not kick the can of BAU-failure down the road a bit?
I don’t have any idea how to start guestimating the amount of energy & resources those “luxury” or “leisure” sectors of the economy sum to, and how easily that sum of energy/resources could be re-purposed into other more necessary functions… but perhaps someone here on OFW has given that some thought?
As a side note, I recognize that we live in Neo-Rome, and taking those things away would be akin to cutting out the latter of our “bread and circuses”, which may lead to more revolts as the proles get restless. But when it’s a choice between that and BAU-failure, I’m sure the elites would gladly re-purpose the energy/capital that goes into circuses into more energy (“bread”) and more para-military (“police”) funding…
Cheers!
These luxury goods are mostly of the nature of a “service.” They don’t really have a huge amount of energy embedded in them that could be repurposed, as far as I can see.
This is sort of related to “tax the rich.” The poor would like three meals a day. They would like job opportunities, beyond making handicrafts to sell to tourists. They would like paved roads. It is paving roads and jobs that take a lot of energy.
A couple of Jehovah’s Witness ladies visited me today and I listened to them politely at the door.
When I pointed out that the current world situation seemed to indicate that we were possibly approaching the Last Days—just as the scriptures teach, they became very enthusiastic. All of us on earth live under Satan’s rule, they lamented, and times are going to get tougher, but God has everything in hand.
These ladies could feel the economic malaise growing all around us, but they had a worldview that put everything into a perspective that they were comfortable with. I was sorely tempted, presumably by Satan, to ask them whether they considered the end of cheap energy supplies had anything to do with our predicament, but my Guardian Angel, perched on my right shoulder, whispered in my ear that it would be bad form to interrupt them while they were doing their useful spiritual work.
I get a JW visiting me and my family pretty regularly now.
I guess he’s trying to convert me or something, though I’ve been very upfront with my lack of faith in Christ (believe in God, but not so much in the J.C.). Anyway, our conversation almost always gets onto the topic of preparedness and the way the world is now – like your JWs, mine gets very enthusiastic about the subject and points to scripture that captures some of the evil of the world we currently face. I have to say, the Good Book certainly makes the “End Times” sound like the world of today 😐
I’ve tried to tell my JW friend about my (very limited) experience of canning food with a bunch of Mormons at the Church of Latter Day Saints (sadly, I don’t think they let you can your own food anymore… they just let people of all walks of life buy canned food at very competitive prices, as I guess preparedness / resiliency is a big thing for Mormons… good for them!), and ask if the JWs have any sort of local outreach / programs to increase resiliency / preparedness within the congregation. I don’t think they do, but hopefully his chat with me may light a fire under his butt to start something to that effect with his flock…
I have to admit, I really don’t mind chatting with him, though it sucks to do so on my front porch in -10 degree Celsius (or colder) weather up here in Canada 🙁
you’re supposed to invite then in for hot tea or coffee, like my father used to do after he retired. the conversations they had kept him occupied, but i don’t recall him ever converting them to atheism.
They do have ‘bug-out’ bags prepared (or they are supposed to). My wife has her bag parked next to our bed. I’m not sure she could get it from there to the car, but she is prepared! The JW’s will be ecstatic as conditions worsen. It will just reinforce their world view.
i can never figure out where one is supposed to bug out to
if you live in a city—with everyone else bugging out, the roads will seize up
if you live in the country, all the bug outers (or is that buggers out?) will be bugging out towards you.
also, you can’t carry more than a few days supply of food and water, and petrol won’t be available
just stray thoughts
bugging you eh?
good one, but he’s English, not Canadian.
I don’t think the idea is to have one bug out location.
Where I am now, I can’t bug out to the south (large body of water), but I can bug out to the west (major Canadian metropolis where multiple family members live), to the North (small semi-rural villages along a Canadian non-400 series highway,one of which my uncle currently resides in), or to the East (to the capital of Canada where my sister lives).
The direction of my “bugging out” would depend on what the threat is and where it is located (i.e. a nuclear plant meltdown near Toronto would likely have me moving Eastward towards Ottawa… “Hello Sis! Hope I’m not contaminated with nuclear radiation!”). But if I could avoid bugging out and could hunker down instead, that would be the most preferable option.
Also, why wouldn’t petrol/gas be available? An emergency could be very localized, like a train full of deadly chemicals crashing near your home. People within 30km may have to evacuate, but for everyone else it would be “BAU” – that’s where a bug out bag would really come in handy.
Side note: everyone should have a 72-hour kit as a minimum. In my past life, I worked for a regional municipality and we went to great effort (on the taxpayer’s dime) to try to let the people know that if a disaster struck, there was a good chance they’d be on their own for at least the first 72 hours…
I agree. If things get bad enough to “bug out,” I would think the last place a person would want to be is out on the roadways. I would think one’s odds of the longest survival time would be in the crawlspace under one’s home with a lot of water bottles, toilet paper, and some magazines. Be sure to bury the turds at downwind side of the house.. With any luck, in a couple of weeks everyone above ground would be killed off or gone. So, you would have done better than most.
that’s what I figured
You may come out of the crawlspace to find a bunch of people squatting in your home 😐
True, squatters would be a downside. I did follow my statement with the phrase “with any luck.” 🙂 Luck is probably the best plan of all. There are a lot of downsides to what lies ahead. But, with any luck there would be no squatters. I suppose one could put some fake CDC orange placards on the doors and windows exclaiming the house is quarantined and infested with Ebola.
Get yourself a 12 gauge shotgun and make your own luck? 🙂
One interesting tidbit the JW fellow told me is that the JWs are considered a terrorist organization – just like ISIS – over in Russia 😐
Persecution complex, more like the banned countries just realize they are high control.
Norm, to answer specifics, the propaganda shows them bugging out to basement bunkers or the forest where they will receive divine intervention as the mobs close in.
I could do with some divine intervention
Whether or not we agree with the religious teachings of any of these groups, I think that there is an extremely important reason that our self-organizing system provides religions of all types for us. The reason, as I see it, is that common religions are very good for keeping groups together. Dmitry Orlov has pointed out that it is especially good if a religious group is persecuted (at least a little), because that tends to bond the group together.
Whether we like it or not, we cannot survive individually in a lower energy society. We have had the illusion that we can all have our own apartments and that we can each “do our own thing,” with the government and businesses providing all of the support we need. This won’t happen in a lower-energy world.
There are all kinds of sustainability groups that gotten organized, but generally, they have a terrible time staying together. Members bicker among themselves.They really aren’t very sustainable as a group. If any kind of adversity hits, members are ready to leave to find greener pastures. They want to vote in a new leader.
As I recall from hearing Dmitry Orlov speak, his view was that historically, groups that that have stayed together in hard times are ones that were bound together by a common view of life, usually a religion. The group would be more tightly bound if it were persecuted a bit. It certainly doesn’t matter if the religion is “right.” It only needs to be suited to the situation at hand. (This is where self-organization comes in.)
We judge these groups based on what we see coming out of peer reviewed literature and science, and take this as the gold standard for what people should believe. The catch, if we step back a bit, is that what comes out peer reviewed literature and science tends to be distorted as well. Economics in particular is full of nonsense. Economic models of all sorts, such as those used by actuaries, assume BAU will continue forever. In fact, climate models do as well. So these don’t really stand the test of really representing the truth either.
Maybe the truth, in the peer reviewed literature sense, isn’t as important as we think it is. Maybe what is important is that small groups of people be bound together by a common understanding of the world, and that understanding doesn’t have to be, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” It is easy to criticize any religion. If a person doesn’t like one religion, there are plenty of others to choose from.
Perhaps we should be looking at cults from a different perspective. If someone really is interested in a sustainable future, that person will likely need to join one “cult” or another, to have a big enough group for protection from others trying to take away what little the group has. It is hard to see the situation from any perspective other than our current high-energy perspective, where “every man for himself” seems to work as a philosophy of life.
Gail,
One of the reasons I worry ALL groups will inevitably fall victim to internal strife / bickering (including large religious groups) to some degree is the fact that our society is more indebted than any that have come before us (at least to my knowledge).
To be more specific, how can you ever trust someone who is indebted? They arguably have no real control over their own existence, owing someone something for their (and perhaps their immediate family, who they are likely to be more dedicated to than a member of their social/religious group) continued well-being.
I have a best friend I’ve known since the 3rd grade. He’s been there for me when many others have turned their back on me. I value his friendship dearly, but at the end of the day I know he’s pickled in debt and has very few (if any) options should BAU start to unwind. Thus, I know I can’t trust him with excess funds/capital I could otherwise provide to him to help him through an emergency (he’d have no choice but to purpose it towards servicing his debts and appeasing his debt-masters), and I certainly can’t rely on him to be there to help me out in the future if things should get bad for him too (despite the fact he’s been there for me in the past).
Also, there’s the thought that we all belong to more than one group, which will exacerbate strife within all groups. Some of the people you know within your chosen religious group are also likely to be strong members of the “Cult of Self” and the money grubbing “Cult of Mammon”, as everyone one of us in Western Society seems to be trapped in those groups in some way or another.
Finally, at what point to the groups (religious or otherwise) that you’ve alluded to start to “cut their losses” and exclude individuals that are perceived to be liabilities? Like the lifeboats of the Titanic, they may avoid taking in too many people to avoid capsizing…
Sorry, my mind is jumping all over the place in this line of thinking, but hopefully whatever point I’m trying to make somehow got across in my rambling rant of post 🙂
You rang?
XJW here,AMA. Sadly there is a huge problem with child sex abuse within the cult. This channel has some of the best info on JW’s as well as jwfactsdotcom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWeHB4qM1Hg
As a side note, it was waking up out of JW that lead to waking up about OFW
Unfortunately, there has been a problem with child sex abuse everywhere where men (by themselves) are alone with children. I think that the instances with women being the perpetrators is vanishingly small, but I have not seen insurance company data on this.
The news in December was that US Boy Scouts may file for bankruptcy because of lawsuits related to sex abuse.
If an organization deals with children today, insurance companies have changed the rules on how activities can be run, if the organization is to get insurance. Today, every adult who wants to be a leader or to otherwise involved with children’s activities has to undergo at training session (2 hours?) and there are new rules on what adults can and cannot do. There must be two adults present with all children at all times. If a child needs help using the bathroom, another child is to be sent with the child to the bathroom. An adult, by themselves, cannot give any of the children a ride home after the activities. Physical touching (pat on the back; holding a child on the lap to comfort them when crying) is strongly discouraged. The training sessions caution that the people who are most likely to be sexual predators are people who seem to be especially “called” to be involved with children’s activities. They spend an unusually large amount of time at it, and children tend to love them. Other adults like them as well.
For a very long time, in many cultures, and even today in some cultures, women are property. Marriages are arranged. What the young girl thinks is not of great importance. Children of both sexes were put to work to support the family. In some cultures, baby girls were selectively killed at birth. Slavery has been common in many cultures, and children were sold as slaves.
We have now moved to a situation that we have enough energy that we can dictate that all activities for children should have two leaders at all times. (One can sit in the corner and read a book, if desired.) Parents need to pick up children, rather than a leader who lives nearby dropping the child off. All of these ideas are ideas of a high-energy society. Activities for children necessarily get to be scarcer, because it is hard to find two leaders who will volunteer their time to take care of, say, four or five children. Parents are expected to take responsibility for picking up their children. And of course, no one would suggest that a child walk home alone; it is just too dangerous.
I don’t think the “modern” approach works either. The kids end up spending all of their time at home using computer games and toys, or watching TV. They end up badly “adjusted,” but in a different way. It is only the rich kinds to get to take part in group activities.
This will probably be a very unpopular comment, but I think there is some truth to it…
Perhaps we’d see less “child sex abuse” in society if we didn’t consider adolescents / young adults (i.e. people between the ages of 13-14 to 18), who are in the later stages of puberty (a biological sign of being ready for sexual reproduction), to be “children”… 😐
“Biologically, a child is generally anyone between birth and puberty”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child
Good but sad commentary, Gail. We just saw the movie made about Mr Rogers and his intuitive kind interactions with young children 40 years ago. A show like that in Pittsburgh would never have a chance getting aired today. Touching and comforting children is so passe’.
That makes two ex JW’s. Same here!
Lapsed Catholic here. I won’t name it but the Catholic boarding school I attended was last year stripped of its responsibility for pupil welfare by the Charity Commission amid concerns about its management of sex abuse allegations, which stretched back over 40 years, and several of which resulted in convictions.
The Seventh Day Adventists have boarding schools in this country. I know that they have had a lot of problems as well.
My father attended a Lutheran boarding school for children of missionaries when he grew up years ago in Madagascar. All of the teachers were female, as far as I know. The main complaints I heard were about sending children away from their parents for months at a time, when they were very still young.
It seems to me like there is an epidemic of sexual abuse scandals surfacing now as diminishing returns begin to kick it. So, how can we call the decades past – a time of “prosperity”? Or, is it just easier to hide these kinds of indiscretions in times of “prosperity”? The older I get the more disgusting the world seems to be. A thin veneer indeed!
I think the reason the sexual abuse scandals are surfacing is become juries are awarding large payouts. This attracts lawyers to the field. More and more old cases are found. I imagine most of them are real, but a few could just be trying to ride in on the coat tails of other suits. Lawyers are the big winners in this. I would imagine that this is not as big an issue in Europe.
Jw’s recently lost 35 million lawsuit in Montana. Also found malice in deliberately not reporting as required by law.
Here is an activist site in NL (translates to English)
https://reclaimedvoices.org/
sorry for getting off topic
and this
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/media-releases/report-jehovahs-witness-organisations-released
Wow, fade, DF, or DA?
Proud to say DA’d about 16 years ago.
A fanatical Turkish Muslim taxi driver tried to convert me to Islam; he pointed out that the conversion rate in Britain indicated that the Last Days were almost upon us, and was very happy at the thought….
“Kids have it easy these days”
https://i.redd.it/3bqw3i5iatb21.png
that’s the illustration i always give when trying to explain the difference in finance between then and now
Another thing to consider is that salaries back in 1965 were still increasing every year making the mortgage payment easier to make every year. However, today, wages are either stagnant or decreasing making the mortgage payment harder and harder to make every year as other living expenses increase taking up more of the workers paycheck.
Inflation helps a whole lot. It doesn’t even need to be “real” growth, it can just be GDP growth. But we have lost both inflationary growth (difference between top and bottom lines) and true GPD growth.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/22-after-1980-both-real-gdp-growth-and-inflationary-changes-lower.png
I agree Gail. When the person who bought the home in 1965 for $3500 sells it for $650,000 today that is a whopper of a windfall. Buying a house today for $650,000 and selling for even and equal amount 50 years later is a lot of lost interest payments, insurance and upkeep. But, at the same time, one can’t even imagine a modest home costing $3500 in 1965 and $650,000 in 2015 being sold for 120+ million dollars in 2065. Exponential growth is a killer.
back in the 60s, i could never have imagined a 3k house multiplying 40x or more
but back then i was oblivious to oil and exponential growth it supported
the point being that the past 50 years of growth were supported by energy input
the next 50 years won’t have anywhere near that input, so colla[se is inevitable
(first… a beautiful photo of a tasty hamburger… yum)…
“Coal is an anachronism that also happens to be the single largest source of electricity on the planet. Some of its resilience reflects pure politics (“beautiful clean coal”). But there’s another aspect more akin to that guilty pleasure that floods through you when you devour a hamburger.”
what guilt? burgers are usually pure pleasure, and I never eat one with guilt…
now “Coal is an anachronism that also happens to be the single largest source of electricity on the planet…”
how can it be an anachronism and yet still be the #1 source of electricity? that’s just duummbb propaganda……
“However, continuing problems with air quality in Chinese and Indian cities and the rapid decline in the cost of renewable power and battery storage present chronic problems for coal. Solar power and onshore wind power are now the cheapest sources of new electricity in China and India, as they are in all major economies other than Japan, according to Bloomberg NEF.”
as we know from reading OFW, intermittent sources are totally dependent on reliable sources…
“Those economics are what ultimately kill the construction of new coal-fired plants. But the price of renewable energy needs to drop below the running costs of existing plants in order to force their closure. Bloomberg NEF estimates that point will be reached in China in about a decade, while for India it begins from the mid-2030s.”
now he admits that existing coal plants provide cheaper electricity…
“Even so, the appetite for coal power is waning inexorably. At some point, why pay more for junk — in terms of money and health — when the healthier stuff is cheaper?”
because it’s not…
which is why China greatly increased their coal production in 2018…
Burn More Coal…
great post
Bake America’s Grates Again!
China’s coal consumption is similar to Americans gorging on junk food. It’s not because Americans like junk food, it’s because junk food is all that many Americans can afford. Funny how junk coal and junk food are both forms of cheap energy.
Really cheap.
And a reason the life span in the US is decreasing for the first time (from WWI and Flu epidemic in 1918).
The US is getting fatter and dumber—–
Why do you think we have our current President?
I agree that Americans eating excessive amounts of junk food are probably the same Americans that voted for the current President. I think you’ll find that their motivation for both is one and the same. Americans have discovered that their ability to earn good wages and to support a family have declined significantly over the last decade. A vote for President Trump was a vote against the failed establishment. What’s most unfortunate, is that the current power structure won’t be able to halt the economic decay. History is full of nations experiencing similar economic situations. In the majority of these situations the population continues to radicalize its leadership in a desperate attempt to reverse economic hardships. One day you’ll look back and realize these are the good ole’ days and that President Trump wasn’t so bad after all.
When there are only crappy politicians to vote for then, the food one eats makes little difference in who is president.
That’s easy!
Because the Oven Mitt Fashionista lost to the Orange Hulk after stealing the nomination from Bernie. I recall that the Bernie Babes and Boosters were absolutely outraged at how their candidate had been swindled, and refrained from voting or else held their noses and voted accordingly.
Yea—
Never voted for a Dim or Repug.
Reformist politics is far in the rear view mirror.
I can trump you on that—
Never voted in a national election.
Lived abroad for most of my adult life and haven’t had access to the franchise, and if I had a vote, I expect I’d be in a quandary about who to vote for. In the US, I’ve cheered on Nader, Perot and Ron Paul from the sidelines, but I never had any expectations that they’d win or that their winning would have changed the fundamental dynamics of this juggernaut we’re riding in. I guess I’m jaded!
Lived abroad also.
Just moved back to the States from Mexico.
the world economy could have been much better now if there had been way less “investment” in renewables and way more burning of coal…
renewables will have just a short run…
in the long run, countries will gladly be burning as much coal as they can get into their power plants…
ps: I prefer a hot and tasty fast food burger any day over a calamari bisque with artichokes and Brussels sprouts and seasoned with mushrooms, garlic and ginger (ahg!)…
but that’s just me…
coal, the Lycopods gift to the world.
https://twitter.com/rickjnewman/status/1087500676219965446
thanks…
excellent that he admits there are “illegal immigrants”…
then he calls them “illegals”…
spot on…
The biggest killer of Americans is modern medicine, followed by unhealthy diets, and lack of exercise. Those are the big three. Between them they get almost everyone in the end.
But no crisis! Just business as usual!
“if” I gotta go, then…
I want it to be “unhealthy diet” all the way, baby…
see comments below…
Of the 40,000 gun related deaths, the CDC reports that 24,000 or 66% were suicides. It makes me wonder how many of the 67,000 drug overdoses were suicides. What does that say about the mental health of our society? It’s a lot easier to build a wall then to fix what’s wrong with America. So sad.
People with Brains will regard Rick Newman’s tweet here as shameless whataboutery.
445 murders by illegal immigrants is 445 murders too many in people with brains’ book, regardless of whatever other problems the US has got. A word of advice for Mr. Newman: As long as the will was there, it would be possible for the United States to multitask. The country, its government and its people are capable of doing more than one thing simultaneously. Although it often seems that way, the US is not a nation composed entirely of people who can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.
Central America and the Caribbean region is by far the most violent region on earth, with homicide rates that a lot of people with brains would kill to be as far away from as possible.
Many of those nations have 5, 10 or even 15 times the US homicide rate of 5.35 per 100,000 inhabitants, which is in turn 20 times higher than the rate in my adopted homeland of 0.28 per 100,000 inhabitants. El Salvador is currently top of the world with 82.84 per 100,000 and Honduras and Venezuela are in second and third places.
It’s only natural and reasonable that many of the inhabitants of such places want to leave for somewhere more convivial, but equally natural and reasonable that the more convivial places would prefer to have some effective controls on who comes across their borders.
In the US case, sitting next to the single most violent region on earth, people who use their brains may well consider building an effective barrier against illegal entry to be a no brainer.
On the other hand, I have seen some statistics that indicate that once they’re settled, Hispanics in the US are about as inclined to criminality and violence as Anglos It’s down in the tropics that lawlessness really explodes. And quite honestly, I fault the Pope and his pontificating predecessors for clinging to the be fruitful and multiply mantra all this time.
“It’s down in the tropics that lawlessness really explodes”
Perhaps there’s something to be said for lack of resources, economic opportunity, education, and living space combined with sweltering heat/humidity.. All those things combined might make me a violent person too… 😐
Not to make light of the deaths of the 445 But the big problem is the cost to the taxpayer
Jail school and the like…I wonder if Traffic accidents are included in 445.
‘Never underestimate human stupidity,’ says historian whose fans include Bill Gates and Barack Obama
“It’s one of the most powerful forces in the world,” he added.
Speaking with CNBC’s Martin Soong, Harari expressed concern about the ability of populist leaders — a group he described as “selling people nostalgic fantasies about the past instead of real visions for the future” — to solve today’s biggest global problems.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/never-underestimate-human-stupidity-says-historian-and-author.html?__source=facebook%7Cmain
“… Harari said the three biggest “existential” problems faced by the world today are global in nature: Nuclear war, clymitt change and technological disruption.”
see? he’s a smart man, but this shows his own partial stoopidity…
“Never underestimate academic stoopidity”, says OFW commentator whose fans include many lurkers…
No it’s not stupidity it’s a plan (perhaps stupid anyway), how to curb demand of the masses. I used to think this perhaps might be part of it, but the preponderance of evidence as of now is already here (it’s not about renewables subsidy), they are phasing in a grand plan “how to prepare” lower strata of pop for the reality of far smaller energy budget. Permits/emission allowances are used to prop up energy prices (and stock / debt instruments for the energy sector) throughout forthcoming depression-deflation, the plan is to smooth the attempted transition into the world of less. Hence I’d also not try to short this thing (around GFCII event), it will be a widow maker or you must act super quick, as the volatility on the energy markets would be relatively low, and in the later stages the sector would be nationalized anyway..
This meddling Is it futile, most likely, but very annoying already..
I will go out on a limb and say that financial collapse is THE biggest “existential” thread facing the world today.
‘Real visions’: amusing concept. His own brand of fantasy and delusion perhaps?
Tesla increases Supercharging prices to the point that gas might be cheaper
https://www.techspot.com/news/78366-tesla-increases-supercharging-prices-point-gas-might-cheaper.html
There is not much cost savings from using electricity as a fuel. This is the problem. The places where most of these autos are sold have high-priced electricity. Charging with high-priced electricity is expensive.
… and the fuel-taxes for the governments have to b replaced by even higher electricity prices. In Germany the state recievesapprox. 3 € per 100 kilometers.
EVs existed over 100 years ago. They were abandoned as an idea when gasoline cars became popular. History is merely repeating itself..
Moreover, super/fast charging kills the battery life expectancy – why bother..
Not mentioning the plausible effect on various self combustion incidents in high density batt packs automobiles we have seen recently. Again, lets have max ~25kWh pack, charge it overnight, if that’s not enough for commute, though luck or emigrate to rail based country instead.. lolz
The old saying “pay me now or pay me later” comes to mind.
Thought I would share this article:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-29/coal-is-the-junk-food-of-global-energy
The first figure in the article does a great job showing the dependency that India, Australia, Poland, South Africa, China, Kazakhstan and Indonesia still have on coal.
thanks… see my reply below…
The S&P 500 vs. The 200MA
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxXPcphXgAQQ3pQ?format=jpg&name=large
The S&P 500 is definitely falling below the 220 day moving average.
which is why TPTB apparently have renewed QE…
renewing QE in a stealth manner suggests that there are big problems behind the economic curtain…
https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/21/tesla-model-3-europe-delivery/
‘Tesla gets clearance to begin Model 3 deliveries in Europe’
“Tesla expects to start delivering the Long Range Battery version of the Model 3 in Europe in February after getting the go-ahead from Dutch vehicle authority RDW. As such, it can sell cars across the continent without having to win approval from individual EU member states. It had seemed the regulatory thumbs up was imminent after Tesla opened up Model 3 orders to left-hand drive countries across Europe this month.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/davos-world-economic-forum-elites-inequality-globalization_us_5c45ed5be4b027c3bbc4327c
‘Elites Gather In Davos To Rich-splain Poverty As The World Spirals Into Crisis’
“According to a report from the anti-poverty coalition Oxfam, timed to coincide with Davos, the world’s 2,200 billionaires grew 12 percent wealthier last year. But the wealth is not trickling down. The poorest half of the world got 11 percent poorer in 2018, and today the top 26 billionaires own the same wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people. In the U.S., wages have been essentially stagnant for decades while members of the Davos elite have gotten significantly richer. The fortunes of a dozen 2009 Davos attendees have jumped by a combined $175 billion in the years since, a Bloomberg analysis found.”
Looks like the top tier have gathered to discuss their exit plans (once things get too out of hand) and what to do with all these poor people?
https://ponziworld.blogspot.com/2019/01/davos-2019-ponzi-mind-trick.html
“DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund on Monday cut its world economic growth forecasts for 2019 and 2020 due to weakness in Europe and some emerging markets, and said failure to resolve trade tensions could further destabilize a slowing global economy.”
“What I’m trying to say is that the market knows things, that serial idiots don’t know.
Which is why anyone listening to economists is going to get duly monkey hammered.”
1924 — Russia: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik party, dies of a stroke at 54. Lovingly known as “Major” in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
When the necessity for increasing the mining and burning of coal becomes manifest, despite a declining world economy and all the political correctness for not burning dirty fossil fuels, then we will know that we are scraping the bottom of the energy barrel.
Records show 100 percent of Texas coal power plants contaminating groundwater – “We found contamination everywhere we looked, poisoning groundwater aquifers and recreational fishing spots across the state”
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2019/01/records-show-100-percent-of-texas-coal.html
Plus, re-starting old coal mines is costly/dangerous enough to be pointless in most cases.
when coalmining started, miners lived in hovels close to the mine and walked to work
now a miner would expect to drive there, have all the amenities of a modern workforce
and work in safety
which is why the chinese are opening coalmines and we are not
Let’s not forget today’s miner is partly robot-machine operator; obviously there are also teams working manually all the time: electricians, plumbers, mechanics, rescue & medical, .. But today’s (modern) mine employs very few workers per that gargantuan lump of coal energy produced.
I’ve seen video of coal mining seams underground. They use a machine to dig out the material. The ceiling height in a seam is 43-60 inches. Then they have to put in place posts to hold it up. It’s dangerous work and looks really depressing. I mean its got no daylight, just artificial lighting, black walls, floor and ceiling, coal dust they try to reduce with water vapor so it’s humid. No one looked very happy, but plenty dirty, plus there is always the push to keep going by the managers. Then they ran numbers on how much was taken out that week and the managers said it coming out too slow, they needed to work better as a team. The lead guy took the blame then they all went home a dirty mess. No thanks.
I have a mining family background, and have been down there a few times, so I have a little experience of the awfulness of it
the bottom line seems to be, that yes, you can devise new machines to get the coal out and improve safety and so on, at each stage, but that adds to cost at the pit head
then if each miner demands a luxury lifestyle–car–nice home and so on, that adds cost as well
but the energy in every ton of coal is fixed, so energy used in extracting it, leaves less available in using it (burning in power stations etc)
Which is roughly where we are today at most of the world’s deep mines.
The Chinese system of economics might allow them to ignore it for a little while longer, but they will hit the same limits in the end. The Chinese have the worst safety record, which would suggest they cut corners to extract coal as cheaply as possible.
That used to happen here. Only 30 miles away from me there was a pit disaster that killed 450 (80 years ago)
The rest of the mining community just carried on—it was part of the life they had
It depends on the mine (size, country, coal/ .. ), but the modern ones have been almost ~fully automated (incl. placing these ceiling-wall supports) for decades already.
Yep, it’s not pretty work anyways, there have been some documentaries made, even movies on the much harder past, say 15-17th style mining and uprisings against high mortality and low pay..
Here in Wyoming the country’s largest producer of coal, the “miners” drive titanic dump trucks with ear buds hooked to their Iphones. The trick is not to breathe the silica laden dust kicked up by those $60,000 truck tires.
sunshine miners
“When the necessity for increasing the mining and burning of coal becomes manifest, despite a declining world economy and all the political correctness for not burning dirty fossil fuels, then we will know that we are scraping the bottom of the energy barrel.”
per comments earlier today, China greatly increased its coal production in 2018…
so then here we are!
the bottom of the barrel…
“The window to restock monetary ammunition is closing for the world’s major central banks.
“With economic growth slowing and inflation lagging in big economies like the U.S. and euro area, a push to escape crisis-era policy settings that include rock bottom interest rates appears at risk of stalling. That will leave less firepower to fight off the next economic downdraft, threatening a prolonged downturn.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-20/central-banks-window-to-restock-ammo-is-closing-as-growth-slows
“Davos Man is richer than ever. A decade after the financial crisis poured flat champagne on the World Economic Forum, gold-collar executives set to gather there this week have bounced back, and then some…
“Data from UBS and PwC Billionaires Insights reports show that global billionaire wealth has grown from $US3.4 trillion in 2009 to $US8.9 trillion in 2017.”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/the-244b-dozen-the-davos-billionaire-is-richer-than-ever-20190121-p50skk.html
“Financial analysts have been frustrated by the global elite’s failure to manage discontent from voters in Europe and the US who are expressing anger over wealth inequality and immigration.
““Judging by the state of the world right now, 10 years on from the financial crisis and the dysfunctional state of global politics, I would suggest that these annual events have achieved the sum total of diddly squat,” says Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/davos-world-economic-forum-global-elites-populism-macron-trump-switzerland-a8737291.html
If the Davos World Economic Forum is talking about the issues I mentioned yesterday (such as adding more minorities to boards of directors), I can see why “these annual events have achieved the sum total of diddly squat.”
That is a really tone deaf comment to make on MLK day..
If it’s the truth, it should be fine to say it 365 days a year.
Perhaps there are better places on the Internet you could be PC-policing people’s comments?
The rich get richer!
“The Bank of Italy has cut its growth forecast for this year and next while signalling that the euro region’s third-biggest economy might have slipped into a new recession at the end of 2018… Italy has been struggling to break out of a years-long trap of economic stagnation…
“The populist government is counting on its expansive budget and programmes to spur economic growth.”
https://www.independent.ie/business/world/italy-growth-forecast-slashed-amid-fears-it-fell-into-recession-37726839.html
“Theresa May’s government is facing meltdown today as The Sunday Times reveals how a senior House of Commons official helped rebel MPs who are plotting to derail Brexit.
“Leaked emails obtained by this newspaper show that Dominic Grieve, the former attorney-general, has been in secret communications with Colin Lee, the clerk of bills, with the explicit intention of suspending Britain’s departure from the European Union.
“Lee drew up three versions of the plan for Grieve — each of which would overturn centuries of parliamentary precedent — and then swore him to secrecy.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/may-in-meltdown-h60z6nx8c?fbclid=IwAR27tqWA7P7O3l5k4QI9F64oNSb18mv-BKiCGWYv107NQpu74wY7IENiXtk
“Data showed that 38 per cent of FTSE general retailers [UK] issued profit warnings in 2018, a 50 per cent increase on the previous year and the highest number since 2008, said the EY profit warnings report.
“Half of the profit warnings cited weaker consumer confidence, up from a quarter in 2017.”
http://www.cityam.com/271897/profit-warnings-uk-retailers-highest-level-since-global
“House prices in some of Britain’s wealthiest areas have had up to 25% wiped off their value in 12 months as Brexit turmoil continues, according to the estate agent Your Move.
“That has meant typical price falls in some cases of almost £500,000…
“On Thursday, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) said house prices were falling at their fastest rate in six years, and that the outlook for sales was the weakest in two decades.”
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jan/21/up-to-25-per-cent-wiped-off-house-prices-some-of-uk-wealthiest-areas-brexit
This is not good for banks and other holding the debt on these mortgages.
I suppose if something is essential, a person tries to figure out a way to work around the problem, even if it is contrary to parliamentary precedent.
Indeed. Still unnerving though when a crisis starts to force an established constitution to fracture and mutate, an extreme example of which would be Hitler’s ‘Enabling Act’ of 1933, wherein he used the Reichstag fire as a pretext for awarding himself plenary powers.
Stephen Crabb, the former Conservative cabinet minister, has described the European Research Group, which represents Brexiter Tories, as “almost a party within a party”. One wonders whether the Conservative party can survive Brexit intact:
“They organise themselves extremely effectively. They have their own leadership. They say publicly they have their own whips. They whip their members to vote in a certain way. They have their own briefing material. They rely on their own social media networks. So they are a well-established group, almost a party within a party.”
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c1U3QpkTrYU/VUBnE-KcwtI/AAAAAAAAJL4/-xRJmAgq9I8/s1600/dunce.png
seems most dictators use an existing rule of law to enable them to dispense with the rule of law
the Chinese current despot had himself ”voted” into that position
given the chance (a state of emergency say) the don WILL do the same thing
Perhaps if there were social unrest stemming from a protracted government shutdown, a conspiracy theorist might wonder!
wonder indeed
before the don got into office, he couldn’t have foreseen or planned all this—but now he sees all too clearly that all it takes is a national emergency/disaster—call it what you like, and he can grab full dictators powers and when he’s done that, disband congress altogether
it’s been done before
On the other hand, there’s a story going around from the Alex Jones and Roger Stone side of the sandbox that the Deep State are going to use Mueller’s investigation to impeach Trump and Pence and install Dearest Nancy as prez, who will make Hillary her vice and then resign to allow her Imperial Highness to Sit in the Big Chair in the Oval Office that she was deprived of by Russian meddlers who bought 50,000 dollars worth of Facebook Ads that nobody saw, and thereby save the world from the Great Orange Pumkin Baboon Man once and for all.
Unorthodox, I know, but we live in cartoonish times.
“Chances that Japan will slide into a recession this coming fiscal year have grown over the past three months, a Reuters poll of economists found, pressured by a global economic slowdown and U.S.-China trade friction…
“The latest data showed Japan’s export growth slowed to a crawl in November as shipments to the United States and China weakened sharply.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-poll/japan-recession-risk-rises-on-u-s-china-trade-war-global-slowdown-reuters-poll-idUSKCN1PF0B0
“[Japan’s] Banks, Fitch said in a Jan. 16 report, “have increased lending toward riskier companies in order to cushion profits in a negative interest rate environment.” As a result, Fitch says, capital adequacy ratios “have been declining” and posing “financial stability risks when the economy is likely to slow in 2019.””
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Time-to-worry-about-Japanese-banks-again
“China’s economy [officially] grew 6.6% in 2018… its slowest pace in almost 30 years, confirming a slowdown in the world’s second largest economy that could threaten global growth…
“China’s economy grew 6.4% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, levels last seen in early 2009 at the height of the global financial crisis…
“The latest economic figures suggest China may no longer be able to help shore up weakening global growth, as it has in the past.
“A government campaign to rein in risky debt has been compounded by a trade war with the US, hitting consumer and business confidence. Over the past few months consumer spending, manufacturing output, and investment have reached record lows.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/21/chinas-economic-growth-slowest-since-1990
“A 2016 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report found 38 out of 43 economies whose national debt was 30 per cent higher than its GDP experienced “severe disruption” in the form of financial crises and a decline in growth.
“It also found the probability of a “bad outcome” was imminent if the boom lasted for more than six years — these are all criteria the Chinese economy meets.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-20/chinas-looming-great-wall-of-debt/10713614
“China-focused investment managers in 2018 endured their most difficult year since the global financial crisis with equity funds suffering widespread heavy losses…”
https://www.ft.com/content/d3268189-a4d4-3224-b40d-82ec2c2437bf
“[China’s] Miners produced 320.38 million tonnes of coal in December, according to data released on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics. That is the largest volume since June, 2015.
“China approved more than 45 billion yuan’s ($6.64 billion)worth of new coal mining projects last year, much more than 2017, official documents show.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-output-coal/chinas-coal-output-hits-highest-in-over-three-years-as-mines-start-up-idUKKCN1PF0DI
despite knowing the damage coal does, we are locked into using it/burning it, because that’s how our economic system works
we in uk might point to our own clean energy haloes—but all we’ve done is outsourced the mucky stuff to the far east
we’ve only just realised that Chinese are doesn’t hang about over China
Chinese air
The article also says:
If I look at the data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, it says that China’s output of coal in December 2018 was up 2.1% over December 2017 (which was also a very high month).
For the full year of 2018, it says that China’s output of coal was up 5.2% over 2017, which is in the “Wow” category. It could afford to cut back on imports from Australia with that kind of output.
The same report says that its annual growth in crude oil was -1.3% for the year 2018 over 2017.
Its annual growth rate for natural gas is given at 7.5%. Total 2018 production was 16.102 million cubic meters. Still not very much.
Coalbed gas (which is presumably in addition to natural gas) increased by 5.8%. Its volume was only 0.726 million cubic meters.
LNG “output” – which I presume means imports – decreased. The growth rate is shown as -0.9%.
Refinery processing volume grew by 6.8%.
Gasoline production grew by +8.1%.
Kerosene (mostly jet fuel, I expect) grew by +12.7%.
LPG (perhaps for home cooking) grew by 11.2%.
On the other hand, output of some products shrank in 2018. Diesel oil output shrank (growth was -1.9%),
Fuel oil (perhaps for home heating and ship operation) shows “growth” of -16.0%.
Petroleum coke (bottom of the barrel, burned as polluting fuel) shows “growth” of -0.6%.
Electricity (output, not generation capacity) shows a growth rate of 6.8%, with thermal power (almost all coal) showing a growth rate of 6.0%.
Hydro electric power grew by 4.1% for the year.
Nuclear power grew by 18.7% for the year.
Wind power output grew by 16.6% for the year.
Solar power output grew by 19.8% for 2018.
It is too bad that US data is not available in this detail yet. Some of these amounts may be estimates, I suppose.
“If I look at the data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China…”
The viewpoint I always seem to read these days is that Chinese statistics/reporting cannot be taken at face value. Just curious if you think the National Bureau of Statistics of China, in this energy-related data set, should be trusted? If so, how does it differ from other economic/growth figures that tend to be considered more suspect?
Cheers!
It is hard to know. I was hoping that these amounts were far enough away from terribly sensitive numbers to be close to “real.” They are not GDP, after all. Some of the do show negative growth.
“Data disappears when it becomes negative,” said Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research, which analyzes the Chinese economy. “When you go around and meet state-owned industry people, everybody laughs at the national statistics, so I don’t know why foreigners believe them.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/business/international/china-data-slowing-economy.html
There is no doubt some truth to this. The amount are sums of various amounts, reported by regional authorities. No one want to show how badly their region is doing.
World’s 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, says Oxfam
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/21/world-26-richest-people-own-as-much-as-poorest-50-per-cent-oxfam-report
Not too bad, would have guessed poorer half didn’t own anything.
A million mud-houses here, a billion second hand garments there, it adds up.
After a minor asset price crash we’ll have 250M western debt slaves with negative net worth and a calculation like this impossible.
A quick search of retail sales shows that for the last ten years, most months have shown an increase in retail sales. The last ten years have also shown an increase in energy production.
They go hand in hand, which is what Gail has been saying. When energy production drops, economy will follow, but her point is that Banks and lenders expect you to pay back plus interest, which is getting close to being not possible. Will they realize that hey, we need to reset terms of loan to be more realistic, or say screw you, if you can’t pay we will liquidize you, because, you know, Tony needs his money. It’s like legal mafia. Iron fist in velvet glove. But it won’t work when everybody is shrinking. It’s simple punishment mentality. Will prisons still be growing while energy shrinks? I would like to think that the new push for feminine leadership and qualities in the media will lead to more group support and caring, but what I see is aggressive, bullying feminism. Some weird mutation between all competitive masculinity with a feminist skin. A bit of a rant, thanks for letting me blow off some steam.
I agree. Increased energy consumption underlies all growth in what we think of as GDP.
There has to be a high enough return on investment for the system to work, though, and that is becoming less and less possible because of diminishing returns. So the system starts reaches a point where the amount of interest it can pay is very low, and the frequency of defaults is much higher. Any little upward adjustment in the interest rates causes a major problem.
“Will prisons still be growing while energy shrinks?”
Perhaps we’ll see the return of “debtor’s prison”, where you’ll be forced into working off your debts…
In a way, I’m not entirely opposed to that approach. Probably because I’m not in debt, and maybe because I’m a terrible, unsympathetic person at heart…
Don’t Blame Amazon for the Retail Apocalypse
The fundamentals of the retail business look horrible: Sales are stagnating, and profitability is getting worse with every passing quarter.
Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com get most of the blame, but this is only part of the story. Today, online sales represent only 8.5% of total retail sales. Amazon, at about $100 billion in sales, accounts only for 1.6% of total U.S. retail sales, which at the end of 2018 were around $6 trillion. In truth, the confluence of a half-dozen unrelated developments is responsible for weak retail sales.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/dont-blame-amazon-for-the-retail-apocalypse-51547989221
Are retail sales, in total, down that much, or did retailers build too many stores? I guarantee you that if Sears closed half of their lower performing stores, and were able to write off their debt, they could still be profitable. The remaining employees and executives would have to take large pay cuts, as well as shareholders, but they could make money. Just like shale, if they limited their number to just the most productive platforms could make a profit. It is the debt repayment that kills. This is the step down that Archdruid thinks will happen. It is all up to banks and people to write off bad debt. Like monkey with hand in log, have to let go of something to survive.Greed kills.
I don’t necessarily buy the over built stores argument..And the reason is the US population is still growing around a few million or so every year..So its hard to argue you have to many stores when you are adding more and more people every year..I’m sure though in some places where the population is shrinking, that could be the case..But overall in general that doesn’t seem to make much sense..And due to all the box and chain stores they have consolidated nearly all of the small business stores..So you would think that there are less stores today than in the past before you had all the wal marts etc..
I think the US economy is suffering from “stagflation” right now..
The US population is still growing, but not by “a few million or so” each year. This is what the United States census bureau said in December 2018:
It also says,
From this I would deduce that the census department believes that immigration lead to an increase in US population of 978,826 in the 12 months ended July 1, 2018. The excess of US births over US deaths only added 62,661 people (1,041,487- 978,826). Of course, immigrants have higher birth rates than others. Cutting back on immigrants would make the excess of births over deaths negative.
EDIT: I did this wrong. See discussion below. Total is really about 2 million. Oops!
Natural increase is birth – deaths which is 1 million. Immigration is another million. So population increased by 2 million.
I think you are right.
Total population growth was 0.6%, (down from 0.7%), so I am reading this wrong. If total population was about 326 million in 2017, then 0.6% is about 2 million.
It strikes me that population growth is less relevant for the sale of consumer goods – you could add millions of people to any economy, but if they don’t have any money and/or have shrinking wages, then I can’t imagine they’ll be buying much.
Where population growth in terms of consumption creates more of a problem, at least in my mind, is with regards to necessities. Money or not, people have to eat…
Perhaps this is just how many have suggested a deflationary wave plays out: assets collapse in price as nobody can afford them, while basic necessities continue to increase in price (driven by increased demand by population growth at the same time that cost of production increases)?
The problem is that the low-performing stores are in the rural, depressed areas with few jobs. Closing these stores makes the situation worse. The stores in the cities would mostly stay, except for those in economically depressed areas.
The rich grow richer; the poor get poorer.
i sometimes equate wealth movement to a flat tray, lying horizontally, covered by a shallow sheet of water
sprinkle a few drops of oil all over the water, and each drop stays where it falls, sitting on the water surface
move the tray slightly, and the oildrops begin to move.
keep the tray of water gently moving, and eventually the oil dropsl finish up in a single blob
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46939165
“When thieves punctured a pipeline in the Mexican town of Tlahuelilpan, a geyser of high-octane gasoline was sent several metres into the air, More than 700 residents flocked to the scene to fill jerry cans. People spoke of a party atmosphere. Local petrol pumps had reportedly run dry, and people needed fuel for their cars. But two hours later, at least 79 people lay dead after an explosion tore through the scene. Mexico is a big producer of oil, so how is it that people are dying rushing to gather fuel?”
“Criminals known as huachicoleros have in recent years begun stealing from oil pipelines and selling fuel on the black market. A few litres of fuel are worth more than the daily minimum wage in Mexico. Gangs reportedly made 12,581 illegal taps in the first 10 months of 2018, the Associated Press reports – about 42 a day. Authorities estimate it costs Mexico more than $3 billion (£2.3bn) each year.”
Looks like poor wages has spurred people to stealing fuel/oil to make some money to live on. More unfortunate consequences on the way down.
This is what a total collapse looks like: “We are now in our third day of complete shutdown throughout the whole of Zimbabwe. Banks are closed, schools are closed, roads are closed in and out of the main towns and transport systems have shut down. If this goes on for much longer, the humanitarian crisis will escalate. We cannot buy food because the shops are all closed and transport systems have closed down. Most of the hospitals are without essential medicines and also staff because doctors and nurses can’t even get to work.”
The crisis was precipitated on Sunday (January 13) by President Emmerson Mnangagwa when he announced a shock increase of 200 percent in the fuel price – this in a country with more than 90 percent unemployment and where the struggle to survive escalates daily.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-20/it-feels-apocalyptic-letter-zimbabwe-where-country-remains-total-shutdown
It sounds like a big problem.
I forgot to mention that the Zimbabwe Gov’t shutdown the internet i.e. “killswitch”. One day in the not too distant future we could be seeing reports of this from around the world. But the masses don’t care because their respective Govt’s have their attention turned towards sports and entertainment….
….and in other news “Insect Armageddon” continues marching on. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/15/insect-collapse-we-are-destroying-our-life-support-systems
It’s not so much about distractions, people just don’t enjoy staring death and destruction in the eye. Better to deny it, make some rationalizations, or just think about nicer things.
economic systems will go down at different rates in different ways ant different times in different places
a lot of people make the mistake thinking that ”the collapse” will be the same everywhere
the cumulative effect will eventually be the same for all of us, we just can’t forecast that
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I beginning to see the wall at the end of the BAU tunnel…
If the shutdown continues into February, rent hikes and eviction threats will probably spread as more landlords get antsy. The letter follows a similar note that a different Arkansas landlord sent to 50 properties last week.
The buildings are subsidized by a U.S. Department of Agriculture rental assistance program that supports 282,000 households nationwide, most of them with elderly residents. The agency said last week that rental assistance is funded through January.
The federal government’s bigger housing programs, run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, are funded only through February. Those programs support more than 3 million households.
President Donald Trump forced the shutdown of several federal agencies, including HUD and the USDA, to put pressure on Democrats to support $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall that he previously said Mexico would pay for. Democrats have refused to budge.
The shutdown will get worse with time as 800,000 federal workers continue to miss checks, landlords miss rent and some 38 million Americans miss out on food benefits come March.
https://news.yahoo.com/government-shutdown-hiking-rent-hundreds-205727104.html
Trump claimed he could identify with those workers missing paychecks!
Hardly, he got his start as a landlord evicting tenants!
Trump is a loser when it comes to business–
The Russians kinda help him, but he has burned so many people, that no one will touch him.
He lost 400 million that Daddy gave him.
He was, from what I hear, not a bad TV personality.
The perfect President!
A good reason to give the orange man his wall money…Willing to bet the shut down will cost more that the wall.
no dictator can seize power without first setting off chaos
The don seems to have that well under control
the rise of feminism in Muslim countries
Tunisian women free to marry non-Muslims
Tunisia has overturned a law that banned women from marrying non-Muslims.
A spokeswoman for President Beji Caid Essebsi made the announcement and congratulated women on gaining “the freedom to choose one’s spouse”.
Until now, a non-Muslim man who wished to marry a Tunisian Muslim woman had to convert to Islam and submit a certificate of his conversion as proof.
Tunisia, which is 99% Muslim, is viewed as one of the most progressive Arab countries in terms of women’s rights.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41278610
this is clear related to lower fertility rate
in Tunisia
Pipeline explosion witnesses describe scene where 73 died: ‘People’s skin came off
The tragedy comes as Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — known as “AMLO,” who took office in December — has vowed to eradicate fuel thieves who illegally drilled taps into pipelines an estimated 12,581 times during the first 10 months of 2018, an average of about 42 violations per day.
“We are going to eradicate that which not only causes material damages, it is not only what the nation loses by this illegal trade, this black market of fuel, but the risk, the danger, the loss of human lives,” said Lopez Obrador, who ran on an anti-corruption platform before being elected last year
https://www.foxnews.com/world/death-toll-from-mexico-pipeline-explosion-rises-to-73-dozens-injured.amp
Isaias Garcia, a farmer who witnessed the explosion from a distance, explained why so many had come to the area.
“Everyone came to see if they could get a bit of gasoline for their car,” he said. “There isn’t any in the gas stations.
I was in high school during the long gas lines back in the 70s here in the United States…ugly…
While in Charlotte North Carolina a brief gas shotage there because of shutdown of pipeline arcound 2009….very stressful to find a station running on empty…can’t imagine what would happen when the pumps run dry and stations close….forgetaboutit
Or when people lose their jobs, so that they cannot afford the gasoline that is available, leaving huge gluts that no one can afford.
I’ve been tracking the gasoline issue in Mexico for the last few years. Gasoline has been averaging $4 a gallon since PEMEX and the government stopped providing subsidies. A couple of months after the subsidies ended gasoline thefts started. These aren’t local farmers tapping the pipelines. Thieves have included PEMEX employees, law enforcement, as well as criminal organizations. I believe gasoline shortages are creating a domino affect on Mexican exports. Mexico is the second largest trading partner for the U.S. They are the number one provider of fresh produce into the U.S. IMO a lot of the food inflation we’re seeing in the U.S. is originating from Mexico. The gasoline subsidy provided by PEMEX was also a subsidy for American food imports. For any PM investors out there, Mexico also provides 30% of the world’s silver supply. Things could get interesting over the next several years.
Yep—
Mexico is a major player in US finance and resources.
“Mexico is the second largest trading partner for the U.S.” – Canada is no doubt number 1.
“They [Mexico] are the number one provider of fresh produce into the U.S. IMO a lot of the food inflation we’re seeing in the U.S. is originating from Mexico. The gasoline subsidy provided by PEMEX was also a subsidy for American food imports.”
We definitely get a lot of produce from Mexico. The gasoline subsidy was only possible (a) when oil prices were high, and (b) when Mexico had significant amounts of oil to export that it could tax at a high rate and then use those taxes to fund things like new refineries and programs from Mexican citizens. Recently, Mexico has been in a deficit position with respect to trade imports. (It imports more than it exports.) https://tradingeconomics.com/mexico/balance-of-trade It can’t really afford to purchase the refined fuel products it buys from the US, which is its problem. Gasoline imports from the US in particular have been spiking recently.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/us-exports-to-mexico-of-finished-gasoline.png
Unless a country can print world currency at will, aka USA, imports can’t exceed exports for long. Any estimate for how long Mexico will ladt?
Long time—
Really, wake up—
You are not in Kansas anymore—-
yes, a long time…
as an economic appendage to the USA, kind of a big farmer’s market that sends lots of food here…
if that’s actually the case, then yes, Mexico can “last a long time”…
and possibly avoid becoming Venezuela 2.0 …
it may descend soon to a country of mostly dirt poor farmers, but if it can grow enough food to feed a smaller population AND make some money selling the rest to the USA, it could “last” as long as its buyer (the USA) lasts…
This link https://commodity.com/mexico/ shows the following top commodity exports and imports:
Commodity exports:
1. Crude petroleum $15.5 billion
2. Gold $4.88
3. Tropical fruits $2.48
4. Tomatoes $2.11
5. Silver $1.89
Commodity imports:
1. Refined petroleum $18 billion
2. Corn $2.69
3. Aluminum $1.64
4. Soybeans $1.62
5. Wheat $.987
So, comparing exports to imports, on a US dollar basis, the Refined Petroleum Products it buys for $18 billion exceed the value of the crude oil it sells for $15.5 billion. This sounds like a problem.
Mexico also imports large amounts of the staple foods that Mexicans and their animals eat. Data indicates that their own production has grown as well. I imagine what is happening is that Mexicans are eating more meat. Also their population is growing. Both add to their total food needs, because meat production is inefficient compared to production of plant foods.
I am not sure. Their petroleum industry is not now a net profit center anymore, comparing export $ to import $ (in another comment). This is a big problem. They have to support the loss with profits from other areas. This becomes harder and harder to do.
We shall see Gail—–
Suburbia was a bad idea.
They can last a long time? I think they are the next Venezuela, diminishing oil production,
increasing population. Explain to me how they can continue to have a trade imbalance for extended time. I know debt creation works, but you need lenders. When their natural resources run out who will lend them more debt? Wake me up Duncan.
I live in “the suburbs”…
it has been quite good…
we should be more thankful to all the scientists and engineers etc who invented the worldwide FF system which has allowed Suburbia to flourish…
sorry, JHK, but Suburbia rocks!
it’s been worth every penny and every drop of crude oil….
ps: maybe below zero F tonight, but I hear the furnace running and it’s burning some of that precious (and a bit pricey) heating oil…
the suburban house is warm…
I expect that law enforcement & the military will take up any oil “surplus” as the natives will indeed be restless!
The military can always “afford” what they want, after all, the government will give them all the tax money they want.
The Mexican military and a lot of the law enforcement in Mexico have become less inclined to follow orders and more inclined to act as soldiers of fortunes. Here is an interesting article that demonstrates what is happening. Unfortunately, its wide spread. Mexico is a warmup to the main event.
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/26/651708030/mexican-authorities-disarm-acapulco-police-amid-infiltration-concerns-by-drug-ga
I just moved to the States from Mexico—
One really needs some real time there to make a judgement.
It really isn’t that challenging.
I think they are following the money, their not getting paid enough by the Mexican government, the drug gangs offered them a better & safer deal so they took it.
Any unpopular government that wants to stay in power had better pay it’s law enforcement & it’s military very well or they will seek a better option.
The same thing happens here but it isn’t as widespread as in poorer Mexico since their oil revenue went south along with their oil.
As things continue to deteriorate, we can expect even more migrants trying to get past our borders for “a better life” but is “life” on our cold, cruel streets really better than where they are now?
Those migrants fleeing central america look better dressed, better fed & they even have smart phones, something our poor, needy, jobless & homeless do not have.
Perhaps our poor, needy, jobless & homeless should migrate south for a “better life”.
Dimon, Schwarzman and Other Davos A-Listers Add $175 Billion in 10 Years
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-20/dimon-schwarzman-and-other-davos-a-listers-add-175-billion-in-10-years?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=business
if you want to see less inequality of wealth, I’m with you!
this might just be populist talking point #1 for the next few years at least…
the path seems to be diminishing returns > specifically declining net (surplus) energy > less wealth to spread around > greater inequality > protests over greater inequality (Yellow Vests…)…
unfortunately, the AOC type push for a more socialist America will be met with great pushback by those Davos types…
as the world declines in prosperity, capitalism may be blamed by the have-nots…
we may or may not be headed for more socialism in the American hybrid capitalist system…
whatever… any major changes to our political-economic system will ultimately be ineffective against the unstoppable downward momentum of that net (surplus) energy form FF, which dominates all adjustments to our system…
More unrest in France:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6610399/Yellow-Vest-violence-breaks-Paris-tomb-Napoleon.html
I’m ok with the yellow vest protests in regards to damaging modern infrastructure, but take exception to damaging art. Even mobs need to have a sense of right and wrong.
Not so good!
For $1, or less than a pizza slice, you can buy a house in Italy
A semi-abandoned town in Italy is selling homes for just over $1 in hopes of luring foreigners to renovate the properties and revive its local economy.
Sambuca, a hilltop town in Sicily with sweeping views of the Mediterranean, is selling dozens of bargain basement-priced homes after other Italian towns and villages have made similar offers. Sambuca — no relation to the liqueur of the same name — has a population of fewer than 6,000 residents and is located about 40 miles south of Palermo.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sambuca-italy-town-sells-houses-for-1-to-lure-new-residents/
rural Italy is dying
well one mayor in italy did try do a different thing
to his ghost town
https://youtu.be/X4v51rNRUME
but now he in jail
You buy the house cheap but pay the municipal taxes……
With more use of machinery, there is less need for human labor in villages. Also, citizens can drive further to stores than they did in the past, so there is less need local stores. So there aren’t many jobs in small towns.
That’s not going to last much longer. Hilltop villages will be abandoned as too difficult to reach & sustain, they have to be self sustaining if they want to remain viable but on a hilltop? unlikely.
After oil they will want to be near a navigatable river or ocean with good flat land nearby to grow food & wood.
Your so right about there being no jobs in small towns but that will change, a lot more farmers & farm workers will be needed even in small towns. They will also need many other skilled workers to produce their durable goods.
There will be very little unemployment in the future IF we have a “future”.
The hill-top villages and towns of Southern Europe originated in the need to be away from the coast and mostly Muslim pirates/slavers; a problem into the early 19th century, until the British and the American navies put an end to the piracy conducted from North Africa.
Also, it offered greater security from local bandits, a problem which lasted much longer.
unless sources of water are higher up the hill
hilltop dwellers always have a fundamental problem
But they do tend to escape disease bearing insects that inhabit areas at lower elevations. Freezes during the year kill of some kinds of insects, for example. Malaria does not occur at high elevations, for example.
I agree
but while some will live through insect bites, none will live through a water shortage
This happens assuming that somehow, the farms can feed the local populations post collapse, using resources at hand. If imports drop way off, the availability of farm equipment disappears. Small boats for navigation also have to be built with local materials. I am not optimistic about making the transition. We currently are geared toward a one-crop approach for farmers, and most of the one crop is for animals.
Obviously that will have to change as a monoculture is not sustainable.
Before we had factory farms, farmers grew several crops including wood for fires, fruit trees & nut trees & fodder for their animals in rotation. fodder one year, food crop the next, cover crop, grazing, food crop etc etc etc.
Those on the hills traded wood or crafts for food or other items, farmers traded their production for what they needed, everyone had a job of some kind wether it was as a blacksmith, wood worker, sheep shearer, weaver, animal raiser & trainer, shop owner etc etc.
You can still see this today in small, isolated rural villages in the third world, people work until they can’t, the only “retirement benifits” they might have was support from their families.
“Money” in some form or other served as a portable means of trade, it’s easier to trade using a silver coin than a cow, cord of wood or a heavy bag of grain.
More people need to stop reading fiction & instead READ more about the real world & how people in other areas of the world live today & in the past, history is a great teacher.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/planetary-health-diet-red-meat-methane-cattle-cut-consumption-earth-climate-change-a8731656.html
‘Planetary health diet: Developed countries must cut red meat eating by 80% to protect Earth’
How is that ever going to happen? Not voluntarily, people just aren’t like that. The only way probably is to find a way to produce meat in some kind of grow tank, so as to eliminate the animals and in so doing their emissions.
So is that possible? Well here’s an article on it;
https://www.gfi.org/mapping-the-clean-meat-industry?gclid=CjwKCAiA1ZDiBRAXEiwAIWyNC0QQXksVhLFAb6y5ON3xdIE_kBHcyFbQK9w0ytaF-zKREZn8-ofyghoCmlcQAvD_BwE
“Call it clean meat, cultured meat, or even lab-grown meat – the questions remain the same: What’s it going to take to get this revolutionary product on grocery store shelves, and how close are we right now? Today, The Good Food Institute’s Science & Technology Department released the world’s first public guide to the clean meat industry: an industry that is poised to completely transform the way we produce meat by removing the animal from the equation. That is, this is technology that allows us to produce meat directly from cells outside of an animal, circumventing the need for factory farming and its myriad harms.”
Clean Meat; Clean, Good, Energy; Smart Houses; a De-materialized Economy: how bright the future is looking!
Perhaps we have been inclined to be a little too pessimistic here?
“Perhaps we have been inclined to be a little too pessimistic here?”
I’m not suggesting that, but the idea of clean meat as they refer to it sure is interesting. Would be nice if animals are not slaughtered or that methane emissions don’t need to be part of the process to have a meat sandwich. Even if we still are on a course for collapse, would be interesting to try some ‘clean meat’ before the oil age is over.
Or we could just eat less meat. My wife looks at me funny every time I suggest a dinner meal that does not include some kind of meat.
We only put meat in pasta if company is coming. The norm for us is pasta with shellfish
We put mushrooms in the tomato sauce. Or we add soy sausage.
When we add meat, it is as a flavoring. Think of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. Not much meat.
An ounce of meat (or fish) per person per day is a reasonable amount to plan for. Beans and lentil are good for you. Eat lots of them.
“Tesla’s Decline Causes Concern for Almost $1 Billion in Bond Payments
Tesla stock was buried on Friday and its looming $920 million convertible debt payment could be coming straight out of the bank.
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/tesla-decline-causes-concern-for-almost-1-billion-in-bond-payments-14839130?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO&yptr=yahoo
Despite the flurry of questions and the onslaught of selling on Friday, one note worth covering its Tesla’s 2019 convertible bonds. On March 1st, $920 million worth of convertible debt will come due. If Tesla stock is trading at or above $359.88, the company can elect to pay back that debt with stock rather than cash.
Tesla has already said that should the stock close above the conversion price, that it will pay it back with a 50/50 combination of cash and stock. However, with Tesla’s recent pullback and Friday’s 13% plunge, that puts Tesla’s strategy in jeopardy.
As of last quarter, Tesla had about $2.9 billion in cash and equivalents. Tesla’s cash and liquidity situation is more complicated than a simple glance at the balance sheet, but it gives us a rough idea of where the automaker stands.
Of course, it’s always possible that Tesla stock will be able to rally above that conversion price in time to pay part of the debt with stock. After all, it’s more than a month away and we’ve seen crazier things than a 20% rally in Tesla’s share price in a short time period. Earnings will likely be a big catalyst between now and then, too.”
Either way, keep the debt in mind
It might me a good idea to avoid tweeting and toking Mary Jane for Elon till then!, just saying.
How is Elon going to do it???
Tesla’s Model 3 Wait List May Undermine Musk, One Way or Another
(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk has backed himself into a corner with Tesla Inc.’s most crucial car.
Some would-be customers have waited almost three years to take delivery of the Model 3, a sedan they plopped down a $1,000 deposit for as early as March 2016. Musk, Tesla’s charismatic chief executive officer, has pitched it as the company’s first car for the masses, with a base price of just $35,000.
Thousands of those deposit holders still are standing by, and they could spell trouble for Tesla — whether they stay patient or not.
Selling too many Model 3s at that price too soon would put the company out of business, Musk tweeted last year. At the very least, it undermines Tesla’s profitability, as he alluded to in an email to staff on Friday. He announced Tesla will cut about 7 percent of its workforce — roughly more than 3,000 employees
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-apos-model-3-wait-140000957.html
Maybe free Red Bull for assembly line workers?
Mexican oil pipeline explosion..
I’ve been reading Vaclav Smil’s ‘Energy and Civilization: A History’ recently. It’s been a great read so far, and I would recommend it since it’s so closely relevant to what we discuss here.
Blurb:
“Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today’s fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity’s energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview.”
Smil seems to recognise the deterministic patterns that societies follow in their response to energy flows, the sociocultural and political implications of this, and our ultimate fate as a civilisational ‘flash in the pan’ abberation in the long history of humanity. Also discussed in the book, and something that might be of interest, is the correlation between new innovations capable of utilising energy and the expression of business cycles. I’d be interested to know whether Gail has heard of Smil and what she thinks of him.
Smil seems to understand on a basic level.
Good choice, interesting.
Is probably not the ideal person for this blog.
Smil doesn’t agree with Peak Oil. He thinks we will eventually transition to renewables. The following is a critique of Smil written by a peak oil advocate:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.greentechmedia.com/amp/article/watts-up-vaclav
He is an anti collapser..He wrote a book called something like “The US is not Rome”..That is why Bill Gates loves him..
“Smil doesn’t agree with Peak Oil.”
I would examine that one a bit more thoroughly–
http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/vaclav_smil
(a bit dated)
“It is fairly probable that its [conventional crude oil’s] extraction will peak within the next two decades, and it is inevitable that its share of the world’s primary energy supply will continue to decline.”
-Smil
Right, he believes in peak oil, not collapse.
Yep
how can we have peak oil and not collapse? i think we can collapse without peak oil, but not vice versa. we’re already having problems with peak cheap oil.
I have read some of his books and have met him in person once, when we spoke at the same conference in Brussels.
I agree with a lot of his conclusions. He says any transition to renewables is a long way off, for example. But he doesn’t think of limits at all, and he is not at all interested in blogs.
When he spoke in Brussels, he skipped the night-before speakers’ dinner (without telling people his plans, I believe). I am sure he was busy with his many things. He did talk to me and the other speakers briefly in the morning before our talks. I am sure he had never heard of me and had no interest in me. Blogs were of no interest to him. I mostly asked him questions, and he responded. He left immediately after his talk, so he didn’t hear my talk, or the EU responses to our talks.
He must spend an awfully large share of time on his books and talks, to pump out as many as he does. His talk was very good. It was basically an anti wind and solar talk. He talked about their deficiencies as replacements for fossil fuels, as I recall.
He is slender, about 75 years old. Wikipedia says
I had a tutor like Smil, a wonderful dedicated scholar and very reclusive – he went a little mad in the end, sadly (having to teach me had nothing to do with it, I swear!).
Monetary policy space remains constrained by the lower bound in many countries, limiting
the policy options available to address future deflationary shocks. The existence of cash
prevents central banks from cutting interest rates much below zero. In this paper, we consider
the practical feasibility of recent proposals for decoupling cash from electronic money to
achieve a negative yield on cash which would remove the lower bound constraint on
monetary policy. We discuss how central banks could design and operate such a system, and
raise some unanswered questions. file:///C:/Users/computer/Downloads/wp18191.pdf
Links to files on your own computer don’t work. The file needs to be up on a server.
Website forecast 2/3 die off in the US by 2025 from an economic collapse
http://www.deagel.com/country/United-States-of-America_c0001.aspx
Here is there reasoning behind the forecast.
“The key element to understand the process that the USA will enter in the upcoming decade is migration. In the past, specially in the 20th century, the key factor that allowed the USA to rise to its colossus status was immigration with the benefits of a demographic expansion supporting the credit expansion and the brain drain from the rest of the world benefiting the States. The collapse of the Western financial system will wipe out the standard of living of its population while ending ponzi schemes such as the stock exchange and the pension funds. The population will be hit so badly by a full array of bubbles and ponzi schemes that the migration engine will start to work in reverse accelerating itself due to ripple effects thus leading to the demise of the States.
This unseen situation for the States will develop itself in a cascade pattern with unprecedented and devastating effects for the economy. Jobs offshoring will surely end with many American Corporations relocating overseas thus becoming foreign Corporations!!!! We see a significant part of the American population migrating to Latin America and Asia while migration to Europe – suffering a similar illness – won’t be relevant. Nevertheless the death toll will be horrible. Take into account that the Soviet Union’s population was poorer than the Americans nowadays or even then. The ex-Soviets suffered during the following struggle in the 1990s with a significant death toll and the loss of national pride. Might we say “Twice the pride, double the fall”? Nope. T
he American standard of living is one of the highest, far more than double of the Soviets while having added a services economy that will be gone along with the financial system. When pensioners see their retirement disappear in front of their eyes and there are no servicing jobs you can imagine what is going to happen next. At least younger people can migrate. Never in human history were so many elders among the population. In past centuries people were lucky to get to their 30s or 40s. The American downfall is set to be far worse than the Soviet Union’s one. A confluence of crisis with a devastating result.”
http://www.deagel.com/country/forecast.aspx?pag=1&sort=Population&ord=DESC
After the economic collapse, they see migration going into the opposite way..Americans fleeing to central America..Maybe Trump’s wall is to keep us in? Wouldn’t that be a hell of a plot twist..
Except Mexico seems to already losing its oil exports, making the country much worse off financially. What does it do, when it cannot pay for the programs it needs for its people?
I just moved back to The States from Mexico.
This is a very simple view—–
A 2/3 die off in the US by 2025 may be better than what Mexico experiences. All things are relative. When a person doesn’t know the various pieces, it is hard to judge.
Maybe a farmer in Calif. meets a segment of Mexican immigrants that are tilted to immigrants that are also farmers, yet even separated from their immigrant relatives by a couple generations the Mexicans I know are good gardeners and farmers. Gotta count for something in the event of a nasty economic downturn.
“The key element to understand the process that the USA will enter in the upcoming decade is migration. In the past, specially in the 20th century, the key factor that allowed the USA to rise to its colossus status was immigration…”
no! this is absolutely wrong…
the key to the USA rising to its “colossus status” was FF…
so much of it that over 200 million people can now have modern prosperity…
that reality pretty much blows up the “reasoning” of this article…
It was a combination of both..Nearly half of our fortune 500 companies were founded by first or second generation immigrants..Such as Google, Apple, Tesla, Amazon, etc..
Yes immigrants had everything to do with it…a simpleton statement….also, those companies were founded by individuals schooled in good educations, before it was corrupted into today’s joke of an education system. Also, what did government money contribute to Tesla, Google…And now to Amazon?
Steve Jobs and Wozniak actually had garages to start their companies in…not a government funded apartment hovel.
well-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index#2018_Fragile_States_Index
‘Mericans migrating to Mexico & Central america? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, tell me another one!
People are fleeing those countries because they can’t survive there!
Their flooding our border expecting us to give them our non existent jobs, unafordable housing & I also expect most of those women towing children expect us to support them.
‘Mericans have no place to flee to, go north? there are too many of us, it’s still too cold & with poor soils, go south, way too many people & it’s getting hotter & dryer, flee to Asia, your kidding, their even more overpopulated than we are & they will be fleeing towards Europe & poor Europe will also be flooded with even more Africans!
Rich ‘mericans might try fleeing towards New Zealand but they don’t want more northerners & neither does Australia, nobody will be welcoming more migrants.
We are in a trap & we keep digging it ever deeper with our growing overpopulation.
Women around the world march for social justice
https://www.reuters.tv/v/PeuV/2019/01/19/women-around-the-world-march-for-social-justice?nofbvideo=true&utm_content=RSS&utm_term=SocialFlow&utm_source=tw&utm_campaign=site-clicks&utm_medium=social
https://imgur.com/a/nW3eoC1
https://i.redd.it/btjqc62dheb21.jpg
Went with my wife to the Women’s March today in Bend Oregon.
Well attended.
I am sure There are many oppressed women in Bend Oregon.
Did you tell them that civilization is fast approaching collapse and they were wasting their time?
Isn’t it wonderful when people use social justice as a smokescreen for self interest? If they’re interested in social justice they could try thinking about those who actually need it.
Highly privileged, self-indulgent, beneficiaries of an unjust global capitalist system which makes it possible for them to waste time on marches, and resources on disposable placards…… 🙂
I see that got a response!
Obviously from those who didn’t walk.
I understand comrades!
Not sure you understand the main premise of this blog.
Come now comrade—
This is several levels down, looking at economics, and how energy influences the outcome.
Rather amusing
“Women around the world march for social justice”…
well, not in Muzzlim countries…
isn’t it ironic that the women who are most in need of social justice live in countries where they can’t march for social justice?
and…
another topic…
social justice for women also seems to correlate with the modern prosperity delivered via the huge net (surplus) energy of FF…
as this energy drops towards zero in the coming decades, any modern gains in social justice might just be reversed…
End of Growth has big implications for the social order…
Very true: the interesting thing is that pre-FF societies show such a wide variety in the relative status of men and women.
The radical-feminist proposition that it ‘will all be like the Handmaid’s Tale’ is pure bunk.
Even more so the idea that these spoiled people are ‘victims of the Patriarchy.’
For instance, a muslim Kurdish woman went unveiled, looked men in the eye and could hit her husband, but not so the Arab women in the same town, who were veiled and had to keep their eyes on the ground and often beaten. (My Iranian Kurdish friend beat up her arranged-husband!)
And Germanic, Norse and Celtic and Basque women had very much higher status than Ancient Greek females, as history shows: most tribal chiefs – until Christianity imposed itself – would do nothing without the approval of the tribal witch and one even scared a Roman general into running away.
well, not in Muzzlim countries really ?
Women’s March protesters stay silent as Iranian women fight for freedom
https://www.washingtontimes.com/multimedia/image/1_2_2018_iran-protests-48201jpg/
It takes real guts to step out of line in Iran, male or female.
I don’t think the situation is “might.” Before birth control pills, and the good transportation we have today, married women mostly stayed at home. Businesses did not hire them. Single women became nuns for the church, or took on a few other professions (teacher, nurses, store clerks).
More like social media march…
Here is Sean Hannity with another whopper that is pure fake news..
Very bottom of the story
“The US became the world’s largest exporter of oil towards the end of 2018 after the Trump administration eased restrictions and allowed more off-shore drilling opportunities for American businesses.”
And he sites a bloomberg story as a link that is about the central bank president of India..It has nothing to do about US oil production..And makes up a baseless claim that Trump’s deregulation is the reason for this.
https://www.hannity.com/media-room/great-again-us-oil-output-to-exceed-saudi-arabia-at-their-peak-in-six-months/
The US isn’t even in the top ten of worlds largest exporters..And the Saudi’s are by far the largest exporters
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/company-insights/082316/worlds-top-10-oil-exporters.asp
This is how Trump won the election..Via right wing conservative fake news..Just like numerous studies have shown..
If a person restricts the statement to “crude oil,” and takes a fairly short time period, the statement might be right. This is a chart of US exports of crude oil by month, through October 2018.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/us-exports-of-crude-oil-through-october-2018.png
US refineries are operating pretty much 24/7/365, except for needed downtime spring and fall. They don’t have more capacity for oil. This cuts back on how much the US can imports from Canada, and it tends to depress US WTI prices relative to Brent. In October 2018, the US exported 2.3 million barrels per day.
Looking at BP Statistical Review of World Energy, Crude oil exports were higher than 2.3 million bpd in 2017 for Canada (3.5), Russia (5.6), Iraq (3.8), Saudi Arabia (7.2), and United Arab Emirates (2.5). The US did not become the world’s largest exporter of crude oil, but it certainly ranks up near the top.
The US’s production of crude oil keeps rising. It exceeded 11.5 million barrels per day in October 2018. On this basis, the US seems to have become the world’s largest producer of crude oil.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/us-production-of-crude-oil-through-october-2018.png
All of the details about whether it is “producer” or “exporter” of “oil” or “crude oil” become difficult for novices to keep straight.
I was looking at this further. In October 2018, the US exported 2.3 million barrels per day of crude oil and 5.7 million barrels per day of other stuff (mostly products) for a total of 8.0 million barrels per day of oil exports.
BP Statistical Review of World energy shows total oil exports for Russia (crude oil and products) 8.6 million barrels per day, and for Saudi Arabia of 8.2 million barrels per day. Thus, the US is not far from becoming the world’s largest oil exporter on this basis. Of course, these amounts are not net of imports.
“All of the details about whether it is “producer” or “exporter” of “oil” or “crude oil” become difficult for novices to keep straight.”
I did a Google search to find an article that spelled out the numbers on the US oil situation, or at least according to the linked article below. The last paragraph gets to a bottom line, but includes other supply, NGL’s and ethanol as feedstock for refining.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/12/09/no-the-u-s-is-not-a-net-exporter-of-crude-oil/
“20.5 million BPD is a fairly accurate representation of U.S. consumption, but there is a large U.S. production number that isn’t included in the crude oil production numbers.
There is a line item called Other Supply, which consists primarily of natural gas liquids (NGLs) and fuel ethanol. This category represents a significant input to refiners in addition to the 11.7 million BPD of production (and the 4.0 million BPD of net crude oil imports). Other Supply represented 6.9 million BPD of production, and it mostly ends up as feedstock for refiners or petrochemical production. (Note that this category also includes “Refinery Processing Gain” of 1.2 million BPD, which results from refiners making products that are of a lower density than crude oil).
So, Domestic Production of crude oil plus Other Supply is equal to (11.7 + 6.9) = 18.6 million BPD — which is still about 2 million BPD less than the U.S. consumes.”
I know Robert Rapier from Oil Drum days. The numbers I was quoting were different, but related.
The EIA calculates a “net import” amount each week, which is what all of the discussion was about in early December. I am not sure how good these weekly amounts are; I was using the monthly amounts that are put up later, and seem to have a little more review to them. One of these weekly amounts reported as “net imports” was slightly negative, namely for the week ended November 30. Thus, with the highly variable weekly numbers, the US for one week seemed to look like a net exporter. I wouldn’t believe it over any longer period. I didn’t go back through Roberts’s numbers. I suspect he also looked at more stable numbers than the weekly estimates. This is a link to the weekly estimates that got people excited.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WTTNTUS2&f=W
The pieces can be seen at this link.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_sndw_dcus_nus_w.htm
I thought Trump won because he was the ‘new liar, nit the same tired ‘old liar’.
Remember Obama was a lame duck President at the end.
Its late stage capitalism– Trump was an appropriate candidate.
No morals or rules to get in the way, no one will do business with him except the Russians, can be the needed sleazy actions to increase elites wealth.
I think we have the perfect candidate.
I liked the line that somebody said on MOA upon his election, that he’s being elected to do for USA like he does in business ventures, declare bankruptcy. It’s amazing that we’re already in year 3 of his presidency; time sure goes fast.
He has been bankrupt 4 times, as I remember.
Seems perfect!
“Meanwhile, the US elected an insane, kleptocratic gang to the White House and Senate, is exploding its national debt, and for the first time since WWI, has seen its life expectancy decline for the third year in a row. More USAnians will die in 2019 from opioids than died from the entire Vietnam war. “
https://i.redd.it/4zadty0iabb21.png
I was at Moscone Center when Jobs introduced the Smart Phone (months before you could purchase one), and had a good look– I was sure about most things Apple (being a consultant) was putting out, but that one had a weird vibe—-
Little did I know.
*cringe*
Orwell v Huxley: whose dystopia are we living in today?
The modern world looks to many like a dystopia — a version of “the darkest timeline”, to borrow a term from the American sitcom Community. Whose dystopia, though? Which writer best imagined this moment of turmoil and dysfunction? The greatest contributions to the tradition of dystopian fiction are two defining masterpieces from the 20th century, both of them bestsellers at the time and ever since: Aldous Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The two dystopias have many details in common. Both writers saw a future shaped by weapons of mass destruction — biological and chemical weapons in Huxley’s case, nuclear war in Orwell’s. They agreed about the danger of permanent social stratification, with humanity divided into categories determined by biological engineering and psychological conditioning (Huxley) or traditional class combined with totalitarian loyalty systems (Orwell). Both men imagined future societies completely obsessed with sex, though in diametrically opposite ways: state-enforced repression and celibacy in the case of Orwell; deliberate, narcotising promiscuity in the case of Huxley.
Both men thought the future would be dominated by America. Both men thought that future governments would spend a lot of effort permanently trying to incite economic consumption — not that either man thought of anything as wildly fantastical as quantitative easing. Both began their books with a short sentence designed to signal a world which was familiar but also disconcertingly futuristic: “A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories,” begins Brave New World. We are supposed to gasp with amazement at the “only”. Nineteen Eighty-Four begins: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Thirteen! The horror!
Both men were writing warnings: “the message of the book”, said Huxley, was, “This is possible: for heaven’s sake be careful about it.” In his vision, humanity was facing a future world tranquilised by pleasure and drugs and the voluntary distractions of “civilised infantilisation”. For Orwell, humanity was facing a permanent state of war and totalitarian mind-control, summed up by the image of “a boot stamping on a human face, for ever”. For all the overlap, though, they are usually seen as contradictory, conflicting versions of the future.
The difference between the two dystopias is rooted in one of imaginative literature’s central distinctions. Many writers of speculative fiction — a term preferred over science fiction by Margaret Atwood, among others — like to stress that their work is a vision of the present, magnified and intensified. “The future is here,” William Gibson has said, “it’s just unevenly distributed.” Atwood made it a rule in writing The Handmaid’s Tale that she “would not put any events into the book that had not already happened . . . nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities.” Orwell did create some technological innovations for his future world, but in essence his Nineteen Eighty-Four is a deep look into the heart of already existing totalitarian societies. Some of the details may be from the straitened world of the 1940s — the novel is pervaded by the smell of boiled cabbage — but the story goes far past that into the depths of the human heart and the totalitarian project to reshape it.
The meeting room named Only Good News — can you guess whether that belongs to Huxley’s World Controller, or Sheryl Sandberg?
No one could have been better placed than Orwell to see into this present and project it into the future. His life-long involvement with leftwing ideas was both theoretical — nuances of perspectives from the Independent Labour party to the union movement through anarchism, Trotskyism and Stalinism — and directly lived. It was characteristic of him that when he went to the Spanish civil war to write about it, he found himself unable to stand back and report, but instead, once he saw the reality of what was happening, immediately joined the Trotskyist militia to fight the fascists. The utter ruthlessness with which the Soviet-backed faction suppressed the other groups on the republican side, their willingness to lie and murder their own allies, gave Orwell the impetus and insight to write his great novel about totalitarianism.
It is because of that, in this difficult historic moment, that the Orwell vs Huxley contest might seem to have been concluded in Orwell’s favour. I was recently on a plane just after the start of the school holidays, and in the course of wandering up and down the aisle, noticed the startling fact that three different young people were reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, in three different languages (English, Italian, Portuguese). Not bad for a 70-year-old book. The Orwell estate has always been well run, attentive to the business of keeping his reputation in public view — that was one of the inspirations behind the creation of the annual Orwell prizes for political writing. You could even say that Sonia Orwell, who married him on his deathbed, was being attentive to his reputation in taking his pseudonym as a surname, given that his family knew him as Eric Blair. (This point was made to me by a relative of Orwell’s, someone who thrillingly-to-me knew him as Eric.)
The world is not divided up into three dominant totalitarian superstates, as in the novel, but in a time of ascendant strongmen, dictators, anti-Semites and state-sponsored liars, many of Orwell’s other prophesies have come true. Consider North Korea, an inherited communist dictatorship many of whose features — a society based on hierarchies of loyalty to the leadership — might have been directly transcribed from Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Wait a minute, though. Orwell was right about many things, but Huxley was right too. Huxley’s background was similar to Orwell’s — not only did they both go to Eton, Huxley went back there as a young man (and even taught Orwell French). Despite that, Huxley’s milieu was very different, scientific and philosophical rather than politically engaged. The Huxleys were scientific and liberal aristocracy: Aldous’s great-uncle was the poet laureate Matthew Arnold; his grandfather Thomas was “Darwin’s bulldog”, the first high-profile public defender of Darwin’s ideas; his brother Julian was a prominent biologist and public figure, the first director-general of Unesco, co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund. Julian was also a leading eugenicist, dedicated to the idea that science could be used to weed out inferior genetic stock for the public good.
The emotional texture of Brave New World is very different from that of Nineteen Eighty-Four; there is a playfulness, a lightness, not at all like the grim, repressed, grey-toned landscape of Orwell’s novel. The question of eugenics offers us a clue to the reason for this. Huxley was interested in eugenics, which held a fascination for many intellectuals of the left as well as of the right. He came to see it as a sinister field — correctly, since the thought that the poor have genetic traits which could and should be bred out of them is indeed one of the darkest and most dangerous ideas of the 20th century. But he had first felt the lure of the idea that modernity can improve us, that science can cure some of the pain and difficulty of being human. The fact that Huxley had been tempted by these thoughts helped him depict his ideas with a lighter, more exploratory touch than Orwell.
Huxley’s dystopia was the other sort of speculative fiction from Orwell’s: not a deep burrowing into the present, but a projection of existing trends into the future. He genuinely was trying to think about what the future would be, if things carried on in the direction they were headed. He was well placed to see trend lines in many of the sciences and made good guesses about where they were going. As a result, we can make a strong claim that it is he, and not Orwell, who did a better job of predicting modern life in the developed world. The revolutionary change in attitudes to sex, for instance, is not something many people foresaw in 1932, but Huxley did: the separation of sex and reproduction is complete in Brave New World, as it is near-complete in modern life. He guessed correctly about the development of new technologies in contraception, and guessed correctly about their consequences too.
In Brave New World promiscuity is not just normal, it is actively encouraged; total frankness in all aspects of sexuality, ditto. Sex is a distraction and a source of entertainment, almost a drug. Huxley would have looked at our world of dating apps and sexualised mass entertainment — and perhaps especially shows such as Love Island and Naked Attraction — and awarded his predictions a solid A+. (Naked Attraction is a Channel Four dating show on which people choose a partner based on whether or not they like the look of their genitals. The audience sees the genitals too. When you describe this show to people, they often think they’ve misunderstood, and that you can’t mean that people stand with their faces concealed and their genitals exposed and are chosen by a prospective partner on that basis — but that’s exactly what happens. I recommend this programme to anyone who doesn’t agree that norms around sexuality have changed.) Orwell saw a future in which the state discouraged sex. In this respect he was completely wrong and Huxley was completely right.
Huxley was also more broadly right about pleasure. Orwell wrote about a world which was sensually constrained, pinched, grey — that was one of the main respects in which he was channelling the spirit of the 1940s. Huxley looked ahead, and saw a future in which life was very pleasant — lullingly, deadeningly, numbly pleasant. Undemanding pleasures and unchallenging entertainments are central to the functioning of society. Sources of distraction play a vital role. The “feelies”, the main source of mass entertainment, are all about escape from the self. “When the individual feels, society reels,” is the motto, and every effort is made to stop people from feeling strong emotion. The preferred method for this is soma, a side-effect free drug which guarantees dissociated happiness. Here, again, Huxley could look at the modern use of antidepressants, anti-anxiety and sedative medications, and conclude that he had nailed it.
One particular area of Huxley’s prescience concerned the importance of data. He saw the information revolution coming — in the form of gigantic card-indexes, true, but he got the gist. It is amusing to see how many features of Facebook, in particular, are anticipated by Brave New World. Facebook’s mission statement “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” sounds a lot like the new world’s motto “Community, Identity, Stability”. The world in which “we haven’t any use for old things” dovetails with Mark Zuckerberg’s view that “young people are just smarter”. The meeting room whose name is Only Good News — can you guess whether that belongs to Huxley’s World Controller, or Sheryl Sandberg? The complete ban on the sight of breast feeding is common to the novel and to the website. The public nature of relationship status, the idea that everything should be shared, and the idea that “everyone belongs to everyone else” are also common themes of the novel and the company — and above all, the idea, perfectly put by Zuckerberg and perfectly exemplifying Huxley’s main theme, that “privacy is an outdated norm”.
This theme, of an attack on privacy, is central to Orwell’s vision too. Thought crime is one of the most serious crimes in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is at this point that we can start to see his and Huxley’s novels not as competing visions of the future but as complementary, overlapping warnings. Our world has sex on display everywhere, entertainment to take you out of your mind whenever you want, and drugs to make you stop feeling. It also has an increasing number of strongmen leaders who rewrite history and ignore the truth, and a growing emphasis on crimes-by-thought. We don’t have an official “Two Minutes Hate”, as Orwell’s state of Oceania does, but our social media equivalents come pretty close. The idea of permanent low-level war as a new norm looks a lot like our 18-year global war on terror — in fact the GWOT would fit in nicely in Orwell’s world of acronyms and Newspeak. The idea of a society permanently stratified into inherited or genetically determined social classes maps well on to a modern world where the most unequal societies are also the ones in which people are most likely to inherit their life chances.
A globally dominant society ruled by a party and a strong leader, a society which uses every possible method of surveillance and data collection to monitor and control its citizens, a society which is also enjoying a record rise in prosperity and abundance, and using unprecedented new techniques in science and genetics — that society would look a lot like a blend of Orwell’s and Huxley’s visions. It would also look a lot like modern-day China. The developing Chinese “citizen score”, a blend of reputational and financial and socio-political metrics, used to determine access to everything from travel and education and healthcare, is such a perfect blend of dystopias that we can only credit it to a new writer, Huxwell. Some commentators on the subject have begun saying that the citizen score is being misunderstood, that it is only a Chinese attempt to develop something as all-encompassing and socially determinative as we in the fortunate west already have with credit rating agencies. They’re missing the point: that isn’t what’s good about the citizen score. It’s what’s bad about it.
Huxley and Orwell both wrote their books to try and prevent their dystopias from coming true. Their success at prophecy is also their failure — because the righter they are, the more their projects didn’t do what they were supposed to. Neither man would have thought that a reason to give up hope. Their warnings are still valid. We can still change direction. There will be life after Trump and Putin. There may even be life after Naked Attraction and Facebook. Last word to Huxley, in the foreword to his dystopia, written 20 years later: “though I remain no less sadly certain than in the past that sanity is a rather rare phenomenon, I am convinced that it can be achieved and would like to see more of it”.
https://www.ft.com/content/aa8ac620-1818-11e9-b93e-f4351a53f1c3
Maybe the future has elements of both. We don’t know for certain.
I think Atwoods “Handmaid’s tale” is by far the most accurate Dystopian novel..
Agree– Atwood nailed that one.
How is it accurate exactly? Are women in the West property of the state? Are they oppressed- I would say the exact opposite. Reproductive and women’s rights are as permissive as they’ve ever been.
Huxley’s novel is still the most accurate representation of BAU. A techno-theocracy would be way too complex for a post-collapse society, and the world faces the opposite of a fertility crisis.
Orwell for sure.
Huxley in the past, but Orwell is now dominate.
The above article on China, India and (grasp) Egypt is rather humorous.
One has to be living is a very small box not to burst out in laughter.
One does not want to be in Zimbabwe, as the whole country is in shut down. Continued wild ride down the sink. https://economist.com.na/41172/extra/a-letter-from-zimbabwe-where-the-country-is-in-total-shutdown/?fbclid=IwAR0z3dP2okmBmwtitwxmfD8ZH-GH-Q0MoEp_HPCPHrU3aauODs0wX1SShG8
Add one country to the collapsing list. Somalia and Yemen seem to be on the list, too. Probably others as well.
As a follow up to my Caulhoun post, PC cannit be found in Asia. The contrast is so great.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-16/dealmaking-in-escort-bars-thrives-in-pockets-of-corporate-asia
In Tokyo’s Ginza, Seoul’s Gangnam and Beijing’s Chaoyang financial district a familiar scene plays out almost every night of the work week. As dusk falls, businessmen flock to karaoke and hostess clubs to close deals and build relationships in the liquor-lubricated intimacy of young women.
Call it bonding over vice. It’s a culture that sits uneasily with the #MeToo movement that has swept across Europe and the U.S. In parts of Asia, corporate men continue to openly drink with colleagues or business clients at venues where women escorts are paid to consume alcohol, sing karaoke and — often illegally– perform sexual favors, according to interviews with men and women including Regina Yuan, who works at a Shanghai-based startup.
https://oilprice.com/
Oil has been headed back up in price, jumped in price today WTi up to 54. & Brent up to 62.70 last I looked.
Also US stock market jacked back up on news the trade war with China may be softening as China claims to help trade imbalance with big purchases. But could just be a false olive branch attempt to lull the white house into complacency, initiate some truce, then go back to big imbalances.
Someone sent me a link to this article:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-16/real-reason-why-stocks-are-surging
Is This The Real Reason Why Stocks Are Surging?
It alleges that Plunge Protection Teams have been hard at work since the beginning of June, turning around the Quantitative Tightening we have been experiencing and moving back to Quantitative Easing. Nothing has been announced, except for the related fact that the US is now more cautious about raising short term interest rates further. These are charts from the article:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/global-stocks-vs-global-central-bank-balance-sheet.jpg
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/s-and-p-500-vs-change-in-central-bank-balance-sheets_zerohedge.jpg
The real reason for the rise in the oil prices is exactly the same reason as the upward motion of the stock markets, IMO. It has to do with unannounced changes in QE vs QT.
i heard about this a few months ago and it does make sense quantative easing is still occurring but it has not been officially announced to the public this just shows us that QE may never ever go away would it eventually lead to high inflation if oil prices rise
There is a balancing act to be done. With all of the QE done so far, it has not led to inflation, so I would doubt that it would lead to inflation. Inflation occurred back in the day when (a) lots of women were entering the workforce, (b) demand was growing simultaneously from US, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet Union, and (c) interest rates were falling leading to more purchases of capital goods. Now we are on the edge of collapse with falling energy and other commodity prices. I don’t think it would be possible to overshoot on the upside.
That New Zealand Herald article about the world in 2030 was based on an article by Standard Chartered Bank, which does 90% of its business in Asia, Africa, and Middle East.
In other words, they want to encourage potential clients to feel giddy with optimism about future investment opportunities.
Yay! The American Dream!
https://i.redd.it/jniey1any7b21.jpg
from the IMF BLOG an admittance that they have run out of viable solutions when the next crisis comes ” Building Defenses Against the Next Economic Downturn ”
FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT MAGAZINE
About the Blog
IMFBlog is a forum for the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and officials on pressing economic and policy issues of the day.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF and its Executive Board.
JANUARY 17, 2019
By David Lipton
عربي, Français, 日本語, Русский
The global economy faces a number of complex challenges from technological change and globalization, and the lingering effects of the 2008-9 financial crisis. At the same time, we are witnessing lower levels of trust in the core institutions that have helped to deliver tremendous growth and prosperity over the past 40 years. These developments threaten to fragment the international order that has governed the global economy.
History suggests such a downturn is somewhere over the horizon.
The symptoms of this fragmentation include rising trade tensions, discord with and within some multilateral institutions, and a dilution of efforts to address the profound cross-border challenges of the 21st century, such as climate change, cyber-crime, and refugee flows. The question inevitably arises: if this is occurring at a time of solid global growth and relative financial stability, what might the next economic downturn produce?
History suggests such a downturn is somewhere over the horizon, and recent signs of slowing global growth should underline the imperative to prepare for unexpected developments.
The distrust of institutions is not confined to the multilateral realm. National governance has in many respects fallen into disrepute—witness the turmoil resulting from recent elections in many countries. If we are to forestall the next economic downturn—and mitigate the impact when it arrives—countries need to shore up their defenses now.
These defenses comprise financial firepower, policies to fight crises, and regulatory regimes, many put in place after the Global Financial Crisis. However, as matters stand now, there is no guarantee that they will be sufficient to keep a “garden variety” recession from becoming another full-blown systemic crisis.
On monetary policy, there is considerable discussion about how central banks can respond to a deep or prolonged downturn. For example, past U.S. recessions have been met with 500 basis points or more of Federal Reserve easing, and in the global financial crisis, central banks used their balance sheets extensively. However, with policy rates still so low in so many countries, and balance sheet normalization still underway, that same policy response may not be available.
Some suggest that unconventional monetary measures may provide the scope to respond to a crisis through negative rates, forward guidance pledges to hold rates at lower levels longer than justified by inflation targets or policy rules, or other innovations. But with the effectiveness of these ideas at best uncertain, there is reason for concern about the potency of monetary policy.
The next line of defense is fiscal policy, where many observers insist that the room for maneuver has been narrowing in the advanced economies. Public debt has risen—notably in the U.S. in the wake of tax cuts and spending increases. Indeed, in many countries deficits remain too high to stabilize or reduce debt. At the same time, if the next slowdown creates unemployment and economic slack, we should expect the multipliers to grow. That would restore some potency to fiscal policy, even at high debt levels. However, we should not expect governments to have the room in their budgets to respond as they did ten years ago. With high sovereign debt levels, fiscal stimulus may be a hard sell politically.
One lingering resentment growing out of the Global Financial Crisis was the perception that bankers were saved at the expense of the average worker. As a result, a future recession that endangers the finances of small businesses or homeowners would likely lead to calls to help relieve debt burdens. Supporting a larger share of the economy could further stress already stretched public finances, but failing to do so could deepen political divides.
If recession once again threatens the stability of banks, the recourse to bailouts is now limited in law, following financial regulatory reforms that call for bail-ins of owners and lenders. But those new systems remain underfunded and untested.
We should not lose sight of the fact that the impairment of key U.S. capital markets during the global financial crisis, which might have produced crippling spillovers across the globe, was robustly contained by unorthodox central bank actions supported by backstop funding from national treasuries. The capacity to do so again also is unlikely to be readily available.
The point is that national policy options and public financial resources may be much more constrained than in the past. The right lesson to take from that possibility is for each country to be much more careful to sustain growth, to limit vulnerabilities, and to prepare for whatever may come.
Another takeaway is the importance of multilateral preparedness and action. Institutions like the IMF have played a crucial role in responding to crises and keeping the global economy on track. The ability to respond effectively to these challenges has required a constant process of reform that needs to continue.
In the face of the discontent with multilateralism in some advanced economies, it is essential for the process of IMF evolution to continue—across the range of lending, analytical and research activities—so that we continue to meet our core mission of supporting global growth and financial stability. This will become all the more important if national policy tools prove insufficient to meet a crisis.
The IMF’s lending capacity was increased during the Global Financial Crisis to about one trillion dollars—a forceful response from our membership at a time of dire need. From that point of view, it was encouraging that the G20, at the November meeting in Buenos Aires, restated its commitment to support the global financial safety net, with a strong and adequately financed IMF at its center.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde has called for a “new multilateralism,” one that is dedicated to improving the lives of all this world’s citizens and ensures that the economic benefits of globalization and technology are shared much more broadly. This is an essential goal, and one element is to ensure that we can prevent future crises—and respond effectively to the next recession. This is a practical and pragmatic way to overcome distrust in institutions and build a shared and prosperous future.
This reminded me of the World Economic Forum, which both the US and UK are passing on. (At least May is not attending.) This is the Davos conference that
I see that it has a number of liberal agenda items on its agenda:
What does real leadership look like in the #MeToo era?
How do we solve LGBTQ+ discrimination? One word: visibility
We should take humour in the workplace more seriously
The Fourth Industrial Revolution will change production forever. Here’s how
Diverse boards are better. So how do you build one?
I can’t see that there is much need for a world organization pushing these ideas any more. I can see why Trump decided not to attend.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/664415-1.jpg
“How do we solve LGBTQ+ discrimination? One word: visibility”
To a limited extent, I would have recommended INvisibility. Somehow, PEOPLE IN THE PAST DEALT WITH ALL SORTS OF UNUSUAL (ANOMALOUS) gender appearances without talking much about it. One used restrooms according to basic plumbing, not preference. Nothing too rigid.
And sex, in general, is way too visible. If people don’t like overt gay behavior, they might consider discouraging overt straight behavior too. I’m not seeing why people can’t dress a little more alike, and leave sexual manifestations in the margins and out of the public realm. This might make sense in a world that a majority perceive to be already overpopulated.
Is the cheap transport using the river Rhine one of the main reasons why the Germanys economy is not doing well recently?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-18/europe-s-most-important-river-is-running-dry
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/rhine-drought-threatens-fuel-supplies-as-cold-snap-hits-germany
“Even with Germany’s extensive road and train networks, the Rhine is hard to beat. Barges can carry more than five times their own weight, making them cheap to operate. Shipping from Rotterdam to Basel costs around 40 percent less than rail transport, according to the German Federal Institute of Hydrology.”
No real change since the days of Rome….
A lot of efficiency improvements are indirectly dependent upon less efficient but more scalable old systems.
Sounds right!
Interesting.
Oh my…another article…this from BLOOMBERG Business, no less with the forbidden OFW words CC.
Economics
Europe’s Most Important River Is Running Dry
The Rhine waterway, critical to moving coal, car parts, food and thousands of other goods, risks becoming impassable because of CC…..
You can see the water levels are lower each year,” said Kilps, who added extra flotation equipment to the 150-ton boat during the stoppage to enable it to finally cross the river again. “It’s scary to watch the cymut changing
The river is fed by glaciers and rain. But alpine ice flows shrank 28 percent between 1973 and 2010—the date of the most recent in-depth study by the Swiss government—and that decline may be as much as 35 percent now, according to Wilfried Hagg, glacier expert at Munich University.
“The Alps are warming at an even faster rate as snow and ice melts,” Hagg said. “A warming cymut means that incidents like the low river levels this summer are more likely to occur.
Ah, that’s too bad, I agree with Gail…she is correct t 100%…we can not really do anything about it ….
When I was on a river boat tour in Europe a few years ago through Germany, the water level was too high for boats to go through. It seems like the explanation then was “too much rain.” It seems like every fluctuation, in whatever direction, is yet another opportunity to talk about the climate changing. Why should we care, or make a big deal over it? We have other problems working in the direction of a near-term economic crash, which no one is building into their climate change models. We can’t really fix it. It is just a diversion, to keep people from thinking about our real problems.
Yep, funnily enough, in recent days there has been the highest snow fall in past ~20yrs in SW Germany/Bavaria and Austria, 2+ meters of snow even in many urban places, but that’s all mostly connected to different river system via Danube flowing eastbound..
ooops, SE Germany obviously..
The world’s economic powerhouses are going to look very different by 2030
A decade from now, the world’s biggest economic powerhouses are going to look very different.
China is set to dominate the world, India will outpace the United States, and Egypt’s economy will rise well above Australia’s into the top 10.
The world’s total population is expected to hit around 8.56 billion, with Asian countries alone making up almost five billion.
According to a recent Standard Chartered report, seven of the world’s 10 largest economies in 2030 will be from emerging markets.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12193021
In other words, global economic and population growth is assured for the next ten years at least. Can that really be achieved from our current position, with the issues we are already having with energy, mineral resources, and finance?
Historically, when a rising power challenges the existing top dog it has more often than not led to bloodshed..
You mean the global population growth based on the ageing populations? That means energy decline, as an ageing human being has got less and less energy and needs more and more external energy. Which means that there can be zero growth for decades, consuming the populations and depopulating the world.
hi, Curt…
“In other words, global economic and population growth is assured for the next ten years at least.”
more than that… this article seems to be concluding that population growth will push many national economies much higher by 2030…
this has got to be one of the most ludicrussly duummbb articles that I have seen in many blood moons…
how about this:
“At the same time, the report predicts a majority of the world’s population — around 5.4 billion people — will enter a middle-class income group by 2030, up from three billion in 2015.”
WARNING: reading the entire article may cause nausea or worse…
“this has got to be one of the most ludicrussly duummbb articles that I have seen in many blood moons…”
Exactly. Most people reading the article will believe it and others like it, then base decisions on such drivel, and refuse to countenance any suggestions of such articles being utter nonsense on the basis of physics and basic arithmetic.
In other words, can the money printing, foisting of austerity on the poor, whilst giving the rich a free ride, that we’ve seen these past 10 years be sustained for another 10?
What about the cumulative and corrosive effects of all the other issues that have resulted in the predicament of a limits to growth for industrial civilisation?
The geopolitical tensions these problems are already causing, like Brexit, Trump, Yellow Jackets, Syria, Ukraine, etc? These will be contained/managed? All of them? New ones?
Can that really all go on for another 10 years without something major snapping? I don’t believe it can. We’ve had a good run, and it’s gone on for longer than most here thought.
Not in Mexico…the crisis deepens in Mexico. After deploying the army to combat fuel theft…”A pipeline explosion north of Mexico City has killed at least 21 and injured more than 70 people who had been gathered around the ruptured Pemex line collecting free fuel. Another blast came minutes later near San Juan del Rio.”
No such thing as a free fuel-tank; and the price may be death….
Trump’s insistence upon greater border security, and his symbolic cry for a wall, is his way of signalling the USA that there is a growing migratory threat from Central American and now Mexican civil breakdown. recall he gets daily briefs from the CIA, DIA, etc.
it’s more difficult to detect what’s behind his signalling on the middle east troop drawdown, but at least part of it is cost savings and the final, open recognition of a quagmire. similar to Viet Nam, by the time Nixon declared “peace with honor”, just about everyone was fed up with that losing entanglement.
Clearly, this won’t happen, but it is possible to make money writing articles about this kind of stuff.
I also find it hard to believe when a good portion of the population in India still poops outdoors.
China and Egypt are a basket case also
vice versa i also find hard to believe that some places
in the richest country on earth still not have proper plumbing
https://youtu.be/a5XSsfiG8Ok