Many people are concerned today with the low price of oil. Others are concerned about slowing or stopping COVID-19. Is there any way forward?
I gave a few hints regarding what is ahead in my last post, Economies won’t be able to recover after shutdowns. We live in a world with a self-organizing economy, made up of components such as businesses, customers, governments and interest rates. Our basic problem is a finite world problem. World population has outgrown its resource base.
Some sort of economy might work with the current resource base, but not the present economy. The COVID-19 crisis and the lockdowns used to try to contain the crisis push the economy farther along the route toward collapse. In this post, I suggest the possibility that some core parts of the world economy might temporarily be saved if they can be made to operate fairly independently of each other.
Let’s look at some parts of the problem:
[1] The world economy works like a pump.
To use a hand water pump, a person forces a lever down, and the desired output (water) appears. Human energy is required to power this pump. Other versions of water pumps use electricity, or burn gasoline or diesel. However the pump operates, there needs to be some form of energy input, for the desired output, water, to be produced.
An economy follows a similar pattern, except that the list of inputs and outputs is longer. With an economy, we need the following inputs, including energy inputs:
- Human energy
- Supplemental energy, such as burned biomass, animal power, electricity, and fossil fuel.
- Other resources, including fertile land, fresh water and raw materials of various kinds.
- Capital goods, built in previous cycles of the “pump.” These might include factories and machines to put into the factories.
- Structure and support provided by governments, including laws, roads and schools.
- Structure and support provided by business hierarchies and their innovations.
- A financial sector to provide a time-shifting function, so that goods and services with future value can be paid for (in actual physical output) over their expected lifetimes.
The output of the economy is goods and services, such as the following:
- Food and the ability to store and cook this food
- Other goods, such as homes, cars, trucks, televisions and diesel fuel
- Services such as education, healthcare and vacation travel
[2] Adequate growth in supplemental energy (such as fossil fuels) is important for keeping the economy operating properly.
The more human energy is applied to a manual water pump, the faster it can pump. The economy seems to work somewhat similarly.
If we look back historically, the world economy grew well when energy supplies were growing rapidly.
Figure 2. Average growth in energy consumption for 10 year periods, based on the estimates of Vaclav Smil from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent.
Economic growth encompasses both population growth and rising standards of living. Figure 3 below takes the same information used in Figure 2 and divides it into (a) the portion underlying population growth, and (b) the portion of the energy supply growth available for improved standards of living.
Figure 3. Figure similar to Figure 2, except that energy devoted to population growth and growth in living standards are separated. An ellipse is added showing the recent growth in energy is primarily the result of China’s temporary growth in coal supplies.
Looking at Figure 3, we see that, historically, more than half of energy consumption growth has been associated with population growth. There is a reason for this connection: Food is an energy product for humans. Growing food requires a lot of energy, both energy from the sun and other energy. Today, a large share of this other energy is provided by diesel fuel, which is used to operate farm equipment and trucks.
Another thing we can see from Figure 3 is that peaks in living standards tend to go with good times for the economy; valleys tend to go with bad times. For example, the 1860 valley came just before the US Civil War. The 1930 valley came between World War I and World War II, at the time of the Great Depression. The 1991-2000 valley corresponds to the reduced energy consumption of many countries affiliated with the Soviet Union after its central government collapsed in 1991. All of these times of low energy growth were associated with low oil (and food) prices.
[3] Even before COVID-19 came along, the world’s economic pump was reaching limits. This can be seen in several different ways.
(a) China’s problems. China’s growth in coal production started lagging about 2012 (Figure 4). As long as its coal supply was growing rapidly (2002 to 2012), this rapidly growing source of inexpensive energy helped pull the world economy along.
Figure 4. China energy production by fuel, based on 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy data. “Other Ren” stands for “Renewables other than hydroelectric.” This category includes wind, solar, and other miscellaneous types, such as sawdust burned for electricity.
Once China needed to depend on importing more energy to keep its energy consumption growth, it began running into difficulties. China’s cement production started to fall in 2017. Effective January 1, 2018, China found it needed to shut down most of its recycling. Auto sales suddenly starting falling in 2018 as well, suggesting that the economy was not doing well.
(b) Too much world debt growth. It is possible to artificially raise economic growth by offering purchasers of goods and services debt that they cannot really afford to pay back, to use for the purchase of goods and services. Clearly, this was happening before the 2008-2009 recession, leading to debt defaults at that time. The rise in debt to GDP ratios since that time suggest that it is continuing to happen today. If the world economy stumbles, much debt is likely to become impossible to repay.
(c) The need to lower interest rates to keep the world economy growing. If the world economy is growing rapidly, as it was in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the economy is able to grow in spite of increasing interest rates (Figure 5). After energy supply growth slowed about 1980 (Figure 2), interest rates have needed to fall (Figure 5) to hide the slowing energy consumption growth. In fact, interest rates are near zero now, similar to the way they were in the 1930s. Interest rates are now about as low as they can go, suggesting that the economy is reaching a limit.
Figure 5. 3-month and 10-year US Treasury rates. Graph provided FRED.
(d) Growing wage disparity. Increased technology is viewed positively, but if it leads to too much wage disparity, it can create huge problems by bringing the wages of non-elite workers below the level they need to support a reasonable lifestyle. Globalization adds to this problem. Income disparity is now at a peak, around the level of the late 1920s.
Figure 6. U. S. Income Shares of Top 1% and Top 0.1%, Wikipedia exhibit by Piketty and Saez.
(e) Excessively low commodity prices, even before COVID-19 problems. With the world’s wage disparity problem, many workers find themselves unable to afford homes, cars, and restaurant food. Their lack of purchasing power to buy these end products tends to keep commodity prices too low for producers to make an adequate profit. Oil prices were already too low for producers in 2019, before lockdowns associated with COVID-19 were added. Producers of oil will go out of business at this price. In fact, other commodity prices, including those of liquified natural gas, copper, and lithium are all too low for producers.
[4] The COVID-19 problem, and in fact epidemic problems in general, are not going away.
The publicity recently has been with respect to the COVID-19 virus and the need to “flatten the curve” of infected individuals, so that the health care system is not overwhelmed. The solutions offered revolve around social distancing. This includes reduced air travel and fewer large gatherings.
The problem with these solutions is that they make the world’s problems related to slow economic growth and too much debt a great deal worse. Growing businesses are built on economies of scale. Social distancing requirements lead to less efficient use of buildings and furnishings. For example, if a restaurant can only serve 25% as many customers as previously, its overhead quickly becomes too high, relative to the customers it can serve. It needs to lay off workers. Laid off workers add to the problem of low demand for goods like new homes, vehicles and gasoline. Indirectly, they push commodity prices of all kinds down, including oil prices.
If this were a two-week temporary problem, the situation might be tolerable, but the virus causing COVID-19 is not easily subdued. Many cases of COVID-19 seem to be infectious during their latency period. They may also be infectious after the illness seems to be over. Without an absurd amount of testing (plus much more accurate testing than seems to be really available), it is impossible to know whether a particular airline pilot for a plane bringing cargo is infectious. No one can tell whether a factory worker going back to work is really infectious, either. Citizens don’t understand the futility of trying to contain the virus; they expect that an ever-large share of our limited resources will be spent on beating back the virus.
To make matters worse, from what we know today, a person cannot count on life-long immunity after having the disease. A person who seems to be immune today, may not be immune next week or next year. Putting a badge on a person, showing that that person seems to be immune today, doesn’t tell you much about whether that person will be immune next week or next year. With all of these issues, it is pretty much impossible to get rid of COVID-19. We will likely need to learn to live with it, coming back year after year, perhaps in mutated form.
Even if we could somehow work around COVID-19’s problems, we can still expect to have other pandemic problems. The problem with epidemics has existed as long as humans have inhabited the earth. Antibiotics and other products of the fossil fuel age have allowed a temporary reprieve from some types of epidemics, but the overall problem has not disappeared. Our attention is toward COVID-19, but there are many other kinds of plant and animal epidemics we are facing. For example:
- Bananas are being attacked by a fungus in many parts of the world.
- African swine fever has killed tens of millions of pigs in China and elsewhere.
- Locusts are attacking crops in Africa.
- Human pathogens are constantly evolving, so that today’s antibiotics work much less well.
Even if COVID-19 does not do significant harm to the world economy, with all of the resource limits and economic problems we are encountering, certainly some future worldwide pandemic will.
[5] Historically, the way the world economy has been organized is as a large number of almost separate economies, each acting like a separate economic pump. Such an arrangement is much more stable than a single tightly networked world economy.
If a world economy is organized as a group of individual economies, with loose links to other economies, there are several advantages:
(a) Epidemics become less of a problem.
(b) Each economy has more control over its own future. It can create its own financial system if it desires. It can decide who owns what. It can decree that wages will be very equal, or not so equal.
(c) If population rises relative to resources in one economy, or if weather/climate takes a turn for the worse, that particular economy can collapse without the rest of the world’s economy collapsing. After a rest period, forests can regrow and soil fertility can improve, allowing a new start later.
(d) The world economy is in a sense much more stable, because it is not dependent upon “everything going correctly, everywhere.”
[6] The COVID-19 actions taken to date, together with the poor condition the economy was in previously, lead me to believe that the world economy is headed for a major reset.
Recently, we have experienced world leaders everywhere falling in line with the idea of shutting down major parts of their economies, to slow the spread of COVID-19. Citizens are worried about the illness and want to “do something.” In a way, however, the shutdowns make no sense at all:
(a) Potential for starvation. Any world leader should know that a large share of its population is living “on the edge.” People without savings cannot get along without income for for a long period, maybe not even a couple of weeks. Poor people are likely to be pushed toward starvation, unless somehow income to buy food is made available to these people. This is especially a problem for India and the poor countries of Africa. The loss of population in poor countries due to starvation is likely to be far higher than the 2% death rate expected from COVID-19.
(b) Potential for oil prices and other commodity prices to fall far too low for producers. With a large share of the world economy shut down, prices for many goods fall too low. As I am writing this, the WTI oil price is shown as $1.26 per barrel. Such a low price is simply absurd. It will cut off all production. If food cannot be sold in restaurants, its price may fall too low as well, causing producers to plow it under, rather than send it to market.
(c) Potential for huge debt defaults and huge loss of asset value. The financial system is built on promises. These promises can only be met if oil can continue to be pumped and goods made with fossil fuels can continue to be sold. Today’s economic system is threatening to fall apart. Even at this point in the epidemic, we are seeing a huge problem with oil prices. Other problems, such as problems with derivatives, are likely not far away.
The economy is a self-organizing system. If there really is the potential for some parts of the world economic system to be saved, while others are lost, I expect that the self-organizing nature of the system will work in this direction.
[7] A reset world economy will likely end up with “pieces” of today’s economy surviving, but within a very different framework.
There are clearly parts of the world economy that are not working:
- The financial system is way too large. There is too much debt, and asset prices are inflated based on very low interest rates.
- World population is way too high, relative to resources.
- Wage and wealth disparity is too great.
- Too much of income is going to the financial system, healthcare, education, entertainment, and travel.
- All of the connectivity of today’s world is leading to epidemics of many kinds traveling around the world.
Even with these problems, there may still be some core parts of the world economy that perhaps can be made to work. Each would have a smaller population than today. They would function much more independently than today, like mostly separate economic pumps. The nature of these economies will be different in different parts of the world.
In a less connected world, what we think of today as assets will likely have much less value. High rise buildings will be worth next to nothing, for example, because of their ability to transfer pathogens around. Public transportation will lose value for the same reason. Manufacturing that depends upon supply lines around the world will no longer work either. This means that manufacturing of computers, phones and today’s cars will likely no longer be possible. Products built locally will need to depend almost exclusively on local resources.
Pretty much everything that is debt today can be expected to default. Shares of stock will have little value. To try to save parts of the system, governments will need to take over assets that seem to have value such as farm land, mines, oil and gas wells, and electricity transmission lines. They will also likely need to take over banks, insurance companies and pension plans.
If oil products are available, governments may also need to make certain that farms, trucking companies and other essential users are able to get the fuel they need so that people can be fed. Water and sanitation are other systems that may need assistance so that they can continue to operate.
I expect that eventually, each separate economy will have its own currency. In nearly all cases, the currency will not be the same as today’s currency. The currency will be paid only to current workers in the economy, and it will only be usable for purchasing a limited range of goods made by the local economy.
[8] These are a few of my ideas regarding what might be ahead:
(a) There will be a shake-out of governmental organizations and intergovernmental organizations. Most intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations and European Union, will disappear. Many governments of countries may disappear, as well. Some may be overthrown. Others may collapse, in a manner similar to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. Governmental organizations take energy; if energy is scarce, they are dispensable.
(b) Some countries seem to have a sufficient range of resources that at least the core portion of them may be able to go forward, for a while, in a fairly modern state:
- United States
- Canada
- Russia
- China
- Iran
Big cities will likely become problematic in each of these locations, and populations will fall. Alaska and other very cold places may not be able to continue as part of the core, either.
(c) Countries, or even smaller units, will want to continue to limit trade and travel to other areas, for fear of contracting illnesses.
(d) Europe, especially, looks ripe for a big step back. Its fossil fuel resources tend to be depleted. There may be parts that can continue with the use of animal labor, if such animal labor can be found. Big protests and failing debt are likely by this summer in some areas, including Italy.
(e) Governments of the Middle Eastern countries and of Venezuela cannot continue long with very low oil prices. These countries are likely to see their governments overthrown, with a concurrent reduction in exports. Population will also fall, perhaps to the level before oil exploration.
(f) The making of physical goods will experience a major setback, starting immediately. Many supply chains are already broken. Medicines made in India and China are likely to start disappearing. Automobile manufacturing will depend on individual countries setting up their own manufacturing supply chains if the making of automobiles is to continue.
(g) The medical system will suffer a major setback from COVID-19 because no one will want to come to see their regular physician anymore, for fear of catching the disease. Education will likely become primarily the responsibility of families, with television or the internet perhaps providing some support. Universities will wither away. Music may continue, but drama (on television or elsewhere) will tend to disappear. Restaurants will never regain their popularity.
(h) It is possible that Quantitative Easing by many countries can temporarily prop up the prices of shares of stock and homes for several months, but eventually physical shortages of many goods can be expected. Food in particular is likely to be in short supply by spring a year from now. India and Africa may start seeing starvation much sooner, perhaps within weeks.
(i) History shows that when energy resources are not growing rapidly (see discussion of Figure 3), there tend to be wars and other conflicts. We should not be surprised if this happens again.
Conclusion
We seem to be reaching the limit of making our current global economic system work any longer. The only hope of partial salvation would seem to be if core parts of the world economy can be made to work in a more separate fashion for at least a few more years. In fact, oil and other fossil fuel production may continue, but for each country’s own use, with very limited trade.
There are likely to be big differences among economies around the world. For example, hunter-gathering may work for a few people, with the right skills, in some parts of the world. At the same time, more modern economies may exist elsewhere.
The new economy will have far fewer people and far less complexity. Each country can be expected to have its own currency, but this currency will likely be used only on a limited range of locally produced goods. Speculation in asset prices will no longer be a source of wealth.
It will be a very different world!
“United Nations chief António Guterres has said the coronavirus pandemic has unleashed a “tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering”, and appealed for an all-out effort “to end hate speech globally.””
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/08/global-report-china-open-to-cooperate-with-who-on-virus-origin-as-trump-repeats-lab-claim
I have heard that free speech can be infectious. Wouldn’t want that.
United Nations declares free speech “infectious”. Spread of free speech must be halted as first pillar of covid policy!
Or maybe the response to the coronavirus pandemic itself represented scapegoating and scaremongering.
“French people are being encouraged to eat more cheese, after the country’s coronavirus outbreak caused sales to melt and left farmers with wasted produce.”
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/france-coronavirus-cheese-sales-scli-intl/index.html
“…we [in the UK] produce more varieties of cheese even than the French. Sadly, these high-quality cheeses are extremely difficult to shift with the hospitality sector closed, and even major supermarkets are mothballing their deli counters.
“Many firms have lost almost 90 per cent of their business…”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8298629/Coronavirus-crisis-means-tonnes-British-cheese-thrown-away.html
Disruptions in “demand lines” as businesses close lead to major problems for producers. The loss of jobs in these sectors may not become immediately obvious.
“On march 15 the government announced coronavirus restrictions that stopped the protest movement in its tracks”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/may/07/hunger-is-a-bigger-risk-than-coronavirus-lebanon-protesters-return-video
“The Lebanese government last week released its ambitious economic rescue plan as the country grinds through its worst financial crisis in recent memory.
“But what was notably downplayed in the 53 pages was the offshore natural gas reserves, a potential that was overhyped for years as a solution to the country’s financial woes…
“After the financial collapse, the political establishment was looking to give the impression that there is a new resource that will actually pay back all of what has been lost,” Chaaban told MEE.
“He added that the political elite created hype around the oil and gas sector to make sure they were selling the idea in advance. “It was like selling fish in the sea,” he said, using an Arabic saying to indicate the uselessness of an act.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/lebanon-downplays-hydrocarbon-wealth-new-economic-rescue-plan
“Only a handful of Lebanese lenders are expected to emerge from an economic rescue plan that many banks, who are among the government’s biggest creditors, oppose because it would wipe out $20.6bn in shareholder capital.”
https://www.gulf-times.com/story/662659/Lebanon-s-besieged-banks-scramble-to-avoid-near-to
Stopping the protest movement was probably the real reason for the restrictions.
…. and for creating and spreading Wuhan flu… and exaggerating the impact of it
(see Ethiopia, Sweden, Bali etc… see CBS fake queues in USA… see empty hospitals USA… see Film Your Hospital… see empty Javits Centre… see empty hospital tents Central Park… etc…)
MSM has made the normies believe 1+1 = 4. Amazing!
And here goes South Korea!!!!
South Korean officials sounded alarm Friday after finding more than a dozen coronavirus infections linked to club goers in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area.
The discovery raised fears of another surge in transmissions just as the country had eased on social distancing amid a slowing caseload in past weeks.
Earlier Friday, South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 12 fresh cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to midnight Thursday, which was the first time in five days that the daily jump came above 10.
https://apnews.com/d0d91a99a4c826d453504657468f5381
More Siren! More lockdowns!!! See what happens when we unlock!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ciAl8Bynjs
Heads we lockdown Tails we lockdown.
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/05/07/xi-jinping-admits-coronavirus-still-problem-china/
“Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda has been declaring near-total victory over the coronavirus for a month, but on Wednesday Chinese dictator Xi Jinping admitted at a leadership meeting that the Wuhan virus is still a major problem in China.”
I am amazed that China is not totally overrun with Covid … amazed… well not really … since Ethiopia has less than 200 infections a handful of deaths — and they have allowed tens of thousands of chinese travellers in …
And since there were loads of MSM stories on how they’d be overrun because they let the Chinese in … then the MSM would jump at the opp to report on an apocalypse there… if there was one
which begs the question: how much longer can this charade go on?
Hahaha … and people are going to fly when they see this sort of thing????
https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1200×800/public/d8/images/methode/2020/05/08/48888232-90d0-11ea-a674-527cfdef49ee_image_hires_143425.jpg?itok=8Xf1oMeE&v=1588919674
I am also amazed that China is not overrun with cases. Japan and Taiwan as well.
The story plays out strangely.
Unless.. Wuhan was never really overrun either …. and it was all just exaggerated/?
It is easy to create mass panic in a city if you f ak e a pandemic… you really only need one hospital to be seen as overflowing (see Elmherst NYC)… and a real flu of course — something that happens annually in most place.
Humans are prone to panic if you incite them because they are SDR
see CBS fa ke queues….
https://www.breitbart.com/health/2020/05/07/dr-deborah-birx-high-risk-coronavirus-testing-showing-high-levels-asymptomatic-spread/
“White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said at the White House on Tuesday that recent sentinel surveillance coronavirus testing in high-risk areas showed remarkably high levels of the asymptomatic spread of the virus.”
high levels of asymptomatic spread… which means:
reopen everything everywhere… and now…
no good reason not to…
https://www.breitbart.com/health/2020/05/06/cdc-data-average-age-of-those-who-have-died-from-covid-19-in-u-s-75/
“The average age of Americans who died from COVID-19 between February 1 and May 2 is 75, according to an analysis of a provisional data set published by the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) on Wednesday.”
just the same old news…
lots of Grandma’s and Grandpa’s dying sooner rather than later…
reopen everything everywhere… and now…
Not going to happen. They will reopen a little in a few places to give people hope… but they’ll slam that door shut.
They are not interested in returning to pre covid — why would they when all that would bring is uncontrolled collapse
Yes this is very much a controlled slow motion demolition in progress. And as such you need people to stand well back. Give them whatever excuse you need to. And at the same time print yourself trillions of dollars of slush money. Not that it will make any difference when all the dust settles.
At the end of the day the purpose of the CDP is not only to provide humans with a dignified exit… (avoiding most of the violence and cannibalism)…. it is also to extend BAU for as long as possible…
It’s not a sinister plan….
If not for the CDP we’d have already torn each others faces off and by now we’d be settling in to the radiation phase ….
The el de rs are being too kind to us…. do we deserve a dignified exit after the sinfully behaviours we have engaged in for thousands of years?????
Enjoy the short time we have been granted by way of the el de rs CDP….
Effectively we are here — but the normies are unaware of it :
https://static.timesofisrael.com/jewishndev/uploads/2016/11/PETAkosherslaughterexpose.jpg
Much better than being here, no?
http://i.mol.im/i/pix/2016/06/16/11/3558D73D00000578-0-image-a-31_1466074488238.jpg
I dont see how terrible violence can be avoided, at least in a first stage.
The elders would be much more gentle if they fentanylized the water system. Three full glasses of water and a peaceful sleep.That would be a nobel peace prize kind of gesture!
Passing around germs seems to be nature’s way of cutting back population without huge violence. We now are fighting this approach, at high cost with little success.
See that SWAT team video on NY post? Most people will scurry back under their beds the minute something like that arrives on the scene and says ‘go back inside’
And that’s not even the real deal — that’s just some cowboy cops messing around with their new toy…
Wait till you see the serious cats pull up … Apache helicopters — M50 turret mounted machine guns… drones …
People will either go back inside — or they will be dead. Real fast.
Easy to stop violence if you are willing to kill — and also if you have convinced the majority that breaking quarantine is murder.
It’s kinda like how people wonder how it is possible to keep a secret when so many people know… and I say — how many people have worked for the NSA? How many of them exposed that the NSA is spying on everyone?
Yea, that’s why I said “in a first stage”. If a modern state is willing to do anything to empty the streets, it can do it easily. A machine gun is enough to drive 100 protesters away.
We are no longer in 1789, when a mob armed with spikes could overthrow governments and regimes.
But in a first phase, with hunger and dispair spreading i believe the masses will try to loot shops and hang the ones they perceive as “the culprits” – the rich and the politicians – since humankind always need scapegoats, and even more so in a time like this, when people believe they have natural rights, and tend to regard politicians as the ones to be held accountable in times of crisis.
But in poor and high populated countries, where the state have just substandard firepower, i expect mobs will begot chaos, until the physical strenght is lost to hunger and people drop exhausted and eventually dies, wich could be very quick, depending on the availability of drink water. Point is, without food energy, any riot must dwindle in a matter of days/weeks.
I believe, like Gail, that the way and pace of the collapse process can vary from country to country, from region to region, at least in the medium term (2 years?), but ultimately the catastrophic collapse is irreversible everywhere, and the spent fuel ponds ensures that the end result will be the same in the entire planet. Could it be that there are pockets of survivors in the southern hemisphere? I doubt it. Anyway, i don’t care for the survival of homo sapiens. We had our run, accomplished inummerable great things, commited the most horrendous and stupid crimes ever. Time to go. For the species, and for every one of us. Any sane person knows we all live on borrowed time now, as in a terminal cancer case (only the cancer is us),
I am obviously assuming that it will be impossible to guarantee the safety of nuclear power plants in a situation of generalized hunger and disease. But maybe i’m wrong and the PTB can secure electricity and manpower to mind the nuclear power plants? What can we really know?
https://apnews.com/23f7a2d9645602bee1c3dc7c0c952191
hydroxychloroquine just doesn’t work for C19 cases…
It does in Spain https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202005.0057/v1
Let me guess…
They used hydroxy on its own without the zinc combo?
That’s been the case in “studies” that wanted to “debunk” the use of hydroxy.
Even so… intravenous vitamin c and vitamin d3 treatments have shown even better results. Every individual case is unique and have their own set of symptoms and possible treatment protocols and results.
It’s very deceptive to say hydroxy doesn’t work on its own because it’s only there to open up the cells to zinc treatment.
Your immune system handles all of this perfectly well. Some people are immunocompromised so they may need a little help. Some people are beyond help. They were on their last legs anyway.
There really is no problem here.
The lock down… now that’s another matter.
Given the author’s track record, I would not believe a word of this story. By the way, this treatment was used against other ailments for 70 years without any bad side effects being observed – until Trump recommended it. Science for hire strikes again.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/may/7/first-us-space-force-commercial-released-maybe-you/
“The U.S. military has released its first commercial for the Space Force to attract what will be its first recruits as the service evolves into the military’s newest branch.
Its message to new recruits: “Maybe your purpose on this planet isn’t on this planet.”…”
bizzzarrre…
Perhaps I will volunteer. I wonder what the age limit is?
America is consumed by a moral sickness worse than the Coronvirus or the Black Plague, a pandemic of self-centered greed and refusal to do one’s duty of helping others in need. This wretched excuse for a nation is plunging into the shadows beyond the pale into the coldest lower depths of Dante’s hell. The American Century is over, gone, dead, and from now it’s dog eat mangy dog, in a collapse of civilization. The shame of this grim spectacle will hang like a damp bleary sickening fog over pitiful generations yet unborn. And so we have reached the end of the dream, with the loss of hope and faith.
The United States will not fail with folded arms saying I’m sorry. We are leaving, Bye bye.
Very poetic!
Lets just imagine for a minute that the american empire could successfully retrocede back to within their own borders more or less surrounded by a uuuge big beautiful… fence.
Close all the foreign forward operating bases, bring all the troops home, defend the homeland and all that malarky.
Carry out a symbolic version of scorched earth on china and bring back all the manufacturing within american borders or extending into mexico since you’ll now have a very strong not in my back yard effect because americans have gotten used to their record breaking clean air.
But they also want the jobs so you can’t have it both ways.
So far so good.
Do a deal or invade and sequester Venezuela for some of the cheapest oil around until most vehicles switch to electric drive – I know I know but bear with me – whilst building out as many new type nuclear power stations as required including fast breeders to start eating up some of that naughty spent fuel hanging around in the ponds.
Beyond that you would have to secure every single supply chain connected to your reducto absurdo novel situation.
And Space Fooorce!! Don’t forget Spaaace Foooorce!
Even if the United States does seem to have closer to enough resources per capita for its population, changing the whole structure to start doing more mining and manufacturing here would be virtually impossible.
And then there are the spice mines
https://www.factor-tech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/asteroid-mining-main.jpg
Johnson Douses Hopes of Freedom as U.K. Infection Rate Rises
Rules may not change significantly until June, person says
Johnson says easing will only proceed ‘with maximum caution’
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-07/johnson-s-office-plays-down-extent-of-u-k-lockdown-relaxation?srnd=premium-europe
http://terrillthompson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/tonytiger.png
Now let’s have Spain and Italy announce more infections and lock down really really hard!
Fighting the virus is a battle we can use a lot of resources on, but it is doubtful we can win before we collapse the economy.
Brazil risks ‘economic collapse’ over virus lockdown: minister
https://news.yahoo.com/brazil-risks-economic-collapse-over-virus-lockdown-minister-233253172.html
“But there is a problem that’s worrying us more and more… and that’s the issue of jobs, of the stalled economy,” Bolsonaro added.
“Fighting the virus shouldn’t do more damage than the virus itself.”
yes, so reopen everywhere… now…
“More cases are starting to come in as we observe Argentina moving toward a default on $323 billion worth of its debt toward the end of May.
“The concern is that defaults or bankruptcies will begin to accumulate into a plethora of unhappy situations, highlighting the fact that the current concern should be solvency, not just liquidity.
“The question then becomes, do central banks and governments really have the means to fight a cumulative collapse in the debt markets?”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4344024-world-debt-crisis-be-sure-to-add-argentina
Promises and more promises to bail out businesses and industries that are no longer economic. This doesn’t really work.
In fact, the article says,
“Brazil could face “economic collapse” in a month’s time due to stay-at-home measures to stem the coronavirus outbreak, with food shortages and “social disorder,” Economy Minister Paulo Guedes warned Thursday.”
I think that there are two interesting things in this sentence:
(1) “in a month’s time” – Wow! Not a general, something might happen statement!
(2) The many problems are “due to stay-at-home measures to stem the coronavirus outbreak.” They are not due to coronavirus. They are due to the measures taken to stem the outbreak!
I would be surprised if BAU was gone by June….
The coal mining in Poland suffers under coronavirus spread.
https://www.miningfrontier.com/press-releases/poland-temporarily-shuts-down-mines-as-covid-19-spreads/
It sounds like the mine was in deep trouble before the virus hit:
Just talked to a normie friend who favours lockdown. When I said that to save 100s but sacrifice the next generation for this 100s is not worth it. He countered by saying that what is the 100s are your parents. I say I don’t mind and then conversation ends.
Broadly, normies are those who have the money and could not see that a large portion of the people are not rich. For example a friend of mine. He was from a poor family and his mother worked hard to send him to college/university. He worked hard, saved and helped the entire family with his salary. He is suppose to be the saviour of the family and forever indebted to the mother who put him through college. If he is out of job, what else can he do? Is he the lazy one? No. He is the rising star and the family needs him. He is still young and has not build up his career yet. He does not have the money yet. Is it fair to him ? No.
Can the normies see that? I doubt it. They only see it from their perspective and their comfortable perch on the top.
Sad….
thanks, C T G…
“Broadly, normies are those who have the money and could not see that a large portion of the people are not rich.”
and this is the political class as well…
all lockdowns should be ended now, even if it means many Grandma’s and Grandpa’s kick the bucket sooner rather than later…
the lockdowns will end someday, but it’s going way too slow right now…
Not that it matters because that ship has sailed…
But if there was a vote on this — I’d vote to continue the lockdowns —- they are very useful in extincting the humans.
Isn’t it amusing — humans demanding more lockdowns — asking to be starved 🙂
https://www.aboutmanchester.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TELEMMGLPICT000229696389-696×442.jpeg
No surprise.
In the UK they still assume that their jobs will be there for them when lock-downs end; and many will have had no experience of the hopeless misery of unemployment, or ever have been hungry or cold.
And propaganda has saturated their minds over the last month and a half with the idea that lock-downs are the right thing to do, saving lives.
If you operate off of the understanding that most people are SDR … you will never be disappointed.
In fact… if you get a fleck of intelligence out of them once a year… it will restore your belief that humans are not quite donkeys.
Every day that goes by as I observe humans it reinforces my belief in SDR… It’s not like it’s an aberration I am witnessing … you know — like sometimes you encounter an occasional SDR person… it’s pretty much across the board… finding one that is even slightly switched on is very very difficult….
And even if you are dealing with a highly educated intelligent person do not make the mistake of assuming they are not SDR… intelligence and education have nothing to do with it…
It’s so wide spread that I often wonder if there is something wrong with me rather than them?
Is it any wonder that one might have a God-complex when one is amongst billions of lesser beings.
Let’s not forget — Colonel Kurtz was like a god amongst the savages.
At best I’ve only heard older richer people express boredom and frustration at this interruption to their normal activities -mostly expensive holidays – and no concern for the plight of wage earners.
Everyone assumes things can be restarted. Most are unaware that the world was already tipping into recession in 2019.
The general public – God bless them – is deaf dumb and blind and love being led by the nose. It makes them feel all warm inside – like when someone does something for you.
Each one is in a bubble and like venn diagrams the individual bubbles can become conjoined twins at times sometimes overlapping millions of bubbles around a common cause as with the current crisis.
The individuals feel comfortable when everyone else is on the same page. Don’t dare anyone rock the bubble boat or they will be severely attacked and thrown overboard.
Let me give an example… a few years ago I decided to ostracise myself from all social media platforms… and I mean ALL. The response from others was like a severe form of henpecking. How could I possibly not want to see more pics of their latest lunch or selfie? Was I a monster?
Later my smartphone got hacked and I reset the whole darned thing and only kept text messages for logging in etc. No skin off my nose. And I didn’t need a new one. I was done. But again… the response lasted a whole year, badgering to get a new better phone even though the others didn’t have one themselves! They would even pay for it. They just couldn’t bare the idea that people wouldn’t be able to send me their whatsapps etc.
Group pressure is a terrible thing.
I am assuming it will be used (enforced) even more as we progress towards whatever comes next.
I recall years ago setting up a FB account … I was going to use it as an album and drop trip photos there… I had no idea how it worked thinking it was basically like making a personal website…
Then I started getting people (I knew most of them)…. liking etc… or whatever people do on FB… and I was thinking – wow — how do they even know I have a website?
Then someone informed me of how it works…. and I thought – wow — this is not good — what do all these people think about me (bucket listing) travelling around the world continuously burning through cash … while they get their 3 weeks holiday per year….
I quickly deleted the whole lot before it got out of hand. I ran into an ex girlfriend who was (stalking) following my FB account in the airport and she was distraught that I had dumped her (again) on FB…. I said oh no I just deleted the entire mess. She felt so much better…
I do see how social media could be beneficial for staying in touch with people — I’ve met some interesting people over the years but have no contact with them. Unfortunately people use social media as a way to demonstrate how awesome they think they are….
I do peek at M Fast’s page from time to time (especially when some hot friend has posted and I cannot resist asking ‘who is that!!!!’ – she hates when I do that)….. and one time I noticed a peripheral friend had posted a photo of himself leaning against his airplane…. look at me – I have an airplane! — isn’t (my) life awesome!!!
M Fast does not use FB much these days… but some of her friends wonder if we are on the outs because I am never in any photos that she posts… that is because she is not allowed to post photos of FE on FB….
It all just gets so overwhelming in the end
I mean… I was even on Pinterest for farks sake!
And then they call you paranoid… because you read the reports on how social media was set up using high level psychological programming that taps into animalistic strutting displays
social media manager is a high paid job in NYC
says it all really
The number one issue people tend to see is, “How this might directly affect me.” I might die. Or my parent or grandparent might die. Or I might have a big hospital bill, or be laid off work because of this virus. All of these are terrible outcomes
If a person is rich enough, the issue of hospital bills and the possibility of being laid off of work disappear in importance. These folks are often older, as well. So then the big issue becomes, “What might happen to me?”
no big hospital bills in spain
free healthcare for all (paid by someone else)
unless you go private
i really don’t understand the american system at all
why not provide very basic essential health care at one level govt funded and then have a pay as you go level above that for those who want it?
wouldn’t that make life a whole lot easier?
The current system revolves around making money for physicians, hospitals, and those making drugs and vaccines. The system doesn’t pay much attention to what is good for the patient. The US has the worst health care outcomes among advanced economies, in spite of spending a whole lot more. The food system is structured similarly, adding to poor health outcomes. Cheap health care solutions, like vitamin and mineral supplements, are not much considered.
This is one of many charts showing the bad results.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/figure-1-6-female-life-expectancy-at-birth.png
Once people start living in that paradigm of elite vs common, evil vs good, and indulging in the sanctimonious judgment that it entails its hard to get them to think another way. This paradigm involves a lot of emotions and indulgence. Its hard to take responsibility for being a human. You can break through but it takes a lot of time and effort. Political lines have been drawn and emotions invoked in this event. Involving emotions and condemnation locks people in to a course of action. Most people are unwilling to admit they were wrong intellectually. If they have condemned a point of view emotionally its very very hard to consider that point of view. This habit has rendered our society unable to react to events appropriately.
Its too late. Ten seconds to midnight. Get ready for your neighbor to try to put your head on a pike.
you mean like this…
Week 7 of the Collapse of the U.S. Labor Market
“Insured unemployment rate” spikes to 15.5%, is already over 20% in some states, 25% in Vermont.
State unemployment offices have processed a gut-wrenching 33.48 million initial claims for unemployment insurance over the seven reporting weeks since mid-March. In the week ended May 2, state unemployment offices have processed 3.169 million unemployment claims, seasonally adjusted, according to the US Department of Labor this morning.
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/05/07/week-7-of-the-collapse-of-the-u-s-labor-market/
https://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/US-unemployment-claims-2020-05-07-detail-.png
the average extended family has probably seen a loss of one third or so of its working adults…
the USA labor participation rate was about 63% before March, and now it must be down to somewhere around 40%…
this would not break the economic system, though the level of prosperity in the average family will be plunging…
if these 3+ million weekly numbers continue into summer, it could be game over…
or not…
The game is for all intents and purposes – OVER.
It was over pre-covid. The CBs have just extended the game a little longer.
This is the part where you wait to starve. The normies do not understand this…. they do not understand much of anything…
Have a biscuit normies
https://equity.guru/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/dogtreats.gif
Ethiopia records 25 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, 187 in total
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-05/07/c_139038794.htm
Oh wow!!! Ethiopia is OVERWHELMED!!!!
Jeez…. if they would have stopped the China flights they’d not be in this horrible crisis!!
As far as I can tell they never stopped flights from China… checking Ethiopian Air and I can book Wuhan Addis….
https://qz.com/africa/1795562/ethiopians-slam-their-government-for-not-stopping-china-flights/
What’s going on here normies? What’s your explanation?
the Abnormies seem to be misunderstanding some of the causes and effects of this pandemic…
no one claims that this pandemic will be equally bad everywhere all at once…
We were told the third world was going to be overwhelmed by wuhan…. because they have such poor medical facilities… so where are all the dead bodies??? There ain’t.
Oh and btw – did anyone see this — CBS apparently paid people to make a queue at a hospital to make it look like it was overwhelmed… when caught they blamed the hospital — the hospital CEO said she did not organize the f ake patients….
So where is the MSM — pretty big story we have here… massive actually….
Surely CBS could have found a hospital with lots of wuhans in the queue… apparently NY is overwhelmed… CBS has people in NYC…
Now why would they fa ke a queue????
Could it be … that … the MSM is massively exaggerating the story — it’s kinda hard to fa ke stuff all over the world … so they have decided to focus on NYC …
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/wow-cbs-news-exposed-for-using-fake-patients-for-a-report-fabricating-coronavirus-pandemic/
https://sd.keepcalms.com/i/keep-calm-and-use-common-sense.png
Hahaha … tedros must have rang them and said do this…. emergency? Chinese flights have been arriving non stop and continue to arrive in Ethiopia — so if there is no emergency yet – there will NOT be one.
Well a f ake on. Someone send CBS there asap!!!
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/ethiopia-declares-state-emergency-fight-covid-19-200408142519485.html
Home to almost 110 million people, Ethiopia has recorded 55 coronavirus cases and two deaths to date.
And even those prolly tripped and banged their head.
Mark Cuban: I Hired a Team of Secret Shoppers to Find Out How Businesses Were Opening in Dallas. It’s Not Good.
https://blogmaverick.com/2020/05/07/i-hired-a-team-of-secret-shoppers-to-find-out-how-businesses-were-opening-in-dallas-its-not-good/
“Overview:
1)Re-opening Rate: Only 36% of businesses chose to open on the opening weekend. Media coverage, showcasing owner sentiment and infection statistics, paint a picture of a large degree of latent fear in the marketplace.”
in other words, we have entered the Greater Depression…
(unwarranted) fear has caused massive economic damage…
does the word “fear” go to moderation?
Fear? Why would anyone be fearful????
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ciAl8Bynjs
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/z-Gn_vTyshE/maxresdefault.jpg
“Overview:
1)Re-opening Rate: Only 36% of businesses chose to open on the opening weekend. Mediaa coverage, showcasing owner sentiment and infection statistics, paint a picture of a large degree of laytent feare in the marketplace.”
in other words, we have entered the Greater Depression…
(unwarrranted) feare has caused masssive economic dammage…
Besides fear, there is also the desire of “good” citizens to do what is best for everyone. They have been told to stay inside and spend their time sanitizing surfaces and washing their hands. It is hard to “turn off” that directive. We might accidentally harm the 80+ year olds.
this subject of demand destruction has been appearing more frequently this week…
the general public still has no idea of the dire consequences of this demand destruction, but give it a few more weeks or months…
If demand destruction was allowed — there’d be nothing left.
Of course they are blaming the clinic hahaha
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/06/cbs-news-edits-testing-story-after-project-veritas-exposes-clinics-line-stuffing-ploy/
PR 101 – Deny. Deny. DENY.
Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic.
1 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Falmouth, Massachusetts
2 Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education, Ensenada, BC
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1.full.pdf
Too much maths for me, but you can see the graph “active cases” in Germany, quite impressive. I don’t have a clue how they do that
Here
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/
it’s obvious that Germany has “flattened the curve”, but as has been discussed here quite often, that only lengthens the curve…
when scientists have a few more months of data, we should begin seeing the deaths “saved” in the early months will be negated by the deaths in the “long tail” on these graphs…
somehow, I don’t think TPTB wanted a rallying cry of “lengthen the curve”, but that is what is coming…
Lengthen The Curve!
Lengthen The Curve!
Fatten.
It’s very possible. Nevertheless, still no extra deaths in Germany, and France’s are now below historical average
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps?fbclid=IwAR1p9EKIU6mtmWLx9wDY4YsWR_5Bid23adI8BXlZgb7RlwuP-yOoCLPvmeM
The number of new coronavirus cases in Germany rose the most in a week, just days after the government declared the first phase of the pandemic to be over.
There were 1,268 additional infections in the 24 hours through Friday morning, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That is the third day of rising cases and brings the total number to 169,430.
Germany is preparing to open restaurants, hotels and all shops as well as to restart professional soccer games as Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday declared some progress in fighting the virus, which so far has caused 7,392 deaths in the country after 117 new fatalities were reported on Friday.
European leaders are feeling the pressure to accelerate a return to normality and are trying to walk a fine line between reactivating the economy and avoiding a renewed outbreak. France on Thursday joined Germany, Italy and the Netherlands in easing restrictions as Europe’s economic pain from the fallout of the coronavirus intensifies.
Restrictions will be reinstated if an area records more than 50 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants in a week.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-08/germany-s-new-coronavirus-cases-rise-the-most-in-a-week
How do they not all end up with loads of new covids… this exposes the id iocy of lockdowns.
I can do the math, and in my opinion both you and the paper are quite correct. There is no action that will reduce the total number of infections; actions that reduce the R* simply lengthen the time it takes to reach that final number. The real scientists are aware of that, which is why they confected the excuse that the lockdown was to prevent the health service from being “overwhelmed”. As is now painfully obvious, it was nowhere near being overwhelmed, not least because the main at-risk cohort – old people – were mostly in group homes or care facilities where they could silently be left to die. So, at a terrible and ever increasing cost, we have bought the general population just four or six weeks of health.
Robert, yes exactly.
How can anyone trust data and graphs from anyone ever again?
We’ve been lied to so many times about so many things you’d be better off trusting your own instincts.
Garbage in. Garbage out.
Better off, perhaps. But the problem is we can’t always trust our instincts either. They can fail us badly.
All we can do is weigh up the various pieces of evidence to see how they fit together. The truth is consistent.whereas lies always lead to contradictions somewhere down the road.
Thanks for finding the paper. The abstract says
That paper was passed to me by an epidemiologist who was asked to evaluate the findings.
Lockdown-inspired suicides on course to DWARF coronavirus deaths in Australia & in time, even in US – studies
https://www.rt.com/news/488070-australia-us-coronavirus-suicide-spike/
This article references the following Psychology Today article: Will COVID-19 Make the Suicide Crisis Worse?
Mass unemployment may bring about historically high suicide rates. Posted Mar 22, 2020
Compared to all of the COVID-19 deaths, 6,000 extra suicide deaths isn’t much. Based on this, I think the RT article is overstated, at least related to the US. Australia has had so few deaths that the increase in suicides might be significant.
But I don’t think the calculation that was done is half-way close to right, based on the unemployment situation we are seeing now. (The article is from March 22.) The current US unemployment rate is 20% and clearly trending higher, say 30%. At 20%, the unemployment rate is 16 points higher than the prior unemployment rate of 4%. So this would imply a 16 x 0.78 = 12.48 increase in the 14.8 suicide rate, which would be 27.3 per 100,000. At 30%, the increase would be 26 x .78 = 20.28. Adding this to the prior suicide rate of 14.8 would imply a suicide rate of 35.1 per 100,000. Assuming a population of 330 million, we might be talking about suicides of 90 thousand to 116 thousand. If the prior suicide level was 48,000, this would be an increase in suicides of 42,000 to 66,000.
Even with this result, it would be hard to say that suicide deaths can be expected to dwarf COVID-19 deaths. Suicide deaths could certainly become a big part of the excess deaths we seem to be seeing, as we have lockdowns. It would be something researchers might consider.
There are NO covid deaths! People die with covid NOT because of covid. I can’t believe anyone still uses the official numbers to make a case. It’s time to wake up and realise that we’ve been fooled with tests that don’t work and random symptoms being lumped together to inflate the numbers. Add to that the incentives that hospital admin have recieved to make all deaths covid related.
I can’t wait for the perps involved to be publicly shamed and punished for what they have unleashed on so many innocent minds.
I am extremely skeptical of a lot of things about the narrative we are told about this event. The CDC excess death statistic show people are dieing from something. It would be hard to forge death certificates. I would guess it is from a virus called covid 19. Perhaps the whole thing is a fabrication. Shis research and publication of creating corona virus that had made the “jump” to humans. If everything is a lie we have no way to discover facts. Perhaps there are 10x as many deaths. Perhaps no one dies ever. I am suspicious when fear is used as a tool but I believe there is a virus and it is killing elderly with comorbidity.
The real issue is whether we want to take actions that work against feeding ourselves and our children. Everything else is just discussion.
more people die from malaria or diahrea
1 million every year from car accidents
500 thousand from flu
9 million from hunger
9 million from tobacco
are you running around in a tizzy because of that?
why not?
because you weren’t told to
it’s amazing what people will do because someone they’ve never met tells them to do it
I found a reference saying that around 9 million die from hunger and hunger-related diseases each year.
https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year
https://www.creditdonkey.com/world-hunger-statistics.html
At one point, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations appears to have been publishing numbers to that effect, but now they just talk about “food insecurity.”
Oh … it’s because wuhan is contagious… or so I am told by normies if I mention the above…
And I thought it was because it was lethal…. (all flu is contagious)
I think my timeline for collapse is the same as Marco, police stop being very effective in August, total collapse December.
I think the collapse is orchestrated and has probably been in the works for years. In a way I appreciate that they didn’t pull the plug till now. The economy wouldn’t have gone on much longer anyway, and I can hardly blame them for trying at least to make something work for a few of the richest and most powerful. I would have done the same. I think they are misguided though. They will not be buying themselves much time. I agree with Fast Eddy that nuclear fallout will get them. I have for years thought of the nuclear fallout from 450 generating facilities and I think 250 laboratories as a kind of final page in our own species history. We were never destined to be a long lived species. Animals, especially mammals rarely are. We come and go in a relative flash compared to say alligators, who are mostly unchanged in 100 million years.
I don’t take delight in thinking of our demise, but, our extinction is the only sure way to end human suffering once and for all. Somehow that gives me a little solace.
BTW, I did get a dog, medium sized mongrel from the humane society. I named it Pica for obvious dietary reasons. I was hoping it would bark at intruders, but so far have yet to hear it make a sound, although, it has been very busy chewing. Maybe a dog that doesn’t bark is not a bad thing in the interim. It’s a sweet animal and a pleasant diversion.
Congratulations on your pup!
Suffering can not be ended. Think about all the millions of animals whose lives are cut short every day, to provide energy for something else. The universe is a bloody killer.
I would say humans are directly responsible for the lion’s share of animal suffering.
Billions of creatures are being fed on every day. Humans are just part of it.
LTP was talking about human suffering and i believe he is mostly right.
The other animals don’t suffer like us. Because of our oversized brain, humans are also champions on suffering.
All sentient creatures suffer. To live is to suffer. Humans have the unenviable capacity to anticiapte it.
Anticipation is the word, and the reason we are champions on suffering. So much suffering can only mean our species is fundamentally maladaptive. Definitely, there’s something wrong with us.
The other animals are great and fine. Love them all (except centipes and rats)
Read “Rat” by Andrzej Zaniewski and you might change your mind on rats. It’s the most moving book I’ve ever read, especially the ending.
Thanks for the tip. I’ m done with literature (read too much of that), but I can certainly make an exception for a polish author, since some of my favorite writers are polish (Z. Herbert, Szymborska, T. Rozewicz, etc. )
Check this guy out – he’s written some of the most outstanding non-fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Kapu%C5%9Bci%C5%84ski
Shah of Shahs is pure genius … all his books are
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59661.Shah_of_Shahs
FE, thanks, I’m a already a big fan of Kapuscinsky, read all his books. My favourites; “Sha of shas”, “The shadow of the sun” and “the Emperor”.
i love rats and i don’t step on centipedes any more
but mosquitos and blood sucking flies…
Dogs are excellent. Never cared much for cats…
4000 fuel ponds is the issue not so much the reactors…
I have a book series coming out soon… in dribs and drabs. It’s called The Ponds!
A trucker knows what’s coming and struggles to survive as everything falls apart.
Something to read under the disco ball with your last sip of whiskey.
I’ve made it my final challenge to release as much reading material as I can before the lights go out!
Anyone else have ridiculous challenges in mind as industrial civ shuts down all around them?
I’ve got a short story… it involves a doomie prepper …. the SHTF… he’s thinking he’s got it made up there in his cabin with his garden and pre-cut firewood and piles of canned food for the tough times…. fortunately no bad guys found him so he’s sitting perty…
Then suddenly his hair starts to fall out — then he starts vomiting uncontrollably … his skin goes patchy and starts sloughing off….
Then he dies.
The End.
I have a collection of short stories… there’s the one where the bad guys discover our main character Doomie … enslave him … enjoy his wife and dotters… then one day he gets his revenge when the bad guys hair falls out… of course his does too .. and his dotters….
My short stories all have a common theme…
https://antinuclear.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/pool-spent-nuclear-fuel-18-canada.jpg
Not bad! You get the idea!
I really have to wonder how people like yourself get around to this way of thinking. There is some suffering in the world but in general people tend to enjoy being alive – even with all the ups and downs. Unless you are clinically depressed, most problems can be overcome.
So even in the face of great adversity I cannot fathom why people here are so irredemably negative. Why do you hate humans so much? To me it all adds up to self hate which is a psychological issue.
A lion doesn’t give a crap about the temporary suffering of the antelope he is eating. We tend to slaughter animals for food in the least painful way possible. We take our pets to the vet because we can’t bear to see them suffer.
I think on the whole we’ve done exceptionally well. There are times when things get out of hand and mass deaths have occured with great suffering usually at the hands of some psychopathic rabble rouser but it’s not typical by any means.
Even if life for humans was indeed winding down I would accept my fate graciously and know that it is all part of the grand scheme – the self organising reality that we share – but I wouldn’t go out without a fight… and fight I shall to my very last breath.
I’ll take that question:
1. We inflict gruesome torture on animals (I recall being in Yemen and watching a camel go round and round yoked to a stone that was crushing grain … it’s entire life was spent in a room going round and round…)
2. We inflict gruesome torture on other humans. We often do this for pleasure.
3. We are petty SDR beasts (see Justin Bieber)
4. We destroy our Mother
5. Our legacy (when we soon depart) will be 4000+ spent fuel ponds that will spew for thousands of years. Animals have no idea how to manage spent fuel.
Would the planet be a better place if we had never existed?
in the grand scheme of things the planet won’t even remember that we were here
and there won’t be any life whatsoever after a certain period – maybe some frozen bacteria and viruses in the darkest recesses
any local radiation will have to compete with solar and cosmic radiation as the atmosphere depletes
you see… you beg for extinction… and mother nature provides
be grateful
HOMO SAPIENS. The species that invented the crucifixion and St. Mathew Passion (BWV 244), disembowelment and belly dancing.
The most stupid animal, the most intelligent animal, homo sapiens was more or less doomed to die by his own hand. We are too big not to fail. But the act of supreme stupidity was nuclear energy, with which we condemned the extinction of a large part of the terrestrial fauna. Craig Dilworth said it in a sentence (and a wonderful book): too smart for our own good.
it’s as though someone deliberately set up 4000 time bombs knowing full well that society would collapse
and the engineers would leave their posts
now that’s a conspiracy i can get behind!
That’s actually a CT I would give a pass to. I went to a tech school you’d all be familiar with, and the often-autistic focused thinking which serves well in some cases can be very poor at thinking holistically in others. There really is a FAITH that technology will find a solution, somehow. There is no “problem” that they would accept as simply being beyond our capacity to “solve”.
A Ph.D. acquaintance who ran a university biology lab planned to sign up with one of those cryogenic places (just his head, for cost reasons). Not only was he convinced that someone would thaw him out and re-animate him (who would bother?), it never dawned on him that maybe people might just take his money up front and chuck his head out in the back forty to feed the hogs in the best of cases, or let it rot in the freezer after the electric had been turned off for non-payment, for some illegal sod in a haz-mat suit to have to then mop up. They really do not often think these things through.
Ya it’s not like if you froze your spouse’s head … you’d say hey can I just check in on his frozen head every couple of years…..
I bet these outfits have big dry ice special effects bills….
https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/180910-cryogenics-man-head-frozen-feature.jpg
The lab in Wuhan, where researchers “improved” a bat coronavirus to make it more transmissible, was funded by the US. Hard to believe covid didn’t came out of this place and that there is a shared responsibility. The US even put these guys to rule the country
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741
We have seen this information before, but I didn’t realize that Newsweek had run the story on April 28. This is the story about Fauci’s organization funding the research. It seems like a lot of people would start asking questions about why we are relying on Fauci for advice on anything.
Of course the CDC and US intelligence was involved… they were cooperating with all the Players to make this happen
When a Nobel Prize winning virologist says this is man-made (and gets labelled a CT…) … odds are .. it’s man made
Mutant strain of COVID emerged in Europe. Not yet peer reviewed, but may be correct:
http://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/ODN/HoustonChronicle/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=HHC%2F2020%2F05%2F06&entity=Ar00104&sk=C4B198E1&mode=text&fbclid=IwAR1qLJEyg2QrnCet_Dgp0XC81_Gw2cZulKqUNxoS2jIumF2oNspqchSCQR8
We saw that one before. I am skeptical of this particular paper, and so are quite a few other people. I would like to see more/better research on this subject.
OK, should wait until we see a peer reviewed publication. the paper does jive with what the Russian intel officer (retired) said about an Italian “introduction”.
mutant
Similar:
freak
freak of nature
deviant
oddity
monstrosity
monster
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1381211/images/o-CHILD-AFRAID-OF-THE-DARK-facebook.jpg
No matter what I do you won’t get it …. SDR.. tee hee
The reason the normies should know that this is fa ke news is because it includes the word MUTANT.
For those of us who are not SDorR…. we see that word and immediately the ding ding ding bell goes ding ding ding… and we know it’s a lie.
Fake Queues… fake renewables… fake mutations… what’s next?
Viruses mutate. So what?
The normies are so SDR that they would not to think to ask that question…
They just read Mutate – Mutant — in a headline … and they get more scared.
Does anyone want to ask FE what it’s like to exist in a world where inevitably every person he meets (outside of OFW) is SDR … 8 billion people and there are perhaps a hundred? Probably less actually … so what are the odds of coming across a non-Normie?
please forvive my ignorance but I haven’t figured out what SDR stands for yet
does it have something to do with being retaaaarded?
Psst. So damn…..
st …. du…. re…..
SDR… DSR…. SRD…..RDS….
Trump removes some Patriots and planes from KSA, threatens with more of this
“According to a report from Reuters last week, Trump told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in early April that unless the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries started cutting oil production, he would be powerless to stop lawmakers from passing legislation to withdraw US troops from the kingdom.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/remove-patriots-military-assets-saudi-arabia-200507183258484.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-remove-patriot-missile-protection-saudi-arabia-amid-oilpocalypse
Saudi Arabia needs the US protection, to ward off Iran and Israel.
As soon as the oil was gone, the US fleet was always going to sail away and leave the Saudis to sort out their own mess
We BE in. Different World…Goldman Sachs will show us why….
Goldman Sachs official says companies switching to Zoom instead of business travel could hit oil demand by up to 3 million barrels per day
Archie Mitchell
MarketWatch
The coronavirus pandemic will take a lasting chunk out of business travel and hit demand for oil as companies adapt to Zoom ZM, +5.48% and other video-conferencing tools, a Goldman Sachs GS, +3.05% official said Thursday.
“I think you’re going to lose a good chunk of the jet demand that would have been associated with business travel. Our base case is you lose somewhere around 2 to 3 million barrels per day,” said Jeff Currie, Goldman’s global head of commodities research, at a media briefing.
Global oil demand is expected to fall by 9.3 million barrels per day in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency
That should bode well for the Airline/Hotel Industry rebound. Those Business types always seemed to pay top fares and pretty much carry the low fare riff Raff seats. Yes, Sir, a V shape recovery…
So, the Federal Reserve seems to venture forth with negative interest rates….
So, a song a long for the Chairs at the Fed….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dJygTz0gB6g
Looks like Precious Metals are up, up today and wonder why?
Now, for some panic control….
BUSINESS NEWSMAY 7, 2020 / 3:40 PM / UPDATED 15 MINUTES AGO
Fed’s Barkin: Negative interest rates not suitable for United States
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – There is nothing to suggest that negative interest rates would be a suitable option for the United States, Richmond Federal Reserve president Thomas Barkin said on Thursday.
“I think negative interest rates have been tried in other places and I haven’t seen anything personally that makes me think they are worth a try here,” Barkin said in an interview with broadcaster CNBC, repeating a view he has consistently held.
Markets began pricing in a negative U.S. rate environment for the first time earlier on Thursday, even though Fed officials including Chairman Jerome Powell have said they do not see negative rates as appropriate in the United States.
Bark like a dog….because they will do whatever it takes to keep the BAU Show on stage.
I did not realize ExxonMobil was in this bad of shape until I read Steve St. Angelo’s latest article. And the article states that ExxonMobil was having problems before the lockdowns.
“THE END OF A U.S. OIL GIANT: ExxonMobil’s Days Are Numbered”
https://srsroccoreport.com/the-end-of-a-u-s-oil-giant-exxonmobils-days-are-numbered/
I think that Saudi Arabia is doing pretty much the same thing is Exxon Mobile. It is borrowing more, while it can, to live in a situation that clearly won’t work for the long term.
Saudi Arabia have a very hight eroei . Why debit. Too much population?
saudi appears to have a high EROEI, but that is an illusion, that they are unaware of.
Oil is taken away and burned elsewhere. That creates the actual ‘value’ of the oil. The real ‘Energy return’ happens elsewhere. Part of that value/energy return goes back to Saudi as cash or goods. The rest of the ‘value’ sustains ‘western civilisation’.
If the oil stayed on Saudi territory, their economy would collapse. Which explains their current problem. The price is dropping because oil use elsewhere is falling away. Just driving around in gold plated mercedes dissipates energy, unfortunately the majority seem to think it creates wealth. Building towers in the desert does the same thing
If the saudis can’t get rid of their oil and get other people to convert it into something useful, their infrastructure will become unsustainable—which is plain English, means they go back to being goat herders and camel traders.
Problem is, Saudi can support 1 m camel traders. It cannot support 29m oil traders if nobody wants their oil.
No doubt some Saudis have figured this out, but they are on the same treadmill as the rest of us. Thinking, in true Dickensian fashion, that ‘something is bound to turn up’
I am shocked I had never seen it from this point of view.
which is plain English, means they go back to being goat herders and camel traders.
Problem is, Saudi can support 1 m camel traders. It cannot support 29m oil traders if nobody wants their oil.
“My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel”
There is also the issue that Saudi Arabia needs to feed and find jobs for a fairly high population, without many other resources. Because of this, the government needs high taxes, in order provide subsidies for imported food and in order to provide projects for the many citizens to work on. In past years, the necessary selling price, in order for Saudi Arabia to be able to collect enough taxes on the oil that they exported, was around $100 per barrel. If the area had a reasonable climate and soil that was good for growing food, there would not the need to collect so much tax revenue on the oil.
The real issue is that world economy is a networked system. We have to have a system in which the price of oil is
(a) High enough for those extracting the oil to produce it, and at the same time
(b) Low enough for people around the world to afford goods and services made oil.
Right now the price is coming out too low, because there are too many very poor people in the world who cannot afford cars and other end products made with and using oil.
Thanks for this… I cut my alerts from Steve… not overly interested in PM updates…
This also supports CDP…. oil was pretty much done pre Covid already.
Thank you Fast Eddy….PLEASE DO NOT BUY ANY PM…you are 100% right, as always, just a lump of metal that is a waste of space, money and time.
Everyone reading this comment, PLEASE follow FE advice….😜👍
the norwegian government just made a plan public of the reopen society in stages in the following months. Maybee it would interest you,Gail, to read how Jørgen Randers sees the current situation. Google translate is necessary
https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/debatt/i/EWeK4j/hvor-lenge-vil-koronapandemien-og-tiltakene-vare-joergen-randers
US shelves detailed guide to reopening country
https://apnews.com/7a00d5fba3249e573d2ead4bd323a4d4
Smartphone data shows out-of-state visitors flocked to Georgia as restaurants and other businesses reopened.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/smartphone-data-shows-out-of-state-visitors-flocked-to-georgia-as-restaurants-and-other-businesses-reopened/2020/05/06/b1db0056-8faf-11ea-9e23-6914ee410a5f_story.html
Very interesting data. WE virus hunters need have that smart phone data to identify people putting the community at risk.
Sigh. A noble ambition, but I fear the true alternatives are (a) have a community at risk, or (b) have no community. Time to reread the Ars moriendi.
Great!
Virus hunters. NATION UNDER SIEGE.
Starring Fauci and Birx and Directed by the Bill And Melvin Gates Foundation!
Coronavirus Transmission Risk Via Sewage ‘Must Not be Neglected,’ Scientists Warn.
While response to COVID19 pandemic is focused primarily on preventing person-to-person transmission, the Coronavirus might also spread in wastewater.
https://thenewsspan.in/coronavirus-transmission-risk-by-sewage-should/
OOOOO MYYYYYY GOOOOODDDDDDD!!!
That is scary …. I’ve also read that when people take a dump the smell can also transmit covid (that is something I actually read).
I have wondered about that for a long time actually — I ran that by M Fast many times pre covid… hey M … you know how human crap is deadly if you ate it…. I wonder why when you breathe it in (let’s be clear when you breath that smell it’s tiny particles of sh it)…. you don’t get some sort of lung disease or other illness.
She said – good point — she has no idea why.
Well hey – now you can – so stay away from public toilets.
Czech study shows extremely low level of collective immunity to COVID 19 virus.
A government-commissioned collective immunity study aimed at establishing the level of Covid-19 infection within the population shows that the prevalence of the virus is in the order of “units per mille”. The result rules out the option of relying on “herd immunity” in the event of a second wave of the pandemic.
https://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/czech-study-shows-extremely-low-level-of-collective-immunity-to-covid-19-virus
If people were not locking down then we’d already have herd immunity.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/epidemiologist-coronavirus-could-be-exterminated-if-lockdowns-were-lifted/
I am not sure we already would, given how long it takes for the virus to travel to remote areas, but it would be a whole lot closer.
We’ll likely see rolling lockdowns until we develop a vaccine, although the chances of the latter happening any time soon, if ever, are a long shot. What this stop-starting will do to the physical economy is anyone’s guess. Certainly more businesses will fold or just throw in the towel. The government will have to prop things up with helicopter money straight to people’s bank accounts at that stage. The world of finance meanwhile will probably be hitting all-time highs, since this area can be easily manipulated, from now until collapse comes, from some physical shortage or irreparable break in the system.
It would take some time… but we’d not be locked down and collapsing.
But then that’s obviously the plan. CDP.
This would overload the health system and cause many deaths, not all CV-19 related.
Not in Bali. Not in Sweden. Not in Ethiopia… etc…
You mean overwhelm as in overwhelm with fake queues at hospitals?
I guess fake is better than those real videos on Film Your Hospital (no queues)
‘CBS This Morning’ Aired Faked COVID-19 Drive-Through Testing Site Line of Cars
https://www.projectveritas.com/news/cbs-news-this-morning-aired-faked-covid-19-drive-through-testing-site-line/
Normies will be making up all sorts of excuses for CBS…. because they are… normies!!! That’s what they do…. they were born like that.
That’s right up there with the renewables documentary hahaha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
Normies are so….. so …s… d… r…. SDR. Now if Normies are going to take offence at that new acronym (TM FE Enterprises)… then what does that suggest?????
If FE was an ‘influencer’ SDR would be trending now… Normies would be riffing on that … not realizing it’s meant to describe them…
https://media.giphy.com/media/fTWUcmYYazGyk/giphy.gif
Have you been having too much caffeine?
It Begins: For The First Time Ever, US Fed Funds Price “Fatal” Negative Interest Rate Starting Jan 2021
The whole world cannot have negative rates. It is abnormal like negative mass or negative age.
The consequences will be huge.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/it-begins-first-time-ever-market-prices-negative-rates-starting-january-2021
“The whole world cannot have negative rates”
Why not?
“If negative rates come to American shores, El-Erian told Yahoo Finance last week, “I’m going to be really worried because negative yields in the US, the world’s biggest financial market, will break things. The system is not built to operate with negative yields…”
“The US’s financial institutions are set up to only handle positive rates, El-Erian argued. Banks, retirement plans, and life insurers all depend on positive rates, he said. He criticized the European Central Bank for allowing negative rates to occur.
“The ECB “made that mistake and they can’t get out of it,” El-Erian said. “And the Fed has to be careful not to make the same mistake.””
https://www.ai-cio.com/news/us-negative-interest-rates-disaster-el-erian-warns/
Harry, this problem has been with us for thousands of years, and nobody has solved it. Traditional barter is fairly safe: exchange a chicken for a cocoanut. The transaction is simultaneous and symmetrical: no chicken means no cocoanut, and vice versa.
The problem arises when the transaction is extended over time: give me the cocoanut today, and I will give you a chicken tomorrow, Or a loan today, and I will repay it next year, Shylock, when my ship comes in. Or I pay insurance over 20 years, and you pay when I fall sick. Or I save over 40 years, and then collect a pension.
Clearly, the second player has a huge incentive to defect; and what is to prevent him? Over the millennia, many solutions have been proposed, and all of them have proven defective. The Knights Templar (again) had a very solid system, until the King of France decided to liquidate his debts by liquidating his creditors. A plan many in power have followed.
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be” said Polonius, but an economy cannot function without credit. And our current economy is based on the most insecure of all forms of credit: fiat debt. And we all know these debts cannot be repaid; like Ayn Rand’s looters, the great and good hope only that the scam will last for their lifetime. It is no accident that so many of our economic theorists and their enablers have no children.
if we lived in a society where everything that we possessed was what could be physically carried, then this mess could not arise.
we’ve brought this on ourselves, unwittingly (there is no plot or conspiracy) by deciding that we own the planet.
The ultimate outcome of that is infinite growth and expansion while living on a sphere, which is exactly what our leaders promise and what most of us vote for, even unknowingly.
What we actually vote for is a return to our state of non-possession. We are not going to enjoy that very much
This helps corroborate my intuitive take on buildings: Build them small, light and easily transportable by lifting with a fork lift and moving with a truck.
Take away all insurance. That should change things.
How would you build your house if you knew you couldn’t insure it for fire or damage?
Would you buy a new car if it couldn’t be insured?
I think we would a hell of a lot less.
El-Erian comments would seem to understate the problem with negative interests rates on U.S. Debt (and therefore savings accounts etc.) Synthesizing a bit from others: The U.S. dollar as the de facto reserve currency to facilitate the majority of global trade and financial settlements. Along with U.S. Deficit spending this creates dollars and credit and is part of Gail’s “pump” that pulls energy and material resources temporally (through time) and spatially (geographically) in the global economic system. The U.S. and the “west” benefit disproportionately as this system moves resources from the periphery of this system to its center(s).
Nominal or real negative interest rates on U.S. government debt are the end of this current trading and economic system? New currencies ahead and some kind of IMF SDRs? Or maybe a breakup of the global system into regional trading blocks and regional trading reserve currencies reflective of the requirement to spend less energy in transporting goods and services.
It feels like a BOOM moment for the U.S. dollar but I am out of my sandbox on this topic. Is there a John Maynard Keynes or Dexter White here who can explain the impact? (This system is a legacy of the system started with the Bretton Woods Agreement.)
The U.S. dollar is ~60% of all central bank foreign exchange reserves. ~ 90% of forex trading involves the U.S. dollar. ~40% of world’s debt in dollars.
I think the best analysis is by Rudyard Kipling, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”, published in 1919.
Basically it confirms that there is no more expectation to make a buck in the system anymore. That the bringing of demand forward by borrowing, with the expectation of reimbursing the loan with interest because of the expected growth in the future is over.
IC is no longer profitable (has not been for a while if you ask me!), and COVID-19 has all but uncovered that fact, and very fast at that…the Fat Lady has entered the building, and cue our friend Frank Zappa with a slight change to his famous quote:
““The illusion of Industrial Civilization (original Zappa quote was “The illusion of freedom”) will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater with the Grim Reaper waiting for all of you human lemmings…the whole 7.8B of you freaks of nature. (I added the last part 🙂 )”
-Frank Zappa
Nicely said.
That Michael Moore documentary pulled the curtain back a little….
The CB’s could still delay the crack up with infinite money printing and “asset” purchases – they’re definitely on their way. Negative interests, or not. Something physical may need to break for the system to finally collapse, I’m thinking.
Local banks will still pay interest. it might be .0000001% They wont drive people to cash. Negative interest rates are for the big boys as a policy tool. Now we can eliminate the $ out from US government deficit/debt interest. Could the deficit problem be solved with negative interest rates? Its high time the government gets something back out of the system!
Negative interest rates are not any more destructive than artificially keeping them at 1%. If you have money in the bank its losing buying power. It doesnt lose that much more at negative than 1 percent.
WE must have inflation. At any cost. The US dollar has been a example of destruction of buying power since 1913. This is no different. We need to move out of the trillion era to the quadrillion era. At any cost.
“Biblical” Wave Of Bankruptcies Is About To Flood The US
Rating agencies were complicit in giving bad company good ratings. Bow, when the tide turn, why don’t they just leave it as it is (at good rating) wince this will crash the entire financial system.
Is it because they are ignorant? Criminally complicit, sinister motives or just plain dumb?
This happened exactly the same in 2008.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/biblical-wave-bankruptcies-about-flood-us
Complicit? absolutely. Criminally complicit? Absolutely not. Were any of the robo signers convicted for the tens of thousands felony forgeries. Not one. No prosecution equals no crime. Moodys cant issue ratings that would bring down the system. If ratings go down then the instruments cant be used as collateral. Then the basis for other financial instruments goes poof. THAT might be considered criminal. Ratings have been a formality for a long time. THe real rating is fed backstop.
AAA rated MBS’s went to zero in 2008. Did ther ratings agencies get brought up on charges? Did a overhaul of the standards of ratings get done? No . of course not. When your changing the rules fast as you can you dont spank a helper.
How could you possibly “rate” any business as we go into a “depression” never seen in modern history?
Interesting.
Sometimes I would like the world to revert to what I can see around me in my own enviroment and nothing else. No more AAA rated MBS’s and whatnot.
But then I think of the consequences.
At times like this, I look for CONCRETE evidence that we have a future. People, I found it!
https://assets.londonist.com/uploads/2015/06/i638/hogflume.jpg
Yea, it’s a MIRACLE!
Anyone without a mask is obviously a dirty virus bearer. EXPOSING THEMSELVES IN PUBLIC! Shocking!
Masks collect all the bacteria and virus fragments that would normally be expelled and help the user rebreathe and reinfect themselves with said bacteria and viruses. Winning!
They also disrupt the normal flora in the mouth. Dentists offices have signs about gum disease being connected with heart disease. I wonder what the long term impact would be on heart disease.
Masks prevent herd immunity therefore are bad (unless you are KFC Big Gulper Diabetes Heart Disease riddled type)
e.g.
https://i1.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/jodie-sinclair-1.jpg
http://ergo-plus.com/wp-content/uploads/ergonomics-overweight-obesity.jpg
Another reason humans need to go … look at most of them …. disgusting looking things.
Its clear what needs to happen. Anyone with the virus needs to live in a virus colony or just go away. The pure chosen by god will form a new society free from the dirty virus bearers. This will not happen without diligence by the noble and vigilant virus contact tracers tracers.
Yes, the ill (uminati) are already building themselves airports on secret islands.
https://bay.com.mt/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/44358212_10214605600668437_8210906940763537408_o.jpg
All conspiracy theorists are dirty virus bearers! Death to the unclean!
Well everyone carries viruses – especially the vaccinated – so we’d all have to move to the colony. That would kind of defeat the point wouldn’t it?
Nothing that appears in the mass media is unscripted. It is all centrally co-ordinated. The big question is “why are they conspiring to destroy national economies?”
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/wow-cbs-news-exposed-for-using-fake-patients-for-a-report-fabricating-coronavirus-pandemic/
Nick Ross, who works at the Cherry Health facility where the fake news was shot, said he saw the CBS crew arrive and start planning the scene they needed to stage their biased report.
“Apparently the news crew wanted more people in the line because they knew it was scheduled,” Ross said.
Maria Hernandez-Vaquez, who handles professional registrations for the hospital, said to the insider that it was Cherry Health Director of Quality and Informatics Glenda Walker who turned the first responders into crisis actors.
“It’s just annoying cause we could have done other stuff,” a one registered nurse said on a hidden camera recorded by the Project Veritas insider.
“We knew they were coming. We had no clue that we’re going to have to, like, do fake patients,” the nurse added.
Because of the lack of patients, the first responders were coerced into lining up in their cars to make it look as if there was a long wait for COVID-19 patients to receive care. These are the type of promulgated photo ops that are being used to fuel the ongoing mass hysteria.
Sickeningly, they noted that the crisis actors were mixed in with real COVID-19 patients. To set up the phony scene for the cameras, they may have put first responders at risk, which could potentially exacerbate the public health emergency greatly while they are on the job.
“We pretended. There were a couple of real patients, which made it worse,” registered nurse Alison Mauro said on hidden camera.
Yes, it’s all scripted, as that’s how that kind of programme is made; but it’s a mistake to conclude hat everything is therefore false. Unfortunately, it completely undermines any trust. No trust, no society.
IIRC, News Corps in the US are owned by 6 large corporations. I don’t trust CNN, Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC. They are all agenda driven, so the bottom line for me is, I don’t trust any of them. I forgot where I read it but the American public also has a lot of distrust for News organizations which is why viewership is way down over the years. I have not watched TV news in over 15 yrs.
Can you actually believe anything Don Lemon over at CNN has to say? How about a street hustler, turned Congressman, Al Sharpton?
Here’s the original source…. https://www.projectveritas.com/news/cbs-news-this-morning-aired-faked-covid-19-drive-through-testing-site-line/
The normies will excuse this with ‘the MSM is always hyping stuff’
Let’s head the morrons off at the pass….. the MSM is not in the business of hyping something that will collapse their advertisers – their busisness – and the global economy.
And even if they were down with that — they’d get their heads smashed in by the government and big businesses that are being destroyed by their folly.
CDP. That is the only motive I can come up with
BTW – I called Elmerst (apocalypse now hospital) about a week after the big story in the NYT… and asked them about covid and they said ya it was really busy last week .. but it’s returned to normal for this time of year.
I am thinking… it was busy because they wanted it to be busy for the NYT story.
MSM ignoring this story… no kidding.
Fark society!!
Don’t be so trusting.
Demand empirical evidence for everything. Never trust experts. They lie. Constantly.
Unless you know how to isolate virus fragments under an electron microscope that you happen to own you don’t know shart.
Interestingly didn’t some guy get 3 months in jail for filming in a covid ward (that was empty)…
Yet CBS is allowed to do this — without repercussions????
Normies… yoo hooo normies…. what do you ‘think’
Talk about PERFECT timing..this guy takes the PRIZE!
Was the head of the stock exchange in HK during easypeazy FREE money investing
He sees the handwriting on the wall with a 2by4 aiming right for his forehead!
Charles Li says he will throw in the towel after more than a decade as chief executive of Hong Kong stock exchange
South China Morning Post
Enoch Yiu enoch.yiu@scmp.com
South China Morning PostMay 7, 2020
Charles Li, the longest-serving chief executive of a global financial marketplace, has thrown in the towel after more than a decade as chief executive of the Hong Kong stock exchange (HKEX), in a surprise announcement to let his contract lapse in October 2021.
The former oilfield worker, journalist and banker, also known as Li Xiaojia, will not seek reappointment when his current term expires at the end of October next year, according to a statement. He will continue to lead Asia’s third-largest exchange while a selection committee headed by HKEX chairwoman Laura Cha Shih May-lung looks for a successor, and may leave earlier if a replacement is found sooner, the filing said.
The unexpected move is a bookend in a career that has taken Li, who turned 59 in March, from the oilfields of north-eastern China to Wall Street before landing in Hong Kong in the city’s highest-paid financial job. The exchange’s market capitalisation has risen 67 per cent since Li took over the helm in January 2010 to HK$319.5 billion (US$41 billion), and Hong Kong has seized the crown as the world’s hub for initial public offerings (IPO) in seven of the past 11 years.
Man, some Guys have all the luck…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AqrxgEln_Dw
Yo, Fast Eddie, where are you on the list here? Come on, Man. Get with it, an opening is up for you
Hong Kong’s Richest 2020
https://www.forbes.com/hong-kong-billionaires/#69bca3dc3e46
Front Page News!
Yahoo News
End the coronavirus lockdowns, skeptical experts tell Congress
Alexander Nazaryan
Alexander Nazaryan
May 6, 2020, 7:25 PM EDT
Speaking a month-and-a-half later from his home office, Dr. Katz, who founded the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, was ready to answer the question in the affirmative. He called lockdown measures “draconian” and said that the “unintended consequences of our interdiction efforts” were potentially more dangerous than the disease they were supposed to stop. Some of those consequences, he said, included poverty and unemployment, as well as fear of seeking non-coronavirus-related medical care. He cited an increase in domestic violence incidents and deteriorating mental health.
“Those are real families,” Katz said. “Those are real people.”
Considering the mortality statistics from last several months, Katz argued that a more nuanced approach was necessary. “This is a different disease for different populations,” he said. He called for the elderly and already ill to continue staying at home, while arguing that younger, healthier people should resume ordinary lives without much worry. Trump has argued much the same thing, though without describing a national plan for reopening. He has largely left that task to the states, which has resulted in a confusing patchwork of public health directives.
Can, Day late and Dollar(s) gone….with credit card MAXED out!😭
More bad news from the land of the long blue pill.
https://incels.wiki/images/thumb/b/bb/Bluepill.png/450px-Bluepill.png
Economist makes dire prediction about US employment rate
Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi says that while jobs will come back as businesses start to reopen, the US will never get back to pre-pandemic unemployment rate as long as social distancing measures remain because of Covid-19.
We are asking companies to become less efficient. What do we expect?
Certainly, I am getting emails thanking me for orders and stating that social distancing measures are making fulfilment very much slower, and that courier services have become somewhat chaotic (couriers going bust perhaps?)
A nightmare, too, for companies who will open up only to find that former levels of demand are not present.
For most small and medium enterprises, govts. having casually thrown a spanner in the works, will start to withdraw subsidies and leave them to deal with the results of the crash.
Whos reality is this?
The World’s Longest Economic Growth Streak Could Keep on Running
Did you forget to add a link?
No .. I didn’t read the article…. it’s next to the ‘we’ll be mining in space’ article on the same site — might have been Bloomberg
I found the link. It looks like an economist sees a slim possibility for Australia:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-07/the-world-s-longest-economic-growth-streak-could-keep-on-running
yes, it’s almost as if we love this corona virus and want to keep it around for as long as possible. also makes a great cover story for the crumbling global economy.
The name “Scapegoat” was mentioned a while back. I think that is a good description.
Better than blaming the banks (el dres) — Lebanon is fire-bombing banks….
How Dare the Banks charge interest on loans!!!
Didn’t Jesus and Akhbar have something to say about that?????
Yep — leaving the middle seat empty in a plane obviously is not workable and demonstrates what they are trying to do:
1. It serves no purpose in that it won’t reduce infections
2. It will discourage any from flying because it will remind them it is ‘dangerous’
3. The airlines cannot make money if they leave 1/3 of the plane empty – they will need to charge more for the other seats — which means few will be able to afford to fly
the airlines are being dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the “China Clipper” days when every passenger flew in first class accommodations with plenty of leg room and quality service. of course, only the elites could fly in those days. our ancestors were the ones diving for change in the lagoon after they landed in the islands. don’t forget your place.
yes, the Ryan Air “flying bus” business model is failing. no more no-frills and packed-like-sardines seating, and a lot cleaner interiors.
To be honest… it’s a bloomin’ miracle that they lasted so long at those prices. And with those practices. I remember painfully watching as they loaded a wheelchair user up the main flight of stairs. Hair raising doesn’t describe it.
Pritchard – The supposed trade-off between lives and the economy is an illusion. The most certain way to turn this crisis into a depression is to give up too soon, as Spain is already doing, and Donald Trump is itching to do.
After reading this I will never open another Pritchard article again… he is clueless. Even if he thinks wuhan is worse than it actually is — lockdowns are re ta rd ed policy
“[W]hat people are trying to do is flatten the curve. I don’t really know why. But, what happens is if you flatten the curve, you also prolong, to widen it, and it takes more time. And I don’t see a good reason for a respiratory disease to stay in the population longer than necessary,” he said.
You cannot stop the spread of a respiratory disease within a family, and you cannot stop it from spreading with neighbors, with people who are delivering, who are physicians—anybody. People are social, and even in times of social distancing, they have contacts, and any of those contacts could spread the disease. It will go slowly, and so it will not build up herd immunity, but it will happen. And it will go on forever unless we let it go.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/epidemiologist-coronavirus-could-be-exterminated-if-lockdowns-were-lifted/
It is a wonder he is still employed: but I suppose he is the hack to go to for a great deal of hopelessly inaccurate tosh with some fancy historical references. Probably writes after a liquid lunch in the best Telegraph tradition.
For your information and critique…
https://www.cnet.com/news/white-house-drafting-international-artemis-accords-for-moon-mining-report-says/
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a32253706/history-moon-mining/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/05/trump-mining-moon-us-artemis-accords
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-52228423
https://www.mining.com/russia-questions-legality-of-us-planned-moon-mining-pact/
Some of these have cookie control banners which you can read around or reject all in settings. God I hate cookie notice and GDPR bullocks. We can manage all this at the browser level. Some idiot thought it was necessary to do this on every single website in the world. Bureaucracy at its best!
Given humans have never been beyond low orbit — this is just more fa ke news along with mo on landings…
But most people believe we are about to mine asteroids.. maybe not this year… but in the next couple.
Normies are very easy to convince of just about anything. If it’s in the MSM – it’s true
SDR
Within the next ten years apparently so we won’t have to wait long to find out. I have filed the moon mining news under extreme hopium attempts. But you know… whatever it takes to keep spinning some plates.
I have no idea what exactly they hope to mine. Haven’t looked yet. Or how exactly it would save our skin down here.
If it’s all part of the wizardry and spell casting – so be it. If we’re not smart enough to know when we’ve been lied then we’re not really worthy of much more anyway.
Long live Space Force!
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article/2178366/united-states-space-force-recruitment-video
Warren Buffett dumps US airline stocks, saying ‘world has changed’ after Covid-19
Warren Buffett, the legendary American investor, has sold his firm’s entire holdings in the four major US airlines, warning that the “world has changed” for the aviation industry because of the coronavirus crisis.
In comments that will send shockwaves through financial markets already pulverised by the economic shock of the outbreak, Buffett said the outbreak could have an “extraordinarily wide” range of possible outcomes.
Buffet’s fund, Berkshire Hathaway, ate a $50 billion dollar loss a few days ago. The man, pushing 90, is a long-term investor, so it’s not every day that you see someone like him completely divest out of an entire sector of the economy.
Buffet’s signal to the market: The airlines aren’t coming back…
Well, the trouble is, Buffet’s no slouch, about finance.
I haven’t read this yet, but it looks interesting.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/14/how-coronavirus-almost-brought-down-the-global-financial-system
Shades of 2008-09 as the so called intervention is the central banks from around the led by the Federal Reserve, printing worthless money. But it’s not going to work in the long run. The only ammo they have left is UBI because without money people can’t buy or pay for things. And what’s going to happen when the next lockdown occurs?
UBI is palliative care for a dying society.
Have you seen those donkey sanctuaries? Where they send old donkeys to die? Most of them don’t make it there. The unlucky ones end up in the knackers yard.
So yeah… UBI… Yay! For a while… maybe… and only if you accept their terms – sterilisation (no more kids to feed), no travel – not that you could anyway – and so on. Just the daily slop until you are no more.
The only way this can be issued for a while is to dump the credits onto the user’s card or phone or whatever and make them use the credits by the end of the month.
Cannot be issued as debt in any shape or form.
And of course… the credits end up flowing to the remaining producers of essential products and services until the whole system falls apart. i.e. not enough users left to maintain the slop production at scale.
All that while major industries are being propped up by massive printing of debt based subsidies.
Palliative care indeed. How can one exist and for how long while the main engine is sputtering and failing as we speak?
I am not an advocate for UBI but I see it coming much sooner than you think. It’s the next card the fraudsters might want to play to keep this Ponzi scheme going.
https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/s960x960/94977544_3491099234239417_7244403165880123392_o.jpg?_nc_cat=106&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=yD1_sDH-C3IAX8ve6Ej&_nc_ht=scontent-lht6-1.xx&_nc_tp=7&oh=82190a78a186c58e34fb2e29db26128b&oe=5ED9829A
Wonderful sign!
the youtube video is called energy and the health facilities a conversation with m. king hubbert and the statement occurs on the 35th minute so just imagine there is a plan in place involving a cull in the human population of course it would be kept secret
It really hasn’t been kept secret at all.
I mean for anyone paying attention over the past 20 years or so.
So many references to depopulation in Elite literature it’s beyond a joke. They have been obssessed with the idea of reducing useless eaters for a long time.
I always said they would probably use bioweapons and or starvation. It looks like they’re going with total shut down and starvation mainly of third world.
The rather weak virus outbreak just works as cover for total shutdown which can used again and again from now on unless people get wise to it and resist.
The mass die off was going to happen one way or another because the global ponzi was going to collapse one way or another.
Just nature correcting itself and balancing as always.
There is always a misunderstanding in USA when you read articles in internet.
Shops, malls are part of the local economy and they are not all the economy. There is another very large part that is unseen – the business to business suppliers (e.g. laundromat detergent, leather supplier to shoe manufacturer), wholesaler, etc.
What you see are shops, nail salons, etc that are closing down in high numbers. What about those at the back that requires just an office or warehouse that you cannot see it from the main street?
Restaurant owners complained about lack of customers and people will read that in the newspaper but the “hidden economy”, the wholesaler, B2B supplier, etc will not be heard.
If i fly After i must do 14 days in quarantine i Will not fly. Or i fly for emigrates or travel more long than 2 months
If i must travel and After must do 14 days in quarantine i Will not fly. Or i fly for emigrates Forever or travel more long than 1 months. For country like new Zealand. And if i can use car i Will use car Always. For Barcellona Praga London paris
It makes me laugh that Nail Salons are a business!
At the end of the day… I know that people like to have their back scratched… but there comes a time when I feel like screaming… make your own darned coffee!!
Think about what makes up most modern service economies… and it’s all a bit of a joke. Nothing to be proud of really.
I guess I’m cynical when it comes to people complaining that they can’t get a haircut, or their lawn mown, or their daily latte at the local cafe etc etc etc.
I see hordes of industrial civ refugees swarming through the burbs at some point like the locusts of late. They will pick everything clean. And there will be no cops standing in their way. And the latte drinkers will be long gone after mass pants pissing competitions.
Two things
(1) – met up with a friend. He said that due to severe economic issues, countries will NOT quarantine in future (assume to be immediate future) and plane tickets will be cheap because airlines want people to travel.
** Let us have a discussion on this. Do you think this will happen?
(2) Nothing has changed. Government all over the world did not repair any damage (until today) done over the last few decades on all issues (wage disparity, financial timebomb, etc). Just doing the same thing again and again but with a big difference – all in unlimited QE and stuff.
** question – what are the chances of doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results.
People always say that they did it before and it should work this time as well. Personal, I think there is a limit and this time, the “unlimited” thing is probably the limit to this nonsense.
What do you guys think on (1) and (2)?
Malaysia has removed the lockdown. Let us see how it will spike and how it will be handled. The economic damage is enormous.
https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3083307/airfares-could-rise-50-cent-if-social-distancing-leads-empty
You should stop listening to him. He’s clearly from dELuSistAn.
People aren’t going to fly if they have fear of contagion, of quarantine (there WILL be quarantines), have no money, there’s nothing left of the resort they want to travel to because it went belly up, if the airline industry is in ruins, etc, etc.
You can’t fix the economy by piling on more debt. Things were already going pear-shaped as early as last October when something big broke in the markets (probably Deutsche Bank finally carked it, technically), and the FED has had to keep funding all insolvent criminals thereafter. Now the pile of debt stink is even larger.
Agree. This is a ongoing event with a chapter in 2008 and the repo event in september was just another chapter.
Airliners are reconfiguring all seats and installing:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0b/4a/7b/0b4a7b2da2428176cdbe3691a8c0e326.jpg
What wrong with simple BSL4 suits with positive pressure airline. With the suits people can be packed as close as desired.
Behind the scenes Fast Eddy is negotiating with Air NZ to sell disposable cheap hazmat suits…
https://www.hantover.com/datasurge/img/image-normal/kappler-Z5H582-zytron-z500-chemical-protection-suit-level-a-orange-44444-A-web.jpg
Tesla is branching out and undercutting FE though … they can do that because their business model is to lose money on every thing they sell but make up for the losses by selling more