A few years ago, especially in the 2005-2008 period, many people were concerned that the oil supply would run out. They were concerned about high oil prices and a possible need for rationing. The story was often called “Peak Oil.” Peak Oil theorists have also branched out into providing calculations that might be used to determine which substitutes for fossil fuels seem to have the most promise. What is right about the Peak Oil story, and what is misleading or wrong? Let’s look at a few of the pieces.
[1] What Is the Role of Energy in the Economy?
The real story is that the operation of the economy depends on the supply of affordable energy. Without this energy supply, we could not make goods and services of any kind. The world’s GDP would be zero. Everything we have, from the food on our dinner table, to the pixels on our computer, to the roads we drive on is only possible because the economy “dissipates” energy. Even our jobs depend on energy dissipation. Some of this energy is human energy. The vast majority of it is the energy of fossil fuels and of other supplements to human energy.
Peak Oilers generally have gotten this story right, but they often miss the “affordable” part of the story. Economists have been in denial of this story. A big part of the problem is that it would be problematic to admit that the economy is tied to fossil fuels and to other energy sources whose supply seems to be limited. It would be impossible to talk about growth forever, if economic growth were directly tied to the consumption of limited energy resources.
[2] What Happens When Oil and Other Energy Supplies Become Increasingly Difficult to Extract?
Fossil fuel producers tend to extract the fuels that are easiest to extract first. Over time, even with technology changes, this tends to lead to higher extraction costs for the remaining fuels. Peak Oilers have been quick to notice this relationship.
The question that then arises is, “Can these higher extraction costs be passed on to the consumer as higher prices?” Peak Oil theorists, as well as many others, have tended to say, “Of course, the higher cost of oil extraction will lead to higher oil prices. Energy is essential to the economy.” In fact, we did see very high oil prices in the 1974-1981 period, in the 2004-2008 period, and in the 2011-2013 period.
Unfortunately, it is not true that higher extraction costs always can be passed on to consumers as higher prices. Many energy costs are very well “buried” in finished goods, such as food, cars, air conditioners, and trucks. After a point, energy prices “top out” at what is affordable for citizens, considering current wage levels and interest rate levels. This level of the affordable energy price will vary over time, with lower interest rates and higher debt amounts generally allowing higher energy prices. Greater wage disparity will tend to reduce the affordable price level, because fewer workers can afford these finished goods.
The underlying problem is that, from the consumer’s perspective, high oil prices look like inefficiency on the part of the oil company. Normally, being inefficient leads to costs that can’t be passed along to the consumer. We should not be surprised if, at some point, it is no longer possible to pass these higher costs on as higher prices.
If higher extraction costs cannot be passed on to consumers, this is a terrible situation for energy producers. After not too many years, this situation tends to lead to peak energy output because producers and their governments tend to go bankrupt. This seems to be the situation we are reaching for oil, coal and natural gas. This is a much worse situation than the high price situation because the high price situation tends to lead to more supply; low prices tend to collapse the production system.
The underlying problem is that low prices, even if they are satisfactory to the consumer, tend to be too low for the companies producing energy products. Peak Oilers miss the fact that a two-way tug of war is taking place. Low prices look like a great outcome from the perspective of consumers, but they are a disaster from the perspective of producers.
[3] How Important Is Hubbert’s Curve for Determining the Shape of Future Oil (or Coal or Natural Gas) Extraction?
Figure 1. M. King Hubbert symmetric curve from Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels. Total quantity of resources that will ultimately be extracted is Q.
Most Peak Oilers seem to believe that if we see Hubbert shaped curves in individual fields, we should expect to see a similar shaped curve for total oil supply or for the supply of other fossil fuels. They think that production patterns to date plus outstanding reserves can give realistic views of the future extraction patterns. Frequently, Peak Oilers will assume that once production of oil, coal or natural gas starts to fall, we will still have about 50% of the beginning amount left. Thus, we can plan on a fairly long, slow decline in fossil fuel production.
However, many Peak Oilers will agree that if the energy used to extract energy is subtracted, the result will be more of a Seneca Cliff (Figure 2). Seneca is known for saying, “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.”
Figure 2. Seneca Cliff by Ugo Bardi.
Peak Oilers also tend to limit the amount of resources that they consider extractible, to exclude those that are particularly high in cost.
Even with these adjustments, it seems to me that the situation is likely to be even worse than most Peak Oil analyses suggest because of the interconnected nature of the economy and the fact that world population continues to grow. The economy cannot get along with a sharp reduction in energy consumption per capita. Some governments may collapse; many debtors may default; some banks may be forced to close. The situation may resemble the “societal collapse” situation experienced by many early economies.
One concern I have is that the Hubbert model, once it became the standard model for what energy supply might be available in the future, could easily be distorted. With enough assumptions about ever-rising energy prices and ever-improving technology, it became possible to claim that any fossil fuel resource in the ground could be extracted at some point in the future. Such outrageous assumptions can be used to claim that our biggest future problem will be climate change. After hearing enough climate change forecasts, people tend to forget about our immediate energy problems, since current problems are mostly hidden from consumers by low energy prices.
[4] Is Running Out of Oil Our Biggest Energy Problem?
The story told by Peak Oilers is based on the assumption that oil is our big problem and that we have plenty of other fuels. Oil is indeed our highest cost fuel and is very energy dense. Nevertheless, I think this is an incorrect assessment of our situation; the real issue is keeping the average cost of energy consumption low enough so that goods and services made from energy products will be affordable by consumers. Even factory workers need to be able to buy goods made by the economy.
Figure 2. Historical oil, natural gas, and oil production, based on Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
The way the cost of energy consumption can be kept low is mostly a “mix” issue. If the mix of energy products is heavily weighted toward low cost energy-related products, such as coal and labor from low wage countries, then the overall cost of energy can be kept low. This is a major reason why the economies of China and India have been able to grow rapidly in recent years.
If underlying costs of production are rising, mix changes cannot be expected to keep the problem hidden indefinitely. A recession is a likely outcome if the average price of energy, even with the mix changes, isn’t kept low enough for consumers. Energy producers, on the other hand, depend on energy prices that are high enough that they can make adequate reinvestment. If they cannot make adequate reinvestment, the whole system will tend to collapse.
A collapse based on prices that are too low for producers will not occur immediately, however. The problem can be hidden for a while by a variety of techniques, including additional debt for producers and lower interest rates for consumers. We seem to be in the period during which the problems of producers can be temporarily hidden. Once this grace period has passed, the economy is in danger of collapsing, with oil not necessarily singled out first.
Following collapse, large amounts oil, coal and natural gas are likely to be left in the ground. Some of it may even cease to be available before the 50% point of the Hubbert curve is reached. Electricity may very well collapse at the same time as fossil fuels.
[5] How Should We Measure Whether an Energy-Producing Device Is Actually Providing a Worthwhile Service to the Economy?
The answer that some energy researchers have come up with is, “We need to compare energy output with energy input” in a calculation called Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI). This approach looks like a simple ratio of (Energy Output)/(Energy Input), but “the devil is in the details.”
As I looked through the workings of the Limits to Growth model, it occurred to me that the EROI calculation needs to line up with how the economy really operates. If this is the case, we really need a very rapid return of the energy output, relative to the energy input. Also, in the aggregate, the energy output needs to scale up very rapidly. Furthermore, the energy output needs to match the types of energy needed for the devices the economy is currently using. If the output is different (such as electricity instead of fossil fuels), the EROI calculation needs to be adjusted to reflect the expected energy cost and time delay associated with a changeover in devices to match the new type of energy output.
In a footnote, I have attached a list of what I see as requirements that seem to be needed for EROI calculations, based on the LTG model, as well as other considerations.1
Of course, in a setting of many researchers working on a subject and many peer reviewed papers, a concept such as EROI is gradually modified and enhanced by different researchers. For example, EROI is turned around to become the Energy Payback Period. This is used to show prospective buyers of a device how helpful a particular device supposedly is. Researchers who are trying to “push” a type of energy product will find ways to perform the EROI calculation that are as helpful as possible to their cause.
The problem, though, is that if more stringent EROI requirements are put into effect, wind and solar can be expected to do much less well in EROI calculations. They very likely drop below the threshold of being useful to the economy as energy producers. This is especially the case if they are added to the economy in great numbers to try to significantly replace fossil fuels.
Regardless of their value as energy producers, there might still be a reason for building wind and solar. Building them probably does help the economy in the same sense that building unneeded roads and apartment buildings does. In theory, all of these things might someday be somewhat useful. They are helpful now in that they add jobs. Also, the building of wind and solar devices adds “demand,” which helps keep the price of coal in China high enough to encourage additional extraction. But in terms of truly keeping the world economy operating over the long haul, or in terms of scaling up to the quantity of energy supply that is really needed to operate the economy, wind and solar do very little.
[6] How Should Net Energy Be Defined?
Net Energy is defined by EROI researchers as (Energy Output) minus (Energy Input). Unfortunately, as far as I can see, this calculation provides virtually no valid information. Instead, it promotes the belief that the benefit of a device can be defined in terms of (Energy Output) minus (Energy Input). In practice, it is very difficult to measure more than a small fraction of the Energy Inputs needed to produce an Energy Output, while Energy Output does tend to be easily measurable. This imbalance leads to a situation where the calculation of (Energy Output) minus (Energy Input) provides a gross overestimate of how helpful an energy device really is.
If we are dealing with a fish or some other animal, the amount of energy that the animal can expend on gathering food is not very high because it needs to use the vast majority of its energy for other purposes, such as respiration, reproduction, and digestion. In general, a fish can only use about 10% of its energy from food for gathering food. Limits to Growth modeling seems to suggest a similar maximum energy-gathering usage percentage of 10%. In this case, this percentage would apply to the resources needed for capturing, processing, and distributing energy to the world economy.
Perhaps there is a need for a substitute for Net Energy, calculated compared to the budgeted maximum expenditure for the function of “Energy gathering, processing and distribution.” For example, the term Surplus Energy might be used instead, calculated as (10% x Energy Output) minus (Energy Input), where Energy Inputs are subject to suitably wide boundaries. If an energy product has a very favorable evaluation on this basis, it will be inexpensive to produce, making it affordable to buyers. At the same time, the cost of production will be low, leaving plenty of funds with which to pay taxes.
Alternately, Surplus Energy might be calculated in terms of the tax revenue that governments are able to collect, relative to the new energy type. Tax revenue based on fossil fuel production and/or consumption is very signification today. Oil exporting nations often rely primarily on oil-based tax revenue to support their programs. Many countries tax gasoline consumption highly. Another type of fossil fuel tax is a carbon tax. Any replacement for fossil fuels will need to replace the loss of tax revenue associated with fossil fuels, because taxation is the way Surplus Energy is captured for the good of the economy as a whole.
When we consider the tax aspect, we find that any replacement for fossil fuels has three conflicting demands on its pricing:
(a) Prices to the consumer must be low enough to prevent recession.
(b) Prices must be high enough that the producer of the replacement energy supply can earn adequate after-tax revenue to support its operations.
(c) The mark-up between the cost of production and the sales price must be high enough that governments can take a very significant share of gross receipts as tax revenue.
The only way that it is possible to meet these three demands simultaneously is if the unsubsidized cost of energy production is extremely low. Wind and solar clearly come nowhere near being able to meet this very low price threshold; they still rely on subsidies. One of the biggest subsidies is being allowed to “go first” when their energy supply is available. The greater the share of intermittent wind and solar that is added to the electric grid, the more disruptive this subsidy becomes.
Afterword: Is this a criticism of Peak Oil energy researchers?
No. I know many of these researchers quite well. They are hard working individuals who have tried to figure out what is happening in the energy arena with very little funding. Some of them are aware of the collapse issue, but it is not something that they can discuss in the journals they usually write in. The 1972 The Limits to Growth modeling that I mentioned in my last post was ridiculed by a large number of people. It was not possible to believe that the world economy could collapse, certainly not in the near term.
Early researchers were not aware that the physics of energy extraction extends to the economy as a whole, rather than ending at the wellhead. Because of this, they tended to overlook the importance of affordability. Affordability is important because there is a pricing conflict between the low prices needed by buyers of energy products and the high prices needed by producers. This conflict becomes especially apparent as the world approaches energy limits; this conflict was not easily seen in the data reviewed by Hubbert. Once Hubbert missed the affordability issue, his followers tended to go follow the same path.
Researchers needed to start from somewhere. The start that Peak Oil researchers made was as reasonable as any. They were convinced that there was an energy problem, and they wanted to convince others of the problem. But this was difficult to do. When they would develop an approach that they thought would make the energy problem clear to everyone, other researchers would modify it. They would take whatever aspect of the research seemed to be helpful to them and would tweak it to support whatever view they wanted to encourage–often with precisely the opposite intent to what the original researchers had expected.
Thus, the approaches that Peak Oil researchers thought would show that there was a likely energy shortage ahead ended up being used to “prove” that we have an almost unlimited amount of fossil fuel energy available. It seems as though the world has such a strong need for happily-ever-after endings that self-organization pushes research in the direction of showing outcomes people want to see, even if they are untrue.
Footnote:
[1] The following is from an e-mail I sent to some energy researchers concerned about EROI calculations:
A concern I have is that EROI really needs to match up with the concept of Fraction of Capital to Obtaining Non-Renewable Resources (FCONRR) in the Limits to Growth model. If a person looks at how the 2003 World3 model functions, the person can figure out several things:
1. FCONRR is what I would call a calendar year “in and out” function. Forecasting EROI using a model year approach gives artificially favorable indications. FCONRR calculations line up fairly well with many fossil fuel EROI calculations, but not with the usual model approach used for capital devices used to generate electricity.
2. I would describe FCONRR as corresponding to “Point of Use (POU) EROI,” not Wellhead EROI.
3. If a newly built device causes a previously built capital device to be closed down before the end of its useful lifetime (for example, solar output leads to distorted electricity prices, which in turn leads to unprofitable nuclear), this has an adverse impact on FCONRR. Thus, intermittent renewables need to be evaluated on a very broad basis.
4. In the model, FCONRR starts at 5% and gradually increases to 10%. This is equivalent to overall average calendar year POU EROI starting at 20:1 and falling to 10:1. The model shows the world economy growing nicely, when total FCONRR is 5%. It gradually slows, as FCONRR increases to 10%. Once overall FCONRR exceeds 10%, the model shows the world economy contracting.
5. I was struck by the fact that FCONRR equaling 10% corresponds to the ratio that Charlie Hall describes as the share of energy that a fish can afford to use to gather its food. Once a fish starts using more than 10% of its energy for gathering food, it is all downhill from there. The fish cannot live very long, without enough energy to support the rest of it functions. Similarly, an economy cannot last very long, without enough energy to support its other functions.
6. In the model, necessary resources out depend on the population. The higher the population, the more resources out are needed. It is falling resources per capita that causes the system to collapse. This is why FCONRR needs to stay strictly below 10% and energy consumption must be ramped up rapidly. This would suggest that average POU EROI needs to stay strictly above 10:1, to keep the system away from collapse.
7. If there are not enough resources out in total, for a given calendar year, this becomes a huge problem. The way this works out in practice is that if a device uses a lot of upfront capital, these devices can sort of work out OK, if (a) only a few are built each year, (b) they have very high EROI, and (c) they last a long time. Thus, hydro and dams can work. But devices with an EROI close to 10:1 cannot work, especially if they need to be scaled up quickly and need a lot of supporting infrastructure.
8. Clearly, using the FCONRR approach, eliminating a high EROI fuel is as detrimental to the system as adding a low EROI device with a lot of upfront capital spending required. It is the overall output compared to population that is important. The quantity of output is even more important than the EROI ratio.
National Assembly
https://www.moonofalabama.org/images8/vennationalass-d.jpg
Constitutional Assembly
https://www.moonofalabama.org/images8/venconstass-d.jpg
Can anyone see the difference?
A lot more cute chicks in the National Assembly?
Oh, and no Dear Leader.
Amazon and NY
https://twitter.com/i/moments/1093919577573126144?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email
We are on a collision course with arithmetic, and arithmetic is going to be the Winner.
Try a thought experiment. A farmer has a farm of 10 square miles, but it’s just him and his wife. So they have 10 kids because they need farm labour. The next generation now works 1 square mile. But those 10 have 10 children each, and now everyone works a tenth of a square mile. Do this again, and everyone now has a postage stamp.
At what point ( because tractors and farm machinery has been invented in the meantime) do you get family members for whom there is no job on the farm?
Well, the farm is the world, and the children are the 8bn of us living on it. We just don’t need all the labour we have around us, and we can’t put it to work.
Meantime another 90m people a year are arriving on earth. All of them young, and most of them will never see a job in their entire lives. What’s worse is that these unemployed are now demanding free education, breadwinner wages, and free medical care. Where could all this possibly come from?
So the world belongs to the lucky few. Hence the inequality and no way of fixing it.
That is sort if what happens.
The problem is also qualitative, not only quantitative: those who say that the planet can feed more and more people disrespect the depletion of the soil and the rising amount of energy that is needed for returning the depleted minerals to the soil: we have to mine less and less economic mineral resources, too.
The connection of mining and agriculture today is very close. On one hand, we can get more food from smaller area, but only if we invest more into mining, processing and transportation of the minerals and other nutrients to the soil.
The current agriculture is much more energy intensive than many people realize. That way importing food from warm and humid areas to cold and dry ones becomes more and more economical than food production in the cold and dry areas. That way the tropical fruits and chickens from e.g. Brazil become more and more affordable in you Northern Hemisphere food stores.
https://www.newsweek.com/video-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-plays-scathing-corruption-game-its-already-1323479
Ocasio-Cortez of as we know has that new proposal to transition the country to zero carbon emissions in 10 years, which is a flop out the gate, but check out the corruption lightening round she had with the ethics committee today. She cleverly pointed out how easy it is to be corrupt in DC. Here are some excerpts from that question and answer meeting:
“Let’s play a lightning round game,” Ocasio-Cortez began. “I’m gonna be the bad guy and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting my interests ahead of the American people.”
“So,” the 29-year-old asked the panel, “if I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees [PACs], is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?”
“No,” one expert, Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the government accountability watchdog group Common Cause, said decisively.
“So, let’s say I have some skeletons in my closet and I need to cover it up so that I can get elected,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. The New York representative did not hide the fact that she had some very specific “skeletons” in mind, immediately turning to an article written by one of the panelists on hush money payments made shortly before the 2016 election to women who alleged they had sexual affairs with President Donald Trump.
Addressing panel member Bradley Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Ocasio-Cortez asked: “Is it true that you wrote this article, this opinion piece for The Washington Post titled, ‘These payments to women were unseemly. That doesn’t mean they were illegal.'”
After Smith acknowledged that he did write a story with that headline, Ocasio-Cortez summed up: “So, greenlight for hush money, I can do all sorts of terrible things. It’s totally legal right now for me to pay people off.
“So, I use my special interest dark money-funded campaign to pay off votes that I need to pay off and get elected,” she continued. “So, now I’m elected, now I’m in, I’ve got the power to draft lobby and shape the laws that govern the United States of America.”
“Are there any limits on the laws that I can write or influence?” Ocasio-Cortez asked the expert panel.
“There’s no limit,” Hobert Flynn acknowledged.
“So there’s none. So, I can be totally funded by oil and gas, I can be totally funded by Big Pharma, come in, write Big Pharma laws and there’s no limits to that whatsoever.”
“That’s right,” the ethics expert said.
“So, I could do that? I could do that now with the way our current laws are set up?” Ocasio-Cortez asked, seeking clarification. “Yes,” Mehrbani said.
“OK, great,” she said. “Is it possible that any elements of this story apply to our current government and our current public servants right now?”
“Yes,” at least two panelists confirmed.
“So,” Ocasio-Cortez summarized, “we have a system that is fundamentally broken. We have these influences existing in this body, which means that these influences are here, in this committee, shaping the questions that are being asked of you all right now. Would you say that that’s correct?”
Yes,” Walter Michael Shaub Jr., an American attorney specializing in government ethics who previously served as the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, responded. “In terms of laws that apply to the president, yeah, there’s almost no laws at all that apply to the president.”
“So, I’m being held, and every person in this body is being held, to a higher ethical standard than the president of the United States,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Ocasio-Cortez’s “Corruption Game” did not end there, however.
“I want to do is get rich with as little work possible. That’s really what I’m trying to do as the bad guy, right?” she continued. “So, is there anything preventing me from holding stocks, say, in an oil or gas company and then writing laws to deregulate that industry and cause, you know that could potentially cause, the stock value to soar and accrue a lot of money in that time.”
“You could do that,” a visibly bemused Rudy Mehrbani, who serves as senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, replied.
“So, I could do that? I could do that now with the way our current laws are set up?” Ocasio-Cortez asked, seeking clarification. “Yes,” Mehrbani said.
“That’s right,” Shaub confirmed once again. “Because there are some committee, ethics committee rules that apply to you.”
“And it’s already super legal, as we’ve seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy. So, it’s even easier for the president of the United States to be one, I would assume,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“That’s right,” Shaub said.
There is it a perfect explanation through this Q&A why DC is so corrupt, because as we know if people can be corrupt, they are.
Imagine what the situation is like in China, where there is a tradition of taking bribes for every type of favor. And cheating if you can get away with it. Quite a few in the US come from a Judeo-Christian set of beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. This doesn’t necessarily hold for the rest of the world.
China is very protective of what its people see of the outside world. In some ways, it is more conservative than the US. What is accepted by the culture has a lot to do with what actions politicians and other leaders take.
Quite a few in the US come from a Judeo-Christian set of beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. This doesn’t necessarily hold for the rest of the world.
Lol!
Good for some laughs
Thanks Gail
Perhaps a different view of what is expected.
True, in a very different way.
“To live outside the law, you must be honest.”
— Bob Dylan
“U.S. politicians are making the same mistakes with regards to Venezuela as they made with the regime change wars on Iraq and Syria. They believes that all people are as corrupt and nihilistic as they are. They believe that others will not fight for their own believes and their own style of life. They will again be proven wrong.”
I don’t think taking bribes and cheating are considered virtues in Buddhism and Taoism. The ten commandments can fit into any major religion, really.
China has done its best to reduce the practice of any type of religion. Consuming more, and getting a better lifestyle, has become all important. (Not very different from the US! Who needs a god, when the politicians can solve all problems?) Also, the government is interested in providing jobs for everyone. This is a major reason for the many State Owned Enterprises.
I was in Osaka the other day. The streets were filled with thousands and thousands Chinese tourists over for the New Year holiday break. The shops were doing a very brisk trade, not just in things like brand fashion goods but also home electronics/electrical products and pharmaceuticals.
It seems that many Chinese people don’t trust the boutiques, electrical stores or drug stores in China because they believe many of the products sold there are defective or fake. Whereas in Japan, even Chinese shoppers tend to trust Japanese drug stores not to sell pain killers or cough medicines that are fake or of poor quality.
The issue is one of corruption, but it goes what we’d recognize as ordinary corruption. In societies where the vast majority of people are honest, fraud is limited to the extent that people tend to trust each other not to systematically cheat each other over small fundamental matters. You buy a box of Asprin, for example, you get a box of Asprin.
But once you have a society in which some people will go to the trouble to produce fake boxes Asprin and sell them into the distribution system where others can pass them off as legit because this is cheaper than buying genuine products from the manufacturers of real Asprin, and the public finds out about this deception, then trust in everything breaks down.
Fake goods do go on sale in Japan and elsewhere too, of course, but IMHO not to anything like the extent this sort of thing goes on in China.
I agree. China is known for its fake goods.
Possibly the most eloquent commentary on the true nature of the Chinese ‘economic miracle’!
study the Chinese upcoming Social Credit system and you have the beginnings of what the bible describes as the beast system where moral behavior is legislated by way of high tech! Judeo- Christianity was always about the self government of the individual person and love but where the Chinese model is taking us is enslavement pure and simple. Technology in the hands of a dystopian government spells the end and here I thought this was to be a Jewish creation and the Chinese apparently are taking the world their first? wow
Interesting idea! There is much more central control of everything.
In the area of corruption, the Center for Disease Control seems to have its own problems.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution recently published an article about how Coca Cola had influenced the Center of Disease Control over the years, to skew its finding on what foods were appropriate for Americans in favor of findings that would be helpful to Coca Cola. For example, lack of exercise and too much fat were the cause of American’s problems. Both of these organizations are located in Atlanta.
Coke and CDC, Atlanta icons, share cozy relationship, emails show (Feb 6.)
https://www.salon.com/2019/02/01/new-emails-reveal-how-cdc-employees-were-doing-the-bidding-of-coca-cola/
https://usrtk.org/academic-work/coca-cola-and-the-cdc-resources-page/
This kind of situation is not really protecting the American public. I can imagine that meat producers and fast food folks have an influence as well.
what does it all mean?
Japan 10 year yield has gone even lower… now -0.035% (that’s a negative sign there…)
German 10 year Bund is down to 0.088%… still positive! but that’s only about one tenth of one percent…
it almost seems that these are signs that something is seriously wrong…
or is everything just fine and dandy?
These yields are ridiculous! Think about pension plans that are to be funded with these yields.
Return of investment, not return on investment.
“It occurs to me that elections are for adults”
Actually, elections today are more like Reality TV and a Game Show. It’s basically entertainment for the TV networks.
In my opinon, the elections are about the topics that are of the interest of the population. Not the solutions, as no one has solutions. The winner is the party or the person, who sees what are the most important topics for the population. That is why we no longer have like the right or the left parties, the Republicans or the Democrats. The parties can have various strange names, like we see it in Italy, and they are carriers and representants of the hot topics. When the interest in a given topic dies, the given political party is usually doomed to death.
For me swap out the word Talent for Politics “America’s Got Talent”. It’s become a Game Show.
The Italian case is a relevant one. But you have to take into account it took decades, and decades, decades more for the Italian voter to decisively commit to alternative (fringe) parties after all.
The traditional systemic propaganda pealed off finally when people realized, yes the corruption of perennial political parties system is not only cliche talking point, hell it impoverished me markedly and I can’t take it anymore! And exactly the same occurred on related topics, open border policy – influx of migrants, etc..
The fun and tragic point about these deeper political realignments is that they come often way past the threshold of implementation of different corrective path forward.
In other words the changes applied will have its cost to the detriment of the public.
It’s like field surgeon deciding should I keep the badly injured patient two legged or one handed instead..
I agree with you. For the voters it’s a dilemma. There’s a cost involved in continuing to go with the same political agenda that has been delivering poorly in recent years, and a cost involved in making changes, and there’s no guarantee that the changes will be beneficial. But perhaps the people have reached the point where any change seems preferable to the status quo.
Shape….doing just dandy….sarcasm
Chesapeake Energy’s stock heads for 7th-straight loss, longest such streak in over 4 years
Shares of Chesapeake Energy Corp. tumbled 6.1% in afternoon trade Friday, enough to pace the S&P 400 Mid Cap index in losses, and putting them on track for a seventh-straight loss. That would be the longest losing streak for the oil and gas exploration and production company’s stock since the 11-session losing stretch that ended on Oct. 14, 2014. Since that losing streak, there had been seven 6-day losing streaks. The stock has lost 20% during its current losing streak, but was still up 34% since it closed at a near 3-year low of $1.73 on Dec. 24. The stock’s decline on Friday comes despite a 0.1% gain in crude oil futures . Chesapeake has not issued a press release or filed anything with the Securities and Exchange Commission since Feb. 1. The stock has tumbled 34% over the past three months, while crude futures have shed 14%, the S&P 400 has slipped 2.9% and the S&P 500 has lost 3.9%
https://finance.yahoo.com/m/ffc99edf-3a57-3627-8d9f-db7046d53843/chesapeake-energy%27s-stock.html
I think of Chesapeake as a natural gas company. Henry Hub spot prices dropped from $3.58 on January 17 to $2.57 on February 4, according to EIA. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdd.htm
We have basically gotten through a mild winter, without much of a run up in prices. Natural gas producers need higher prices than this to stay in business.
The oil equivalent of these prices can be obtained by multiplying by 6. $2.57 per Mcf is equivalent to $15.42 per barrel of oil. Not a good price for natural gas producers.
Thank you, Gail does that mean they stopped flaring?
Chesapeake Energy, Fracking Pioneer, Bet on Oil. Then Prices Plunged
For Chesapeake, a move to oil looks ill-timed, straining already frayed finances
By Rebecca Elliott
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chesapeake-energy-fracking-pioneer-bet-on-oil-then-prices-plunged-11546358400
DOUGLAS, Wyo.—Chesapeake Energy Corp., best known for its trailblazing pursuit of natural gas from shale formations, is making a big bet on the oil below the rolling grasslands of eastern Wyoming.
Its timing doesn’t look great. U.S. oil prices have fallen more than 40% since early October to close at $45.41 a barrel on Monday, straining the finances of the debt-laden company co-founded by Aubrey McClendon, the late wildcatter. It is a rough time to be planning new shale wells anywhere, but especially in Wyoming’s Powder River…
January 1, 2019
The timing on their entry into oil no doubt hurt Chesapeake, but I bet they still have a lot of natural gas as well. The combination has not been good at all.
It occurs to me that elections are for adults what xmas is for children. We try and pick the Santa who promises us the most without thinking too hard about the realities. AOC seems to embody this best.
Maybe we need to shorten the election cycle so we can have that ‘buzz’ once a year like we did when were just out of nappies?
Yep
https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/politics/donald-trump-president-elect/
(CNN)President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he is recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela.
“In its role as the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people, the National Assembly invoked the country’s constitution to declare Nicolas Maduro illegitimate, and the office of the presidency therefore vacant. The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law,” Trump said in a statement recognizing Guaido as interim president of Venezuela.
Trump also urged other governments to recognize Guaido, adding that he “will continue to use the full weight of United States economic and diplomatic power to press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy.”
Trump continued by saying his administration will “continue to hold the illegitimate Maduro regime directly responsible for any threats it may pose to the safety of the Venezuelan people.”
That’s right Trump’s boy didn’t even run much less was on anyone’s radar.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14305
Don’t even get me going about the whole Brexit deal. I believe May is going to have a nervous breakdown on live television before it’s over.
Who could blame her?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/opinion/abolish-billionaires-tax.html?fbclid=IwAR2nFYOpPuTdjZcPvjSIAgk14fEn2ev3SLWsAbzXeeZx0gxhpdwhmD2T-80
https://earthfirstjournal.org/wp-content/themes/monkey-wrenched/images/monkeywrench.png
Duncan, brings back the days of long ago. EARTH FIRST! No compromise in defense of Mother Earth. Seems like another lifetime ago…Judi Bari…RIP…a true PATRIOT…
Read her book “Timber Wars”
Judi Bari (November 7, 1949 – March 2, 1997) was an American environmentalist and labor leader, a feminist, and the principal organizer of Earth First! campaigns against logging in the ancient redwood forests of Northern California in the 1980s and 1990s. She also organized efforts through Earth First! – Industrial Workers of the World Local 1 to bring timber workers and environmentalists together in common cause.
.
Car bombing attempt on Bari’s life
On May 24, 1990, in Oakland, California, the vehicle used by Bari and Darryl Cherney was blown up by a pipe bomb.[22] Bari was severely injured by the blast, as the bomb was located under her seat; Cherney suffered minor injuries. Bari was arrested for transporting explosives while she was still in critical condition with a fractured pelvis and other major injuries.
In 2002, a jury in Bari’s and Cherney’s federal civil lawsuit found that their civil rights had been violated.
As part of the jury’s verdict, the judge ordered Frank Doyle and two other FBI agents and three Oakland police officers to pay a total of $4.4 million to Cherney and to Bari’s estate.[55] The award was a response to the defendants’ violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and for the defendants’ various unlawful acts, including unlawful search and seizure in violation of the plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights. At trial the FBI and the Oakland Police pointed fingers at each other.[49
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judi_Bari
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nSbhULjTVC0
Yes Sir, BAU FULL THROTTLE BABY…right smack in a brick wall.
Judi Bari was a true warrior for the planet.
Tragic loss.
I actually had a detailed conservation with Cherney on the bombing.
The State and its motives were brutal.
As has been posted here in the comments…BAU..whatever it takes…and I mean whatever it takes….soon the State will be turning on its law abiding citizens
Would that be the Deep State?
Some people think it might have been her ex-husband wot dun the bombing.
Others have speculated that Cherney may have been responsible for the bomb but that it went off ahead of time.
And then there were enemies both in the Earth First movement, in the logging industry, and among her own neighbors who hated her with a passion.
Lots of suspects.
Not that the FBI or the CIA is above such things as assassinating people with bombs, but there has never been any proof they bombed this pair, has there?
Boy, Tim, how do you ever fabricate your story, I wonder? Some folks have a very active imagination, ignoring the actual evidence.
Does not negate the outcome of the finding of the lawsuit against the FBI and the Police, does it, Sir?
Please read the link to her Wikipedia page…that will correct your other unwarranted comments, than you.
Bill, I wasn’t there and haven’t exhaustively examined all the evidence, and I haven’t heard the arguments the prosecution and the defense councils. And even if I had done all that, I would still probably be undecided. That’s why I stick to questions rather than pretending to give definitive answers.
If you think the State in some form or another bombed these two activists, that’s your prerogative, your opinion, your theory, your story, or your truth. But it isn’t an established fact. You don’t know what happened any more than I do.
The lawsuit you mention was unrelated to the charge of who planted the bomb. Before she died, Bari and Cherney filed suit against the FBI and OPD for violating their civil rights by pursuing an unsupported criminal case against them. In 2002, a jury found for Bari and Cherney, and ordered Frank Doyle, two other FBI agents, and three Oakland police officers to pay Bari’s estate and Cherney $4.4 million, after a trial mainly characterized by the OPD and FBI blaming each other for the investigation’s myriad screwups.
So we are still left with a real-life whodunnit, innit?
Tim, it is apparent that you don’t know…but you set to imply that you do know.
You ignore the pertinent.
I requested you read my link….if you had you would read
The rapid presence of FBI bomb investigators at the scene, virtually simultaneously with first responders from the Oakland Police Department, raised suspicion that the FBI knew about the bomb beforehand and might even have been responsible for the bomb.
In Bari’s words, it was as if the investigators were “waiting around the corner with their fingers in their ears.” It was later revealed that there had been a tip to law enforcement, suspected to be from the person responsible for the bomb, that “some heavies” were carrying a bomb south for sabotage in the Santa Cruz area.[3][23] The rapid response of the FBI to the bombing and their immediate focus on Bari as a suspect rather than a victim are consistent with surveillance of Bari after receiving a tip about a bomb.
FBI analysis of the explosive device determined it was a pipe bomb with nails wrapped to its surface to create shrapnel, and that it was equipped with a timer-armed motion trigger ensuring it would explode only when the car was driven. The bomb was also placed on the floorboard directly under the driver’s seat, not on the floorboard behind the seat as Agent Doyle had claimed. That evidence pointed to the bomb being an anti-personnel device placed with the intent of killing the driver of Bari’s car. Despite that evidence, the FBI investigation remained focused on the theory that the explosion was an accidental detonation of a device knowingly transported by Bari, with attempts to match roofing nails transported in Bari’s car to finishing nails used with the bomb. After seven weeks of continual news stories citing repeated police claims that all evidence pointed to Bari and Cherney as culprits, the Alameda County District Attorney announced that he would not file any formal charges against the pair due to insufficient evidence against them. Law enforcement agencies never followed through on the evidence that the bombing was an attempt on Bari’s life and the crime would go unsolved.[33]
Come now, FBI never followed through…. surprise, surprise…wonder way
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judi_Bari
Do I need to continue?
She was a true warrior for the planet?
You are fond of rhetorical exaggeration, Duncan.
But what do you mean by that ostensibly vapid statement?
Perhaps we should allow Ms. Bari to give you the answer herself.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl14jbn4bEw
Well, here Judy begins by saying she believes that all species are equal and that no species has the right to cause the extinction of another.
That’s hardly defending the earth, is it? The earth is indifferent to how many species inhabit it and whether they kill each other off or not, surely?
It’s also reciting a creed of credulous speciesism. Believing in equality between species, believing in the rights of species—it’s all very well, but it’s just airy-fairy intellectualism. Judi’s statement is indicative of a human mind attempting to impose its own opinion on the natural in order to achieve its own goals.
It’s also at the other extreme of the Old Testament-inspired view of humans as masters of creation, with the right to do as they will to any other species anytime and anywhere they choose.
And it is inherently anti-individualistic in that it implies that as long as a species is not endangered, it is perfectly OK to cause the extinction of its individual members.
Which brings me back to the fascinating question of how do we as warriors or in any other capacity defend the earth?
Well, Tim, before you start to judge her please listen to her full interview yourself.
Appears you have an agenda yourself and wish to assert it. Please go back and view and listen to her whole interview, thank you, Sir.
If you do so, that will validate Duncan’s comment.
P.S. I’m not going to debate you.
“Abolish Billionaires”…
I think the left/Ds have found what they have been looking for in the upcoming 2020 POTUS election…
emotional subjects/stories that will fire up voters in their direction…
there doesn’t even have to be truth or logic either, though in this case I tend to agree with the author that policies should change to minimize the amount of billionaires…
other 2020 subjects:
free health care for all…
free college for all students…
these are subjects where it is highly doubtful that any candidate could fulfill such promises…
but does it even matter?
the Ds want to win in 2020…
more voters are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the way things are…
they will vote for what is new…
which is why Trump won in 2016 and AOC won her election in 2018…
and her Green New Deal is highly unlikely to be even partially enacted…
it’s illogical and impractical, but most left leaning voters don’t know that…
(check out #greennewdisaster on Twitter for rightist commentary… quite entertaining)…
and as mentioned on Twitter:
almost all of the Ds who have declared that they are running in 2020 are publicly supporting the Green New Deal…
it’s the winning strategy, even though the GND is going nowhere…
Well, as Donald Tusk said to Cameron: ‘You don’t have to enact every manifesto promise’.
The prosperity narrative is certainly failing nearly everywhere, and people will grasp at straws.
Who needs Socialism, when there is rigged Capitalism….like Trump declared….”This Nation will never be socialist country”. He is one of those that reaped the rewards of this fact, why change it?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FKF_590azfw
P.S. Odd that those with distain for socialist policies readily accept Government Programs, such as, Social Security and Medicare, ect. They could easily determine how much they contributed to the program and terminate it when they recover their monies plus interest.
Never heard that being done. Heard from a retired mail carrier that delivered SS checks to an exclusive wealthy area, the woman would chuckle that this was there play money for that day….Suppose if one is fortunate and secure in life…it’s a beach.
‘a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud’
From a current candidate.
I bet you can guess who it is about.
Isn’t socialism when people pay taxes and those taxes are used for various purposes, like fire dept., police dept., library, post office and the military. Anyone in the military is a socialist worker. Ok, Trump and GOP, get rid of the military and reduce the amount of socialism.
When right wing politicians say they don’t like socialism, they are actually saying they don’t like communism. How the two became interchangeable is a question for the GOP that continues to conflate the two, without I might add the listless Dems ever contradicting those statements.
Communism is the idea that everyone (except the top elite of course) get a standard wage. I don’t see the Dems advocating a standard wage.
Like the old saying …Why live in Russia (Soviet Union) when you can live Netherlands or Belgium? They may pay a higher tax rate, but get a lot in return.
Food for thought….President FDR received, during the depression, letters of heartbreak from the elderly in destitute conditions, pleading for a way to support themselves.
Many, too old to work or not hirable (high unemployment) needed a safety net. That’s where Social Security came into being. Of course, FDR, being handicapped in a wheelchair, could put himself their shoes (just a joke).
Actually, he went a step further, setting up an universal health care one payer system for the United States. World War II interrupted it’s placement and after the war the administrative personal to set up the system in the United States were first sent to war torn Europe to establish it there first. Harry Truman had his hands full with other pressing matters and decided the Labor Unions should handle the matter with business.
Oh well, such is fate.
Well, the idea that “socialism is communism” goes back a long way. Back in the day, Lenin said so. GB Shaw said so. Sylvia Pankhurst said so. Ayn Rand said so. You can classify collectivist ideologies until you have 39 flavors, but they are all flavors of collectivism. he main difference is in the amount of coercion the apply to the people forced to abide by them. To a person who values their own liberty, all are equally abhorrent.
https://pics.awwmemes.com/what-ifi-toldyou-fascism-nazism-socialism-and-communism-are-all-38636403.png
I find it very interesting that beneath the radar, several diseases seem to be re-emerging at the same time: typhus in LA, measles in Washington state, ebola in Congo.
Apparently it is unlikely to become zoonotic (ie able to pass from animals to humans) but there’s a nasty outbreak of African swine fever in China, too:
“Almost 1 million pigs have been slaughtered over the past six months as the country battles African swine fever. And with no sign of the disease coming under control, more culls are set to come which could cripple the domestic pig farming industry.
“The Chinese government has set up epidemic zones across the country, restricted the movement of live pigs, and closed live pig markets in affected areas. Pfeiffer said that if not brought under control, the outbreak could ruin millions of small pig farms across the nation.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/01/china/china-african-swine-flu-in-year-of-the-pig-intl/index.html
When I read about the outbreak of African swine fever in China, it reminded me of the epidemics that seem to happen in collapse situations. Maybe the epidemics can happen in animals as well as humans, especially when the animals are kept in close quarters. Food supply has become more and more dependent on people eating meat rather than grain and vegetables. When a large number of pigs dies, it upsets the demand for soybeans in the US. This is part of what brought soybean prices down.
Measles, through ignorance, is quite interesting.
Maybe we are just too ignorant of a species?
Population overshoot seems to be putting stress on an ecologically digressing species.
Enjoy (this film is about a pandemic and the breakdown that can come with one)
After Armageddon
What does digressing mean in this context?
to deviate away from higher intelligence.
(In other words, we as a species are getting dumber)
Not that evolution would have any objection–
Well yes. I’m sure we’re at peak dumbness too. How could any part of a global system be immune from peaking when the entire system peaks?
I expect that there are other diseases as well that are at record highs.
The CDC reports that Sexually Transmitted Diseases are at a a record high in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0926-std-prevention.html
A University of Minnesota report warns about the rise in drug-resistant tuberculosis. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2017/03/report-warns-rise-drug-resistant-tuberculosis
Yep, under the “controlled depop” scenario, the goal is to unleash such genetically targeted diseases while upper caste stays immune, robotic JITs are maintained by way smaller working class. Not sure the needed biotech is that advanced already, doubtful to work exactly as intended.
It may not be as far fetched as people think. What is the old saying – once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, 3x is enemy contact.
From the final months of 2001 to mid-2005, numerous people employed in the elite field of microbiology – which is defined as the study of organisms that are too small to be seen with the naked eye, such as bacteria and viruses – died under circumstances that some within the media and government came to view as highly suspicious and deeply disturbing in nature. It would be impossible to list all of the deaths in a single article. However, a summary of a number of cases will let you see what was afoot.
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/08/mysterious-deaths-and-microbiology/
Good point, it’s apparent at least some of it has connections to mil-industrials, their biotech branches trying to weaponize it. Every major country has got such program running from US/UK, Russia, India, China, Korea, .. even to lesser powers; that has been essentially re-confirmed again by numerous freak spy accidents recently. But I guess it’s doubtful they have it ready to to unleash it on some precise genetic profiling, it would work like selecting specific genes among the target population (racial, social class, health-fitness), lets say poorer SAmericans, MEs, Africans* or whoever share some specific set of genes, so they could be “easily” deleted out of the global consumption equation, etc.
—
* actually these are the easiest group to target since they mostly did not commingled with other humanoids as people ventured and mixed up in northerly Euroasia, it’s very specific identifiable gene even or lower cost apparatus, Europeans and Asians would be immune to such weapon by default
In my opinion the increase in diseases is related to decreasing energy per capita. With less energy to invest to battle nature, holes are popping up where nature is creeping back in to our little utopia.
It seems like we need ever increasing energy per capita to fend off ever evolving diseases. Amazing all the unintended consequences we are coming up against as we mess with the natural order of things.
Yes, more crowding takes more energy per capita to fend of diseases.
In my opinon, the distrainment amnesty is one of the hotest topics in the current Slovak presidential elections campaign.
There are presidential candidates who are green (one of them, who has got the highest preferences in the polls presented himself that he owns and drives Tesla car (https://podkapotou.zoznam.sk/cl/1000611/1726059/VIDEOROZHOVOR-Robert-Mistrik–jazdi-na-Tesle-a-chce-byt-prezidentom), others have pro-life Christian or an activist background or even the current Commissioner for the Energy Union, Maroš Šefčovič, is also one of the top candidates.
But, in my opinon, given the record household debt levels
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/slovakia-households-debt-to-income.png?s=slovakiahdti&v=201811171026a1
https://tradingeconomics.com/slovakia/households-debt-to-income
the one of the candidates, who openly talks about the distrainment amnesty as the very first point of his agenda can achieve a “surpraisingly” good result or even win the current presidential elections, although the polls do not show very high preferences for him, as there is 1 milion people in Slovakia (about 1/5 of the population) which face the distranment. (The person with the record number of the distrainments has got 144 distrainments which are currently going on. https://banky.sk/exekuciam-celi-takmer-milion-ludi-rekorderom-je-clovek-so-144-exekuciami/)
Distrainment is a verb. It means
1. To seize and hold (property) to compel payment or reparation, as of debts.
2. To seize the property of (a person) in order to compel payment of debts; distress.
So all of this discussion is with respect to allowing people to keep their homes, even if they cannot make the monthly payments. Presumably it could apply to other debt as well, such as for automobiles or businesses.
In Slovakia, the distrainor e.g. seizes a part of the monthly wages or pension to pay the debt of the given person in installments or when the seized property of the given person, which is sold in an auction, does not provide enough funds for debt repayment.
Recently, the discussion about this type of debt jubilee in Slovakia was about the debts to telecommunication services operators or energy providers, or some penalties like one somebody was identified in a bus of the urban mass transportation without a valid ticket by an officer etc. I.e. not things like mortgages, but rather services and energy supply that is needed for everyday life of the people who otherwise have no property.
https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20836232/distrainment-amnesty-stays-in-plans.html
“Thousands of Slovaks, with a large share of pensioners, have suffered from unresolved distrainments for a long time. Even younger Slovaks are unable to find steady jobs with high enough salaries to cover their debts.
The government’s solution, anticipated by those affected for several months, is a one-time distrainment amnesty that aims to stop the proceedings where claims are unenforceable and debtors do not have property that can be withdrawn.”
“one-time ”
Could something so obviously unfair win the election?
Why not? The interest in the elections goes down and 1 milion people who need this solution can decide who will be the new president. They have a strong motivation to come into the polling stations. The topics of other candidates are not so serious, many people who were interviewed by a polling agency can simply say themselves: I do not have time today, I have somthing more interesting/important to do, the results will be ok also without my vote, the whole elections are only a show etc.
How do you think Hitler came to his power?
Wikipedia says turnout was 80% and Dolph Hilter got most votes.
Dear DJ, oh, no:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Germans-who-voted-for-Hitler
If there are enough parties, the winning party doesn’t need to get 50%.
Wow, it sounds like JHK has been reading way too many of Gail’s articles!
“The disappointment over it will be epic when we discover that the laws of physics override the bright ideas of politicians. America has been blowing green smoke up its own ass for years, promoting oxymorons such as “green skyscrapers” and “clean energy,” but the truth is we’re not going to run WalMart, Suburbia, DisneyWorld, and the interstate highway system on any combination of wind, solar, geothermal, recycled Fry-Max, and dark matter. We’re just running too much stuff at too great a scale for too many people.”
“There are two kinds of deadly narcissism at work in American culture these days: techno-narcissism — the belief that magical rescue remedies can save the status quo of comforts and conveniences — and organizational narcissism — the belief that any number of committees can lead a march of humanity into a future of rainbows and unicorns. Both of these ideas are artifacts of a fossil fuel turbo-charged economy that is coming to an end. Societies and economies are fundamentally emergent, non-linear, and self-organizing as they respond to the mandates of reality”
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/dreams-die-hard/
I haven’t corresponded with JHK recently, but I have corresponded with him quite a few times over the years. I have also met him quite several times in person, and he has interviewed me on a podcast. I am sure that he reads at least some of my articles.
Where is snowflake KMO to point out how ridiculous JHK’s article is…? 😐
“There are no plans yet for US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to meet soon in hope of finalising a trade deal, the former has said.
“On Thursday, asked by a reporter whether there would be a meeting before a March 1 deadline for the two countries to reach a trade deal, Trump said: “No.” …Kudlow told Fox Business that there was still a “sizable distance” separating the two sides.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/plans-trump-xi-meeting-trade-officials-190207175537280.html
“After the 2008 financial crisis, China launched a stimulus program of mind-boggling proportions. The stimulus was essentially built on debt from the non-financial sector, aka shadow banking.
“All this debt will have to be paid off, which is why a trade war is so threatening to China. Worse, debt is no longer having the desired effect on China. So, in the next downturn, slowdown, or whatever you call it, Beijing may not be able to borrow its way out of the hole.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4239225-debt-save-china-anymore
“When China used easy credit and infrastructure spending to avoid the global financial crisis, it reversed years of reforms to open its economy, economists say. That’s because that credit went to unproductive state-owned enterprises and starved the private sector.
“Now, China risks unemployment and social unrest if it doesn’t breakdown the state-owned enterprises, and getting trapped in a vicious economic cycle if it does.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-financial-crisis-economic-stimulus-closed-the-economy-2019-2?r=US&IR=T
“Rogoff said, “China really does seem to be slowing down more than the official number. It has probably slowed down a lot. In Europe that is what Germany is feeling, that is what a lot of Asia is feeling.
“So, looking more broadly globally that is much slower and the whole world affects interest rates, it is not just the United States.””
https://www.cnbctv18.com/videos/economy/china-slowdown-is-more-acute-than-believed-says-economist-kenneth-rogoff-2227011.htm
“Copper prices eased overnight as worries over global economic growth lingered, with aluminium also weakening after a major producer warned about softer demand…
“A steady drum beat of weak economic data in recent weeks, including in top metals consumer China, has stoked fears of a global recession.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/copper-retreats-on-global-economy-concerns/news-story/5c91fb88841dbccb357bd4d718266d8c
State-owned enterprises are a give-away program. According to the article:
“Private companies in China have gotten only 25% of the country’s formal bank lending, even though they account for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment, 90% of new job creation, and 70% of innovation.”
Growing the public sector, at the expense of the private sector, is a recipe of disaster.
Not necessarily in the QE and tax heavens debt recirculating, rent seeking world though.
That’s why serial printing offenders such as Japan and now China can get away with it, simply from certain threshold (mass/gravity) the owners of the system – lets identify them as tax heavens standing above the old guard US/EU – have to accommodate these new Asian gorillas within “their” system.
How is it going to proceed into the future is puzzling question.. one of the factions have to loose, very badly.. and or the table around lost game will be demolished incl. all the major players and proles bellow.
If you just for a moment transposition your mind into late 1990s, early 2000s, i.e. the pre hockey stick of China global phase, one has to wonder about these current US tariffs. It’s a huge reversal.
Not making drastic changes in anything–material or institutional–is starting to look like the wisest plan.
“Global economic growth is being hit more significantly than many anticipate and calls for an impending U.S. recession now look increasingly credible, which is bad news for risk assets, according to Europe’s top-ranked strategy team at Societe Generale SA.
“The Fed’s dovish pivot should cast doubts on how the last leg of this cycle will unfold, with investors likely to see profit warnings, defaults and increased volatility over the next 12 months, they wrote in a report Thursday.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/u-s-recession-increasingly-credible-to-top-ranked-strategy-team
“Fears of an earnings recession are cropping up in the market as company profits are expected decline for the first time in two years. While the possibility wouldn’t necessarily signal an economic recession to follow, it paints an important picture of flattening growth trends and a looming global slowdown.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/07/earnings-recession-fears-wall-street-three-experts-weigh-in-what-next.html
“This level of debt has occurred just twice in the past 120 years, first during the second world war and then again during the 2008 financial crisis…The second time it relied on its central bank’s balance sheet via quantitative easing. However, the US Federal Reserve is now trying to unwind QE…[and faces a battle to find buyers for its bonds].”
https://www.ft.com/content/78bc966c-2adf-11e9-a5ab-ff8ef2b976c7
“U.S. central bankers are done raising domestic interest rates amid signals from Asia and Europe that global economic growth is sputtering, according to RBC Wealth Management’s lead fixed-income strategist… when a recession arrives, the Federal Reserve may institute below-zero, or negative, interest rates like those seen in Europe after the 2008 financial crisis, said Bishop, who helps run RBC Wealth’s $300 billion of assets.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-funds-rbc/slowing-global-economic-growth-to-deter-us-rate-hikes-rbcs-bishop-idUKKCN1PW2N1
All kinds of ways of skating around saying, “Look folks, we seem to be at the edge of another major recession.”
“The economic outlook in the euro area is going from bad to worse.
“The 19-nation region has had a poor start to 2019: disappointingly weak indicators keep rolling in, the list of one-off growth inhibitors is getting longer, and a slew of institutions are downgrading their forecasts. Now, the bloc’s executive sees “substantial” risks — a change in tone that goes beyond the downbeat assessment of the European Central Bank.
“Gloomier prospects reflect the protracted impact from unrest in Italy and France, and changing regulations that held back car production — particularly in Germany. Also looming are uncertainty around global trade and a sharper-than-expected slowdown in China…
“Clouds on the horizon are getting darker, the commission said…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-07/europe-s-economic-outlook-seems-to-be-going-from-bad-to-worse
“Emergency plans to stimulate the economy if Britain leaves the European Union without a deal next month have been drawn up in secret by senior government figures.
“The move emerged as Mark Carney, the Bank of England Governor, warned of the growing risk of recession following a no-deal Brexit and cut Britain’s growth forecasts to their lowest for a decade.”
https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/doomsday-plan-devised-in-secret-to-boost-economy-in-case-of-a-brexit-no-deal/
“Italian industrial production fell for a fourth straight month, in a sign the recession that started late last year may persist.
“The populist coalition government has been swamped by a rash of negative economic data, including the European Commission’s slashing of this year’s growth forecast by a full percentage point.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/italy-s-industrial-output-drop-may-signal-longer-recession
““[Greek] Small and medium enterprises with excellent know-how and solid business propositions and around 30 million euros in revenues or less, are in great need of funding,” said Petros Doukas, chairman of advisory boutique Capital Partners SA and a former deputy finance minister.
“One of the biggest obstacles to providing that money is the ongoing legacy of the country’s debt crisis that forced it to seek multiple international bailouts. Borrowers are failing to meet payments on almost half the debt owed to Greece’s banks. In other words, there’s 88.6 billion euros ($101 billion) of bad loans weighing down the balance sheets of Greek lenders, equivalent to about half the country’s annual economic output.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/mountain-of-crisis-era-bad-debt-puts-brakes-on-greece-s-rebound
Greece is in energy deficit
but borrowing money is all they, and almost everyone else, knows to do about it.
it’s impossible to explain that money cannot substitute for energy
What on earth can they do to ‘stimulate’? Interest rates are already quite low enough, and going even lower wouldn’t encourage borrowing except possibly in the property market
and retail is in sharp decline: it would be like whispering sweet nothings in the ear of a corpse – not much chance of a response…..
They can create/borrow money for the energy that is going to be extracted. More and more money, as the costs are rising. They create jobs for distrubuting created/borrowed money to the consumers. I.e. money creation in two ways: producers and consumers.
The direct intervention of the central banks via injecting money right into the companies seemed to be working for a while in Europe.
I have read that during the Middle Ages practically every castle in Slovakia had its money-forging workshop, which is proved by many archaelogical excavations. Was that not caused by the lack of the money in the circulation?
Or perhaps money was a very regional item. Each area was quite separate. These tokens were to facilitate something equivalent to barter within an area. The real question with respect to money relates to debt, and how that is handled. I would expect that debt, to the extent that there was debt, came from the kings or nobles living in the castles. For example, a farmer might be extended credit for buying some seed that was needed. Repayment might come after the crop came in. The people forging the coins had control over this as well. If most land was inherited or owned in common, only enough coins were needed to facilitate what was essentially barter.
Everyone seems to have a basically unnecessary way to spend more energy/raise debt. There are lots of examples:
[1] Tear down existing homes to build more efficient ones.
[2] Build unneeded roads.
[3] Train young people for non-existent jobs, and require the young people to pay back the debt with their future earnings.
[4] Add solar panels.
I agree, all the talk of increasing efficiency by adding more debt, complexity and burning more energy. How is that increasing efficiency? How is that saving energy. It is ludicrous.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
I have the impression something’s up with the US national debt. The debt clock had been ticking up close to 22T, then suddenly dropped back down about 35B and is treading water there. I suppose if someone wants a wall, maybe they don’t want 22T breached until the wall bit is settled. Just a suspicion.
Debt hawks fall out of fashion
Former vice president Dick Cheney, in making the case for a second round of tax cuts under president George W. Bush, reportedly remarked ”deficits don’t matter.” After Republican president Donald Trump signed yet more tax cuts—passed by a Republican house and Senate—into law last year, the pretense of Republicans being the party of debt hawks has gone out the window. Deficits increased despite the strong economy.
The far left is also getting on board the-debts-don’t-matter train. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a newly elected Democrat from New York, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, have aligned themselves with Stephanie Kelton, an economist and former adviser to Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee, who adheres to a heterodox idea called Modern Monetary Theory, which argues running deficits is harmless, even healthy, when inflation is low.
https://qz.com/1517842/do-deficits-matter/
Maybe the 800,000 US federal workers who were laid off got paid. Perhaps some other bills got paid as well.
Yeah, but all those paychecks covering two pay periods suddenly coming due would amount to a lot. Wouldn’t that increase the debt?
You are right. The US is on a cash basis. They would take credit for whatever came in, but as long as they had not paid the workers, it would not count as outgo. So it would increase the debt after they paid the wages.
Now that I think about it, I have a different idea regarding what went wrong with the debt clock. Most systems similar to the debt clock operate on some algorithm that is only “sort of” right. Every once and a while, they need to be trued up. I wonder if that is what happened.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/images8/maduroisstarvingustodeath-s.jpg
Looks like another starving Venezuelan.
(or maybe someone from Mississippi)
http://dxczjjuegupb.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Venezuelan-oil-reserves-300×300.jpg
the US is producing about 11 million per day which equals about 3.9 billion per year…
so by that (dubious) data, the US will be dry in 10 years at the current rate (unlikely to continue much longer)…
elsewhere…
Venezuela will probably still have those 300 billion reserves 10 years from now…
and still have it 100 years from now…
and like, you know:
forever…
We shall see—
(you maybe trading antibiotics for spear heads with the tribe in the next valley in 10 years)
better than that… most likely I will have joined the “Grateful Dead”…
yes, with the severe global recession of 2019 and no recovery, and with the Great Global Depression in the 2020s, the US will never produce all of its “reserves”…
but by the same token, I think I’ll be right that V will still have its 300 billion reserves “forever”…
Lets hope—-
Keep it in the ground.
And out of the hands of the Greed Heads in production.
Those oil estimates are meaningless..No OPEC country allows independent audits..They are anything but “proven”..They just tell BP what they have and they list them as “proven”..
This is what different definitions does, when every country “does their own thing.”
Shes a capitalist speculator – look at the toilet rolls……
That text is clearly superimposed on her top for ironic effect, Duncan. And are you seriously trying to make the case that people are not starving in Venezuela? I can assure you that they are. I am friends with a Venezuelan family who were lucky enough to win the green card lottery. I oversaw the fundraising campaign that allowed them to start a new life in Florida last year.
In the months before they left Venezuela, I and several friends had tried to send food packages to them but not a single one arrived – all swiped at customs, no doubt. They were certainly suffering from malnutrition by the time they boarded their plane to Miami – very run down there were and the father had just had a miserable trip to the dentist with no antibiotics and no pain-relief. And these are smart, educated people. The father received a small amount of his salary in US dollars, which just about kept the wolf from the door. Most Venezuelans are in a worse predicament.
One of the first things they did on arrival was visit an American supermarket. They sent me footage of themselves walking around, marvelling at all the produce – it was very touching to see. It occurred to me that they had in effect experienced collapse in reverse!
A friend of mine in TX runs an oil services company…making special repairs using some proprietary technology. They recently completed an emergency repair in Venezuela. I presume they were paid in dollars and that there was some “up front”payment involved. You would have to be crazy to do otherwise.
“That text is clearly superimposed on her top for ironic effect, Duncan.”
lol!
(I suggest you get some other media sources)
That is my own view, based on the fact that text does not even follow the (ample) curvature of her body. It is obviously photo-shopped!
I have been wryly amused watching ideologues of every hue trying to make political capital out of Venezuela’s economic situation – first its apparent success and now its manifest failure – all convinced of their own righteousness. But I had thought that most of here on OFW had reached the understanding that our problems are not fundamentally political in nature and that this sort of point-scoring is therefore neither here nor there.
Wouldn’t you be having more fun on Reddit/socialism?
Obviously
lol!
http://www.medialens.org/images/resized/images/rsz_dont_trust_238_280.png
Have you noticed that when caught out, Duncan always either avoids the issue or else doubles down?
It takes half the fun out of gotcha-ing him.
Tim, he is a very naughty boy. A visit from the smack fairy is pending, I hope.
“That is my own view, based on the fact” I’m stealing that Harry!
I could use a visit from the smack fairy. 😉
Smack:
Heroin.
Also known as Dragon, Dope, Heron, Herone, Hero, Hera, H, Big H, White, China White, White Nurse, White Lady, White Horse, White Girl, White Boy, White Stuff, Boy, He, Black, Black Tar, Black Pearl, Black Stuff, Black Eagle, Brown, Brown Crystal, Brown Sugar, Brown Tape, Brown Rhine, Chiba, Chiva, Chieva, Mexican Brown, Mexican Mud, Mexican Horse, Junk, Tar, Snow, Snowball, Scag, Scat, Sack, Skunk, Number 3, Number 4, Number 8, Bombita, Brea, Blanco, Bonita, Caballo, Calbo, Carga, Carne, Chapopote, Chatarra, Chicle, Cocofan, Gato, Heroina, La Buena, La Chiva, Polvo, Tecata, Tigre, Tigre Blanco, Tigre del Norte, Vidrio and Zoquete.
Mark, the naughty step for you, I think!
Most of us are unfamiliar with all of these terms!
I agree, we are so SO spoiled here by supermarkets. It is insane how far we have to fall and most people just don’t even know it.
Maybe she has other plans like having a bunch of BM’s
https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/toilet-paper.htm
“The U.S. government, which actively helps to starve the people of Yemen into submission, is concerned about Venezuela where so far no one has died of starvation? The lady ain’t gonna believe that.”
Take a look:
Venezuela – U.S. Aid Gambit Fails – War Plans Lack Support
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/02/venezuela-us-aid-gambit-fails-war-plans-lack-support.html
That poor lady will soon be saved and her freedom restored.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claims terror threat as cause for U.S. action in Venezuela
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News’ Trish Regan that he believes Hezbollah has a presence in Venezuela
https://www.salon.com/2019/02/07/secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo-claims-hezbollah-terror-threat-as-cause-for-u-s-action-in-venezuela/
I don’t doubt for a minute that the US currently has nefarious intent and their sanctions and policies over the years have been detrimental to Venezuela.
Does that mean that we should overlook the economic mismanagement by the Venezuelan government?
When oil prices were high it failed to diversify Venezuela’s economy. It spent lavishly on social programmes (and there was and is plenty of corruption, too) and it did not put together a sovereign wealth fund like Norway. It failed also to properly reinvest in its oil industry. This meant that at least 95% of its economy was predicated on the very foolish assumption that oil prices would always exceed $100 p/b.
Was that the fault of the evil imperialists of the United States?
“Does that mean that we should overlook the economic mismanagement by the Venezuelan government?”
I wasn’t aware that Venezuela owed us anything. According to this list we should be attacking Norway before going into Venezuela.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt
I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure to visit these fine United States of America but if you have you’d have to wonder what $22 trillion in debt has bought us.
As for properly investing in their oil industry do you dare say like we have done in the U.S.?
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Oil-Companies-Face-240-Billion-Debt-Mountain.html
https://srsroccoreport.com/u-s-shale-oil-industry-catastrophic-failure-ahead
http://priceofoil.org/2018/11/05/us-shale-companies-facing-catastrophic-failure-over-ballooning-debt/
Dan-
I’m sure most of our comrades here have not spent time in South America– from the responses it is obvious.
You’ve lost me, Dan. I’m just expressing my frustration at the ideological point-scoring over Venezuela – rabid socialists who cannot cope with an objective analysis of the Venezuelan economy because they hear pro-US sentiment or anti-socialist sentiment in it; rabid right-wingers who imagine that socialism is responsible for all Venezuela’s ills…
It is as tiresome as it is predictable and OFW is usually quite free of it. Unfortunately we’ll have more and worse moving forwards, so I suppose I had better just gird my loins.
I wouldn’t want to be in Venezuela. Seeing the picture of starving people eating a cow alive was enough for me; that was a year ago already. I am sure it is even worse now. Those poor people.
Look at the strange wording on the bag on her left hand! I wonder if this is the website that sponsored this “fake news”. Something about HUMOR VENEZOLAND TB.
You really choose choice photos, Duncan.
Boy, that photo sure got a response!
Those starving people in the background look horrible!
It has to be faked– or mass media is delusional.
What is the conclusion?
My point is that it is not the US’s role to decide or correct everyone’s ill’s or choices.
If Pompeo or Trump for that matter came out and said “look boys and girls we are in an energy crunch and it is serious – survival serious. We are going into Venezuela and taking their oil like our lives depend on it and screw the Venezuelans” I’d be down with that.
I find the Venezuela situation as something of a dead canary in a coal mine. The politics are just that and they’ll be used to get us in there. The story as it was / is in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Syria, etc. is OIL.
In fact a case could be neatly laid out that nearly all politics, debt, wealth disparities, international conflicts, etc. is about oil / energy or declining abundance of it over the past 40-50 years.
Nearly every ill and having to choose the lesser evil in every choice until we go pure evil is about oil / energy and its decline.
I find it hard to discuss the topic without some politics creeping in simply due to how intertwined they are.
Certainly didn’t mean to offend you. War is a serious subject and that is what our leaders are discussing. Our leaders are politicians so there we are back to the politics and semantics. I’d love to hear what people here at OFW think about it, because they are likely the most informed of what really is going on given the subject.
true Dan the choices that have been made have always been about energy and i do agree that Trump is very interested in Venezuala’s ‘fake’ oil reserves.Why is that because the ‘elders’ control Trump but unfortunately the ‘elders’ are not aware of the finite nature of the financial system that is controlled by the diminishing returns of the fossil fuels age or maybe they are aware and this is all part of a grand plan to set up their endgame utopian world with the remaining fossill fuels maybe the ‘elders’ are the good guys.
“If Pompeo or Trump for that matter came out and said “look boys and girls we are in an energy crunch and it is serious – survival serious. We are going into Venezuela and taking their oil like our lives depend on it and screw the Venezuelans” I’d be down with that.”
My opinion is our problems are ours and theirs are theirs and it isn’t ok under any circumstances to take what’s theirs. But man has a history of pillaging when needed so I’m sure invasion will be considered.
I’m sure that now that socialism has be proven an abject failure and full basketcasization has been reached, some sort of humanitarian intervention in the Venezuelan situation could be worked out to almost everybody’s mutual benefit, for a modest consideration of course. But invasion? Perish the thought. That would be quite literally overkill, like using a sledgehammer to crack open a soft boiled egg.
I think it says HUMOR VENEZOELANO – if so the grammar is correct
HUMOR VENEZOLANO translates “Venezuelan Humor.” Someone has put this photo together using photo shop to be funny.
We can pack it in. AOC will have us 100% renewable and carbon neutral in 10 years.
I would not hold your breath.
Someone put her up to that NO WAY a bar made can come up with that nonsense.
the details:
Overview
We will begin work immediately on Green New Deal bills to put the
nuts and bolts on the plan described in this resolution (important to
say so someone else can’t claim this mantle).
This is a massive transformation of our society with clear goals and
a timeline.
o The Green New Deal resolution a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect
of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve
net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic prosperity for
all. It will:
Move America to 100% clean and renewable energy
Create millions of family supporting-wage, union jobs
Ensure a just transition for all communities and workers to
ensure economic security for people and communities that have
historically relied on fossil fuel industries
Ensure justice and equity for frontline communities by
prioritizing investment, training, climate and community
resiliency, economic and environmental benefits in these
communities.
Build on FDR’s second bill of rights by guaranteeing:
A job with a family-sustaining wage, family and medical
leave, vacations, and retirement security
High-quality education, including higher education and
trade schools
Clean air and water and access to nature
Healthy food
High-quality health care
Safe, affordable, adequate housing
Economic environment free of monopolies
Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work
wow!
this is such a naive and juvenile presentation… something that high school kids might come up with for a social studies project…
it’s quite amazing that AOC and her staff (how big is that budget?) have been spending many hours per week putting this together…
well done!
such a fruitful use of taxpayer dollars! (NOT!)
I particularly like economic security for those unwilling to work That’s me. Just send the checks I will take a nap.
Lots of areas have tried this. Cuba. Soviet Union. Perhaps Greece. Venezuela. If a country (namely Venezuela) borrows to set up this arrangement, it gets the country into deep trouble quickly.
The US Social Security system was started in the 1930s, as a way of helping to solve the problem of too many would be workers, relative to jobs available. Offering to pay people age 65 or over a monthly stipend would get them to leave farming or working as merchants, leaving more jobs for younger people. When the program was started, only a tiny share of the population was over 65, so the impact as small. Now, with all of the demographic changes, it gets to be a huge program of pensions for people who are disabled or elderly. There is a variable start date, from age 62 to age 70, with the amount of monthly stipend depending how long a person has worked and how much income the person made and thus “contributed” (paid taxes) to the system. The program started out affecting only a tiny percentage of the population. Today it is not uncommon to find two generations on Social Security (for example, “young” people in the 65 to 70 range, and their parents in the 85 to 95 year range).
Social Security is a “free ride” for a whole lot of people. Too often, when I visit with a group of folks on Social Security, the talk is about the television shows that they have been following. The other major topic is doctors visits and surgeries, for all kinds of things. Back problems seem to be a popular reason for surgery.
Knowledge brings fear.
— Mars University motto
Not sure these are relevant examples as Greece was back-warded part of the big world of fraudulent debt, while USSR was not. It was rather attempted semi autarky by an underdog (moreover under perennial western attack of one form or another) vs the world of infinite debt.
Yes, we can say the “typical’ Soviet citizen and pensioner draw fewer amount of consumer trinkets while sucking more resources on the public sphere like public transport, culture, education, healthcare, vacations, all which needed large state investment and upkeep.
Many/most people hate Gorbi as the traitor who pulled the self destruction lever by ~mid 1980s for nothing (applause in the W), not sure how it would evolve under different gov faction there aiming more at the direction of the Chinese model.
Finland’s unconditional basic income experiment left beneficiaries happier but did not incline them to find work.
How can anyone have imagined that it would? 😀
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-europe-47169549
People don’t fail to find work because they are stressed financially, this stress will obviously encourage people to find work.
The problem is rather a lack of jobs where you can sit at a desk and drink coffee all day long.
Face it, regardless of party, from here on out we are in a competition to spend the most fake money, I mean debt, to stimulate the economy.
The real kicker is that we are doing this now, with our world wide empire, and medical subsidies. The quantity just goes exponential from here, regardless of party. It is just a ,after of how useless the spending is.
And a partridge in a pear tree.
She is all spin SAIKAT CHAKRABARTI is the mockingbird behind the scene
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-money-flooding-emerging-markets-fed-change-iif-174508869–business.html
The IIF, which closely tracks financing flows, said its high frequency indicators were picking up a “sharp spike” of inflows following last week’s confirmation of a change of tack from the U.S. central bank.
“Recent events look likely to restart the ‘Wall of Money’ to Emerging Markets,” IIF economists said in a report.
They said the money was likely to flow in broadly, although it could have the biggest impact in places like Brazil and Russia where investors had been giving a wider berth.
“The hunt for yield will put positioning front and centre,” the economists said, adding that in contrast to Brazil and Russia, South African assets had been heavily bought up already.
Emerging markets have overcome a brutal 2018 with a blistering start to this year.
The premium investors demand to hold EM government debt rather than ultra-safe U.S. Treasuries has dropped around 100 basis points, while the MSCI EM stocks index has charged up more than 10 percent.
The MSCI index this week scored a rare ‘golden cross’ where the 50-day moving average overtakes the 100-day moving average, something seen by keen chart watchers as a positive signal for things to come.
“Up until recently, it had been the case that China was driving much of the pick-up (in EM flows), but the picture has broadened out in recent weeks, especially where equities are concerned,” the IIF said
“(Extrapolating) the year-to-date flows to a quarterly frequency shows that Q1 is tracking around $48 billion, a number that is already equal to strong EM inflows in 2017 and likely to go higher,” it added.
We will have to see how long it lasts.
All that recent investment in emerging markets smacks of more financial desperation trying to ignite economic growth. Hits me as analogous to a small town in which the drug dealers have run out of customers and then start handing out the stuff real cheap to try and get more hooked customers. In this case it’s more like this; “Here’s some cheap loan money – try your best to get some business going here and expand what is working – let’s get this emerging market economy moving faster.”
It’s all a red queen bit now; running ever faster but going nowhere.
A lot of the investment in emerging markets is in energy and other commodities. If these prices are already too low, bringing more to the market is not helpful.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, giving debt to the emerging markets is a way of skimming some (a lot) of future profits of an enterprise off the top for the rich world. For example, if a toll road is created, the rich world will set up an arrangement where the debt will be be repaid to the rich world, with interest, based on the expected tolls of the toll road. It is sort of a heads I win; tails you lose sort of situation. If the toll road works out as expected, it is the rich world that benefits. If it doesn’t, then the country normally still has the responsibility to repay the rich world. Perhaps this is done in the way Greece was “helped.” Just substitute new debt to cover the old debt plus interest. That way the rich world gets even more out of the deal.
Maybe there must be some rich people, so that the poor can believe that the rich exist and that they can have a chance to be rich, too. Maybe the existence of the rich is one of the key reasons why the communism, with its asceticism, is not very motivating for the people in general.
Good point! Having rich people is part of our “guiding story.” As long as the economy is growing, the story can be, “You, too, can be rich someday.”
https://news.url.google.com/url?sa=j&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com%2Fstory%2F2019%2F02%2F07%2Ftrump-china-meeting-march-deadline-1156909&uct=1526525743&usg=e2jGni1DIePqsNs6gQ8AWIR7yTc.
“President Donald Trump said Thursday he is UNLIKELY to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a March 1 deadline for the two countries to reach a trade deal.”
That likely means the US tariffs against China will jump from 10% to 25% and broaden the scope of items with tariffs. This could have a huge effect on both economies.
Don The Con is going to put the US in the dumpster.
Possibly a good thing.
The survivors, if any, will have more resources to work with.
It could happen. Thinks like this have happened before, when there were not enough resources to go around. Instead of high prices, we get tariffs.
Yes, and tariffs have historically often led to war.
Really? I don’t think that is true. Do you have any statistics on that or is it just something that NPCs have recently been programmed to say?
IEA Chief warns of world oil shortages by 2020 as discoveries fall to record lows
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iea-says-global-oil-discoveries-at-record-low-in-2016-1493244000
Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Warns of World Oil Shortages Ahead
https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-minister-sees-end-of-oil-price-slump-1476870790
There will be an oil shortage in the 2020’s, Goldman Sachs says
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/09/goldman-sachs-there-will-be-an-oil-shortage-in-the-2020s.html
The oil shortages may be marked by World Wars or depression. I wouldn’t count on high prices, though.
You have a point, Gail. After all would people rather go to war or live in a depression? That may end up being the only two choices on the way to finally admitting the oil age is kaput. As they say on 4th and long, behind late in an NFL game, “Might as well die with your boots on.”
Sorry, meant to say housing construction slump
Australian housing slump worst since 2012
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-07/construction-decline-accelerates-amid-falling-prices-and-job-lo/10788782?section=business
My condolences to folks who live in Australia.
Here is one of the proposals included in Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s Green Energy Deal:
“Rebuild every single building in the U.S. and upgrade it or replace it for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.”” Can you imagine the cost of that? Imagine how much finite fossil fuel energy that will consume. Imagine the amount of waste that will be dumped in to landfills to achieve that goal. Millions of A/C and heat units, refrigerators, stoves, appliances, lights, roofing materials, insulation, siding, doors and windows will be scrapped. The resource drain to do this would be tremendous. And this is “green”. How is throwing all that embedded energy in the trash “green”? How efficient is it to throw away perfectly good, infrastructure?
in our finite world, conservatives are green, pie-in-the-sky liberals are the profigate world destroyers.
The way I see it from a political perspective..Is that the right doesn’t believe in a finite world…And the left does believe in a finite world..But thinks we can transition through technology etc..
I can say though every since I found this blog and started criticizing renewable’s..I have upset some of my liberal friends..I even belong to a local science club that I pay a membership for..And I said something on FB last year that renewable’s were a false hope..And the leader of that science club went bonkers on me on FB…And I showed her numerous scholarly references..Then she went and blocked me..So now I can’t go to any of their science meetings because I don’t want to be nervous around her..
I’ll go with you and we can stare her down together.
If our problem is lack of demand, I suppose that destroying everything and adding a whole lot of debt to pay for the replacements is as good a strategy as any for keeping the debt bubble growing. That is what is in danger of collapsing. With a high enough debt bubble, we can get more fossil fuels out because commodity prices will be higher. So, in theory, this action might kick the problem down the road for a short time.
Sorta true–
I would say conservatives brag about being world destroyers.
But Dims, being capitalist, are true destroyers also.
The repugs sort of have an advantage, as they can use both hands.
The Dims often have to cover their noses with one hand.
The Green party in the UK also suggested something like that: only build to last for 20 yrs maximum, so that they could be torn down and replaced by even Greener buildings, the product of ‘new technologies’. And these people think they are eco-friendly……
It is ludicrous!!!!! Eco this, eco-that. Poppycock. It is all consumption of finite resources.
xabier
On BBC Inside Science prog today (Thursday 4 30) there was an item on tracing genetic lines on the Iberian Peninsula—thought you might be interested
Thanks Norman: but it’s quite easy for me, I just have to consult the records at the local asylum – all that inbreeding. I’m afraid……
on radio today there was a pice about a new brick
it has electrodes in it to take current from temperature differentials
seems several sq yards will power an iphone
i must be missing a trick somewhere
I recently read about a rather less sophisticated sort of brick. Not sure I’d want to live in a house made of these:
https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2019/01/28/blocks-of-dried-human-faeces-could-be-used-as-building-materials_c1885499
a whole new meaning to being deep in it
at least if it had a fan—you wouldnt notice anything come shtf time
The production of such bricks must be very energy intensive. And I am doubtfull about their insulation properties in comparison to modern construction materials.
It is based on the belief that we can somewhat go back, that we can return to old good days and ways.
No we can not.
But, what makes the temperature differential? A gas furnace? LOL!
Ah, the ‘smart house’…… 🙂
Curiously, I read the other day that the super-rich are moving away from ‘smart’ homes run by apps, preferring to indulge in the olde worlde joys of actually pulling curtains across, turning bath taps by hand , etc.
I visited a cousin a while back, in her ultra-fancy expensive home. I almost needed a training course to figure out how to get the shades on the windows up and down. The house was so big that I couldn’t call to her, if I wanted to find out where she was. I had to call her on the phone. Her husband’s home office was in a separate building.
I couldn’t see that all of this “stuff” made anyone any happier. I had visited her earlier a few years back, in a different house, when they had children at home. There, they needed an intercom to call the children to a meal. One of her big problems now seemed to be lack of exercise. All of these labor saving devices just seemed to make the situation worse.
I think she also means that disposal also includes the inhabitants.
she’s obviously not a finite worldster
For Ocasio to even suggest a complete transition to zero carbon emissions for the entire country in 10 years is so absurdly out of touch it’s comical. I can’t believe she was allowed to put that junk into a proposal. She just eliminated any credibility she had. Really makes Dems look bad, which is not a good idea now that they finally got back the House. This is a non-starter and the politically bad repercussions from it have only just begun.
i sometimes get the impression that you can only become a politician by being permanently out of touch
What politician today has any credibility when it comes to making promises of future prosperity? And who among them can even be blamed for not having it, any more than the average human. Whether EVs or humvees, it ain’t happening!
It’s comical, for sure.
But our entire political process is comical in a delusional way–
so just a minor part of the delusion.
Sooner or later someone would have to advice AOC she got an excellent great plan there with one small proviso, that ~3-4x families have to move into one single unit/upgraded house and share it. Otherwise it’s unreal wastage of material, money and nature at this point of our trajectory.. And even at that she would have to double cross mil industrials cutting their budget ~75% for two decades to pay for it, lolz..
Good luck with that, you mo-r-on.. I guess I just hate these fakey candidates.
Russia or the Bolsheviks tried that. It did not end well for most.
If it got crowded, they could always use the second home down on the Crimea.
– I doubt her measure will pass any time soon.
– Gail thinks it’s not all that bad, given that it creates massive debt to keep “commodity prices” (CPs) high. Although she’s explained it numerous times, I’m forgetting how high CPs create demand.)
– An alternate way to increase debt AND demand might be the Cortez plan Lite: Put millions to work on repainting and weather stripping what is there. Throw away nothing, massive boon for chain of paint production, brushes, dropcloths, etc. (A lot of coastal buildings that don’t now would withstand hurricanes if supplied with hurricane straps.)
– Cortez Lite could accommodate lower skilled workers, artists for murals, etc. Old appliances would still waste energy, but that might not be the essential problem, or be one that is impossible to work around or mitigate. Repair and maintenance ought to be demand raisers too.
It is the debt that creates the demand. The huge amount of debt allows all kinds of new buildings to be built in the place of old building. It allows workers to be hired to carry out these plans. The wages of the workers is part of what raises demand. The new/refurbished buildings need a lot of resources. The demand from the building projects, plus the demand from the workers on the projects who can now afford cars and homes, raises the prices of commodities, including oil, coal, natural gas etc.. With these higher prices, extraction of these resources becomes (sort of) profitable, at least temporarily.
Governments may need to print money to go along with this, to further allow citizens to afford the higher cost goods made with the higher cost resources.
Not arguing. Just an observation. Some people see building houses and driving cars as the single most polluting or planet-destroying activities ever devised by humans. And they might be inclined to seek very different paths–like hiring millions to fill potholes (or whatever)–as better alternatives for raising debt. Anything but building homes and buying cars. 😉
“Governments may need to print money to go along with this, to further allow citizens to afford the higher cost goods made with the higher cost resources.”
Gail, you got it wrong. It should be…
“Governments may need to print money to go along with this, to further allow citizens to temporarily afford the higher cost goods made with the higher cost resources.”
Fixed it for you.
Thanks for the correction!
There was a huge programme of eco-upgrades in the UK, principally wall insulation: it just attracted ‘cowboy’ builders (sorry cowboys, as you actually know your job) and was a disaster, ruining properties, particularly in the public sector. Still, for a time any old idiot could get a job doing it – so, yes, a ‘stimulus’!
I understand that in the US, there is (or perhaps was) some sort of program under which homeowners could get a loan, without actually having to qualify for it, for a new furnace, if it was more efficient than the old one. I think it also applied to insulation upgrades, and perhaps other things.
I remember reading that sellers of furnaces figured out early on that if a family could not afford a new furnace, and could not qualify under most lending schemes for a loan for a new furnace, this was a way these people could easily get loans that they really couldn’t afford. Any new furnace was, almost by definition, more efficient than one installed 20 years ago, so virtually any new furnace qualified. With this scheme, people could “afford” a new air conditioner as well.
Cowboys? Cowgirls? Cowchildren? Cowyoungpersons?
What is the preferred PC term these days?
Greg my wife and I had a similar discussion on this. AOC has some good ideas(see Jim Kunstlers latest blog post). AOC is an energy an economic illiterate and hasn’t the slightest understanding of the role of fossil energy to the economy. She things all energy is fungible. She also things electricity is an energy “source.”100% “renewables” in 11 years is of course impossible. Wind and solar are not renewables anyway. Ask if she knows what a dissipative structure is, what the second law of thermodynamics states, what entropy is etc etc etc. There is no reason to insulate most residential structures in the country as most of the homes are suburban homes which will be abandoned when transportation access to them ceases. There is a reason to build all new structures to high insulation standards in communities that might have a future such as towns along navigable waterways or ports and that is now mandated in parts of the world and in many communities like my own in Jackson WY. It is far cheaper to build insulated structures within the McMansions by subdividing up existing areas and insulating those stud walls to make in essence a smaller insulated space contained within the same building envelope. In the old days the big farmhouses would close off unused parts of the house. There is no need to get our nappies in a knot fussing over silly suggestions that have zero chance of being enacted. She doesn’t understand that our complex economy is largely self organized, and imposing order from the outside is impossible and the consequences unpredictable. She has a good heart and she is worrying about the looming debacle of environmental planetary destruction brought on largely by human activity. We all do Alexandria! She thinks that we need to get to renewable energy for the entire society(world?) in a decade. She is wishin’ and hopin”for a Utopia which cannot happen for any number of reasons that posters here understand without me having to enumerate them by preaching to the choir. She is right that as a society we need to get to a decarbonized economy and I have no doubt that we will but that process will involve a collapse and extinction of the current complex fossil fuel- based globalized civilization we currently inhabit. Progress like thermodynamics moves in only one direction and this civilization cannot maintain its current structure by a change in energy inputs as she seems to believe. Collapse is not only inevitable but necessary because only then can a new structure more in line with what she thinks we need spring up. My wife thinks I need to send AOC some books like Joe Tainters “The collapse of complex Societies” and others. I think she needs to just follow this blog of Gail’s to help clarify her thinking. Politics no matter how well intentioned simply does not have the tools to deal with the terminal illness this society faces.
Politicians know that citizens want to be told that good times are ahead, no matter how unrealistic that story is. They are good a coming up with suitable (but, in some sense ridiculous) stories to tell people, because citizens are so completely unknowledgeable about what the real problems are.
The accepted models of economics that are based on curve fitting make no sense, because they miss turning points. They convince people that good times can last forever. She is simply following an established tradition.
“A diplomatic row between France and Italy has deepened, with France complaining of “unfounded attacks and outlandish claims” by Italian leaders.
France recalled its ambassador to Italy for talks on Thursday, saying the situation was “unprecedented” since the end of World War Two.
“It comes after Italian Deputy PM Luigi Di Maio met French “yellow-vest” protesters near Paris on Tuesday. France warned him not to interfere in the country’s politics.
“Relations between the two countries have been tense since Italy’s populist Five Star Movement and right-wing League party formed a coalition government in June 2018.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47161500
“The UK and the European Union remain locked in a Brexit stalemate after Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker refused to budge during crunch talks in Brussels.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/02/07/brexit-latest-news-theresa-may-set-crunch-talks-eu-leaders-brussels/
“Germany will not become dependent on Russia for gas due to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday, stressing that it was crucial to ensure Ukraine remained a transit country for gas.
““Do we become dependent on Russia due to this second gas pipeline? I say ‘no’, if we diversify at the same time,” Merkel told a news conference in Bratislava, where she met the leaders of the Visegrad group – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
“Diplomatic sources have said Germany is pressuring other European capitals to block an EU proposal to regulate Nord Stream 2 ahead of a key meeting on Friday but may fail to convince France, threatening the project’s construction.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-slovakia-visegrad-merkel/merkel-germany-wont-become-dependent-on-russia-for-gas-due-to-nord-stream-idUKKCN1PW1JD
Where does this gas from the Ukrainian pipeline come from?
It doesn’t originate or transit Russia, by any chance?
One wonders who is the greatest alcoholic by now, Juncker or May……..
The endless negotiations would drive anyone to drink. Political discourse is proving ever less effective at mitigating the social fractures wrought by declining prosperity. It is frustrating for all concerned.
May has a very heavy type of diabetes. I doubt that she drinks much. But this sickness and the medicine you take along, can make people act funny and strange. But maybe she is just naturally so.
Relations among countries go downhill all over.
I’ve said all along
the EU was born out of a common prosperity
now that prosperity is failing, the EU nations will revert to their old ways
Exactly, NP, and as the common prosperity continues to wane worldwide, we will go from globalism to localism until there are small groups of people huddling together to try and find ways to survive. “Ok, we’ve heard all the speeches – we know the oil age is over. We also know how nice it was for some, so let’s get past all that and find ways to grow crops, locate some chickens and use these abandoned homes for shelter. We need security people for all the hand tools and remaining freeze dried food. Anyone still got a barbecue that still has propane?”
Right. New international organizations are a way to use surplus energy. At least as long as prosperity lasts.
The world is much more interconnected than before – the range of products we use every day prevents us from isolation: the specific environments, we live in, can not sustain our populations, we need exchange much more than before. That is why Brexit is failing!!!
The EU was born out of necessity after the WWII: the states existing alone could and can not survive.
There may be a termporary desintegration (like I know from my experience of the Czechoslovakia breakup), but it can not last.
There was an article in Slovak which stated that the basis for Brexit was migration control, not economy (https://www.postoj.sk/40076/podstatou-brexitu-bola-kontrola-migracie-nie-ekonomika). I do not want to discuss the contents of the given article, but the observation that the main problem was the migration control is something I can agree with.
This dilemma of the ageing societies seeing their decline is something that is hard to solve, especially in case of Britain, which lost a lot of energy per capita due to the fall of the domestic oil production, as the decline in energy per capita transforms into the decline of the population.
My mother has reached aged 96, and having her health issues….not unexpected.
She still managed to go out to the park with her lapdog, Cricket, and Doctors appointments.
On remark that she repeats…”In my DAY”. (born 1922).
Remembers the “Rag Man”, with horse and buggy crying out…”Rags for sale!”, the ice man for my grandfather’s pantry, the coal truck that unloaded a pile in the basement for the furance, the milkman delivering glass bottles in the wee morning hours…and very few automobiles on the road.
They built apartments near where she lived….The Garden Apartments….that were there before the buildings..beautiful food gardens walking distance.
Never mind trollies on the main boulevard…all in NE New Jersey.
Needless to say, she is stupefied by all the congestion on the roads….all new cars, not old…
And the internet…hard to grasp.likes the instant answers to her many questions.
Needless to say, she’s looking forward to the hereafter when it comes
Stumbled across this, you might enjoy it
Yes, Jerry Mander , have a copy of his book “Arguments against Television”,
Thank you, very thought provoking talk….we may be seeing the whole picture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bImdyQn43s8
Makesa some things more clear.
that mustve been a very poor neighbourhood
where i lived the man on the cart was buying rags
This was the Depression era USA circa 1929
I’m only sixty and I remember the rag and bone man with his horse and cart, and the initiate tinkers who used to sharpen kitchen knives for a tanner. They were a regular feature of London life well into the 1960s.
https://youtu.be/fRCzvMNIZqg
Interesting post, UB. My father was born in 1927 and he use to say the only tech they had when he was a kid was a radio and a phone. No car yet although they were available. He said there were 2 billion in the world in the year he was born. Now there’s 5.5 more.
I’m not much better…when I was born there were 3 billion . We had in addition to a phone, AM radio, a black and white television set that received three channels, ABC, MBC and CBS and a couple of UFH stations. This being in the early 1960s, there were lots of cars on the road…in my mind the Chevy Impala, Ford Mustang, stand out in my mind with gas selling for 24.9 cents a gallon…and rising to a whopping 29.9 cents.
No air conditioning for us, though some other folks had it with a color TV!
I was a paper boy for “The Record”. and the whole week home delivery was .75 cents, and they may have given me a tip., I felt rich!
Boy, this makes me feel really old…🙄
AAA: Cold weather can cut electric car range over 40 percent
https://www.apnews.com/04029bd1e0a94cd59ff9540a398c12d1
Nope, <25% tested.. at least for reliable brands.
What if you turn on the heater?
Dear Gail and other Finiters,
I understand your reservations in relation to eroie calculations. However, the topic is interesting and needs to be explained. I hope that you in one of your following posts will give your explanation as to a valid estimate of energy balance Energy In/Energy Out. I will try to give my thoughts on this subject in the following, but I especially hope that you will explain what is up and down in the matter.
Water:
1)
Each day I fill a bucket of water in the nearby spring. Energy In = human labour, Energy Out = zero, absolutely nothing. In this case you can hardly talk about energy balance apart from the use of human energy.
2)
I drill 10 meter down to a water source. The drilling costs 1000 dollars. It turns out that the well is a wellspring so I don’t need a pump. The well will be in use for 100 years without further costs. Energy In – 1000 dollars or 20.000 kwh (industrial price 5 cents per kwh) or 200 kwh per year. Energy Out = zero, absolutely nothing. Maybe you can talk about an energy balance of less than 1.
Coal:
All costs of the coal plant in its lifetime of 50 years is 10,000 dollars per day. Fixed production price (sales price minus taxes and profit) per kwh is 5 cent through the life time of the coal plant. For the daily production price of 10,000 dollars you can buy 200,000 kwh. The coal plant produces every day 10 million kwh. Energy In = 200,000 kwh Energy Out = 10,000.000 kwh. Energy balance 50.
Oil:
It costs 100,000 dollars (i.e. 2,000.000 kwh) per day to operate, maintain, amortize the oil well in its 10-year lifetime. The oil of the well has a production price (sales price minus taxes and profit) of 4,000.000 dollars (i.e. 80,000.000 kwh) per day in its entire lifetime. Energy balance 40.
However, coal has only one single purpose: to produce kwh which is its end product. But the oil has several end products that require further production steps (energy consumption) to achieve: gasoline, lubricants, diesel and 6000 more items. My question: is it correct (logical) to use the production price (sales price minus taxes and profit) of the oil at the well head, or do you have to use the end price (i.e. the price which the end consumer pays for all those 6000 different end products) in order to find the energy balance of crude oil?
In my opinion you must base the energy balance on the sheer production price. The sales price includes for instance profit for the investors and taxes.
Coal has only one production aim – to turn heat into kwh through a coal fired power plant.
Crude oil has several production aims – for instance refinery and integration into 6000 different products – these products must also be transported.
With each taxation or profit step the energy is ploughed back into the community where it is consumed spending (using) money (slow dissipation).
With each conversion step energy is turned into heat or movement (sudden dissipation) and only part of it is left as wages to power plant workers and bus- or truck-drivers.
The connectedness of energy and money is decisive in my thinking.
how do you commmodify water? ever try to live without it?
there’s a great Twilght Zone episode with a guy giviing gold bricks for a sip of water.
I thought coal had multi uses too
dyes, medicines etc in the 1800s—not well up on that tho
The bucket you put water in definitely has an energy cost associated with it. In fact, we need a fairly high level of civilization to get today’s buckets. How would a hunter-gatherer have gathered water from a spring and carried it elsewhere? Perhaps in a hollowed out gourd, for a short time, and a short distance. But it would mostly be of use to people who transported themselves to the spring.
How do you drill down 10 meters to a water source? How would a hunter-gatherer drill down 10 meters to a water source? Why don’t you just walk to the outlet of the well spring instead? I would guess that the amount of water gathered from free flowing springs is negligible, as a percentage of the world water supply. Given the number of people in the world today, the water will need to be tested for purity. It may also need to be treated. If it is to go anywhere else, you will need to have a way of transporting the water, pumping it uphill if necessary. This is one reason that EROI “at the wellhead” gives an absurdly low-biased estimate of the energy cost.
Coal is often said to have an energy balance of 50:1 “at the wellhead.” It is a cheap to extract fuel, if you don’t have to transport it anywhere, and you don’t have to clean up the pollution problems.
Doing all of the extraction, refining , and distribution requires a whole economy. It requires roads, schools, iron ore mines, steel mills, a medical system, and many other things. That is why not too much can be spent on the extraction part, or on the extraction and distribution part.
“Doing all of the extraction, refining , and distribution requires a whole economy. It requires roads, schools, iron ore mines, steel mills, a medical system, and many other things. That is why not too much can be spent on the extraction part, or on the extraction and distribution part.”
Yes, exactly. The enormous ‘surplus energy’ goes into paying all these things.
“The financial crisis of 2008-2009, the worst since the Great Depression, was hard on all Americans. But arguably no group felt its sting more than African-Americans, who were already the most economically and financially vulnerable segment of the population going into it. Even today, a decade since the Great Recession hit, blacks still haven’t fully recovered and remain in a precarious financial condition.
“What’s worse, Wall Street and policy makers are beginning to worry another downturn may be on the horizon.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-numbers-prove-african-americans-still-havent-recovered-from-the-financial-crisis-2019-02-06
“Peter Boockvar at Bleakley Financial Group is …warning that the adoption of a negative interest-rate policy by the central bank would have dire consequences for markets. “NIRP in the U.S. would blow up the money-market industry, the source of $3 trillion of funding for a variety of short-term debt,” wrote Boockvar, the firm’s chief investment officer, in a Feb. 5 note to clients. “How exactly would a tax on capital lead to faster growth?””
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/fed-going-negative-would-blow-up-money-markets-boockvar-warns
The give away lending schemes especially benefited blacks. They received loans that they couldn’t really afford. When oil prices rose, they disproportionately defaulted on their loans.
I know that in the Atlanta area, the parts most affected by the defaults saw bigger drops in home prices, and they didn’t rise again afterward as well either. The prices in those areas tended to be low to begin with. The growing wage disparity problem affected those buyers most.
I found Atlanta pleasantly priced after traveling from the Bay Area.
Of course, all those churches blocked the view.
the world’s debt load is $247 trillion, 320% of GDP. Its GDP growth rate is not sufficient to cover the interest on that debt; and we have reached Peak. This will simply be a recession from which we will never exit. Collapse is such a harsh word!
Who cares about debt?
Give me another McDouble.
“German industrial output unexpectedly fell in December for the fourth consecutive month, data showed on Thursday, sending another signal that growth in Europe’s biggest economy is weakening. Data from the Federal Statistics Office showed industrial output was down by 0.4 percent, confounding a Reuters forecast for an increase of 0.7 percent.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-industrial-output/german-industrial-output-falls-raising-risk-of-recession-idUKKCN1PW0MD
“Italy is preparing to sell as much as 1.8 billion euros (S$2.8 billion) of state-owned real estate as it seeks to rein in soaring debt, people with knowledge of the plan said. The finance ministry is identifying properties owned by the state and by regional and local administrations that could be sold off – mainly army barracks, hospitals and office buildings that are no longer in use – said the people, who asked to not be named because the plan has not been made public.”
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/real-estate/italy-readies-18b-euro-property-sale-to-slash-debt
“The UK financial watchdog has asked for daily updates from property funds after anxious investors withdrew hundreds of millions of pounds amid Brexit uncertainty, stoking fears of another liquidity crunch. Retail investors withdrew £315m from property funds in December, according to Morningstar.”
https://www.businesstelegraph.co.uk/property-funds-on-daily-watch-as-outflows-surge/
We can all guess what the impact of such a big sales program will have on the building of new buildings. It seems likely to depress prices for “used” real estate, making them more attractive than building new.
If the state has unused buildings, my guess is that there are a fair number of other unused buildings. Its recent population growth seems to be negative, according to some reports. I country with fewer people needs fewer schools, fewer businesses in general, and fewer homes. Instead of economies of scale, the country reaches a situation where companies are frequently finding that overhead grows faster than sales.
“PMIs… track most major economies and work by polling the people who sit in the center of a company’s supply chain and make decisions about whether to order more supplies, or change inventories or prices to meet shifting demand for a company’s products.
“These are the people that see the demand pressure first and have to respond to it,” said Tim Fiore, the chief procurement officer for Ryder System Inc., a truck leasing and fleet-management company, who also oversees the PMI survey produced by the Institute for Supply Management. “They’re tied into production and have to respond when new orders come in.”
“Over the past year, purchasing managers sounded an early and persistent warning: The health of the global economy, especially its manufacturing sector, was sputtering.”
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/purchasing-managers-indexes-a-leading-guide-for-slowing-global-economy/
“Three of the world’s largest automakers added to the industry’s gloom this week by warning that 2019 is looking increasingly bleak, with little hope of an end to a Chinese slowdown or the changing customer tastes that are forcing costly overhauls to their model lines.
“The pessimistic outlook for the year ahead from Toyota, General Motors and Daimler — which together account for one in five vehicles sold globally — was accompanied by reports of dismal results for the year just concluded, with all three announcing a fall in profits…
“…the results were sobering. Daimler, maker of Mercedes-Benz, reported a 28 per cent fall in net profits to €7.6b ($12.2b) in 2018; Toyota said net profit last month fell 81 per cent; and GM reported an 8 per cent drop in the fourth quarter.
“More worryingly, all three also said they saw little sign of relief ahead.”
https://www.afr.com/news/world/worlds-largest-carmakers-warn-of-bleak-year-ahead-20190207-h1ayix
“ArcelorMittal [the world’s top steelmaker] said it expects a drop in Chinese steel demand and weakness in the U.S. and Europe, reinforcing concerns that dark clouds are gathering over the global economy.
“The steel industry faces macro-economic risks and persistent oversupply, ArcelorMittal said in a statement. Smaller steelmakers around the world have recently raised the alarm on a darkening outlook, with Salzgitter AG earlier this week pointing to “gloomier sentiment and numerous economic and political uncertainties.””
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-07/arcelormittal-sees-steel-demand-growth-slowing-as-china-drops
Wow. My forecast regarding hitting peak industrial output per capita seems to be right.
Recalling James Schlesinger speech at ASPO, “How then shall we live?”What is wealth going forward after health, abilities, friends and family? Gold? My guess is it can be spent one time and thereafter serves as a trail to one’s location and swift demise. Farm land is not looking so good right now, farm incomes are in the tank, I can’t find any IQ enhancers which would be greatly appreciated at my advancing age.
This sounds sarcastic, but it is a very serious question now that tomorrow appears to be the dawn of today. There is always a tomorrow,
Is it possible we can discuss some realistic modes of action? More and more I think collapsing in place is a good idea, be useful, what will be useful?
Claud Shannon thought that any information which does not change a state is noise. What information do we have here that changes our state? How can this information used in our own lives?
Snowing here in MN, it has been cold, FE would probably have something to say about the state of the weather, he was entertaining and certainly changed my state to quite laughter; not all bad.
Dennis L.
Not sure how you meant it with the farm land, if you have the stamina and funds (buffer), reorganize it (and or help younger folks) for the post fossil era, it’s doable, info everywhere. Now comes the spoiler, the probability of limited or complete nuclear war eventually occurring (say in next 25yrs) is very high as well as relapse into openly neofeudal conditions. That’s about the mega trends..
Farm incomes collapsing is further evidence of incomes of a lot of people being too low. The need for food will still be there. The problem will be that few can afford it. You or your children may still want to work on the food aspect, for your own family, if nothing else. Don’t count out anyone else being able to pay you for it. And don’t just grow crops that animals eat.
“My forecast regarding hitting peak industrial output per capita seems to be right.”
I wonder if it can be ‘pumped up’ again with more stimulus or if the process of contraction will start to become self-reinforcing.
If we are lucky, dovish central banks, a peaceful resolution to the trade war and a compromise Brexit might at least allow us to maintain ‘bumpy plateau’ status for the rest of 2019… Certainly we could do without any nasty shocks!
I hope I didn’t jinx it!
“Dow falls nearly 400 points, as stock market spooked by trade-war fears… CNBC, citing sources, reported that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping were unlikely to meet before a March 1 deadline for tariffs to increase on Chinese goods.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dow-falls-230-points-trades-at-session-low-as-kudlow-says-sizable-distance-remains-in-china-us-trade-talks-2019-02-07
“The warnings came from Europe as PMIs in the euro area, produced by research firm IHS Markit, started losing steam in early 2018.”
So this has been happening for a while. There seem to be two different PMIs produced for the US, producing conflicting values. Practically every index seems to be negative for January.
Trump voters are just realizing the Trump tax-cuts where only for the rich
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dyn8_EiUYAABcN0.jpg
The vast majority of Americans got some tax cut, according to the Tax Policy Center, so the folks from the twittering classes featured above must either be members of a small and unfortunate minority or else just grumbling and whining for the fun of it.
‘weaponised ignorance’ (like our cli mate change de niers) will run this as long as they can.
One has to actually look at data– they are being taken advantage of, but don’t have the intelligence to realize it.
Do you seriously adhere to the slogan: “If you like your current climate, you can keep your current climate”?
Climate is usually defined as the average of weather experienced at a given location over an arbitrary extended period of time, and we all know from daily experience that weather changes frequently and continuously, and so with an elegant inevitability, climate must also also change frequently and continuously regardless of whether people make a concerted effort to stabilize it or not.
Thunderf00t’s hilarious take on Tesla, Elon Musk and his fan base
Well all these are known facts for ages so why you bother.
I don’t have a private oil well, refinery and printer for fuel taxes, so electric propulsion makes sense as long as the components and generator last. It’s a tradeoff, and a good one these days finally..
Btw. TSLA still leads the industry as having the most energy dense batt pack, legacy big manufs are one or two automotive product cycles behind them (Koreans less so, VW very late perhaps starts catching up ~2021 but only on volume since TSLA will be again ahead on density and further revisions).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/PVWfV44u2cXZZdgqlWu1LzW2beI=/1484×0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/B2QRYEUVVJDDVFEKLVG5JOGUCU.jpg
Democrats at first looked skeptical when President Trump brought up women’s economic empowerment during his State of the Union address.
“No one has benefited more from our thriving economy than women,” Trump said.
Vice President Mike Pence stood up behind Trump, but Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remained seated. And in the seats of the House chamber, Democratic women, largely dressed in suffragette white, at first remained seated as well and looked around at one another.
But then some of those lawmakers began offering lukewarm applause. Some stood up. And eventually more got to their feet and began to clap. Other lawmakers pointed at the Democratic women in white, as if to point out that the women — many newly elected to Congress in a Democratic wave — were clapping for themselves, not for the president whose speech they were listening to.
“You weren’t supposed to do that,” Trump teased Democrats.
There was a smattering of laughter in the House chamber, where senators, Supreme Court justices, members of the House and all of their guests were seated to hear the yearly speech.
“All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before,” Trump added next, bringing the Democratic women to their feet again.
The women sat down, and Trump joked with them again.
“Don’t sit yet,” Trump said. “You’re going to like this.”
He wasn’t lying.
“Exactly one century after Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in Congress than at any time before,” Trump said.
That brought the Democratic women in white to their feet again, as they high-fived one another and raised their arms. Chants of “USA, USA” erupted in the House chamber.
A reporter for Vox wrote on Twitter that at least one lawmaker yelled “Thank you Nancy!” amid the applause about the number of women in Congress.
A New York Times reporter wrote that Democrats started the USA cheer — then a “couple women try to get a ‘Thank you Nancy’ chant going, but that doesn’t catch on.”
https://pics.mcclatchyinteractive.com/incoming/rmowfl/picture225588475/alternates/FREE_768/AP_19037119338384.jpg
lol!
Late stage capitalism is really bizarre–
When you hire a loser to run the country, the country will lose.
Bankruptcies for farmers seem to have jumped in the last part of 2018. The WSJ reports, “‘This One Here Is Gonna Kick My Butt’—Farm Belt Bankruptcies Are Soaring: Trade disputes over agriculture add pain to low commodity prices that have been grinding down American farmers for years
Excerpts:
I am sure that farmers around the world are struggling with low prices as well. Farmer is the most common occupation in the world, I would expect. If farmers are struggling, it is clear that the economy is struggling. There is too much income disparity.
Listening to Jason Burack on http://www.wallstreetformainstreet.com, and the gist of what he seems to say is that all this “guidance” by these corporations is at best BS and often outright lies to manipulate stock prices, always higher. CNBC always cherry picks (both the company CEO/CIO or an analyst to give the impression of a booming company and economy. Witness the selection of Larry Kudlow to Trump’s team of economic advisors. Burack’s opinion is that it is very difficult for shareholders to sue for misleading information.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/06/gm-doesnt-expect-to-make-money-off-electric-cars-until-next-decade.html
“The largest U.S. automaker repeated its commitment Wednesday to make its entire vehicle lineup “all-electric,” but provided investors with few details of those plans on a conference call after GM reported fourth quarter earnings that beat expectations. However, GM is clear that its electric vehicles won’t make money until “early next decade,” Barra said.
Early next decade isn’t very far away though to expect a profit on such a big change.
The article says that the CEO said, “General Motors does not expect its electric vehicles to turn a profit for at least a few more years.” I expect that this could mean that profits don’t come until 2025 or beyond.
https://i.redd.it/gqs0c1sbqre21.jpg
Frankie was the Donnie of his time!
Perhaps Donnie’ll be elected for four terms and fight World War III?
Frankie and Donnie are about as far apart as humans can get.
And I’m not just talking about intelligence.
But maybe late stage capitalism makes this possible?
The Russians had Feodor the Bell Ringer.
The only thing billionaires should be running for is their lives!
Five reasons why autonomous cars aren’t coming anytime soon
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-02-autonomous-cars-anytime.html?fbclid=IwAR0dYc4sv9YfvIMvgo1qQjA6b7Ti9NUp9EcvYgssKjZpV3IEiSWfIzbCTj0
Those are good points. I don’t think cab drivers and truck drivers need to worry too much about competition from self-driving vehicles any time soon.
I’m afraid the evolution on this front tends go into another direction, just look around when stuck in traffic jam, people sitting in cars equipped with various “auto pilot” assistants already are eating, texting, watching videos/net browsers, playing with kids etc..
The next step is obvious, companies will hire the utmost bottom income level dudes, sit them inside 99.999% autonomous fleet carz (not declared like that) and voila, turn the autopilot for them on, and tell them to occasionally have one hand nonchalantly on the wheel just for the looks, problem solved for a while..
“The next step is obvious, companies will hire the utmost bottom income level dudes, sit them inside 99.999% autonomous fleet carz”
If the car is legally non-autonomous I imagine the drivers will be paid the regular wage, which makes (hybrid) autonomy as pointless as for private users.
Let me rephrase it, as oppose to the “gig economy” where such drivers are profit driven, the above was meant a notch lower, basically anybody with a sign of breath and rushed driver’s license, obviously paid non regular wages through some scheme..
You seems to believe it is just a legal issue?
I agree. Driving is much too organic and unpredictable for a programmer to account for every possibility.
Sounds a great deal like someone whistling by the grave yard.
Gail is a actuary and I don’t have a clue but let us assume that driverless cars have 10% of the accidents driven cars have. How much to insure the driverless car? Isn’t it always about money? Is there a money difference between 10 fatalities secondary to human drivers vs one from a driverless car?
If your child is 10x more likely to be hit by a human as compared to a driverless car which auto do you want driving on your street? The numbers are for example only.
Who will be more likely to have good insurance and a good reason to have very good accident prevention? The large company or the worker at a local ff outlet? Which one will have better repaired brakes?
Used Amazon lately? That is pretty much AI, how did the human clerk come out in that deal?
Dennis L.
as i see it, a driverless car would be virtually insurable
the only infrastructure that would allow driverless cars, would be where all cars are driverless and no humans allowed at all
that is about as likely as changing the qwerty keyboard
I can see using a driverless slow vehicle for taking goods around inside a warehouse, or in some other areas where the number of visitors is low. In fact, there is no doubt some of this going on already. But out in bad weather, I don’t thing the situation is very likely.
a closed environment is different
why you have driverless trains at airports etc
I appreciate the discussion and differences of opinion. With regards to the keyboard, have you noticed telephone information lately? At my last examination the physician at Mayo was dictating and a computer was transcribing. They are pretty good and liability issues are significant to it would seem safe to assume that the keyboard is indeed changing.
We both are probably older, but I watched someone “type” with his thumbs and he was fast, it was not qwerty.
I have a smart phone and a flip phone, my preference is the flip, much smaller; the smart phone is pretty good, it provides a wifi hotspot with unlimited data for $80/month, cheaper than cable and a separate phone. Landline, what is that?
When it comes to suing someone for an accident, this is as much a “lawyer” question as an insurance question. A lawyer needs to make money off the transaction. Also, it helps if ordinary citizens are outraged about the conduct of a big company. It helps if a company was making money by cutting clearly cutting corners, for example.
Human beings, when they drive cars, normally do not carry very high “limits of liability.” Recommended limits are $100,000 per person; $300,000 total for an accident; minimum limits vary by state but are often $25,000 per person; $50,000 per accident. Lawyers tend to stay away from accidents caused by people with these limits: it is not worth the lawyer’s time.
What lawyers really like is accidents where there is a big, (perceived as bad) company at fault. The maker of the automobile, for example. Or Uber, if it is trying to cut corners by using self-driving vehicles. Then limits will be much higher. The company needs to protect its assets.
It is these law suits that determine the rates that insurance companies charge. So yes, self-driving cars could drive up insurance costs if there is a way to sue a big bad company, since that is what lawyers want.
I’m a personal injury lawyer. If accidents fell by 90%, it would end the business of “personal injury” law. (Probably the end of a lot of Property Casualty Companies as well). The routine fender bender is an accident attorneys bread and butter. In Ohio, state minimum insurance is $25,000 per person/ $50,000 per accident. Average settlement probably something like $9,000.00. Commercial vehicles (Semi Trucks) carry 1 million dollar policies. I would guess self driving cars would require even higher limits absent some very specific legislation (probably inevitable if we really get self driving cars). Juries give larger awards against companies, as compared to individuals.
Honestly, if self driving cars were a thing, probably the most sensible system would be something similar to a no fault workers compensation system, administered by the state, and paid for with an excise tax on the vehicles, or at the time of registration.
Could be, except I think it would need to be paid more frequently than when the vehicles change hands. Road maintenance needs to be covered somehow as well. The current gasoline tax for that purpose is not high enough. The charge really should be a per mile charge, no less frequently than annually.
From 1979 to 2005, the number of deaths per year decreased 14.97% while the number of deaths per capita decreased by 35.46%. The 32,479 traffic fatalities in 2011 were the lowest in 62 years, since 1949. US motor death statistics reported by government only include those on public roads, and do not include parking lots, driveways, and private roads. Wikipedia.
So is the personal injury industry seeing a similar trend in downward income for attorneys in this area?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emsi/2014/01/10/the-job-market-for-lawyers-side-work-on-the-rise-amid-continuing-glut-of-new-grads/#6c943bf23408
Sounds like every profession we know about. Too many educated for the amount of work available.
Many lawyers in Slovakia try to get into politics: too much of them here, too. This oversupply of lawyers was helped by the rise of many private law faculties, financed or co-financed by the state. It reached monstrous dimensions, with no perspectives for majority of the law graduates in their field.
Quite a few features on new cars are helpful in preventing accidents. I learned this a few years ago when I went to an actuarial conference. Because of this, I made certain that my new car had features such as notifying me if I accidentally started to merge over into a lane that had another vehicle that was too close.
Personal Injury fee income has definitely trended downward. I can only speak to my experience in Ohio, and I am very unusual in that I am a solo attorney practicing in this area. Most PI firms are bigger (I actually don’t know of any other solo practitioners ). As best I can tell:
1. Competition has become ever fiercer. Most injury cases come through advertising, which was barred by the State Supreme Courts until 1978. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, most lawyers still viewed law as a profession rather than vocation, and thought advertising unseemly. The lawyers who were willing to disregard their peers disapproval made a killing. Now, advertising budgets are in the millions of dollars, and are chasing an ever smaller pool of clients. Also, media is fragmented, so it costs more to have a presence in each media platform.
2. Insurance Companies have lobbied hard for tort reform, which has negatively effected jury verdicts by both its actual enactment, and by coloring the public’s opinion of plaintiffs. (Admittedly, lawyer advertising has also hurt public opinion).
3. The collateral source rule and subrogation rules now strongly favor the insurance companies. If your health insurance pays any of your accident related bills, they are entitled to get paid back. Their right is now generally so strong that they get paid back before the plaintiff. So if the health insurance company pays $30,000 in bills and the negligent driver only has $25,000 in auto coverage, the Health insurance might take the whole $25,000 and leave the plaintiff with nothing. Health insurance doesn’t have to share.
4. There are entirely too many lawyers. Law Schools can charge big bucks, and class sizes for first year are huge. It is a tremendous money maker for Universities to add a law school. This has been changing over the last 10 years as students were graduating with hundreds of thousands in debt and unable to find jobs. I advertised for a law clerk position paying $12/hr several years ago and got licensed attorneys applying for the job. Some firms were offering unpaid “internships” and getting people to work for free just to try and gain some experience.
Finally, I can tell you anecdotally that some of the PI firms have been advertising for workers compensation, social security disability, and bankruptcy cases too. I suspect this is due to dwindling income from injury cases. Also, after 2008, many of the insurance companies were taking a beating as well. Both State Farm and Progressive closed claims offices, consolidated locations, and laid off older, more experienced adjusters. Some of the In house (insurance company employed, rather than private) Defense lawyers were handling upwards of 200 active litigation files at once, an impossible task. Many burnt out and quit. Others soldiered on accepting the fact that they were basically committing malpractice on a daily basis.
Ah, Life at the end of empire! Me, I work 40 hours a week and accept that I earn like a junior associate at the bigger firms, despite being licensed for 13 years. Growing up working class gave me more modest aspirations than most, and I’m perfectly happy enjoying more family time than money. Besides, having a close relationship with my young children is probably a better retirement plan than piling up a ton of cash given the trajectory of IC!
Wow I live in Canada and carry 2 million on a personal car Only costs a few bucks extra over I million
Gail, I am concerned about this becoming an argument so if I am appearing that way, please forgive.
Heavy trucks are routinely used by large, suable companies and if one notices those trucks are often clearly noted on the door to be part of a holding company which I assume has limited assets; this is what I recall and it could be incorrect.
Electronics is becoming incredibly cheap, robotic cars will record tremendous amounts of information which will require those involved in incidents with a driverless car to have equally good information, front and rear dash cams are already a very inexpensive reality.
Again, my details may not be correct, but during the Gulf War Iraqi tankers felt safe beneath a sand storm with near zero visibility until large bombs started literally doing down the hatch.
Even with excellent training pilots make errors which lead to deaths, the Air France crash in the South Atlantic comes to mind, the data was there, for more see Wikipedia. Basic flying and a stall warning even in a small, single engine plane tells a pilot to put the nose down, humans put the nose up, stalled the plane. The plane was coming from Rio and one of the pilots reported on the black box only one hour of sleep. Machines do not party.
Dennis L.
Hi Dennis,
Interesting you mention the Air France crash. I am a low time non instrumented rated private pilot and read the report in by a Popular Mechanics article (the same magazine that reassured us that the the WTC buildings went down because of jet fuel fires) but also the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). I think the problem with Air France flight was the airspeed indicator tube was jammed with ice, so no reliable indicator of airspeed, which, if accurately measured, would indeed have alerted the pilot to put the nose down to gain airspeed. Conflicting information may have been given by the functioning vacuum gyroscopic or electric attitude indicator which of course complicated the picture. The Co-pilot on the right was pulling madly up on the elevator (wrong reaction) possibly overriding the captain in the left seat trying to do the reverse. I think there was some design flaw with the inability of one control to override the other. Not sure if the static pressure pitot tube may have been frozen too, thus robbing altitude information. It sure sucks when you don’t know how close the ground is and are flying on partial panel. It makes you even more reluctant to put the nose down.
The problem therefore is that humans depend on instruments which can “malfunction” or misinform, and then we are really screwed.
To make matters worse, as far as I am concerned, the internet has “malfunctioned ” in the same way, giving me totally unreliable or verifiable information- most of the time and there are very few blogs that I read without a hefty dose of salt.
A lot of big trucks are “owner-operated.” The drivers are subcontractors to the company. They get paid by the mile they drive the truck. If oil prices go up, this (probably–I am not sure of the details) causes the owner-operator problems. If regulations change so that the driver can drive fewer hours, this definitely causes the owner-operator problems. In fact, the fewer-miles problem did happen last year, when trucks were required to have a device recording precisely how many hours the trucks had been operating. There are requirements as to how many hours a trucker can drive in a day, and how many hours that he/she must have for sleep before driving again.
Anyhow, suing these owner operators would get a person at most $1,000,000/ $3,000,000, I would expect. These poor drivers have a hard time making much more than minimum wage.
I am sure that there are some trucks owned directly by big trucking firms. They are not quite the target for ire as some other firms.
It is an estimated over 3.5 million truck drivers in the U.S. Of that one in nine are independent, a majority of which are owner operators.
https://www.usspecial.com/how-many-trucking-companies-in-the-usa/
The average truck driver makes 40-50k a year, so better than minimum wage, but yes, they are being squeezed like the majority, and if you have a family, you can forget about spending much time with them.
Gail and I come from different perspectives on the insurance industry. While it is true that Truck drivers carry million dollar policies, it is important to know that you don’t just automatically get the million bucks because you sue them. I’ve been a practicing PI attorney for 13 years, 4 years with a bigger firm, and 9 years on my own. Every case with a settlement or verdict over $100,000 was because someone ended up with a life altering injury that resulted in surgery. Things like fractured femurs, fractured pelvis’, herniated discs requiring spinal surgery. The only client I ever had that I would trade places with was a surveyor that got rolled over the top of a van. He was basically sore for a month or two and had physical therapy (also some psychiatric visits due to being scared to work out in the road). Guy put $30,000.00 in his pocket. The only reason it happened was because the van that hit him was owned by a radio station, and they were trying to sell the station and needed the case resolved.
Also, I once had an elderly lady come to me to review a proposed settlement for TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS some shady adjuster tried to get her to sign off on. She had several thousand in medical bills, and I settled her case for $8,000.00. So, while there are undoubtedly unethical lawyers, the insurance companies are no better in my experience.
Everyone always thinks Plaintiffs are greedy scam artists until they themselves get injured. Then its a huge tragedy, and the settlement amounts invariably too low and unfair. “I’m not like those other people, I really got hurt!”
I agree that a person doesn’t automatically get the $1,000,000 limits. The limits on private passenger automobile tend to be so low that it is hard for them to cover much of any claim at all. Very often, there is both wage loss and medical expenses. These run up very quickly, if a person has any injuries at all.
Regarding how insurance companies settle actual claims, I don’t have much experience. I have tended to run the other way, rather than file a liability suit.
I once caused a liability claim, when a I forgot to put the drain hose on a portable washing machine into the sink, when I lived in a second floor apartment. The water caused the ceiling to fall down. My renters insurance policy paid the owner of the two-flat building, who lived downstairs.
In another case, a Kennesaw State University student ran into my son who lives with us, when he was walking in a cross walk on campus. (She was turning right and looking left.) His leg was broken in three places, and he was hospitalized for a short time. Also, he had to have surgery and then physical therapy. Our insurance (Kaiser) covered all of the costs, with virtually no deductible. We gave information on the name of the student to Kaiser. I am fairly sure that they attempted to collect against her liability policy. Fortunately, he lost very little work, because he was able to work at home. He recovered completely; no limp or cane.
My comments from the engineering (with software) perspective. There are just too many variables for the “AI” to determine the best decision.
Fly/land by wire on commercial jets has been around for years (or even decades maybe). The number of variables for take off / landing is much less than a car. For cars, you have road conditions, other driver’s behavior, pedestrians, poorly-maintained cars, etc that must be considered. We have no such issues for planes./airports.
Question – why do we still have pilots?
This is not a sarcastic comment but a valid question. There has to be some reasons behind it and I am sure it it applicable to cars as well
Some folks have been trying to use drones to fly one passenger a short distance.
People are now flying around in autonomous drones
I agree with your point though.
Air travel has less maintenance involved than road travel, because it doesn’t require all of the upkeep of roads. I have noticed that the sale of airplanes has been keeping up a whole lot better than the sale of private passenger automobiles. Rather than electric cars, the future of what little travel is done may be planes, still operated by liquid fuel.
The irony is in the complexity. Even if you have autonomous trucks, the lumpers will gouge the machine.
In other words the loader/unloader will demand huge fees or the trucks won’t be able to go to the next destination. (this already happens anyway)
Then again, corporate dictatorship could stop that 🙁
“Used Amazon lately? That is pretty much AI, how did the human clerk come out in that deal?”
Actually Amazon shopping is mostly client-side web and database design. Purchase still needs to be logged and verified by humans.
If the automation is far enough away, and somehow leads to lower prices, it is sort of OK with American consumers. It is also convenient.
AV’s would probably have a lower injury rate, but who’s to blame in an accident? No one. So either you ditch the autonomous vehicles or ditch the auto insurance laws.
German factory orders drop by -7 percent.
Germany exports 50 percent of its GDP. As the global economy slows down…Germany will go down as well.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DyuUcJcXgAAxyNd?format=jpg&name=large
agreed
you can have the best shop in the world
but with no customers it will close
Interesting!
I decided to look up exports of goods and services as a % of GDP. The World Bank has what are supposedly world figures as well as percentages by country (which can be downloaded as a xlsx table). https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS
There are an awfully lot of countries with very high percentages for 2017:
Belgium 85%
Cambodia 61%
Republic of Congo 94%
Czech Republic 79%
Estonia 78%
Finland 39%
Germany 47% (Pretty close to 50%)
Ireland 120% (!!! I wonder how much it imports of GDP)
Kuwait 50%
Latvia 60%
Luxembourg 230% (Must import a lot, relative to GDP)
Mongloia 60%
Netherlands 86%
Poland 54%
Puerto Rico 68%
Slovak Republic 96%
Switzerland 65%
Thailand 68%
Ukraine 48%
United Arab Emirates 100%
Viet Nam 102%
The United States has no data shown for 2017. Japan also has no data for 2017. I would think that world data is probably not really very accurate, without these countries, and others.
China shows exports equal to 20% of GDP. Really! Perhaps total GDP is inflated.
India shows exports equal to 19% of GDP.
This is a link to a report showing imports of goods and services as a % of GDP. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.IMP.GNFS.ZS
They also tend to be big percentages. The percentage for Germany for 2017 in 40%.
The German export figures are in reality bit higher, say about ~10-20% more (perhaps even higher), since they are running many of their assembly plants in the wider neighboring CEE area as the profits are mostly repatriated – retained to Germany, juiced out of the vassal protectorates..
German growth dropped at 1.5% last year and will even further drop at 1% in 2019, which is in line with the slow done of the global trade of goods. So the downfall of their exports (cars, machine-tools and chemistry mainly) make their economy suffer a lot.
http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/files/2019/01/Nomura-deglobalisation.jpg
Tax avoidance is a major Irish export industry. Enough to destroy anyone’s faith in GDP as a measure of economic activity.
Irish GNP is a better indicator of what is really going on.
I had to look up the difference between GDP and GNP. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030415/what-functional-difference-between-gdp-and-gnp.asp
Key Differences between GDP and GNP
While both measure and represent economic activity of a nation, the scope of GDP is within the geographical limits of the country and that of GNP extends to other countries/regions for activities performed and net income generated by its nationals. GDP measures the monetary value within the country’s boundary (local scale), while GNP additionally includes it for the enterprises/activities owned/operated/performed by the residents of the country (local + global).
GDP outlines the strength of country’s local economy and is an indicator of country’s stability, while GNP represents how its nationals are contributing towards country’s economy.
GDP is based on location, while GNP is based on citizenship.
GDP is commonly referred to as the measure of regional output, while GNP is best described as the measure of national output. Higher GNP than GDP indicates that citizens of a country are doing better abroad.
Owing to the different accounting standards across the globe and the requirements of forex conversion, there may be definitional and accounting issues for GNP calculations. GDP numbers usually don’t face such computational challenge and remain uniform.
If an economy were closed, then GNP = GDP.
____
For most countries, the differences seem to be small.
look like another week of bau is gonna end
same as last week
that called for celebration with great old bau music
https://youtu.be/hwZNL7QVJjE
French lawmakers approve controversial ‘anti-riot’ bill
https://www.france24.com/en/20190205-france-anti-riot-bill-yellow-vest-protest-macron-parliament-castaner
It doesn’t sound to me like this legislation is very far along, however.
The energy levels around the year:
There are 2 important Christian feasts that mark the darkest (and energy poorest) period of the year:
This energy poorest period begins with
All Saints’ Eve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween) on October 31st
and ends with
Candelmas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlemas) on February 2nd
I am so happy, that here, in the Northern Hemisphere, the energy levels of the environment are again going upwards. I feel sooo tired during the winter. Although the birth of Christ is set in the middle of the darkness, I do not like Christmas or New Years Eve…
And the energy richest period in the Northern Hemisphere is marked by these 2 feasts:
Easter (http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2011/12/12/youve-already-experienced-the-earliest-easter-youll-ever-know/) between March 22nd and April 25th
Assumption of Mary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assumption_of_Mary) on August 15th
My father was an electrician and he died on August 15th…
Interesting! Our early ancestors were outside a lot. They recognized the importance of energy from the sun for growing their crops. There are references to the sun in the Bible. Malachi 4:2, talking about what seems to be end times/day of judgment, says (NIV):
Well-fed calves are known for their high level of their energy. So the promise seems to be that there will be a lot of energy for those who revere him.
Deuteronomy 33:13-15 says:
Thanks Gail for the quotation about Joseph, as this speaks specially to me, because my fathers name was Joseph.
The human lives are really closely interconnected with the changing energy levels of the environment they live in.
In my part of Kyoto, January and February are too cold and July and August are too hot for me to be active outside in comfort. The other eight months of the year are paradise by comparison.
In January and February, the hours between 11 am and 3 pm are a precious resource for any kind of outdoor worker. While by contrast, in July and August, the work is done in the early morning and late afternoon, leaving the hottest part of the day for lunch, siesta time and indoor work.
This year, though, January and February have been blessed with exceptionally nice sunny weather—I could almost believe in globbly wobbly. Last winter the snow plows were out six times against just once for this year.
No snow or ice in Atlanta this year. This is the first time in a long time this has been the case. There are daffodils and a few other spring flowers blooming already.
My condolences on the passing of your Father….
Just a note many of these Christian feast days were adopted from Pagan feast days.
As a matter of fact, Constantine the Great, the first Roman Emperor the embraced and adopted Christianity as the State religion. first worshipped the entity, Sol, the Sun God.
Our Sunday was proclaimed after this deity by Constantine. It is surmised, Constantine may have merged the two initially and Sol appeared on his coins till 326 AD, ten years after he was a convert to Christianity.
Footnote, Being the shwered ruler that survived three civao wars to gain sole rulership (having put to death his Father in law, Retired Western Emperor Maximianus, two brother in law’s, Maxentius (rebel ruler in Rome) and Eastern ruler, Licinius and his son. Nevermind, his wife, Fausta, son by first wife, Crispus, a scandal that is hushed up.
The point of all this is Constantine the Great is a SAINT by organized religion.
Being a politician, timing is everything in life and apparently in death.
He waited to be on his dearhbed to obtain Baptism and received confession, forgiveness of all sins and entered into Heaven.
P.S. That did not prevent his Three surviving sons to deify him and issue coins as such.
They also ordered a massacre of all surviving male members of the household, except two youngsters, Constantine Gallus and Julian. Julian is well know as Julian the Philosopher, the last Pagan Emperor.
Very interesting….
Religions are self-organized, like everything else in the universe. They have leaders and followers, beliefs which are sometimes set down in writing. They often have employees and buildings. Religious organizations are able to grow and change over time because of the availability of energy flows, just as any other dissipative structure. All of them can be expected to grow and eventually collapse. There is a huge amount of overlap and cross-fertilization among religions. I think this is what we are seeing here. We call an awfully lot of religions “pagan,” but in many ways they are not very different from other religions.
Yes Gail…reminds me of the ending of the classic motion picture “The Treasure of Sierra Madre”….perhaps FE will be so lucky….Yes, we are up for. a real joke by the invisible hand of fate…full circle….
Nice Walter Huston (Howard in the cast) became the medicine man of the village after the gold blew back to where they found it….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RAapNGRfaBI
great movie clip. of course it’s just a movie, but gold is very dense. if you could find where the bags were cut open, then a survey downwind could pick up the plume’s fallout. I doubt that the gold went all the way back to the Sierra Madre. makes a nice joke, however.
Doomphd….here is part of a long essay regarding this movie….worth reading in it’s entirety
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a two-dimensional, visual fable of human existence. Fables are an essential source of understanding because they confront us with fundamental truths. Also, fables remind us that all our actions and their consequences are the result of our perspective or the lack thereof. While the focus of the film might be Dobbs’ self-destruction, the essential motivation for his destruction nevertheless retains universal appeal and validity.
. The beauty of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is its ability to showcase how wisdom is often shunned for the rewards of instant pleasures or simply because it is often met by deaf ears. Howard is a teacher. Lessons are not made any truer because the teacher initiates them, but rather because the teacher acts as intermediary between the pupil and truth. Ideally, the best pupil is the one that seeks the teacher.
Fables often make use of the supernatural. At the end of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre the mountain reclaims the gold in a sudden burst of wind. Intemperance which is left to its own devices, the mountain seems to assert, is always corrected by its own unforeseen effects
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a moral tale that is told from the perspective of a quasi-omniscient and detached observer of cosmic human follies who takes in the action prima facie. The impact of the story on the viewer’s imagination depends, as is the case with other artistic forms, on the viewer.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a brazen look at human life that avoids a trite climax. The film captures the essence of avarice without making a political statement of any sort. What we have here is a metaphysical rendering of human destructiveness and how this manifests itself in the physical world.
The fable as allegory comes full circle when those involved reach the understanding that human existence possesses an underlying structure that must be respected.
http://sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/the-treasure-of-the-sierra-madre-or-socrates-in-the-desert-2/
PS…trivia ….Robert Blake, child actor…later Barretta….infamous on the death of his wife and a tragic figure had a role with Humphrey Bogart in it!
The underlying structure of the world economy is provided by the laws of physics. This puts limits that are hard to see on things. It makes a place for things that a lot of people consider terrible, such as religion.
Dear Uncle Bill, thanks. My fahter died already in 2006 and since then I stumbled every day on his collection of various spare parts like transformers, electric motors, fuses, cables etc. that I had to move from one place to another and organize/sort/discard somewhat so that I could have place for the things that I need for my actual life. This heritage, among other things, surely contributed to my interest in energy matters.
His last working place, before becoming a pensioner, was at the animal feed granules production unit on the farm in our village. After the fall of the Soviet Union, that unit was completely shut down in the 90s, in the wake of the implosion of Slovak economy during those years.
The Slovak agriculture sector has never fully recoveredy to its state before 1989 and more and more food is imported now.
Hi, MG…my Father was from Slovakia and relatives in Bratislava and Kosic.
Over the years, have lost touch with them because of distance and age.
Their children are all grown with families of their own.
Remember with the velvet revolution and the excitement and promise of freedom.anf prosperity.
I cautioned them about copying the western model of progress.
Oh well, I do look forward to your comments regarding Eastern Europe and Slovakia.
Yes, it was an agricultural economy, my father was excellent in raising food and animals.
All that know how is lost in the wind…..gone forever perhaps.
Dear Uncle Bill, well, at that time in 1989, nobody or only a few understood that it was all about the energy. As the Soviet Union economy imploded in the 90s, there was a need to find other markets for exporting proucts or start a completely new production. Slovakia was a weapon production hub of the Central and Eastern Europe, depending on heavy industry. Thousands of people in my region of Slovakia worked in a big weapon factory, the tradition is still there:
https://www3.teraz.sk/usercontent/photos/c/b/3/4-cb371aae6d3ddfbf1f8e4c690e10ed7746ad7364.jpg
Today, Slovakia is completely dependent on cars production, with armies of robots and imported workforce working for the ageing population:
https://ipravda.sk/res/2016/02/11/thumbs/roboti-kia-zilina-nestandard1.jpg
Some of my family members still work in agriculture, but today it is about big sophisticated machines, which are hired by the farms for performing works in the fields:
http://jmgagro.sk/img/jmg/beet.jpg
BP only shows data for “big countries.” It has a big “all other” category. It is harder to get up-to-date data from other sources.
The IEA shows information through 2016. https://www.iea.org/countries/Slovak%20Republic/
Also this page: https://www.iea.org/statistics/?country=SLOVAKIA&year=2016&category=Energy%20supply&indicator=TPESbySource&mode=chart&dataTable=BALANCES
There are various other pages you can click on as well. It is clear that nuclear had a big bump up about 1999-2000.
Energy use isn’t really rising, according to the charts through 2016. I would guess that industrial energy consumption may be rising at the same time that citizens are getting poorer, so are less able to use energy. Also, most energy consumption may be in the form of imported goods, such as imported steel (if steel is imported). This doesn’t get measured in consumption data.
Thank you MG, I do remember reading an article in “The Economist” about Slovakia being the Detroit of Europe a while back. It may of made the front cover! Yes, seems nearly all food production is all scale now a days and automated. Kitchen gardens, hopefully, like my parents and grandparents were still be tended to….not so much anymore.
About a decade ago, my Cousin had two young daughters that became Nannies for a spell, in England and another worked in a hotel in a Casino in the US with a permit.
It was a good learning experience for them.
Yes, the war machine provides much employment…here in the States the politicians always are calling for “a stronger defense”, preying on people’s fear.
Like Gail has indicated self organizing and seeking expansion….no a new branch is being formed….”The Space Force branch of the military”
Seems the human condition mostly disappoints.
If one lives in the countryside in Northern Europe – which I do, just about although concrete is about to be poured all over us here by bastards seeking ‘growth’ – late October- January can be quite grim, but now life is returning, the sun is almost rising and setting at a proper hour, and the year begins:
‘Hail, O Sun!
Rise up from the Darkness!
Rise up into the day!
By your Light the seed shall grow;
By your Death the seed shall die’.
Even better in the Old Norse version. 🙂
I also find that a Northern Winter is much more bearable if you spend a lot of time working or walking outside, instead of in a dark house.
Any views on that, Sir Harry McGibbs? Or do you get blown over by ferocious island winds?
Xabier, you are completely right: when you can stay and work outside during the winter, it is the best you can do (unless you are suffocating from exhausts…).
It’s not so much the being outdoors, Xavier, as the exercise-generated endorphins that get me through. I have a little gym, pampered creature of industrial civilisation that I am, and rely on a daily work-out to raise my body temperature and lift my spirits. Sugar helps, too, and I’m often gnawing on a slab of chocolate.
I’m really happiest in a Mediterranean climate but felt that with the high population density and looming risk of desertification it didn’t really offer much to us proto-refugees of deflationary collapse.
The winds here certainly can be ferocious. We spent our first six months on Islay renting in Portnahaven, which juts out into the Atlantic on the island’s southwestern extremity, and my goodness – some of the storms there! The spray from the larger waves would even crest the top of nearby Orsay lighthouse. I had no gym back then so had to take my chances with a jog up the road and often wished I hadn’t, as sudden sideways bursts of hailstones or icy, torrential rain would strike cussedly just when I was furthest from home.
just be thankful you’re not scavenging the rocks of St Kilda for seabirds and eggs to prove your manhood in the survival stakes
easier to make sure the distilleries don’t go out of business up there
Xavier, I did reply but my comment clearly smacks of subversion as it is awaiting moderation! The short answer is exercise – lots of it, indoors or out – is indeed a must up here in winter.
Of course regularly sinking into whisky-sodden oblivion is the other option, Norman, but I’m saving that strategy for ‘the end of more’.
Sorry, I got behind on comment moderation for a while.
That fact that the distillery in our village was converted to the use of natural gas instead of wood contributed to its survival: there is bigger and bigger problem to find workers that could work there.
I can not imagine those pensioners who work there and who come to have distilled their fermented fruits still exerting themselves with wood logs for that purpose.
Carrying heavy logs from a distance requires energy of some sort. A natural gas pipeline is expensive to put in, but saves a lot of the labor.
This is a picture from the destillery in our village. As you can see, the chief of the distillery on the picture is an elderly gentleman, the natural gas pipelines are connected to the individual distilling boilers:
https://www3.teraz.sk/usercontent/photos/c/8/d/4-c8db98d70e0dad512d0e2b6075e8336c2f69d6ea.jpg
https://www.teraz.sk/regiony/obec-tuchyna-alojz-filo-mos/293103-clanok.html
“Prayers for a sudden return to dovish monetary policies have been answered, and now investors are living with the aftermath: a world awash with $8.6 trillion in negative-yielding debt. That’s one reason money managers are wading once more into the fringes of fixed-income markets across the globe.
“Consider the action over the past week: Serial defaulter Ecuador managed to sell $1 billion in new bonds even as the government is in talks for International Monetary Fund financing. Crisis-prone Greece received blockbuster orders for its 2.5 billion-euro ($2.9 billion) sale. And the decidedly frontier republic of Uzbekistan, encouraged by risk-on markets, is meeting investors for a debut international offering.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-05/greed-is-back-as-debt-markets-face-an-8-6-trillion-hangover
“A funny thing happens when you depend on borrowing from the future (debt) to fund growth today: the new debt no longer boosts growth, as the returns on additional debt are increasingly marginal. This leads to what I term debt exhaustion: lenders can no longer find creditworthy borrowers, borrowers either don’t want more debt or can’t afford more debt, and the cost and risk of the additional debt far outweigh the meager gains.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4238463-coming-global-financial-crisis-debt-exhaustion
“What we know for sure is that the global financial system continues to expand, with global debt pushing $200tn. Better financial regulation may have helped contain the corresponding growth in risk, but it is not necessarily shrinking.
“For example, although big banks do seem to have less risk “on the books”, regulators must work hard to monitor risky debt that has migrated to the shadow financial system and can inflate quite quickly, as we learned the hard way in 2008.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/05/financial-crisis-us-uk-crash
A few years back I was a groomsman in a friend’s wedding. I had served with him the Marines, he was a lifer / officer – I did my time and GI bill.
So back in 2009 / 10 I’m there with these jarhead officers and we’re talking shop and Afghanistan and the problem was there was nothing worth blowing up.
Basically the books were being cooked as well as ordinance to keep the money rolling in.
Harry,
You are going to be posting stuff like this forever until the printet blows up or people revolt.
My bets are on the printer blowing up.
Either way, I am determined to follow the story to the bitter end, Dan.
Your bet is probably correct, now the issue is the timing..
And if you are among the broader “servicing elite” circles, let say few dozens million globally, and as the ongoing perks are still amazing, hence they will keep the system on the rails till the very last second possible.. which is anybody’s guess ~5-10-15-20-40yrs away. Not mentioning we can’t yet discount outlier probabilities for some energy storage and production breakthroughs, and that would bring the truly quite dystopian future indeed in comparison to “a mere” depop and collapse of this current version of IC.
That’s rather like Stalingrad: nothing worth blowing up (after the first assaults), but plenty of ruins to hide in…….
I can believe that there was nothing worth blowing up. Wikipedia says, “Despite holding over $1 trillion in proven untapped mineral deposits, Afghanistan remains one of the least developed countries on the planet.”
It also says, “Ancient Afghanistan was one of the most prosperous countries in the world owing to its vibrant trade with Greater India that extended till Bangladesh and beyond.” I would be willing to bet that its climate was a whole lot different as well. The Garden of Eden seems to be set in the area of the Tigris and Euphrates. This area seems to have been a whole lot wetter back in the time agriculture was getting started than it is today. James C. Scott, in Against the Grain, talks about adding drainage, to get good farmland that was easily fertilized by the annual flooding.
It is not hard to believe that ancient Afghanistan was much wetter in that time period as well.
Gail I read somewhere that the Tigris/Euphrates region was destroyed by the local ruler adding more irrigation in 400 BC and then again in 900 AD to put more land under cultivation and bring in more tax revenue. The soil was destroyed in both cases by over salination. You can see areas like this in So California today. Salt deserts.
Irrigation, unless if comes from melted ice coming from mountains up above, tends to add salt to the soil and eventually make it unusable for farming. So it is quite possible the salinity would have occurred at some point, regardless of what the local rulers did.
When irrigation comes from melted snow, far away in mountains, the water adds fertility as well. That was why the Nile in Egypt could do so well.
Flooding problems were more serious in Mesopotamia than in Egypt because the Tigris and Euphrates carried several times more silt per unit volume of water than the Nile. … Over the centuries, the agriculture of Mesopotamia began to decay because of the salt in the alluvial soil.
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Hy-La/Irrigation-Systems-Ancient.html
Even silt can carry salt!
Think about Venezuela’s problems. It borrowed against its heavy oil in the ground, in loans from Venezuela. It then spent the money on programs that benefitted all people, plus some of the people from Cuba. This was not a very efficient use of the funds it received. Using them primarily to benefit the oil companies would have left a whole lot for reinvestment and further development. Now it is hard to ask for more loans from China, when the previous ones have not been paid back. In fact, they were spent in an inefficient manner (as far as the physics-based system was concerned).
What happens is that other potential lenders figure out that future debt-based investment in Venezuela would have the same disastrous results. If the benefit of the price of oil could be left primarily with the oil companies, it would be less of a problem. But this is part of the “tax the rich” view that occurs when there is not enough to go around. If Saudi Arabia could afford to use a large share of its proceeds from the sale of oil for public programs, why couldn’t Venezuela? If the entire revenue stream benefitted only oil companies, the situation would be different from what it really is today. (Of course, EROI calculations don’t have a margin in them for government. This is part of what the 10:1 minimum ratio for surplus energy that I proposed is about.)
We have both the IMF and World Bank lending to poor countries, in addition to China with its belt and road initiative. Also other investors, such as Blackstone with its development arm in Africa.
Michael Hudson in his books talks about all of this lending as being primarily a way that the rich world can prey on the developing world. Through interest payments on the debt, the rich world (including China) takes away more of the energy profits that the poor countries might earn (only he doesn’t put it this way). It works sort of like all of the leading to poor people within developed countries. All of they interest payments by poor citizens (in credit cards and such) funnels up to benefit the already rich.
Intellectual capital:
There are those who can learn in two years of university what for most will require four or more; natural talent automatically discounts the cost of an education by more than half and gets that all important first round of compounding for the talented while the less talented are still adding up debt to later pay the talented.
In today’s world many will never have the talent to earn sufficient excess capital in a reasonable amount of time; it seems to me the end result is eternal serfdom for the less talented.
Frequently you mention the super specialization of various areas including medicine. Knowledge seems to me to be a balloon which keeps expanding making it further and further to a frontier which is also increasing in area. Even when a person understands their area well , the trick is to know the most valuable fraction. It can be visualized as a cut from the center of a sphere to the surface with any suitable surface shape. Blow up the balloon and the surface expands, area is an exponential, distance to surface a linear. Red Queen?
Dennis L.
We also see a degree-level education being demanded for jobs which previously could be learnt on the job by those just out of school: the university administrative and teaching staff – and student loan companies – are, in this instance, preying on the young who are indeed to be penned and milked for much of their lives.
There is more and more detail to learn. At the same time, the overview because harder and harder to discern, because no one gives the overview of the whole situation.
Big data, and the temptation to analyze the big data, interests huge numbers of researchers. But analyzing the big data practically never gives an overview. It is subject to diminishing returns. For example, suppose that we know precisely what the claim experience for each person is going to be in the upcoming policy period. There is a limit regarding how close the premium can be to that amount. In a given year, virtually everyone will have expected claims of $0. (Exception, US health insurance). A few will have high expected claims. The ones with high expected claims will not be able to pay the high indicated premium; giving away the coverage to those with expected claims of $0 doesn’t work either.
“Deutsche Bank expects the German economy to contract this quarter after recent business surveys pointed to souring moods at companies and their worsening expectations for new orders.
““The start of the German economy into 2019 has been a major disappointment so far,” Deutsche Bank economists including Sebastian Becker wrote in a report on Tuesday. “The development of several key cyclical indicators is telling us that the German economy is drifting towards recession right now.”
“The warning from Germany’s biggest bank comes just days after Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said economic weakness carried into 2019 and will result in significantly lower growth than predicted just a few weeks ago. The government in Berlin also recently cut its 2019 outlook almost in half and IHS Markit’s January survey showed manufacturing in Germany shrank for the first time in four years.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-05/deutsche-bank-says-german-economy-is-drifting-toward-recession
“A manufacturing and export-led slump in Italy’s economy spilled into services at the start of the year, aggravating an already fragile economic situation in the euro area. Business activity among Italian services providers shrank in January and forced companies to reduce headcount for the first time in more than two years, a Purchasing Managers’ Index showed on Tuesday.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/italy-s-broadening-slump-weighs-down-euro-area-growth-momentum#gs.x10AJvxx
“The UK’s services firms saw activity almost flatline in January as firms reported mounting Brexit fears from clients. The Purchasing Managers’ Index came in at 50.1, the weakest since the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit vote and only just above the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction. Combined with weak recent surveys from construction and manufacturing, analysts said the the UK economy likely stalled in early 2019.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-economy-services-brexit-january-purchasing-managers-index-a8763591.html
Stalled in early 2019 (if not before).
Like maybe 1919, Gail?
“The global economy continued to slow in early 2019, according to the latest JPMorgan-IHS Markit Purchasing Managers Composite Output Index. “Growth in manufacturing new orders slumped to near-stagnation, while new work at service providers rose at the weakest pace since September 2016,” IHS Marhit said.
“New export orders also contracted for a second consecutive month, driven by weakening demand and continued trade tensions between the United State and China.”
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/global-economy-gdp-pmi-2019-2
“Commodities trading at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., GS, +0.15% once a huge moneymaker and a central part of the bank’s DNA, is on the chopping block.
“Goldman plans cuts to its commodities arm after a monthslong review showed the business uses too much capital for too little profit, according to people familiar with the matter. Executives are discussing pulling back in some areas, such as the physical trading of iron ore, platinum and other metals, and reducing costs associated with the sprawling storage and transportation network required to support its trading operations.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-goldman-ceo-plans-to-cut-commodities-business-2019-02-05
Translation- no one is building snything and further translation no one is buying.
Want to know why? Folks are broke. The can has been kicked about as far as free money for the rich and real money for the masses can go and now its closing time.
Goldman getting out of commodities trading is kind of like Blackrock stopping investing in energy in Africa.
If commodity prices were rising constantly, there would be a point in hoarding commodities. If there is a fairly high cost attached and prices aren’t really going up, it is a poor place for Goldman to be. I expect that China has some of the same issue. It has been hoarding commodities over the years as well.
Less nutrients in the food due to the higher CO2:
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/24/17384110/rice-vitamin-nutrition-food-security-co2
“Ziska and his colleagues studied 18 rice strains grown around the world using a technique called free-air CO2 enrichment at sites in Japan and China. This involved building an octagon of tubing around a section of a rice paddy and injecting CO2 while still using the standard commercial applications of fertilizer and pesticides to simulate real-world growth.
They then exposed the rice to CO2 concentrations between 568 parts per million and 590 parts per million to see what might happen to rice nutrition in the future. They chose those levels because climate models suggest that CO2 concentrations will likely top 570 parts per million by 2100 and children born today will likely eat rice grown in 550 parts per million CO2 levels within their lifetimes.
After harvesting the rice, researchers found an average of 10.3 percent reduction in protein across all the tested varieties, with one tested cultivar showing a 20 percent drop in protein. Iron content fell by an average of 8 percent and dropped by as much as 20 percent, while the average decline in zinc was 5.1 percent, though some strains experienced an almost 15 percent fall.
B vitamin concentrations also fell as CO2 levels rose. B5 levels dipped by 12.7 percent on average while B9 plummeted 30 percent on average.”
This is the study:
Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels this century will alter the protein, micronutrients, and vitamin content of rice grains with potential health consequences for the poorest rice-dependent countries
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/5/eaaq1012
Perhaps true. Overuse of the soil, without putting back the minor chemical elements that were taken out by earlier crops, will have an adverse impact on the suitability of food for human consumption as well. If it isn’t one thing, it is another. Hunted-Gathering was a better choice because nutrients tended to stay better where they belonged.
The Okinawans, who on average live longer than almost any other people on earth eat an extremely high ratio of carbohydrates to proteins.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190116-a-high-carb-diet-may-explain-why-okinawans-live-so-long
So one could argue lower intake of protein may actually be beneficial to humans. Indeed, if one were pushing for people to adopt for a vegan diet (in line with whatever agenda) one was selling), one undoubtedly would make this argument. In which case, one would also argue that higher CO2 levels were beneficial.
As for declining levels of vitamins an minerals in rice and other grains, most people are already deficient in most vitamins and a number of vital minerals including, most notably, magnesium, selenium and zinc. Unless you are eating a hunter-gatherer diet with plenty of nuts and berries, you would be well advised to supplement these vitamins and minerals for the sake of your general health.
It’s interesting that most people around the world who eat rice and wheat, tend to eat it white—with the bran removed. The bran contains most of the precious B vitamins. Health authorities are well aware of this and this is why several B vitamins are added to commercial flour. If the concentration of B vitamins fell due to CO2, larger quantities could be added to flour, and the problem would be “sorted”.
As for iron, most people who eat red meat ingest too much of the stuff already, so a reduction from grains would be an improvement from a nutritional point of view. There is even a hypothesis, which has some support, that a major reason why women live longer than men is that for several decades women menstruate, which helps them excrete excess iron. Added to this is research indicating that regular blood donors may live longer than the rest of us. The 2015 study was conducted a team led by Professor Henrik Ullum of the University of Copenhagen.
Dear Gail, I’m happy to read your article as I wrote a similar one here in France more than one year ago (on Adrastia web site). It’s very clear for me that there is no reason that the de-growth (recession whatever the word you use) slope should look like the symmetrical of the growth slope, as the mechanisms on each side of this mountain are quite different.
I underlined the trap of customer affordability / producer profitability which seems about to close on our economies, but I think there is another dead angle in the mining costs. Oil extraction and fuel productions are minerals intensive activities that need low mining costs in their profitability calculations which in turn need low oil prices (because of mines depletion). I think therefore that we might see minerals peak sooner than expected. That’s why I think the Seneca cliff will probably be very stiff.
Sorry for my English, but I hope I could make myself clear.
It is the supply chain….. not only minerals but also human resources (knowledge), computers, software, etc. All these are also resource intensive. Circular supply chain.
You’re absolutely right, but those resources needed in the oil industry come mainly from mining processes rather than from any (re)cyclic form of the economy. I just tried to underline this particular deadly synergy. My bad English maybe prevents a clear understanding of what I am saying?
your english is fine. Have you read the masterpiece OR NOIR by your countryman, Matthieu Auzanneau. The new standard reference on Oil.
I did in fact and I agree, it can be considered as a reference. I would also link it to The Seneca Effect by Ugo Bardi for the Club of Rome.
I am glad you are thinking about the same thing. We need different authors for different audiences. I cannot write in French. It is good that you underlined the trap of customer affordability /producer profitability that will soon close on the various economies.
I am afraid that most energy resources and mineral resources will peak at the same time, because all of them are facing the same affordability problem. This is perhaps what you are trying to say.
The signal of the problem will likely be in the financial system. A debt bubble will pop, and commodity prices of many kinds will fall. In this way, the affordability problem can affect many parts of the economy at once.
I’m not very eased with the financial part of the economy, as I’m a geophysician basically, with a strong specificity on energy issues. But you’re probably right as the financial system is the main driver for policies. I know for sure that there’s no way the 300 billion $ of the shale oil debt can be paid anytime in the future. I would say it’s in the genes of the shale oil industry not to be compatible with the way our economies are running. I can’t say anything on any other debt bubble burst.
1914 — Austria: Adolf Hitler is rejected by Austria as unfit for military service.
Trump had a similar out for Viet Nam.
And then Adolf went to Germany and was accepted and was a soldier in WW1. BTW I am tired of all the Hitler-Trump analogies but this is not my story here. I work with a friend in the business of (mostly) rare and old medical books. By this I come across a lot of interesting things. For instance I sometimes research the biographies of authors of medical texts and it is heartbreaking to find out how many German jews have been physicians, a lot of them trying to make medical care available for the poor, some of them highly decorated in WW1 and most of them ending in Auschwitz and other KZs. Some at really old age. Heartbreaking. Anyway, back to Adolf: Yesterday we had an interesting discussion. There is an American author who wrote a book about it and researched the story throughout. Hitler survived a poison gas attack. By this horrible experience he became victim to hysterical blindness. He was cured in a medical center called „Parcival“. His doctor worked with „Suggestionstherapy“. He healed him by suggesting Megalomania in him. Before this therapy Hitler was a kind of diffident, mousy person, an unsuccessful painter. After the therapy he envisioned himself as the savior of Germany by his healing charms. After AH came to power the doctor and all the persons at the institute that knew about this case were suicided. Explains a lot. And again, beware of stupid Trump analogies.
The Trump analogies are valid
the mistake perhaps lies in making them “Hitler specific”
they are not. A dictator arises through the circumstance in which he finds himself and the support he gets from those around him
Hitler could not have carried out his policies alone, neither could Stalin, Pol Pot, Hirohito and many others. It is their motivations that remain a common factor. And of course as they grow in strength, they also instill a fear factor which also grows with them.
Thus, the dictator wants around him only those who are loyal to him personally, and obey only him. He rewards them with luxuries and privileges not available to others. (this permeates down the ”tier system” of the dictatorial hierarchy). They in turn become beholden to him in a dance of mutual support. (if he goes–they go)
So, using Huckabee Sanders as a low level example. she has made herself look so foolish, that she would be unemployable anywhere else now. So she must hang on for dear life. This is why others got out early.
Trump’s cheering masses want results. Hitler invaded Poland. He made up lies about Polish incursions on the frontier. Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia “to free Germans”–to “Build a greater Germany”
Trump is seen as the strong man putting up his wall. The reaction is the same: He’s saving USA fron “invading hordes”!!
The more Hitler disregarded human rights, the more he did—one step at a time. Already Trump uses the term “enemy of the people” (standard dictator-speak) and demeans everyone not white anglo saxon in origin.
His lies run into thousands, all documented.
Hitler used the same tactic:
“if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it”
Eventually, the state itself is reduced to terrified obedience, where a click of the dictator’s fingers can be a death sentence for literally anyone at any time. (carried out by those owing him total obedience for their own survival.)
It couldn’t happen in USA?
All it takes is an economic collapse (which will happen)–after that the great mass of people will submit to anything to restore their BAU
The Don will have no shortage of willing helpers, I assure you.
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/from-oilslick-to-tyranny-b2da78c7a196
Your Well, given an economic collapse, how would any of us handle the situation Norman?
Do you think Hillary or Barack or Dubya would be any less dictatorial at all than Trumpy if they had the power and the collapse?
If you were in the hot seat, would you personally wield the iron fist and give the orders? Or would you forgive your enemies and attempt to appeal to the better natures of the disgruntled and starving masses?
And if you were running a government, under any situation, would you prefer to surround yourself with people who were loyal to you or with people who were plotting your downfall and intent on stabbing you in the back?
Say what you like about old Trumpy, but he has been put in place to try to prevent or delay an economic collapse by forces who understand very well that the existing system is creaking badly and that the Democrats and their backers’ plans to phase out the burning of coal and reduce the use of other fossil fuels had put the old country on course to becoming FUBAR.
Unlike you, I don’t kid myself that I know what’s going on in the labyrinth of power politics or in the heads of its leading players. But I would just like to say that I am so proud of President Trump at the State of the Union. Not only was he so presidential but he had so much gravitas! The other night was perhaps the best moment of his presidency. He evoked so many emotions from the audience. It was a poignant State of the Union. He embodied all the positive leadership qualities people state that he doesn’t have. And it was a breakthrough moment in his presidency.
In short, it was a noble, dignified and witty performance and I am very proud of him.
To paraphrase John Wayne, truly this man was the son of Lincoln, Kennedy and Reagan!
In your final paragraph, one must assume irony laid on thick.
i hope so anyway—hard to tell on here sometimes.
And I certainly do not pretend to know what’s going on in peoples heads at any level.
If you read my ramblings carefully, I tend to offer observations about likely outcomes of such and such an action. Not usually the thinking itself. I do admit to rambling on a bit—if i gave that impression it was unintended.
As to how “I” would handle it—that’s a non starter. I am by nature a laid back peacemaking type. I trying to examine a problem at its most ‘reduced’ level, and suggest what the problem is—if there isn’t, or doesn’t seem to be, a solution I usually say so—or leave people to get on with their lives.
A personal opinion is that men are too confrontational. Women would run things better. But I had 3 daughters, so gave up years ago on that score.
A lesson I learned years ago was that aggravation solves nothing.
World problem bottom line: shortage of cheap surplus energy, too many people, climate change.
And that’s it. 10 words for the world’s ills. But no one would accept that.
All conflict has been over energy, needing to satisfy the aspirations of people. There was always new territory to invade (re Hitler)
Climate change is the new wild card.
The American nation grew by invasion–just like all other empires. Only the USA “invaded itself”, looting itself for 200 years of everything usable. Oil and coal could just be dug out of the ground and burned to provide employment. (it really was that simple, people have a habit of making commerce very complicated.)
Money value is underpinned by energy. (world business in 6 words)
Now resources are running out, there’s nowhere left to invade, and oil is no longer cheap and plentiful.
The Industrial nations of the world have driven themselves into debt, pretending that debt is income. A politician never admits to past error, only to future certainties.
so circumstances are driving the people to desperation. (and oilwars with top heavy, unaffordable defence budgets). Venezuela is the latest oiltarget.
If the USA doesn’t grab it, the Russkis or the chinese will
Hence Trump—just as I forecast in 2011. He promises infinite prosperity on a finite planet
You may recall Hitler’s 1000 year Reich. Which is exactly the same thing.
And he was believed too.. He also had a top-heavy defence budget, which could only be sustained by invading weaker nations. Japan had the same problem–they did the same thing. The European empires were driven by the same forces too, in the 1800s.
All had top-heavy military costs and aspirations that could only be sustained by other people’s energy resources.
Which is where the USA is right now
Trump is not your ultimate dictator. He’s not smart enough. The final collapse hasn’t arrived yet—the Don is just keeping his seat warm.
So—as the debt-based economic system implodes, the overriding factor will be denial. Trump will pander to this and people will blame everyone in sight but themselves (see Hitler again). But he won’t stop collapse. Civil disorder then becomes inevitable.
That’s when your real dictator will grab power. And given the current loony state of USA politics, it will be one who uses god as the source of all his evil.
But then
the Wehrmacht had “Gott Mitt Uns” stamped on their belt buckles..
OK, I can sympathize with a a lot of what you’re saying, and like you I’m not psychologically cut out to be a national leader, let alone a dictator, and I agree that women overall tend to be less confrontational than men.
The UK has run the woman leader experiment twice so far with Thatcher and May. If I compare these two with the male PMs of the past half century, my less-than-expert judgement is that the have both proven better at running things than the guys did. But I’d also note that both came to power at times of major national crisis.
CC is not under anyone’s control so it’s pointless to worry about it or to have any policy to ameliorate it.
In times of prosperity, dictators will not arise because the political and governing structures of modern industrialized societies will function prevent individuals from accumulating “too much power”. In times of collapse, dictators will emerge as naturally as mushrooms from a proverbial bucket of…. So even with a person of dictatorial aspirations in the White House, prosperity will ensure that they can’t act out their Napoleon or Caesar complex in public.
https://youtu.be/uvUEsm0wNIA
Then we come to the POTUS before Trumpy:
“I am not a dictator, I am the president.” — President Obama
That statement has become inoperative in light of the Obama administration’s diktat to the nation’s public schools that they must accommodate transgendered students when it comes to restrooms, shower and changing areas. This follows the administration’s attempt to force North Carolina to violate privacy and religious concerns, not to mention tradition and common sense by ordering that state to allow people who “identify” with a gender different from the one they were born with to use the rest room of their choice.
That’s what I call dictating!
Norm, you’ve got daughters. How would you feel about a president who dictated that your teenage daughters have to share their school shower rooms with any male student who “identifies” as “female”?
Tim
I suppose we all have our personal view and level of what we might call dictatorships
I also think this gender identification thing is utter nonsense, but accommodating that is a long way from anything resembling dictatorship. I’d put that down to mismanaged government, trying to be all things to all people.
I don’t think women run their own countries better than men do. my point was that they don’t usually start wars of aggression and territorial invasions elsewhere
I think if we examine ‘dictatorships’ things can get a whole lot worse than that, especially when it comes to women’s rights.
Certainly Obama had no history of abusing women, or even disrespecting them.
The current incumbent seems to have made a habit of it, Ivanka appears to have got her divorce settlement on the basis of a gagging order about what her marriage was really Like.
Trump’s appalling attitude to women is clearly on show. He doesn’t even try to hide it.
///quote—- So even with a person of dictatorial aspirations in the White House, prosperity will ensure that they can’t act out their Napoleon or Caesar complex in public./////
The US economy is in a debt spiral and must collapse. Whichever POTUS is in office when it does will be faced with widespread civil disorder. Martial law will be inevitable, as will overriding Congress.
The military will fall in behind whoever seems to be offering them the best bet for survival. (along with the neckless Gopers.)
The fascist state will be easily and eagerly installed. A Theo fascist one if Pence has his way. He’s made his attitude to ‘deviants’ very clear.
What rights for women after that? Bathrooms will be the lease of your worries I think.
State Laws passed against women already are beyond civilised living elsewhere. They are existing in a dictatorship already
You didn’t asnwer my question about irony in my previous comment?
Not comparable, A.J.H. wanted to serve and eventually did, while Trump weaseled out.
https://youtu.be/VkKxmnrRVHo
https://thegreateststorynevertold.tv/portfolio/part-1-adolf-hitlers-childhood/
From 5 min 30 deals with Mr H’s ww1 record. If what is documented here is true, he was certainly no coward.
The tragedy of WW1 is that hardly any of them were cowards.
But they were ‘There, because they were there, because they were there’ to adapt the old soldiers’ song.
That made me think of this quote from Pat Barker’s wonderful novel, ‘Regeneration’. Wilfred Owen is talking to Siegfried Sassoon and grappling with the apparently self-contradictory intuition that the war was at once both beyond human control and the inevitable (and apparently ultimate) expression of humanity’s warlike nature:
“Sometimes, in the trenches, you get the sense of something ancient. One trench we held, it had skulls in the side, embedded, like mushrooms. It was actually easier to believe they were men from Marlborough’s army, than to think they’d been alive a year ago. It was as if all the other wars had distilled themselves into this war, and that made it something you almost can’t challenge. It’s like a very deep voice, saying; ‘Run along, little man, be glad you’ve survived”
Some of them became soldiers in WW1 there because the wages were better than the wages in the UK’s depleted coal mines, and the chance of death wasn’t any higher.
“… and the chance of death wasn’t any higher.”
Not even close. The life expectancy of a ww1 soldier serving in the trenches was six weeks. I can’t find statistics for the UK, but US Dept Of Labor statistics for 1914 state 2,454 coal mining fatalities out of a workforce o 763,185. Safe to say the life expectancy of a coal miner in those times was measured in decades rather than weeks.
Having been down to an old coal face and seeing the horrific conditions the miners worked in, I can understand how fighting the Hun might have seemed preferable, especially as the volunteers would have had little appreciation of the slaughter they would face.
and the ultimate sick joke was, that they used miners to undermine enemy trenches, where they met German miners doing the same thing, and fought hand to hand underground
That was all a very long time ago. We’re all friends in Europe now.
There’s no trench warfare and precious little coal mining going on.
Higher taxes on the rich polling well? Fox Business host blames ‘the idea of fairness’ that’s being taught in schools
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/rasing-taxes-on-the-rich-fox-news-host-blames-the-idea-of-fairness-2019-02-05
https://imgur.com/a/H9NKqKr
The ghastly rich are so unhappy with their wealth that I recommend this as a Public Health measure.