The world’s number one problem today is that the world’s population is too large for its resource base. Some people have called this situation overshoot. The world economy is ripe for a major change, such as the current pandemic, to bring the situation into balance. The change doesn’t necessarily come from the coronavirus itself. Instead, it is likely to come from the whole chain reaction that has been started by the coronavirus and the response of governments around the world to the coronavirus.
Let me explain more about what is happening.
[1] The world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as described in the book with a similar title.
One way of seeing the predicament we are in is the modeling of resource consumption and population growth described in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, by Donella Meadows et al. Its base scenario seems to suggest that the world will reach limits about now. Chart 1 shows the base forecast from that book, together with a line I added giving my impression of where the economy really was in 2019, relative to resource availability.
Figure 1. Base scenario from 1972 Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in “Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil,” with dotted line added corresponding to where the world economy seems to be in 2019.
In 2019, the world economy seemed to be very close to starting a downhill trajectory. Now, it appears to me that we have reached the turning point and are on our way down. The pandemic is the catalyst for this change to a downward trend. It certainly is not the whole cause of the change. If the underlying dynamics had not been in place, the impact of the virus would likely have been much less.
The 1972 model leaves out two important parts of the economy that probably make the downhill trajectory steeper than shown in Figure 1. First, the model leaves out debt and, in fact, the whole financial system. After the 2008 crisis, many people strongly suspected that the financial system would play an important role as we reach the limits of a finite world because debt defaults are likely to disturb the worldwide financial system.
The model also leaves out humans’ continual battle with pathogens. The problem with pathogens becomes greater as world population becomes denser, facilitating transmission. The problem also becomes greater as a larger share of the population becomes more susceptible, either because they are elderly or because they have underlying health conditions that have been hidden by an increasingly complex and expensive medical system.
As a result, we cannot really believe the part of Figure 1 that is after 2020. The future downslopes of population, industrial production per capita, and food per capita all seem likely to be steeper than shown on the chart because both the debt and pathogen problems are likely to increase the speed at which the economy declines.
[2] It is far more than the population that has overshot limits.
The issue isn’t simply that there are too many people relative to resources. The world seems to have
- Too many shopping malls and stores
- Too many businesses of all kinds, with many not very profitable for their owners
- Governments with too extensive programs, which taxpayers cannot really afford
- Too much debt
- An unaffordable amount of pension promises
- Too low interest rates
- Too many people with low wages or no wages at all
- Too expensive a healthcare system
- Too expensive an educational system
The world economy needs to shrink back in many ways at once, simultaneously, to manage within its resource limits. It is not clear how much of an economy (or multiple smaller economies) will be left after this shrinkage occurs.
[3] The economy is in many ways like the human body. In physics terms, both are dissipative structures. They are both self-organizing systems powered by energy (food for humans; a mixture of energy products including oil, coal, natural gas, burned biomass and electricity for the economy).
The human body will try to fix minor problems. For example, if someone’s hand is cut, blood will tend to clot to prevent too much blood loss, and skin will tend to grow to substitute for the missing skin. Similarly, if businesses in an area disappear because of a tornado, the prior owners will either tend to rebuild them or new businesses will tend to come in to replace them, as long as adequate resources are available.
In both systems, there is a point beyond which problems cannot be fixed, however. We know that many people die in car accidents if injuries are too serious, for example. Similarly, the world economy may “collapse” if conditions deviate too far from what is necessary for economic growth to continue. In fact, at this point, the world economy may be so close to the edge with respect to resources, particularly energy resources, that even a minor pandemic could push the world economy into a permanent cycle of contraction.
[4] World governments are in a poor position to fix the current resource and pandemic crisis.
In our networked economy, too low a resource base relative to population manifests itself in a strange way: It appears as an affordability crisis that leads to very low prices for oil. It also appears as terribly low prices for many other commodities, including copper, lithium, coal and even wholesale electricity. These low prices occur because too large a share of the population cannot afford finished goods, such as cars and homes, made with these commodities. Recent shutdowns have suddenly increased the number of people with low income or no income, pushing commodity prices even lower.
If resources were more plentiful and very inexpensive to produce, as they were 50 or 70 years ago, wages of workers could be much higher, relative to the cost of resources. Factory workers would be able to afford to buy vehicles, for example, and thus help keep the demand for automobiles up. If we look more deeply into this, we find that energy resources of many kinds (fossil fuel energy, nuclear energy, burned biomass and other renewable energy) must be extraordinarily cheap and abundant to keep the system growing. Without “surplus energy” from many sources, which grows with population, the whole system tends to collapse.
World governments cannot print resources. What they can print is debt. Debt can be viewed as a promise of future goods and services, whether or not it is reasonable to believe that these future goods and services will actually materialize, given resource constraints.
We are finding that using shutdowns to solve COVID-19 problems causes a huge amount of economic damage. The cost of mitigating this damage seems to be unreasonably high. For example, in the United States, antibody studies suggest that roughly 5% of the population has been infected with COVID-19. The total number of deaths associated with this 5% infection level is perhaps 100,000, assuming that reported deaths to date (about 80,000) need to be increased somewhat, to match the approximately 5% of the population that has, knowingly or unknowingly, already experienced the infection.
If we estimate that the mean number of years of life lost is 13 years per person, then the total years of life lost would be about 1,300,000. If we estimate that the US treasury needed to borrow $3 trillion dollars to mitigate this damage, the cost per year of life lost is $3 trillion divided by 1.3 million, or $2.3 million per year of life lost. This amount is utterly absurd.
This approach is clearly not something the United States can scale up, as the share of the population affected by COVID-19 relentlessly rises from 5% to something like 70% or 80%, in the absence of a vaccine. We have no choice but to use a different approach.
[5] COVID-19 would have the least impact on the world economy if people could pay little attention to the pandemic and just “let it run.” Of course, even without mitigation attempts, COVID-19 might bring the world economy down, given the distressed level of today’s economy and the shutdowns experienced to date.
Shutting down an economy has a huge adverse impact on that economy because quite a few workers who are in good health are no longer able to make goods and services. As a result, they have no wages, so their “demand” goes way down. If the economy was already having an affordability crisis for goods made with commodities, shutting down the economy tends to greatly add to the affordability crisis. Prices of commodities tend to fall even lower than they were before the crisis.
Back in 1957-1958, the Asian pandemic, which also started in China, hit the world. The number of deaths was up in the range of the current pandemic, relative to population. The estimated worldwide death rate was 0.67%. This is not too dissimilar from a death rate of 0.61% for COVID-19, which can be calculated using my estimate above (100,000 deaths relative to 5% of the US population of 33o million).
Virtually nothing was shut down in the US for the 1957-58 pandemic. When doctors or nurses became sick themselves, wards were simply closed. Would-be patients were told to stay at home and take aspirin, unless a severe case developed. With this approach, the US still faced a short recession, but the economy was soon growing again. Populations seemed to reach herd immunity quite quickly.
If the world could somehow have adopted a similar approach this time, there still would have been some adverse impact on the economy. A small percentage of the population would have died. Some businesses might have needed to be closed for a short time when too many workers were out sick. But the huge burden of job loss by a substantial share of the economy could have been avoided. The economy would have had at least a small chance of rebounding quickly.
[6] The virus that causes COVID-19 looks a great deal like a laboratory cross between SARS and HIV, making the likelihood of a quick vaccine low.
In fact, Professor Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and winner of a Nobel Prize in Medicine, claims that the new coronavirus is the result of an attempt to manufacture a vaccine against the AIDS virus. He believes that the accidental release of this virus is what is causing today’s pandemic.
If COVID-19 were simply another influenza virus, similar to many we have seen, then getting a vaccine that would work passably well would be a relatively easy exercise. At least one of the vaccine trials that have been started could be reasonably expected to work, and a solution would not be far away.
Unfortunately, SARS and HIV are fairly different from influenza viruses. We have never found a vaccine for either one. If a person has had SARS once, and is later exposed to a slightly mutated version of SARS, the symptoms of the second infection seem to be worse than the first. This characteristic interferes with finding a suitable vaccine. We don’t know whether the virus causing COVID-19 will have a similar characteristic.
We know that scientists from a number of countries have been working on so-called “gain of function” experiments with viruses. These very risky experiments are aimed at making viruses either more virulent, or more transmissible, or both. In fact, experiments were going on in Wuhan, in two different laboratories, with viruses that seem to be not too different from the virus causing COVID-19.
We don’t know for certain whether there was an accident that caused the release of one of these gain of function viruses in Wuhan. We do know, however, that China has been doing a lot of cover-up activity to deter others from finding out what actually happened in Wuhan.
We also know that Dr. Fauci, a well-known COVID-19 advisor, had his hand in this Chinese research activity. Fauci’s organization, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided partial funding for the gain of function experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. While the intent of the experiments seems to have been for the good of mankind, it would seem that Dr. Fauci’s judgment erred in the direction of allowing too much risk for the world’s population.
[7] We are probably kidding ourselves about ever being able to contain the virus that causes COVID-19.
We are gradually learning that the virus causing COVID-19 is easily spread, even by people who do not show any symptoms of the disease. The virus can spread long distances through the air. Tests to see if people are ill tend to produce a lot of false negatives; because of this, it is close to impossible to know whether a particular person has the illness or not.
China is finding that it cannot really contain the virus that causes COVID-19. A recent South China Morning Post article indicates that roughly 14 million people are to be tested in the Wuhan area in the next ten days to try to control a new outbreak of the virus.
It is becoming clear, as well, that even within China, the lockdowns have had a very negative impact on the economy. The Wall Street Journal reports, China Economic Data Indicate V-Shaped Recovery Is Unlikely. Supply chains were broken; wholesale commodity prices (excluding food) have tended to fall. Joblessness is increasingly a problem.
[8] If we look at deaths per million by country, it is difficult to see that lockdowns are very helpful in reducing the spread of disease. Masks seem to be more beneficial.
If we compare death rates for mask-wearing East Asian countries to death rates elsewhere, we see that death rates in mask-wearing East Asian countries are dramatically lower.
Figure 2. Death rates per million population of selected countries with long-term exposure to the virus causing COVID-19, based on Johns Hopkins death data as of May 11, 2020.
Looking at the chart, a person almost wonders whether lockdowns are a response to requests from citizens to “do something” in response to an already evident surge in cases. The countries known for their severe lockdowns are at the top of the chart, not the bottom.
In fact, a preprint academic paper by Thomas Meunier is titled, “Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic.” The abstract says, “Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, or reproduction number trends. . . We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.”
It appears to me that lockdowns have been popular with governments around the world for a whole host of reasons that have little to do with the spread of COVID-19:
- Lockdowns give an excuse for closing borders to visitors and goods from outside. This was a direction in which many countries were already headed, in an attempt to raise the wages of local workers.
- Lockdowns can be used to hide the fact that factories need to be closed because of breaks in supply lines elsewhere in the world.
- Many countries have been faced with governmental protests because of low wages compared to the prices of basic services. Lockdowns tend to keep protesters inside.
- Lockdowns give the appearance of protecting the elderly. Since there are many elderly voters, politicians need to court these voters.
[9] A person wonders whether Dr. Fauci and members of the World Health Organization are influenced by the wishes of vaccine and big pharmaceutical companies.
The recommendation to try to “flatten the curve” is, in part, an attempt to give vaccine and pharmaceutical makers more time to work on their products. Is this really the best recommendation? Perhaps I am being overly suspicious, but we recently have been dealing with an opioid epidemic which was encouraged by manufacturers of Oxycontin and other opioids. We don’t need another similar experience, this time sponsored by vaccine and other pharmaceutical makers.
The temptation of researchers is to choose solutions that would be best from the point of their own business interests. If a researcher gets much of his funding from vaccine and big pharmaceutical interests, the temptation will be to “push” solutions that are beneficial to these interests. In some cases, researchers are able to patent approaches, even when the research is paid for by governmental grants. In this case they can directly benefit from a new vaccine or drug.
When potential solutions are discussed by Dr. Fauci and the World Health Organization, no one brings up improving people’s immunity so that they can better fight off the novel coronavirus. Few bring up masks. Instead, we keep being warned about “opening up too soon.” In a way, this sounds like, “Please leave us lots of customers who might be willing to pay a high price for our vaccine.”
[10] One way the combination of (a) the activity of the virus and (b) our responses to the virus may play out is as a slow-motion, controlled demolition of the world economy.
I think of what we are experiencing as being somewhat similar to a toggle bolt going around and around, moving down a screw. As the toggle bolt moves around, I picture it as being similar to the virus and our responses to the viruses hitting different parts of the world economy.
Figure 3. Image of how the author sees COVID-19 as being able to hit the economy multiple times, in multiple ways, as its impact keeps impacting different parts of the world.
If we look back, the virus and reactions to the virus first hit China. China’s recovery is moving slowly, in part because of reduced demand from outside of China now that the virus is hitting other parts of the world. In fact, additional layoffs occurred after Chinese shutdowns ended, because it then became clear that some employers needed to permanently scale back operations to meet the new lower demand for their product.
Commodity prices, including oil prices, are now depressed because of low demand around the world. These low prices can be expected to gradually lead to closures of wells and mines extracting these commodities. Processing centers will also close, making these commodities less available even if demand temporarily rises.
As one country is hit by illnesses and/or shutdowns, we can expect supply lines for manufacturing around the world to be disrupted. This will lead to yet more business closures, some of them permanent. Debt defaults tend to happen as businesses close and layoffs occur.
With all of the layoffs, governments will find that their tax collections are lower. The resulting governmental funding issues can be expected to lead to new rounds of layoffs.
Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and forest fires can be expected to continue to happen. Social distancing requirements, inadequate tax revenue and broken supply lines will make mitigation of all of these disasters more difficult. Electrical lines that fall down may stay down permanently; bridges that are damaged may never be repaired.
Initially, rich countries can be expected to try to help as many laid-off workers as possible with loans and temporary stipends. But, after a few months, even with this approach, many individual citizens and businesses will likely not be able to pay their rent. Default rates on home mortgages and auto loans can be expected to rise for a similar reason.
We can expect to see round after round of business failures and layoffs of employees. Financial systems will become more and more stressed. Pensions are likely to default. Death rates will rise, in part from epidemics of various kinds and in part from growing problems with starvation. In fact, in some poor countries, lower-income citizens are already having difficulty being able to afford adequate food. Eventually we can expect collapsing governments (similar to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union) and overthrown governments.
Longer-term, after this demolition ends, there may be some surviving pieces of economies. These new economies will be much smaller and less dependent upon each other, however. Currencies are likely to be less interchangeable. The remaining people will need to learn to make do with many fewer goods than are available today. It will be a very different world.
“Across the US, worries about having enough to eat are adding to the anxiety of millions of people, according to a survey that found 37 per cent of unemployed Americans ran out of food in the past month and 46 per cent said they worried about running out.
“Even those who are working often struggle. Two in 10 working adults said that in the past 30 days, they ran out of food before they could earn enough money to buy more. One-quarter worried that would happen…
“There is no parallel in U.S. history for the suddenness or severity of the economic collapse, which has cost more than 36 million jobs since the virus struck. The nationwide unemployment rate was 14.7 per cent in April, the highest since the Great Depression.”
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/fears-of-hunger-rise-amid-pandemic-economic-collapse-poll-20200515-p54t7i.html
“No economic collapse in modern times has ever happened so fast. [US] Government cash receipts were $1.3 billion above projections through March with only three months left in the fiscal year; now revenues are projected to miss the mark by $9.7 billion through June 30.”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-14/california-54-billion-coronavirus-deficit-choices-news-analysis
A fall in government cash receipts equals economic collapse? I would have said the opposite. If money is being kept by those who earned it and not stolen by those who would squander it, that is a harbinger of economic recovery.
Governments are big employers. For example, my husband’s university was told that budgets for this fall will need to be cut by 14% because of a reduction in tax support. My husband is an emeritus professor teaching part time; one of his two classes for the fall semester is being eliminated, so his current income is being cut in half. (He has a pension as well.) I am sure many other people, both at the universities and otherwise employed by the government (police, libraries, jails, road repair), will also be getting less pay or are being laid off entirely.
The thought has crossed my mind that some high schools/grade schools will decide to do distance learning this fall, simply because it is cheaper. No school buses to run. No lunch room to staff; no school nurse; no custodians; practically no substitute teachers or guidance counselors. Kids will learn less and mothers will have trouble going back to work, but who pays attention to those details.
all the things you list come under a single heading:
Energy surplus
doesn’t matter that FFs are still in the ground, we no longer have the means to use them, so they deliver no value, hence all those services cease to be viable to the communities they serve.
You don’t need an apocalypse to achieve big population reductions. The ex-Archdruid once posted the maths for the big reductions in population that occur in a surprisingly short time through relatively small changes to birth and death rates.
Russia is still recovering from the population decline that happened during their 90s collapse.
Some countries are drastically over populated if resources are constrained by a (chaotic) decline scenario, so starvation may kick in quickly there, assuming refugee flows are constrained. If not, refugee movements are going to get ‘interesting’ aka “Weapons of Mass Migration”.
This site shows graphs of historical and projected death rates by country (UN data): https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate
Notably, most countries are currently around their lowest death rate and everywhere is projected to go up from here.
Russia’s demographic collapse is mainly the result of echo effects from WW2.
Russia’s population collapse came at the time the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed. This seems to have been related to the low price of oil. There was too much oil being produced in the world. The Soviet Union was a relatively high cost producer. It could not afford to do the investment necessary to start new fields until prices were higher. It was forced out.
I have shown charts related to this various times. FSU is “Former Soviet Union.”
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/fsu-energy-consumption-by-fuel.png
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/fsu-oil-consumption-production-and-price.png
What if these aren’t physics issues but political ones? The USA and Saudi Arabia weaponizing oil. The 1970s oil shortage to punish America for Iran, the collapse of the Soviet Union a collaboration between USA and Saudi to punish the Russians, the current glut was the Saudis punishing America, although Trump finally said if you don’t stop overproducing, we will stop protecting you.
So all along, Saudi Arabia may have been capable of producing 15 or 20 million barrels of oil per day, but they have been holding around 10 million for quite some time in order to have the capacity to punish other producers.
Saudi Arabia would need much higher prices to raise their production. Quite a bit of their oil is heavy oil that is expensive to produce.
Saudi Arabia tends to exaggerate their ability to produce more oil. The can ramp production up and down, to some extent, but there are limits on this.
I figured out that this data base is only by country. If you try to type in “World” as a country, it doesn’t give history or projections.
CDT=Controlled Demolitoion Plan/Theory. A theory or plan put forward by FE that some entity or people put in place actions that will slowly wind down the industrialized civilization.
A graduated, step-down process has long been one of the options for collapse and it certainly appears to be what we have been getting these last twenty years. I expect a few more steps, to be deployed like a series of parachutes that will manintain our rullers in their relative place (on top) no matter how far matters devolve.
For the USA, Brazilification will be the next stage. After that I expect a lower level of general misery, Indianization (as in the Republic of India). This will involve a massive but fast declining base population (early adult death rates and infant mortality will explode) that is cut loose to survive as they might. Part of their purpose will be to reintroduce older technologies for their own use. Higher castes will live in ways and places that are essentially separate but certainly not in the luxury that they do now. They will make use of re-introduced basic technologies as the modern world falls away. There will not be much reason for widespread civil unrest, and that can in any case be controlled and directed.
Overall, the plan is well thought out and practicable as long as they can keep extending. A slow death for the modern world is what is needed. If they can get life expectancies down to, say, 40-45, then the finish line may be in sight.
As for the general populations’s understanding of this process, I also expect the occasional frog to chirrup, “Is this water getting a little hot or is it just me?”
I expect that in the future – as it did in Russia and is now in the US already – Despair will swing a very long scythe. And this will be an unrecognized great reducer of world populations, but again, especially in the United States, which appears to be the main target of many of these depopulation and deracination efforts.
Getting people to off themselves is really the neatest way to do it.
You give a lot of credit to the leaders who can bring you down the steps gently. I am not in the side of “competent leaders”. If we have competent leaders, we would not even be in this position now.
Good decisions are never popular and popular decisions are never good.
Politicians who did good decisions are only elected once. Politicians who pander to the voters (popular decisons) are always elected.
“Elect me and I will put the finances of XXX country straight. The country will be debt-free but you must take a 50% cut in pensions. Elect me and I promise I will do it”
That is the reason why I have no faith in homo sapiens. By nature we are greedy because we don’t know when our next meal is (another gazelle?). One homo sapiens come up and say “there beyond the hills are the land plentiful of gazelle” and if there are plentiful of gazelles, then he is the leader. Is he competent? Unlikely.
I have met up with plenty of leaders and none of them will be so caring for the citizens. For themselves yes but not for the masses.
Goyim = Cattle.
Most dairy farmers do not ‘care’ for their cattle as they might their children … but they do have an interest in making sure they are happy and healthy…
Let’s say the farmer knew that an unstoppable Mongol Horde was making its way towards his farm… and he knew that the Mongols do this to cattle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy5prhWesFw
Do you not think that the farmer might kill all the cattle before the Hordes arrived?
It’s not a perfect metaphor because in our case…. we are not docile like cattle… rather we are vicious predators…. and the farmer is not protecting us from the Hordes… he’s protecting us from ourselves.
He is also keeping us from ripping his face off too….
From early to the mid 2000s, the Russian population declined by about 4% from 148.7 million (1992) to 142.7 million (2007), since which time it’s been rising slightly.
I suppose we should expect a much bigger and longer scythe of despair, hunger, violence in many places when people realize the hard times are here to stay. Also, the not-so-healthy of whatever age group are broadly the sort of people who would either be fitter or not here at all if times were tougher. Some of them will become healthier if they loose 15 or 20kg of fat. Others will die quickly when deprived of drugs or exposed to hardship.
Craig Dilworth in Too Smart for Our Own Good writes about experiments done on rat populations. If rats are kept in cages, and well fed, the rat population will still stop growing well below the time the animals would fill up the cage. I forget the details of what happened. It seems like the young did not grow up to be adults in the way that might be expected. Many things went wrong.
There is no evidence at all for such a ‘plan’, or that it is being implemented in a co-ordinated fashion, so why refer to it? It simply does not help us to explain events.
It is certain that some military planners in some states are aware that current arrangements cannot be maintained for much longer, but this is no way equates to the existence of a plan formulated and now being implemented by the elites.
This ignores that fact that the Techno-Utopian delusion is actually a very prominent factor in thinking about the future, the ‘humans are just so smart (TM)’ meme, and that most people will always tend to assume that the future will be much like the present, or that interruptions like this will end and things revert to normal.
Elites,above all, are prone to that kind of thinking: it is the common people who are more likely to feel that it will all go to crap and that the future will be grim for them.
All the evidence is actually that the’ plan’, if we must call it that, really just a trend in expert thinking, is for more hyper-complex forms of technology, not earlier and simpler ones. ‘Smart’ agriculture, cities, etc.
But you are probably quite right that a form of society more like Latin America is in the near-term future for the US and other states: true mass impoverishment and precarious living is already here. There will be more gangs, more violence,and whole areas will be abandoned to the mafias. Water supply will fail and be contaminated, huge shanty-towns will arise, etc.
The elites, as I’ve quoted above referring to the people I know who are close friends of the Clintons, believe that they can maintain their office-less prosperity bubble, insulated from viruses and the violence society at large, while they don’t think at all about the conditions of the masses.
This is just how my own family must have thought when they retreated to their castle in times of plague (Talmond, one of the largest fortresses of medieval France, ruins still quite impressive.) What ever changes in this life?
Anyway, lovely Spring day, so I’m off to dig dirt and prune the roses.
What do we say to Despair? ‘Not today’.
Dmitry Orlov mentioned quite a long time ago that when governments stop paying for adequate police support, there will be young men wanting “protection money” to keep a person from harm.
More likely it’s, as most posters suspect, and “uncontrolled demolition”. Our way of life was hanging way too far out on a limb, and we’ve been busy sawing away at it, from the wrong end. The only way is down. How far, how fast, and how soon we get there, is why it’s so fascinating, in a ghoulish sort of way.
https://assets.thaivisa.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2018_05/suicidalstupidity_6656_1_.jpg.02fb5dcee860bf42962ef1a9e1ed727e.jpg
FE, I am a great fan of yours and in fact, I am one of the few here who asks for your return. Entertaining insights.
It is a controlled demolition. That is without doubt but I am not in the camp of someone doing it on purpose.
1. If there exist that person or entity exists, this is an extremely smart person (probably better than your 700). He/It should exist some time ago, at the time of 1970s (during the time of LTG) and this entity would have put in place steps to ensure that he will not be doing the “controlled demolition” later on.
2. Empty hospitals – politicians are not going to say “I am sorry but this is just another flu”. They take this opportunity, with the help of MSM to grab more power and implement more police state. The pliant or docile population are helping them tremendously. See all the polls that says that many like to be locked down and there are no protests.
3. ALL tech platforms are doing their best to misinform the public and censor all dissent. That is why I love this place for the censor-free speech
4. The population are just too dumb and take in everything. Stockholm Syndrome is working perfectly. This gives an “aura” of planned controlled demolition.
5. Social media, messaging like WhatsApp are doing God’s work on this planned demolition. You can even consider them as “the entity” that is doing CDT.
6. It is way too complex for anyone or any entity to execute this properly.
What is happening here from day one is due to “Instant transmission of information”. All this while, I have been saying that this instantaneous transmission of information is NOT compatible with the lifestyle of homo sapiens. We cannot be instantly connected and our brains cannot function well in multi-tasking mode. We are not supposed to be aware of too many things other than looking out for predators who can eat us.
Within 5000 years, we have transformed from being “afraid of being eaten by tigers” to be “totally connected and know everything that is happening worldwide”. If there is a really a future, are we suppose to know everything that is happening in the universe? (space travels – riots on a planet in Alpha Centauri causing Dow Jones to spike up?).
At 5000 years, it is definately not enough time for evolution to take place.
Put this this way – all the previous pandemics from SARS down to Spanish flu, if WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook, Twitter, 24-hour TV, etc were available at that point of time, it will have the same effect.
If we don’t have them now, will we have the hysteria?
** If we don’t have internet, I would not even know who Gail is
Do you have any thoughts on time frame?
What is CDT?
Dennis L.
Dennis L – Time frame – no time frame but given the fact that things are not going on smoothly. Nothing is rectified, only papered over. With 30-40% unemployed and many metrices “worst ever”, it will follow the path of “Slow and then suddenly”.
Remember that the “slowly” has been happening since 1913 and getting worse and worse, especially since 1970s and more pronounced (and more people realizing it since 2004) and it is very obvious since 2007.
Only the very blind cannot see that we are already collapsing slowly since 2008. It does not impact them because they are too comfortable.
Personally – this game ends in 2020. I am curious to know how it ends.
yes, absolutely in slow motion since 2008…
also, I am very curious to see how this unfolds…
it is a big test… this is the massive economic demolition that so many Doomers have been awaiting for a long time…
the result of the test may not be the end of IC, and that would be very cool to see that even this massive crisis did NOT bring about InstaDoom…
it would be even more entertaining if it wasn’t for the millions/billions of people who will be suffering poverty/disease/starvation because of the continuing test…
I think many of us will still be posting here in 2021 and discussing the preliminary results…
I hope so…
CTG, what you are saying seems reasonable and plausible to me. But as for this game ending in 2020, what are the odds on the Olympics being held in 2021?
“It is a controlled demolition. That is without doubt but I am not in the camp of someone doing it on purpose.”
I agree…
the laws of physics are controlling the downsizing of the economy… net (surplus) energy is decreasing and thus the economy must decrease in size…
the C19+lockdown crisis is just the catalyst that has made this downsizing faster and more severe…
also, the world financial/banking system is sort of the “software” that is being used to operate the basic primary economy of energy and production… unfortunately, this secondary system is out of balance with the primary system of goods and services, so that is adding to the process of “demolition”…
the demolition does not have to be a total 100% end to the economy and IC…
it could be total, but there are other possible futures where the economy has been partially or mostly “demolished” and reset to a (much) lower level…
through 2020 and into 2021, it will become more apparent what this lower level will be…
I agree with you. It is the laws of physics that produce this reaction of governments around the world, not any conspiracy.
And I agree that the financial system is out of balance with the primary system of goods and services. It has promised far more goods and services than the economy can possibly produce in the future, because of the resource limits of a finite world.
Excellent insight, CTG, that this is in part ’caused’ by modern instant communications, and also, I would say, the ability to model a pandemic and make projections,a nd the belife that there must be a medical treatment or cure for everything.
This is very much an event only possible in the 21st century.
The UK government was content to let it spread unimpeded and even to encourage that -eg all the flights from abroad with no quarantine in place – until new models alarmed them by predicting a huge body-count which would crash the hospitals and furnish weapons for their political rivals. So, the lock-downs came. (The above itself argues against the assertion that this has all been planned to the smallest detail, of course. )
At a earlier and simpler stage of civilization, there would have been no models, no analysis and no possible treatments, no 24/7 politics and commentary, no rival political parties seeking advantage, no public scared witless and unable to cope with the flood of contradictory information,etc.
Something mild like COVID would simply have swept through, infecting many, but killing only the few older people and those weakened already by lack of food, a hard winter, etc.
Really it would have been just a slight intensification of the normal conditions of life, in which sudden death after a fever and cough was very common indeed,and doctors could do nothing, in a world where 35% of women died in childbirth,and so on.
The only mass action organised by the state might have been to walk around the town barefoot with candles,praying to be spared – but I don’t think it would really have registered as something so serious as to require even that. People only noticed mortality rates of, say, 30% or more in those days, and only then when young adults died in large numbers. A cough and fever that left most people alive would not have troubled them one bit.
Which all goes to prove Tainter’s basic thesis, that complexity is the author of its own demise.
Thank you, Xabier, an analysis with which I agree entirely. Many times, as an IT consultant, I was asked how to deal with the increasing complexity of computer systems. My answer was always the same: the only solution to complexity is simplicity. That answer was never acted upon.
Of course, it was not easy, but at least possible, with computers, as when I threw away a macroprocessor with 1400 lines of code and replaced it with a data driven one that needed less than 80 lines of code. But is there any way back for an economy? Maybe on an island the size of Gozo, but for something the size of China, the US, or the (coinfection riddled) EU? I fear not. That is why they will all break apart.
CTG – you are one of the best commentators on FW… there are some people on OFW that FE will never attack… he may disagree though
1. The PTB have no doubt had this plan in place before the LTG study. End of the day there was and is no way to avoid the end of days. The best they could do was kick the can. They have done a magnificent job of that.
4. Social media is just another extension of the Bernays strategy to control and keep the population docile and compliant.
6. Not complex at all. If you own the MSM and you own the reserve currency you can pretty much do whatever you want. You have yes-men and women everywhere. And you have a central news service that pumps out the message
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI
Consider that the NSA is collecting EVERYTHING. Difficult? Seemingly … but in reality quite simple. You just pay people and if they go off the reservation you destroy them.
As for the CDT – it is VERY easy to get everyone to buy in. As I have said – the global economy was on the cliff already – not difficult to demonstrate that to the minions (politicians and others who carry out the policies) — so you give them the only choices a) uncontrolled demolition (extreme violence, cannibalism) or b) controlled demolition (minimal violence no cannibalism).
I can understand how people have difficulty wrapping their minds around this concept of an all-powerful central committee.
Even though this is misdirection it is a very important … for the most part this is accurate … people are easily controlled by paying them (and punishing them if they reveal the gig)…. the misdirection is that the Deep State is not the institutions described in the presentation … the Deep State is the owners of the Fed… the men who control the money supply… you control that you control everything… the people depicted in this are the minions…. they have zero power
The only thing that has changed with respect to the comments below is that nobody would dare to say these things now because the senior minions understand that :
1. Exposing their master would result in your career being destroyed and being labelled an anti-semmmite
2. If you play along you get paid well — as a politician there are a lot of rewards
3. No matter who you are – there is no way you can beat the master… he controls everything – he controls the system… so you cannot kill him — and any revolt would fall on deaf ears — what could you offer anyone who were to join you? Most people understand how powerful they are and prefer not to rock the boat and live large.
As mentioned, I have been threatened… I never rock that boat…. why would I?
Think long and hard about these comments comments.
“I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, … The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply.” Nathan Rothschild
“Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation’s laws. … Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.” — Mackenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister 1935-1948.
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” – Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence
“Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” ― Woodrow Wilson
Money talks.
It is amazing how money is a massive motivator… for some reason people dismiss that.
If you couple it with nationalism it is extremely powerful.
For instance … you demonstrate to a general that if they do what you want them to do and do not push back… they get a job doing pretty much nothing at Raytheon when they retire making 500k per year…. you also convince them that what you need them to do is in the interests of your country… no matter what you ask them to do they will convince themselves that it is a good thing…
Take the average person who makes say 60k per year… you give them a cushy job making 250k per year…. they’d turn a blind eye to just about anything you asked them to do….
There was an interesting episode in The Sopranos… one of the few series I download – it’s very much like breaking bad in that it exposes the two sides to humans — the veneer …and the BEAST….
At one point Carmela is forced to confront the fact that Tony supports her committing acts of murder and mayhem… how does she respond? She defends him… she rationalizes what he does….
We are capable of absolutely anything… of justifying anything … because at the core of our being … lurks the BEAST…
I think that this describes the way the laws of physics operated behind the scenes. Wealth flows to one group and away from others. And, as Ed says, “Money talks.”
Gail, wealth does indeed flow, but it really matter whither it flows. In a healthy economy, wealth flows to the productive; in a sick economy, it flows to the corrupt. And I fear the world economy is corrupt beyond redemption.
Thank you, CTG. I appreciate your continuing to give your thoughtful comments.
“Inevitable deflationary forces have required a paradigm shift. For years monetary authorities have failed to produce the inflation necessary to the propulsion of the Keynesian system in spite of the loosest financial conditions ever. The advancement of technology is inherently deflationary, continually lowering costs across the economy. And the fundamental demographic conditions in the U.S. and the world are also highly deflationary. Populations of young, child-bearing age are declining while populations of people over 65 are growing. Without general population growth, and specifically population growth of the consuming age group relative to the retiring age group, the continuing growth of debt and consumption is simply not possible. It’s also unlikely that a truly free market capitalist model could be successful faced with these deflationary pressures. So it’s inevitable that something other than what has already been tried will have to result.
So this Secular Shift involves a managed transition from the vestiges of the free market past to…something else.”
https://www.thebullbear.com/profiles/blogs/the-dawning-of-a-new-era-post-capitalism-1-0
“The house has literally unlimited funds and it will not allow anything other than a relatively smooth transition to the new technocratic future.”
this author is apparently quite ignnorant of the fact that energy is at the base of the economy… he suggests that population growth is the key to economic growth, which is reediculous…
decreasing net (surplus) energy is also “inherently deflationary”…
this is the basic reason why there is no “smooth transition” happening right now, and the transition to a lower level economy is only going to get bumpier later this year…
the (mild)-pandemic-(stooooopid)-lockdown-crisis is just the catalyst to a speedier descent to this lower level, but the decreasing net (surplus) energy was already guaranteeing that the world economy was heading there sooner or later…
Sigh. A “truly free market capitalist model” is what we had before snake oil salesman Keynes set us on the path to ruin. Sound money, a healthy savings rate, free trade, and a legal system based on “Pacta sunt servanda”, or, as the US Constitution put it, the “Obligation of Contracts”.
This article starts out well, but when it comes to solutions/ the future, it is way off.
I do agree that a growing workforce is needed to keep the everything bubble going. Just adding hangers-on is not helpful. Japan and Europe are already to the point where they are not adding working age-population. The US has been doing a bit better in that regard. China, with its one-child policy is also reaching limits. So population alone seems to be a big issue.
Chris Hamilton at Econimica posts articles focused on the aging demographics worldwide (apart from non-consuming Africa), and how we need growth in the younger layers of society to keep comsumption/prices up. I think this dovetails with Gails point of view, and the whole “arc” of our system.
Right!
Dr Mercola published an excellent article today on the nature of the virus: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/05/03/is-the-new-coronavirus-created-in-a-lab.aspx?cid_source=wnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20200514Z2&et_cid=DM534080&et_rid=871119082
It asserts that the COVID-19 virus interacts with and activates other viruses already present in the body, which were most likely introduced via infected cultures used to produce vaccines. Hence the variability in death rates.
There’s possibly also an EMF / 5G aspect: http://emfrefugee.blogspot.com/2012/06/wifi-emfs-electrosensitivity-es-ehs.html To me EMF is just another toxic environmental input that needs to be minimised where possible. Luckily 4G barely reaches us at the farm.
Paul Chefurka did insightful research into why humans behave the way we do. http://www.paulchefurka.ca Ultimately he reached the conclusion that thermodynamic ‘greed’ is built into our genes, hence societal outcomes are always the same.
Dr. Mercola’s link includes some fairly long interview material with Dr. Judy Mikovits. I found a write up at the bottom of the page, which I did a screen save on.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/judy-mikovits-key-points.png
Sorry, I haven’t gotten to your other links yet.
The first link is the interesting on of the group, in my opinion. It leads to a series of six interviews with Judy Mikovits, Ph. D., who is the same woman we met in previous controversial posts. The first interview is 1 hour and 33 minutes long. The others are much shorter. The last one is called, “Evidence that SARS-CoV-2 may be a lab created virus.” These videos do not have over-the-top titles like her earlier video, “PLANDEMIC – Part 1”
I copied as a PNG the conclusions sections before.
In terms of treatment suggestions, I thought these two sections from the summary might be helpful:
25 minute mark if anyone missed this …. 25:00… I ask for only a single minute of your time
QFT, Good stuff !
People have a very aggressive side. Well, maybe. Especially when there isn’t enough to go around, which seems to be now.
One of Gerald Celente’s more famous quotes who is the Founder of the Trends Journal, likes to put it: “When people lose everything and have nothing else to lose, they lose it”
Excellent observation…. that was happening around the world pre covid — manifesting itself in riots….
Then there was…. out of nowhere … the flu… ah I mean…. Covid….
And no more protests!
Yes, great observation how all the protest around the world prior to the fake pandemic have been put on hold because of Covid 19.
Stand in the middle of something like this … and you get a feel for what Freud feared….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1rKmZ0xLKw&has_verified=1
This is the sort of thing I saw week after week when I was in HK September till early December… those people are not gangsters… for the most part they are students — many are young, educated workers…. basically normal people.
When they were not rioting I spoke to dozens of them… they are calm… polite… I’d even say innocent (university students in Asia are NOTHING like university students in north america — they do not get ‘wasted’ — they do not go to ‘spring break’ — they are very serious kids who spend their time studying — childlike in their innocence by comparison)…
Push the wrong buttons and look at what you get…. total utter mayhem.
Anyone think the e l der s were not looking at videos like this? Google Iraq protests… Lebanon protests… France protests….. total fkkking mayhem….
What are the options when people cannot afford to live — and you have already bombarded the economy with record low interest rates?
You can shoot the protesters — but consider the impact on the global economy if that had happened in HK France etc…. I know HK well and already people were passively protesting by not buying anything…. you start shooting the ‘brave frontliners’ (that is how most people in HK -including myself – feel about them)…. and that would crush the economy….
You can impose martial law — that kills the economy — and solves nothing because as soon as curfews come off it’s back on the streets…
Basically the authorities end up powerless against protests of this nature… I remarked to people many times when in HK how the CCP was like a castrated animal… they watched in dismay as the protesters were gutting the HK economy….
And then Covid arrived. Freud/Bernays would applaud that move.
Amazing. Police in USA are armed with M4s for civil insurrection, They would go cyclic very first brick. And justly. A brick has the potential to inflict lethal force. There would be no warning shots from a ancient smith and wesson. There would be hundreds of dead and wounded protesters first brick. When you throw a brick you are not a protester anymore you are a criminal. It be they believe their cause is just but throwing bricks at armed men will have only one result. The police in the USA take their safety seriously. I cant believe the HK police are expected to take that abuse. Police in the USA would flat out quit if they were expected to be exposed to potentially lethal injury without being able to protect themselves. Protest is one thing. Threatening bodily injury is another. You cant expect to try to inflict severe bodily injury on police in the name of protest and be given a free pass.
“Police in the USA would flat out quit if they were expected to be exposed to potentially lethal injury without being able to protect themselves.” But police in the USA are not only expected, but ordered, to do exactly that. Provided, of course, the rioters are part of a certain privileged minority. Hint: they do not turn sunlight into Vitamin C.
People get swept away when doing things as a gang and do all sorts of despicable things. The protesters are human. The police are human. When one human tries to harm another with a degree of force it is self evident that self defense with the same level of force is conscionable.
The people putting the arguments out for picking up the brick are not the Friend of the protester. In many cases they are the enemy of legitimate peaceful protest that is absolutely essential to freedom and a healthy society.
A lot of the clips were taken in the early days of the protests…. the police very quickly changed tactics and they came out in numbers in full riot gear… they also started to blast away with tear gas so there were very few major clashes as depicted in that video….
In the US without a doubt the police would open fire on protestors…
In HK the CCP has to be a bit careful because a full on assault would destroy their golden goose… they also have the PR issue of another T-Square….
Remember – the US PR machine presents the government as a bright shining light for democracy… they can get away with a lot more
The CCP is a totalitarian villain.
Freud needed WW1 to demonstrate to him that human beings are cruel? Or that they are herd animals? Or that people are at their worst in crowds? Really? So all of preceding human history up to that point hadn’t convinced him?
This tv program (note the term “program”) is precisely the kind of pseudish, undergraduate, pabulum- for-the-masses posing as “intellgent” and “intellectual” that induces the kinds of groupthink and self-abnegation to authority that he program supposedly laments.
“Freud was a great thinker.” “The BBC is a reputable news organization.” “This deocumentary is smarter than you.” “Dr Fauci has your interests at heart.”
So tell me, FE, what kind of truth, evidence, or revelation do you think you were exposing me to at minute 25:00? It’s just some televeision garbage isn’t it? Isn’t it the same old television garbage that we are always being exposed to? What do I know now or understand more deeply than I did before I watched minute 25:00?
What was the subtext? That Freud was a deep and important thinker? No. No, he was nothing of the kind. He was a snake oil salesman. That we should worship and and obey and always attend to the opinions of the popular icons that the media presents to us? Yes. Yes. Correct answer. That is the REAL message of this video series, isn’t it? After all, what does it matter to the TRUTH what a fourth-rate sham and conman (Freud) and his media backers CLAIM to have believed?
You think you are exposing and debunking these frauds and fraudsters, but you are just are instead spreading and reinforcing their power.
If you cannot understand what I have posted … I am not about to spend my afternoon explaining it to you….
I provide my services for free…. but there are limits.
You are relegated to Team Peripheral … Gail will post you the jersey….
I would guess that box is covered with tin foil…
Kim. FE hates humans. He takes great satisfaction in demonstrating their weaknesses and flaws. He points out actions of the people calling the shots only to demonstrate weakness and flaws. He points out the actions of the masses only to demonstrate weaknesses and flaws. He doesnt care weather they are wolves or sheep he only seeks to justify his repugnance for the human species at every possibility. Thats why he is so happy about current events. He also hates himself. Freud would recognize FE in a heartbeat. Love is just too hard for FE. Too much pain. Rather than try to love he has chosen to condemn. I think we all have a little FE in us.
You know … I was watching Century of Self again last night … I watched this doco quite a few years ago… and I was thinking … Freud and I are kindred spirits….
He references our heinous crimes in WW1 and torture … but I take it further … I reference slavery… I also reference our Crimes Against Animals… one might also (particularly if one was a Greenie)… note our Crimes Against the Planet…. one might trot out the spend fuel ponds and suggest that these are an act of Genocide…
Add all of this up and surely the conclusion MUST BE — that the human species should be executed?
After all – these are our rules …. we hung Saddam…. and we need to be consistent…
We very obviously are…. the problem …. therefore we must be eliminated.
Rather than spewing your SDR rubbish — please explain to me how I have this wrong.
It’s a brilliant sunny day and I am off for a ride on my mountain bike in a bit — so you have a bit of time to think your response through….
Why is violence necessarily bad? If the darkness was not necessary for survival, it would have been bred out. The “case” against Saddam, the entire Operation Iraqi Freedom, was a terrible mistake, I think.
If humans make it into space and there is a hostile species out there, without the darkness, we would just get extincted or enslaved anyways. We need the capacity to do horrible things, to remain competitive.
Matthew – I am deleting all your comments because you are not worth responding to. Just want to let you know so that you do not take my silence the wrong way
You forgot to mention God/Messiah complex…. or is it a Dog complex….
25 minute mark… could change your entire perception of the world… or not.
Which will you take?
https://www.allenandballard.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2319/2016/02/Red-Pill-Vs-Blue-Pill.png
While Fraud—sorry, Freud—was staying at that hotel in the Swiss Alps, I wonder if he ever ran into the well-known Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot?
I ask this because in “The Labours of Hercules”, Poirot visits just such a hotel in the depths of winter and meets up with a number of curious characters including Dr. Lutz, a Freudian psychoanalyst, who he exposes as a fraud.
Dr. Lutz : May I ask you something? Why do you insist on referring to yourself in the third person? It is intensely irritating!
Hercule Poirot : Because, Doctor Lutz, it helps Poirot achieve a healthy distance from his genius.
The Freud family escaped to England, of course. Freud’s grandson Clement used to appear in TV adverts with his dog. He later became a Liberal party MP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilR3DEuvsGY
Scroll through Clement’s wikipedia entry and search for the word ab use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Freud
Let’s not beat around the bush. The true character of those who rule us should be exposed at every opportunity.
https://www.rt.com/uk/346749-clement-freud-pedophile-mccanns/
I think Jasun Horsley upthread would know a bit about that. He has written of how the MK-Ultra perpetrators knew how to instigate multiple personality syndrome in people by exposing them to abuse.
Entirely unrelated, but interesting that Jasun has Luke Dodson commenting in his Twitter feed. Mr Dodson is a great grandson of J B Priestley. I found out about this through the author Anthony Peake. So my favourite authors / bloggers are seen to have connections between one another.
Post held — see 25:00 mark.
CTG/Xabier – I highly recommend you watch the few minutes from 25 on…..
And people are lead to believe that Freud’s contribution to the world was all about the pleasure associated with taking a dump and wanting to off their fathers to get it on with their mothers….
Think again.
If after watching that segment anyone thinks that nobody is in control …. well… I can lead you to water… and I can pry open your mouth and force the water down your throat…
But beyond that…. there is not much I can do….
https://zach-miller.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Epiphany2-0001314.jpg
https://www.evangelicalendtimemachine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/where-is-your-faith-1.jpg
Fast Eddy was put here…. to help. For free.
Sorry, FE, my “primitive sexual and aggressive forces” are not hidden deep inside my mind. They flourish in the clear light of day.
I think women have less of them. This is part of the reason that armies have been largely male.
Some would disagree. Among them Pentheselia, Hippolyta, Myrina, and, of course, our own Queen Boudicca, whose statue now decorates Westminster Bridge.
I would add my late Aunt Mary to that list, especially after two or three whiskies.
🙂
I have cited this article in my own piece today, “Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Be Normal: Covid-19 Social Engineers’ Green Dreams Update,” here: https://auticulture.com/just-when-you-thought-it-was-safe-to-be-normal-covid-19-social-engineerers-green-dreams-update/
It is disturbing to hear that the European Commission’s John Doyle is promising us a centuries-long pandemic, and a total economic makeover within 15 years, all under the guise of greenism.
Also Extinction Rebellion and the EU have a shared goal for human society? Who knew??
Thanks for sharing a link to your article, and within that article, pointing out the parallelism between what European Commission’s John Doyle is seeing in the future and at least parts of what I am pointing out.
It is pretty clear if you think about it that social distancing will wreck many businesses. It will start pushing economies to smaller and smaller sizes. So in that way, John Doyle and I think alike.
My thought has been that the European Commission is not long for this world. The European Union will start coming apart very soon, with the UK leading the way. Italy, with its debt problems, looks it won’t be able to support the world financially for very long. A person would think that the Foresight group would have come to this conclusion. So whatever the Foresight group decides cannot be a deciding factor in European policy, I would expect.
I have a hard time being very sympathetic toward renewable energy and electric vehicles. They are only offshoots of the fossil fuel industry. They cannot help Greta with her goals.
I don’t really know what the future might happen in the future. The only way that economies might possibly exist in the future is if they are much smaller and less connected.
But roads and highways would seem to have a role in connecting them in some way still. As it stands, developments at both ends of a highway greatly impact communities in between. The need for coherent planning between these entities is virtually unrecognized now. But a systems way of looking at the three entities might lead to groupings that are simultaneously smaller and bigger than what we have now
Artleads, if you want to see some coherent transport planning, look at England in the nineteenth century. Or for that matter, India, whose railway system was also designed by the British (but built, granted, with a huge amount of local labour).
Thanks, This is a very promising lead. I’m a huge fan of English 19th century “management.” This includes the most sophisticated machines (black and monstrously heavy) that, once built, required very little fossil energy to run. Foot pedals did much of the work. But I’m not sensing that we’ll get the trains back. Chinese and other highways might have foreclosed on the demand for these.
This John Doyle (there are others John Doyles more famous than him) is a ClimateAlarmist of the first water. He is up there with Guy McP, both in his predictions of gloom and his eyes—those staring eyes!
Here’s a video in which John Doyle is telling his fellow eurocrats and UN aid agency public trough feeders that “there isn’t a single independent scientist of the world” that supports the “inaccurate science” position that we are facing a 1.5 to 2 degrees C rise over pre-industrial temperatures. “We’re actually heading for 10 degrees of warming that could happen within 20 or 30 years. And on the way to 10 degrees we pass 4 degrees. Now 4 degrees is interesting because that’s extinction for his species.”
I’m posting this not because I agree with Mr. Doyle—happen to think our future temperature will be Goldilocksian—not to warm, not to cold, just right—but because this presentation tells us very clearly where Mr. Doyle is coming from.
Those of you are more open to persuasion should listen to this video because after watching it, you will no longer be worried about Coronavirus. In his confident sciency way, Mr. Doyle will scare you so shite-less about the temperature that being infected by the virus will seem no worse than catching a bad cold.
Thanks!
To be fair, his eyes are markedly less weird and staring than Christopher Monckton’s on the other side of this debate.
Ten degrees of warming? Then I shall take my summer holidays in the Arctic, swimming in the lagoons, drinking Planters’ Punch under the palm trees, and feeding the crocodiles. Just as it was in the early Eocene, and there was no catastrophe on the horizon.
This notion of “10 degrees” can be contemplated over at “Sam Carana’s” blog: Arctic News: http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/
I have to say I am closer to that camp than to a “Goldilocks” one. The sun plainly feels different. I was out for just a few hours gardening (May in New England) and my hands got sun-burned! I frankly cannot remember my hands ever being sun-burned, even in August.
Lucky you. I am rather susceptible to sunburn. As I found out on a nude beach in Dalmatia; no prizes for guessing what was burned. And next on Lake Titicaca, in a reed boat looking at the scenery. Silly me! at 4200m (14,000 feet) what did I expect?
That’s probably because you are accustomed to much more pollution blocking out the sun’s rays. While the days are warmer, the nights are cooler, at least here. The vortex is acting weird, so it is hard to say how much the shutdowns are causing.
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This is not an alien invasion.
Sars-Cov-2 enters the cells through the ACE2 receptors.
Male testicals have ACE2 receptors. But the testicals are not covered by the immune system.
If true, then this will lead to end of the human kind.
Not even E.T. (extra testical) would play with one.
In Italia we use cure for cancer to prostata because hormones of men help virus
Better accept to die before october. My advice
I think Is very similar in behavior to Epstenn Barr virus. This Is not very bad. But go inside and never go away. The same Is covid. But covid more more bad. Slowly kill us. Childrends too. I am positive Epstenn Barr virus. Never had problems. But never goes away. …i think Better study bible Great tribulation as never was before
“But covid more more bad. Slowly kill us. Childrends too.”
Really? In Norway the average age of those dead *width” Covid-19 is 85 years, so far the youngest is a 41 year old man who had serious kidney defects.
Tell me again After 2 years
I fear you might be right.
https://trib.al/706v0RI
Italy is too beautiful to accept to die.
Thank you very much!!)
Yes, Italy was the true heart and soul of all European civilization before industrialization: Spain, Germany, France, England merely imitated Italy for the most part.
I have always noted that memoirs of WW2 record how decent ordinary Italian people were in hard times, lacking the often cruel coldness and inhuman dishonesty of Germans, the impulsive savagery and terrible drunkenness of the Slavs. Although most said that Naples -once one of the greatest cities in Europe – was quite another world…. 🙂
“He who beholds the skies of Italy
Sees ancient Rome reflected; sees beyond
Into more glorious Hellas, nurse of Gods
And godlike men; dwarfs people other lands.”
(Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 to 1822)
Yoshua, Nature is a lot smarter than us. Men with infected testicles become infertile (and may die) because they will produce defective sperm. That would be bad, bad for the species, and Nature values species, not individuals.
Thank you for your clear expositions of the theories of thermodynamics as applied to the social/economic world.
However, your recent essay brought me up short. I refer to the speculation about who or what is “responsible” for the covid virus. To attribute the virus to a “lab” or to Fauci with so little evidence–just one “expert” whose motives are unknown–is just feeding the fears of the conspiracy crowd.
It is notable that the terrible “Spanish Flu” of 1918 started in Kansas long before there were “labs” or even a clear recognition of viruses.
I didn’t attribute the virus to the lab, and I certainly didn’t attribute the virus to Fauci. You need to read the post more closely.
The only thing I attributed to Fauci was an emphasis on what response should be used to the virus–in particular, to “flatten the curve.” This will help vaccine and pharmaceutical companies, as well as the rest of the healthcare industry. But, it will quickly bankrupt the economy, with all of the layoffs it causes and all of the resulting debt defaults. Fauci doesn’t understand the interconnected economy.
Gail did not attribute it to a lab — rather a Nobel Prize winning virologist did … it does not mean he is correct (or not part of an agenda)…… but he’s definitely qualified to comment on this situation.
As a not so old sceptic… when I see a deluge of ‘con sp ir acy th eo ry’ accusations appear on a search of a person who is qualified in a field…. I immediately assume someone is trying to discredit the person….
https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/french-prof-sparks-furor-with-lab-leak-theory/
He doesn’t seem to be a tin-hat type of guy…
The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi for the discovery of HIV.[17] They shared the Prize with Harald zur Hausen, who discovered that human papilloma viruses can cause cervical cancer.[12][18] Montagnier said he was “surprised” that Robert Gallo was not also recognized by the Nobel Committee: “It was important to prove that HIV was the cause of AIDS, and Gallo had a very important role in that. I’m very sorry for Robert Gallo.”[12] According to Maria Masucci, a member of the Nobel Assembly, “there was no doubt as to who made the fundamental discoveries.”[17]
Montagnier is the co-founder of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention and co-directs the Program for International Viral Collaboration. He is the founder and a former president of the Houston-based World Foundation for Medical Research and Prevention.
He has received more than 20 major awards, including the National Order of Merit (Commander, 1986) and the Légion d’honneur (Knight: 1984; Officer: 1990; Commander: 1993; Grand Officer: 2009),[19][20] He is a recipient of the Lasker Award and the Scheele Award (1986),the Louis-Jeantet Prize for medicine (1986), the Gairdner Award (1987), King Faisal International Prize (1993) (known as the Arab Nobel Prize), and the Prince of Asturias Award (2000). He is also a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine.[21]
Montagnier was awarded the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from Whittier College in 2010.[22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier
This is beginning to look suspicious. At least two folks accusing Gail of writing something she did not. I am going to have to look into this more thoroughly: ‘I refer to the speculation about who or what is “responsible” for the covid virus’
I was not referring to the existence of the virus, rather the question of its origins. There is plenty of speculation that was designed in a lab (Professor Luc Montagnier et al) and it makes an intriguing story but one with ‘zero evidence’ to support it.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientists-exactly-zero-evidence-covid-19-came-lab
Ya if you google that you get all sorts of ‘no evidence to support his con sp the ry’……
Maybe he had just drank a couple of bottles of wine and jumped onto his computer and pumped out some ridiculous tripe…. that he had not looked into or even thought about.
That’s EXACTLY how he got a Nobel Prize in virology…. he just blurted some nonsense out about the HIV > Aids connection … and voila …
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1DtTOZkaekY/TXBlgbPX6JI/AAAAAAAAADc/7-v8XZR5oTE/s1600/montagnier_awards2_photo.jpg
It’s ok if you do not get it… since you are being controlled and programmed not to…
25:00 mark
“Governments with too extensive programs, which taxpayers cannot really afford…” It is impossible for governments that issue their own currency ever run out of it. We can run short of labour and resources but never money. Only the ignorant will believe me if I tell you I can’t bake bread because I have run out of Kgs, but I have flour, yeast and water. This Modern Monetary Theory. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2019/01/16/but-can-the-government-afford-it/#2edc177922d9
https://gimms.org.uk/mmtbasics/
Except that after you issue all of this currency, your currency may drop in world markets, making it impossible for those with it to really buy much. Columbia seems set to follow this route. We will see how this really works out. In fact, we have countries all over the world trying to substitute more debt for real resources. It can only work so long.
Print enough money and what you end up with is Germany in the early 1920s:
Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic
Hyperinflation affected the German Papiermark, the currency of the Weimar Republic, between 1921 and 1923, primarily in 1923. It caused considerable internal political instability in the country, the occupation of the Ruhr by France and Belgium as well as misery for the general populace.
And how has it worked out for the Lebanese?
Hyperinflation In Lebanon Leads To Mass Protests
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerhuang/2020/05/03/hyperinflation-in-lebanon-leads-to-mass-protests/
However you can get away with this for some time — if the world turns a blind eye…. (i.e. you are too big to fail)… see Japan…
Just about everyone is following Japan now… and everyone is turning a blind eye…
It cannot go on forever… but I do not expect a contemporary Germany …. where the world suddenly turns on a major country and says – your money is worth nothing….
But hard to do when everyone’s money is worth nothing….
The charade will continue until something breaks that the CBs are unable to control or paper over.
In all likelihood — it will be one of there actions to control or paper a busted part… that will cause the entire system to collapse. But in the meantime their efforts to control or paper over something will keep the machine going awhile longer
Gail, The particular observation that MMT offers us on how modern government issued fiat currency systems work: that taxes do not fund government spending, only apply after Nixon’s 1071 ‘gold’ shock.
That fiat money has this characteristic, doesn’t lead to the policy space / suggestion that governments can or should try to “substitute more debt for real resources” causing “your currency may drop in world markets” thereby causing the hyper ventilation, sorry hyperinflation straw men, sorry incidences that @Minority Of One refers to. MMt scholars seem to have done their homework well.
We are advised to read and absorb MMT honestly and properly, on its own terms, rather than pander to assumptions that only apply to non credit fiat currency issuance i.e. / e.g. the pre 1971 gold backed / commodity money / currency world.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=3773
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=13834
https://positivemoney.org/2015/12/does-money-creation-always-lead-to-hyperinflation-it-didnt-in-britain/
there is nothing to worry about finite worllders this is all part of a big plan to save us our only hope is centred on following orders from our elected officials who are taking orders from the powers that be https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1062492
Reblogged this on syndax vuzz.
Thanks!
Oh, times are tuff, best to retire now!
Brett Arends’s ROI
Opinion: AT&T boss retires with $274,000 a month for life
Published: May 13, 2020 at 9:24 a.m. ET
By Brett Arends
Randall Stephenson gets a golden goodbye
Not everyone gets personally insulted by the president of the United States when they announce their retirement.
But when you’re walking away with a pension plan big enough to buy a typical U.S. house every single month — yes, really — do you really care?
AT&T T, -1.27% honcho Randall Stephenson landed a complimentary insult from the chief executive of the United States two weeks ago when he announced he was standing down at 59.
“Great News! Randall Stephenson, the CEO of heavily indebted AT&T, which owns and presides over Fake News @CNN, is leaving, or was forced out,” tweeted the commander in chief of the armed forces. “Anyone who lets a garbage ‘network’ do and say the things that CNN does, should leave ASAP. Hopefully replacement will be much better
Company filings show that the departing chairman and CEO is retiring with a staggering pension account worth $64 million — enough, according to industry data, to provide the 59-year old with a guaranteed income of $274,000 a month for the rest of his days.
A month.
How’s your 401(k) doing
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/att-boss-retires-with-274000-a-month-for-life-2020-05-11?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo
When the starving rabble are looking for the likes of those like him, I’ll be holding a flashlight to shine on his hiding doomstead
“AT&T boss retires with $274,000 a month for life”
Who in they’re sound mind accepts far out sh*t like this? Answer: Most living today, as long as they get trash food and ditto tv they’re happy.
He won’t be collecting that for very long
Another NO SH#T Sherlock Award!
BARRON’S
Airline stocks take a dive after Boeing CEO warns of possible industry bankruptcy
Published: May 12, 2020 at 4:19 p.m. ET
By Tomi Kilgore
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/airline-stocks-take-a-hit-after-boeing-ceo-warns-of-possible-industry-bankruptcy-2020-05-12
CEO Calhoun’s timeline for full recovery of airline industry is longer than many others
Boeing CEO David Calhoun NBC
Airline stocks suffered a broad selloff Tuesday after Boeing Co. Chief Executive David Calhoun provided a dire outlook for the industry which included a prediction that a “major” bankruptcy was likely in the next several months.
In an interview aired on NBC’s “Today” show early Tuesday, host Savannah Guthrie asked Calhoun if he believed a major U.S. carrier will go out of business when the payroll support program under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act ends in September.
“I don’t want to get too predictive on that subject,” Calhoun said. “But yes, most likely, something will happen when September comes around.”
Maybe Boeing will also be filing soon too?😜
How bad is it? Norwegian Airlines files and has a “plan”, whip out shareholder’s equity, give bondholders a major haircut with new stock. provide the plane OWNERS who are the leasing companies, 50% equity in new shares, downsized the airline, keep flying international (naturally) and cut numbers of employees, pay and benefits to those that are left.
PS Provide CEO and staff a major bonus and package for figuring all this out! Sarcasm!
A plan? What are you talking about. Nobody has plans.
When I start a business I don’t have a plan. I don’t do any market research…. and projections – what are they? Operating costs? I just make those up as I go along… revenue models? Balance sheet? P&L? Sales strategies… marketing ideas???
Nah… Sh it just happens…..
Kinda like how the owners’ of the Fed’s empire operates… they do not engage the best and the brightest at American universities… they do not have think tanks filled with clever people who war game everything as they try to maintain their edge over would be usupers….
Nah… they have no clue that their empire is 100% reliant on cheap energy… they are just old du m b men who sit around in rooms made of wood smoking expensive Cubans and drinking fine whisky…. letting sh it happen….
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/94/f9/0e/94f90e8633b5e657fc965d392efd00d6.jpg
So we need to fly before September, if we are going to fly.
I am flying nowhere so long as the 14 day quarantines are in place…. so I won’t be going anywhere for a long time
Don’t fight the FED, do what the Rulers who make the rules do….
Investors Are Dumping Stocks for Bonds as Fed Buying Begins
Justina Lee, Anchalee Worrachate and Sam Potter
BloombergMay 12, 2020, 3:57 PM EDT
(Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve’s dive into corporate debt on Tuesday aligns the U.S. central bank with money managers around the world pivoting toward America Inc.’s bonds and away from its shares.
Exchange-traded funds investing in credit saw $2.4 billions of inflows in the past week, compared to outflows for equities, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Funds targeting American stocks posted $9.3 billion of outflows in the period ending May 6, the most in six weeks, according to a Bank of America note citing EPFR Global data. The six-week inflow for high-yield bonds hit a record $32 billion.
It’s the “follow the Fed” mantra in action as investors fresh from the first-quarter turmoil seek safety higher up in the capital structure.
“We decided to reduce our global equity exposure in favor of global investment grade corporate bonds,” said Greg Perdon, chief investment officer of Arbuthnot Latham & Co Ltd. “We have preference for bonds that are going to benefit from central bank intervention. Investment grades might not have much of an upside, but they have a floor.”
The Fed facility beginning today is designed to purchase eligible credit ETFs — likely including an unprecedented bid for high-yield securities — as part of its emergency stimulus program to combat the coronavirus fallout.
Read more: Fed Says It Will Begin Buying Corporate-Debt ETFs on Tuesday?
Stocks down you say?, Wonder where the money went to😜?
Stock market down Yesterday and today more serisly
A few week ago in UK:
The reality of Cov-Sars-2 is that most don’t get sick or only get light symptoms but that Boris guy ended up in hospital, not a big surprise when you look at him; not exactly Mr Sound eh?
Surely he must have heart disease… pre diabetes… he looks like death warmed over… like someone who drinks heavily
Now we know why!? There is a connection between the Badboy China Virus, Lockdown of the World Economy and CC….. conspiracy confirmed….Mate…
Go Fast Eddy, Go with it 2000 posts are awaiting you….Give Mrs. Fast a rest from your madness
Lindsey Ellefson
May 13, 2020, 6:19 PM EDT
3.2k
CNN announced Wednesday that teen climate activist Greta Thunberg is in the lineup for a Thursday town hall on the coronavirus, baffling observers and drawing heavy scorn from critics.
Thunberg will join former acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Richard Besser and former Department of Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the panel. The 8 p.m. ET program will be hosted by Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Reactions to Thunberg’s inclusion came in fast and she trended on Twitter through the day Wednesday.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/cnn-draws-criticism-confusion-adding-221930117.html
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4lQ_MjU4QHw
Thank you Gail for the new Post! You are the best!
If anyone still though they were not being played… unreal.
Then there is this — seems there is a centralized entity pumping this sh it out
https://adage.com/creativity/work/microsoft-sam-every-covid-19-commercial-exactly-same/2251551
Is she attending ‘online’ or flying to America?
Meanwhile in Norway:
Holidays abroad is off the menu so now leisure boats are the new black. Economic downturn you say? No problem, we’ve got our big fat national fund to keep the wheels spinning forever.
You can be happy that the population doesn’t have to live on the agricultural produce of Norway. It couldn’t feed Norway’s population 100 years ago. Let’s hope imports continue.
We could eat fish;)
Fish and boiled potatoes. Maybe a little lutefisk and lefsa.
North Koreans apparently enjoy bark soup (and I don’t mean the dog one…)
If you pound it with a sledge hammer and then boil it for a week it apparently tastes like chicken
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nuZzbw1j_xA/Wmqnlec-L0I/AAAAAAAAAvo/8qARVPSXaBc-woq8A1-9qQNNoOJqzRQpgCLcBGAs/s1600/%25E1%2584%2582%25E1%2585%25A1%25E1%2584%2586%25E1%2585%25AE%25E1%2584%2581%25E1%2585%25A5%25E1%2586%25B8%25E1%2584%258C%25E1%2585%25B5%25E1%2586%25AF.jpg
“North Koreans apparently enjoy bark soup (and I don’t mean the dog one…)”
As usual you got to bring on the extremes, c’mon, try to contribute in a sensible way please …
Frankly, I fear, living on this damp island, having to revert to a typical crude English/Scandinavian diet more than anything: no olive oil, no red wine, from the South -horror! My culinary life started to look up when shared student rooms with an Italian.
Xabier, have you encountered a novel called “South Wind”, by Norman Douglas? I recommend it.
1000+ years ago Norwegians lived a harder life than now but it wasn’t that hard, they were able to build ocean going boats and sailed south to the mediterranean and west to America. They were a lot fewer though and needed a lot less energy …
Earlier post held… should be released as it is relevant… anyway .. extreme?
Check out Holodomor….
https://www.thesun.ie/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/12/nintchdbpict000291453186-1.jpg
http://www.ponglizardo.com/uploads/5/7/1/4/57140203/published/1920s-russian-famine-couple-selling-body-parts-for-food_1.jpg
Notice the people selling the meat… just normal people … but the BEAST wants to survive… will do ANYTHING to survive….
I think there is still unoccupied land available over in Vinland. Start building the long ships.
https://www.sott.net/image/s28/567661/medium/LOCKDOWN_final_Flo.jpg
Can I have another reality, please?
clap clap clap!
(The reality you ordered is currently out of stock. Please, try again last month.)
My wife joked that maybe we should see “Dumb & Dumber” again but first we’ll have to finish “Dumb & Dumber 3: Virus!”.
Italian debit Is a bomb
There seems to be a lot of debt that is a bomb.
Pingback: Understanding Our Pandemic – Economy Predicament | Basic Rules of Life
“The turmoil across emerging-market assets is about to get even worse, according to the world’s biggest publicly listed hedge fund firm.
“Guillermo Osses, a money manager at Man Group Plc, said developing nations are about to pay the price for their ballooning debt loads since the 2008 financial crisis.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/new-champions-of-emerging-markets-warn-pain-is-just-beginning
“Up to 13.7% of “speculative grade” bonds across emerging markets are at risk of defaulting over the next year – a higher level than that seen during the throes of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, according to Moody’s latest forecast.”
https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/news/4015067/emd-suffer-defaults-2008-financial-crisis-moody-warns-reports
I would be willing to bet that the actual default rate is higher than 13.7%
“Developing countries face a delicate balancing act of responding forcefully to coronavirus-triggered recessions without causing long-term damage to public finances, currency or inflation-fighting credibility. None more so than Brazil.
“Latin America’s largest economy is hurtling toward its biggest ever downturn already shouldering one of the largest debt loads, widest budget deficits and weakest exchange rates of any emerging market in the world.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/brazils-economic-fragility-magnifies-rock-183851135.html
“Six protesters have died in Guinea during clashes with security forces over roadblocks erected to curb the spread of the coronavirus.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/guinea-protesters-killed-clashes-police-200513071249521.html
“Before lockdown regulations halted work in the hospitality industry and the casual labour and domestic work markets, many Karoo [South Africa] residents were already battling poverty.
“The lockdown made the situation desperate.”
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-05-13-hunger-and-desperation-rip-through-the-karoo/
Should be ‘clashes with Guinea Pigs’ surely.
OH wow… this is a disaster!!!
With 2,998 infections and 11 deaths, the country is among the West African countries worst-hit by the coronavirus.
“Latin America’s economic history has long been forged through crises and shocks that stem from the global system. But there is no historical precedent for the turmoil that is just beginning to unfold in the region.”
https://thewire.in/world/an-economic-storm-is-going-to-devastate-latin-america-very-soon
“Almost half of Colombia’s senators signed off on a proposal to urgently implement a guaranteed minimum income for more than 70% of the population.
“The radical proposal would temporarily guarantee 31 million people a monthly income of $225 (COP877,000), which is equal to the current minimum wage.”
https://colombiareports.com/colombia-considering-guaranteed-minimum-income-as-famine-looms/
“[Mexico’s] National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval) said that between 6.1 million and 10.7 million people could be left in situations of poverty as a result of income loss…”
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coronavirus/coronavirus-could-leave-up-to-10-million-more-in-poverty/
Stave off famine by giving people money to eat. What could possibly go wrong?
I wonder what will happen to Colombia’s currency (relative to the dollar) with these minimum income payments.
“The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that the global economy is deteriorating faster than expected and that growth could fall further in the coming months.
“Kristalina Georgieva, the organisation’s managing director, said that it was likely to cut its global growth forecasts as the pandemic was hitting countries even harder than expected.
““Incoming data from many countries is worse than our already pessimistic projections,” Ms Georgieva said at a web conference organised by the Financial Times.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/worse-is-yet-to-come-imf-head-kristalina-georgieva-warns-6vdmcw6jj
“The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic prompted governments to issue more debt than ever before in April, according to data provided by the Institute of International Finance.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-goverments-issued-more-debt-than-ever-last-month.html
“Sovereign Defaults Set to Hit Record in 2020… Fitch Ratings believes further sovereign defaults are probable this year. Argentina, Ecuador and Lebanon already have defaulted on sovereign debt in 2020…”
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/sovereign-defaults-set-to-hit-record-in-2020-12-05-2020-1
“The World Health Organisation has warned that coronavirus “may never go away” as its experts predicted that a global mental health crisis caused by the pandemic was looming…
““It is important to put this on the table: this virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away,” said Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/global-report-who-says-covid-19-may-never-go-and-warns-of-mental-health-crisis
Right! The primary purpose seems to pay back existing debt and help citizens meet recurring obligations, like rent. No real investment involved. If there is an investment, it is to reduce seating capacity or otherwise make existing investments less productive. This is hardly helpful.
“India’s factory output plummeted to record lows in March, with the Index of Industrial Production contracting 16.7%, reflecting the drastic impact of the countrywide lockdown that began on March 25.”
https://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/coronavirus-lockdown-industrial-output-shrank-167-in-march-2020/article31569384.ece
“India’s shadow lenders are facing fresh turmoil after asset manager Franklin Templeton shut funds late last month, prompting other large investors to dump the financiers’ debt.
“Mutual funds are big buyers of non-bank financial firms’ bonds and some are struggling to meet redemptions after the biggest-ever forced closure of funds in the country.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fresh-crisis-looms-india-shadow-025655912.html
India’s problems are huge!
“The [Australian] economy will ‘snap back’ after falling off a 10% cliff no better than the front of your car would snap back after driving off a 10-metre cliff.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/13/australian-business-cant-lead-us-out-of-this-recession-the-government-must-step-up
And, FE, I just know you’re going to love this one:
“The strains were already starting to show before the pandemic sped up the process… a lot of businesses [in Canada] were struggling amid a slowing economy even before the lockdowns put a freeze on economic activity—meaning some of the businesses laying off workers were already at risk of closing for good.
“Starting last fall, the number of business insolvencies began to rise on a year-over-year basis for the first time since the early 2000s…”
https://www.macleans.ca/economy/the-economy-may-never-return-to-what-it-once-was-coronavirus-canada/
Ha! Like it… so many people are confident that the Aussies will enter our magic bubble and flood into QT and all will be good… a hotel owner with around 20 units was so excited because they have two bookings… no doubt at half the normal price but hey… congratulations (doesn’t even cover staff costs)
Meanwhile I have our rental cottage (next to our house) set up as a gym … and I ain’t about to buy into the optimism and clear the gear out…
Someone with a sense of humor in this awful situation.
You cannot imagine how many people in Queenstown are banking on a Magic Bubble with Australia and Aussie tourists pouring in and reviving this place….
The pub last night had our table of 6 – and 2 other people having dinner. We were there from 6-9….
Yesterday was the first day of L2…. you might have thought that people were itching to get out and have a drink…. after nearly 8 weeks prison.
Oh right — loads of people are on benefits…. loads have burned through savings and taken on more debt…. and there are no tourists….. and most of the people with money (the precious lovelies…) are scared to die and following the EDICT:
https://www.hospitalityandcateringnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/stay-at-home-protect-the-nhs-save-lives-feel-free-to-fly.jpg
Did I mention M Fast was in QT yesterday … she did a walk through over lunch — the restaurants that were open — were pretty much empty.
“For Japan’s shell-shocked small businesses, a promised $1.1 trillion in stimulus is proving too little, too late, raising the likelihood of a surge in bankruptcies at companies that employ nearly three-quarters of the workforce… small businesses, which employ 70% of the workforce, are already on the brink of disaster.”
https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/as-japan-slow-walks-stimulus-small-businesses-fear-collapse
“South Korean job losses rose at their sharpest pace in two decades last month, despite the country avoiding a nationwide lockdown to combat coronavirus.
“The employment data was released as health officials raced to control an outbreak linked to the popular Itaewon nightlife district in Seoul…”
https://www.ft.com/content/d0fcecf5-7254-45dc-8a87-106aaefa4c54
“Financial Secretary Paul Chan has described Hong Kong’s economic challenges as unprecedented. In the first quarter, the city had its worst slump on record. Even pillars of the economy that had been holding up, like finance and real estate, are showing signs of softening.”
https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/hong-kongs-economic-crisis-just-keeps-getting-worse
“Indonesia is backing away from plans to reopen the economy from early June, as the number of new daily cases reported of coronavirus remain in the hundreds…
“The slow down in economic activity has hit day workers in the informal economy hard, with millions of people losing their jobs.”
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/plague-or-famine-indonesia-grapples-with-economic-risks-and-infection-rates-20200513-p54sjj.html
The far east, even without a lot of COVID-19 cases, is doing miserably, just like everyone else. Of course, China was a major problem area before with its flat coal production.
“A rerun of the oil market plunge that took the New York Mercantile Exchange’s now expired May crude contract into negative price territory on the eve of its expiration last month can’t be ruled out, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission warned Wednesday, urging the futures industry to be prepared.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-could-go-negative-again-so-be-prepared-cftc-warns-futures-industry-2020-05-13
“It’s happened again: Another commodities trader in Singapore has all but collapsed under a pile of debt and alleged fraud now under investigation.
“Last week, police raided the offices of ZenRock Commodities Trading Pte Ltd., after HSBC filed a criminal complaint of fraud. It has been reported ZenRock has debts in excess of $160 million, $49 million of which is owed to HSBC.”
https://www.complianceweek.com/risk-management/analysis-oil-collapse-leaves-singapore-traders-scrambling/28892.article
“Six years of negative interest rates have done as much to boost profitability at eurozone banks as they have to weigh it down, the European Central Bank said in a research paper that is likely to raise eyebrows among financiers…
“The findings may be contested by some bank executives, who complain that their sector has paid €25bn in negative rates to the central bank since its deposit rate went below zero in June 2014, eating into their already weak profits.”
https://www.ft.com/content/52de6e70-56bc-4da9-adf7-b228c8da79a0
“European banks have declined the European Central Bank’s offer to pay them to keep loans flowing to eurozone businesses.
““Cheap liquidity…does not insure against credit risk,” said Gilles Moec, chief economist at Axa in London.”
https://www.verdict.co.uk/retail-banker-international/news/banks-turn-down-ecbs-offer-of-more-money-to-make-loans/
“A group of financial experts from Deutsche Bundesbank, Imperial College London and the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has recently reviewed the European Central Bank’s (ECB) 2014 asset quality review data and analyzed whether banks “dress up” for the regulator by changing their assets’ risk composition.
“As it turned out—yes, they totally do.”
https://decrypt.co/28713/german-banks-cheated-on-european-central-banks-stress-tests
“Italian banks are vulnerable because of their large holdings of bonds issued by the government of Italy, one of the most indebted countries in the world
““Clearly the doom loop is still there,” said Lorenzo Codogno, who was previously the director general at the Treasury Department of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance. “If you have this strong link, if you have a widening of spreads, inevitably that puts pressure on the banks.””
http://archive.vn/Nh6yD#selection-675.0-683.287
“Investment in the eurozone has plummeted in recent weeks, creating a drag on the continent’s economy that economists warn is likely to last even after companies and workers emerge from coronavirus lockdowns.
“Across the region, capital expenditure has contracted sharply…”
https://www.ft.com/content/4c279e4c-05af-4c59-be90-48bf3228c92f
Harry, juxtaposing your 3:11 and 3:15 posts allows one to connect the dots. The ECB lends money at a negative interest rate to persuade banks to take it. The banks then lend the money on to unsecured creditors. The creditors default, but the ECB still insists on its pound of flesh. Another classic case of the centre draining wealth from the periphery: the clearest sign of a collapsing empire.
The EU is definitely on borrowed time, Robert.
“A judge in Germany’s highest court has warned that EU infringement proceedings against Berlin over the court’s contentious ruling on the European Central Bank would plunge Europe into crisis.
“Peter M Huber, who drafted last week’s constitutional opinion, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that such a procedure “would trigger a significant escalation, potentially tipping Germany and other member states into a constitutional conflict that would be very difficult to resolve”.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f48e3a6b-6a95-4187-8a7d-0f8dad3fbecb
“Another classic case of the centre draining wealth from the periphery: the clearest sign of a collapsing empire.”
Absolutely.
Businesses need to be able to make profits, not just take out more debt.
“Two prominent retail chains — J.Crew Group Inc. and Neiman Marcus — helped push the U.S. leveraged loan default rate in that struggling sector to 10.34%, a record high that, amid the catastrophic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, will almost certainly continue to climb.”
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/retail-sector-defaults-soar-to-record-high-in-us-leveraged-loan-market-58579317
“Did you make your rent payment this month?
“If you’re struggling to make that happen, you are not alone. According to Edison Research, over 62% of renters are concerned about being able to make the rent. Welcome to the newest symptom of the coronavirus: the 2020 Rental Housing Crisis.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2020/05/13/why-renters-and-landlords-are-getting-crushed-the-rental-housing-crisis-has-arrived/#791d85807eee
“…the historic slump that has put some 30 million Americans out of work is likely to get worse — much worse — before it gets better, according to Goldman Sachs.
“The investment bank predicts in a new report that unemployment, which surged to nearly 15% in April, could soar to 25% this year.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unemployment-rate-could-hit-25-percent-great-depression-prediction/
we are the only animal that seeks to ‘own’ where another of our kind lives
bears out the point that ultimately the planet isn’t property
Birds and beasts of many kinds squabble about nesting sites, territories and the like.
Even koalas will fight over a eucalyptus tree, as this delightful video shows.
eyerolling time
I didn’t think it was necessary to add the following caveat to that comment:
“While the Koala will fight for (and evict) one its own kind from a nest space, having obtained nesting rights it never charges another Koala xxx eucalyptus leaves each month to live there”
There are some bits of common sense one takes for granted
I was wrong
Problems everywhere!
“After dismissing warnings about risky debt when times were good, many corporations are resorting to a familiar tactic to ride out the recession: borrowing even more money. The Federal Reserve — once among those sounding the alarm — now is helping corporations pile on debt.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/13/with-feds-encouragement-corporations-accelerate-debt-binge-hopes-riding-out-pandemic/
“…a corporate landscape that’s leveraged up to the hilt is simply much more vulnerable to future crises and shocks than one that’s not.
“We’ve still not seen the full repercussions of Covid-19 for businesses and the economic ecosystem. We don’t know how severe the damage will be on a financial and human scale.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-economy-wall-street-debt-boeing-shares-junk-a9513176.html
“After the initial onslaught in March when the coronavirus pandemic caused a crisis of confidence in credit markets, CLO securities have recovered some ground, helped by the Fed’s aggressive interventions.
“However, the worry is that further corporate downgrades and escalating defaults could start to unravel sections of the CLO market, in turn prompting a much deeper sell-off that magnifies the broader impact to the economy.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f10eaaac-0f4e-46bc-8f78-0754028da46a
It is amazing how smoothly things have gone so far. A drop in stock prices, and a recovery, but nothing terribly major.
Right! Especially when you think of the Fed having to cut rates three times in 2019 and all the problems in the repo market. This did not feel like a financial system that had much resilience.
There is still some low cost conventional oil available… so perhaps the plan is to keep the global economy on life support with basic functions in place… and just feed what’s left into the hibernating beast…
“March 23, 2020: The Day the US Economy Did Not Crash.
“The day when Fed Chairman Jerome Powell rode in to rescue financial markets to prevent their complete freezing up could have entered our history books as another global mega-crash.”
https://www.theglobalist.com/united-states-stock-market-wall-street-federal-reserve-unemployment-inequality-financial-crisis/
“Rightwing militia groups in Michigan plan to rally at the state capitol building on Thursday to protest Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders that she put in place to slow the deadly spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Thursday’s demonstration will be the latest in a series of protests that started as a demonstration against the lockdown policy but are now generating fears of an eruption of political violence.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/13/michigan-rightwing-militia-groups-stay-at-home-protest
“Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, incident commander of the state’s [Hawaii] COVID-19 response, said he was frustrated when leaders failed this weekend to come up with a schedule for reopening the economy.
“Hara said if nothing changes, there could be violence.”
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2020/05/12/states-coronavirus-incident-commander-warns-potential-unrest-riots-if-economic-strife-continues/
An article on April 16 said, Unemployment in Hawaii tops 37% as coronavirus shutdown continues. Other articles said that this was the highest unemployment unemployment rate in the country. The state is terribly dependent on the tourist industry and the airline industry. The state has a huge population relative to available land.
“Rightwing militia groups”? “political violence”? Yes, it’s the Guardian, the nadir of gutter journalism. Why do they even bother?
As always, it is the presupposition that is the real message.
“…US core inflation (excluding food and energy) has recorded consecutive MoM declines for only the second time in the series’ 63-year history…
“This reinforces our view that the scale of demand destruction in the economy means inflation is not going to be an issue for a long time.”
https://think.ing.com/snaps/us-deflationary-forces/
“It looks as though the long-run trend of stability in the inflation rate is ending, and that we need to prepare for an inflation rate rollercoaster.”
https://www.omfif.org/2020/05/the-inflation-v-deflation-debate/
But here’s what the average dumb American isn’t told regarding inflation. Inflation comes in two forms, one is in price increase and the other is through “product or package shrinkage”. Yup, you not only get to pay slightly more but you also get a lot less.
Tropicana orange juice is a good example. A carton of this premium OJ went from 64oz to 52oz and we also saw a price increase and they are not the only ones doing it.
Also, amusingly, some manufacturers have been shrinking the packet size to the smallest possible, showing up how they used to leave lots of empty air in, say, a box of rice, or a bottle of sherry to mention two which I have come across.
People who were waiting for inflation to reduce the impact of debt will be disappointed.
Anyone who is waiting for something good to come out of this will be utterly disappointed -why people fantasize I do not know.
Most people tend to be optimistic … otherwise they go off the deep end and slit their wrists.
Micawberism is a problem that most of us suffer from to a greater or lesser degree;
“something is bound to turn up”
“Global trade is projected to record a quarter-on-quarter slump of 27% in the second quarter of 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, after falling by 3% in the first quarter, a new report by the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA) warns.”
https://www.miningweekly.com/article/global-trade-set-to-slump-27-in-q2-report-warns-2020-05-13/rep_id:3650
Wow!
World’s Largest Shipper Warns Of Collapsing Volumes, Dashes Hope For V-Shaped Recovery
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/worlds-largest-shipper-warns-collapsing-volumes-dashes-hopes-v-shaped-recovery
25% drop in Q22020. If our economy does not grow, it dies (Fractional fiat-based economies has this feature). So, I am not sure how we can take a drastic 25%. We don’t need to go to -100% to collapse. Consistently 10% drop is more than sufficient. It just takes a longer time.
I believe many people still harbour the fantasy V recovery. What it takes for them to change their view? Remember the virus – it only happens in China… it only infect the Asians… it is just a temporary blip….. jobs will come back…. Wow… cognitive dissonances or normalcy bias (whichever it is) at its best
“The capesize market has suffered a further decline this week, with the average weighted time-charter at just over $2,000 per day on the Baltic Exchange. That is the lowest level since March 2016.”
https://lloydslist.maritimeintelligence.informa.com/LL1132341/Capesize-market-plunges-to-lowest-in-four-years
We desperately need the world’s shipping industry. At least a few of the ships are making money storing unneeded oil.
Then there are plenty of people who think you can survive running a business at 15% capacity — you just ‘reduce your operating costs’…
They are also fans of magic tricks.
“Don’t Believe The Happy Talk” – Jim Rickards Warns “This Time ‘Is’ Different”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/dont-believe-happy-talk-jim-rickards-warns-time-different
“Nothing like what we’re witnessing has ever happened before. Even the savviest analysts cannot yet internalize what happened.
As I explained earlier, comparisons to the 2008 crisis or even the 1929 stock market crash that started the Great Depression fail to capture the magnitude of the economic damage of the virus. You may have to go back to the Black Plague of the mid-14th century for the right comparison.
Unfortunately the economy will not return to normal for years. Some businesses will never return to normal because they’ll be bankrupt before they are even allowed to reopen.”
We don’t know that the economy will ever return to normal, unfortunately.
https://www.newstarget.com/2016-06-29-a-healthy-10-year-old-florida-girl-was-paralyzed-by-the-flu-shot.html
https://www.vaccines.news/2016-01-15-h1n1-vaccines-and-flu-shots-are-useless-for-preventing-disease-cdc-studies-admit.html
Oh and btw – Denial… I was unable to respond to this on the last article because the time had expired… I was so concerned the past two days that you were worrying about FE and I just wanted to let you know that I am going ok…..
‘Eddy the amount of time you spend on a computer is sad……We get what you are trying to say.
Now go out and live a little, have you ever read a book? I know kids of your generation might not know what one is but you can google it……Let some other people have a turn to comment without all your muck all over the place. I do agree with you but I don’t care what you have to say 24 hours a day. Thank you’
My reading list for the past year is below. I mostly listen rather than read because I spend quite a bit of time in my ute driving to the ice rink (30+ minutes each way… 3x per week) – I also listen when I go to the gym….. I am not a big (or small) fan of ‘the radio’ (or the tee vee)….
I also like to listen on airplanes (4 or 5 long haul flights/yr – sorry GEEETA…. )….
It all adds up – as you can imagine…
Of course this is not the full extent of it … as I spend 12 hours per day in front of a computer…. multitasking answering emails thinking about this and that… but also going down rabbit holes…
So no need to feel pity for FE…. think of this as fuel for a 700IQ… 700IQ + knowledge… is a powerful combo… you should feel privileged to be part of it….
Great Courses https://www.audible.com/ep/the-great-courses :
The Late Middle Ages
Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization
The Decisive Battles of World History
Rome and the Barbarians
The Big History of Civilizations
Lost Worlds of South America
Conquest of the Americas
The World of Byzantium
The Celtic World
The Vikings
A History of Eastern Europe
The Story of Medieval England: From King Arthur to the Tudor Conquest
Before 1776: Life in the American Colonies
World War I: The Great War
Turning Points in Middle Eastern History
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
Maya to Aztec: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed
A History of India
Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon
History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective
The Fall and Rise of China
Understanding Russia: A Cultural History
Understanding Japan: A Cultural History
Food: A Cultural Culinary History
The History of Spain: Land on a Crossroad
The Persian Empire
Books:
Middlemarch
To the Lighthouse
First Love
Homage to Catalonia
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
Macbeth: A Novel
Go Wild: Free Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions of Civilization
In Patagonia
Homage to Catalonia
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes: A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness
Mein Kampf: The Ford Translation
Quest for 5000!!!!
In your quest you have so far racked up 27.9% of all posts on the comments section, with 41 out of 147 comments. To keep up over the 20 days allowed you will need 1394 posts (out of 5000) to maintain your percentage, or 69 posts per day.
What’s the point?? Apart from destroying some good commentary with a lot of irrelevancies.
Hmmm… unfortunately the % is going to drop because there will be deluge of normie comments inbound the US crowd come on board…. I will do my best to hit 2000 comments on this article…
I hate to let the team down
Getting out of the way of Mrs Fast? Things might be getting a little tense in the compound after all this time.
well at least, advance warning of the deluge tells people to press delete without taking the trouble to read them all
thanks for letting us know
I have deleted some, so the count goes back down again.
How will we ever reach 5000????
We surely cannot see the world end without breaking 5000 – can we????
5000 is too much for me, I am afraid.
It’s exciting to think about it though… no?
Ford? Oh, that’s the unabridged version. I guess you know there was also a sequel of sorts? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweites_Buch
John Williams at shadowstats:
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
“ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment for April 2020 is 35.4%, 39.6% net of BLS errors”
the BLS admitted they made errors and their real rate for April was 19%, not 14%…
so using the correct BLS data, Williams calculates the real rate as 39.6%…
for the end of April…
obviously it’s much higher now…
No surprise re: those numbers and he said during the meltdown of 2008-09 that the real unemployment rate was in the mid 20’s and the annual inflation rate was between 10-14%. But everyone has to lie because if they don’t then it begins to look like a Depression and not a Recession.
The way to keep the reported unemployment rate down this fall is for schools to still be taught by distance learning. This tends to take mothers out of the workforce and reduce the reported unemployment rate.
Countdown to breaking quarantine…. 1:45 minutes till pub-oclock time…. tick tick tock tock….
This message is sponsored by Panhead… the Official Beer of Fast Eddy (sorta like the trolls that have appeared on OFW today … FE gets paid — 2 pints for each post…)
http://beerhealer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/10727481_745451195529720_1542626673_n.jpg
House prices could fall by 30 per cent in worst-case scenario as coronavirus restrictions bite
https://www.cohenhandler.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/When-buying-a-house-at-auction-its-important-to-know-what-to-expect_578_6029334_0_14101009_1000.jpg
One property analyst warns the worst-case scenario, where coronavirus restrictions are extended for at least six months, could see housing prices tumble by up to 30 per cent.
Louis Christopher, the founder of SQM research, has told The Business house prices will fall regardless of when restrictions are lifted from here, but the timeframe will have a major impact on the depth of a property price downturn.
Mr Christopher says a “V-shaped” recovery, “where dwelling prices fall in the June quarter but start to rise again in the September or December quarters” could still occur if COVID-19 cases continue to fall and restrictions are gradually lifted during May.
of course, the real “worst-case scenario” is that housing prices will fall by 100%…
not a prediction, but time will tell…
If 2008 is the model properties become zombies still on the books at full value. Mortgage have zero incentive to sell for less than the mortgage value. The property at full value is the key to the repo. Lots and lots and lost of vacant houses none for sale. They get way more cash from the property on the books at full value than selling it. Remember all collateral requirements are suspended! No reason to liquidate and all the reason to keep the zombie asset,
Ha! I live in a UK property hotspot. If property values here were to fall by 30%, they would still be almost 4 x those in 2000 – which shows the immensity of the bubble which has been blown!
Excellent point. A fall in house prices is good news, not bad: it helps the young and the renter, both cohorts with below average income. It helps buyers at the expense of sellers, again a transfer from richer to poorer. And if you own a house, you can avoid the issue by simply not selling it: its value as a home is more important than its value as a commodity.
It is a nightmare for the elderly care market though, which relies on house-owners using equity from their properties to fund their frail dotage in residential and nursing homes.
For right now, the real estate agents I have talked to say that there are too few houses on the market relative to buyers because sellers are afraid to let strangers in. This dynamic leads to higher prices, rather than lower prices. One agent said she had just sold a house for more than the listing price, given this situation. Nothing stays on the market for more than a few days. This is Georgia, USA.
That’s really fascinating… paying more than the asking price when the real unemployment rate is probably over 30%…
The buyers are the believers in V…. V for Victory… V for Recovery… (shouldn’t they believe in R?)
I know people like this … they are looking to buy ‘the dip’ on NZ property because they believe this is as bad as it’s going to get…. this is an ‘opportunity’…. they are delusional yet not delusional enough to pay above the asking price…
That is … insanity.
Would-be buyers want to move right now, for some reason or other, and there are hardly any homes on the market because would-be sellers don’t want would-be buyers walking through there home. It is only after people have completely vacated a home that they will let someone look at it. So the number of would-be sellers drops.