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.
Do you know Miley Cyrus’ wrecking ball? Likewise the oil price is doing this. on the one hand there is the price too high on the one hand the price too low on the one hand the negative price that destroyed the oil industry, now a high price is coming back which will destroy the economy. then the demand will collapse. and then the ball will hit the oil industry again due to the low oil prices again. A few more shots will suffice. #triangle of Doom thanks Alexis
It would be fascinating to run TLG model from today’s date with services and industrial output set at half and food set at 0.9 and see what it shows.
Some years ago, sitting next to Meadows I asked two questions, this was one of them and he indicated that the model was running pretty much true to the original. It seems that the Club of Rome group did an update, as I recall the results were the same and no I am not chasing that one down. ( It may have been a group in the Netherlands).
The second question was what comes after peaks, my recollection is the model does not have anything to say after the peaks, it probably becomes a Liebigs minimum issue but that is a dumb answer as I really don’t know what I am talking about, it is a guess.
Cleaning out my office I came across a paper, “SCARCITY: Humanities Final chapter?” by Christopher O,. Clugston. Basically it tracks 89 non renewable mineral resources, it seems well done, but I have no way to verify. I appears to have been written in 2008 so there has been enough time to verify some of the projections should you so desire. The short fall probabilities are for 2030, almost ten years from now, “What? Me worry?”
Dennis L.
The things that Chris Clugston did years ago (in my Oil Drum days) looked at the increased cost of extraction of a number of minerals, over a period of years. These years included the big run-up in oil prices. Of course, pretty much every mineral had a much higher cost of extraction because of the higher oil prices. Oil is used in extraction of all minerals. Also, when “demand” (affordability) rises, it rises for pretty much all commodities at once. So not only did costs rise, but the amount that people were willing to pay for these minerals rose. These things are true, whether or not a mineral is scarce.
Of course, as oil prices fall, and as demand in general falls, this whole approach to determining scarcity falls apart. It seems like that at one point he was saying that aluminum is scarce, when it is the third most abundant element in the earth’s crust.
Here public servants had a pension system much better than the ordinary people. It was draining public recourses put politicians did nothing because it was related to their own pensions, and because public servant unions are very strong. But covid changed it. Authorities had loosened a bit lockdown for one week, but reversed without a surge in cases. A pure show of force from the government. So they terminated the pensions extra benefits and no one could go on the streets to protest. After that, they unlocked again
The only good use of covid 1984 I’ve seen so far
I mean all state’s employee’s pensions (policemen, teachers, doctors), so it’s big money. Now they’re leveled with the private sector, we wished for it for 30 years and it took a week of extrahard lockdown to make it real. My money will go to those most in need, not that bad. Politician’s pensions are also affected, but these guys had been on power for the last 20 years, and they completely destroyed their oponents at the last election. So key players are not planning to retire. They had to prosecute half a dozen shoppers that protested, but perhpas they managed to square the budget and even get a couple of extra votes
Hope they will continue to loosen the knot
I mean shop owners, not shoppers
I know that generous pensions for public employees are very common in the US. These pensions made it easier to hire workers at wages below what the private sector was paying.
Now you know a way to get rid of these pensions 😉
Except that for about 30 years public sector wages have matched if not exceeded private sector thanks to decades of wage suppression in the private sector. But I suspect the general public is still unaware of this as the old myth still prevails. Yet generous public pensions continued to be enhanced despite deterioration of private compensation vs public.
Queenstown Lakes chief executive Mike Theelen’s pay increased to $356k
https://www.stuff.co.nz/otago/115792561/queenstown-lakes-chief-executive-mike-theelens-pay-increased-to-356k
That’s a hell of a lot of dosh in NZ — particularly when you are not running a business with all the pressures of a business to turn a profit and reward the shareholders…
End of the day the taxpayer pays your salary regardless of what you do…
I also understand this clown gets paid bonuses… bonuses for what???? Releasing land for more development?
For that level of salary you need to be in a high pressure job…. I hardly think Mike’s job is high pressure.
I wonder about kickbacks from local connected property developers…. I have heard it’s an old boys club.
More on my current obsession, education, higher education.
Article on Wolf’s website regarding student housing. Again I personally watched a very nice 8? story apt building go up across from my office, I had a corner office with a large window, couldn’t understand where all the students would come from to fill it, how they would afford rent.
Well, it seems in England there is a shortage of students. Furthermore the financing was first obtained by the developers who took their cut and then sold the units to REITs which are now, surprise, failing.
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/05/24/student-housing-one-of-the-most-hypes-asset-classes-runs-out-of-students/
If the changes in education are real and accelerating, we should see more of this. It has implications for tax revenues used to employ police to help with student social growth at local bars. La Crosse even provided a “Vomit Comet” to take students from the university grounds to the bars – very thoughtful and of course good for sales tax revenue as well as ER revenue from alcohol toxicity. It is easier to understand things which one personally experiences, education seems to be a huge change even for software Zoom has zoomed. Any one “zoom in” on that stock?
Education is the next big change, it takes very little change in marginal revenue to greatly affect the viability of an organization. Climbing walls are “sunk” expenses, perhaps administrative expenses might also be sunk but in a different manner.
Dennis L.
I read in the paper today that some overseas elementary schools are planning on a program in which the students each go half time, so the classrooms are half as full. I presume that they are given more homework.
I can’t imagine that this appreciably reduces the risk of catching COVID-19. At the same time, the parents are still left with needing part time child care, if they can find it, so that they can work. The buses would presumably be half as full as well, assuming the same number of bus drivers and buses are used.
When there is no future why pursue education – unless it’s a pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge …. it’s not as if anyone needs to prepare to compete for jobs…
Perhaps sustenance farming and telling tomorrow’s weather from the clouds. Maybe a little about sundials. Nothing high-tech.
Or … how to kill with a knife? How to butcher a human body? How to plan and executive an effective ambush on a farm….
CTG,
Laughing quietly at your last sentence/paragraph, perhaps both, God sent incompetent politicians so we wouldn’t be bored.
Regarding the June test, only have recent direct experience with education about which I have bored this audience to death. It will change, being the optimist it will change for the better but not without bruising some along the way. You are still in business, I was in business, my metaphor during my business years was like a convoy during WWII, expect to take hits, maybe even a torpedo, avoid taking one in the engine room.
Dining out: personally belong to a private club in the cities, glass of wine before a fireplace in the library, dinner at a table by the window overlooking St. Paul, lovely, social distancing not an issue before, shouldn’t be one after. Walk to a very nice local pub, different game, close. Hopefully, both survive.
Dennis L.
We Italians are children of the Romans we have always built in stone and bricks our houses must last for centuries everyone ventured into investment in property the police policemen professor of gymnastics all bought and speculation building, because they thought that these were all earned in this field, however now after 2008. The real estate market has completely failed and now even worse and everyone is left with many, many, many unsold properties and you can’t even rent tourists. This is the real drama in Italy now.
No. The Italians as we know it are descendants of the Lombards and other Germanic tribes.
them what happened to the Romans? did the line eventually die out?
some answers to my questions:
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-happened-to-the-ancient-romans-4058701
Same goes for us Greeks…from theory three in the article:
... most modern Greeks actually have ancestors of a variety of ethnicities, some of whom they would prefer to distance themselves from. This is apparently an extremely touchy subject in that part of the world: modern Greeks unquestionably prefer to identify themselves as descendants of the people that produced the Age of Pericles, etc. Suffice it to say, however, that, after several hundred years of Turkish domination, not to mention numerous incursions by Slavic peoples and other invaders, the modern Greek gene pool is probably as diverse as that of the British (for example), though there are no doubt still traces of “ancient” Greek ancestry in the population.
Before 1750 there was no concept of being “Greek” in the modern sense. The term was a pejorative as it was seen to be linked with the pagan Hellenic past. The overwhelming majority of the Greek-speaking people were subjects of the Ottoman Empire and were part of the Rum Millet (Roman nation), which encompassed all Orthodox Christians of the Porte (except the Armenians), with the Archbishop in Constantinople as ethnarch. They had called themselves Romaioi (Romans) since before the Byzantine Empire was even a thing in Western scholarship.
Indeed it was the West that primarily rehabilitated the idea of Greece, or Hellas, and was instrumental in the creation of a modern Greece with its spiritual roots in the Classical period, rather than in the Near Eastern (Byzantine) Orthodox tradition, influenced heavily by four centuries of Ottoman rule. This had more to do with the West needed a foundation myth, and ancient Greece was seen as the locus. For most Greeks, we’ve never been able to adequately reconcile the two. Modern Greece is a Western mistress, but an Eastern bride.
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/d/images/thumb/c/ce/Epanastasi.jpg/87px-Epanastasi.jpg
Mythical scene from the Greek War of Independence. The blessing of the flag by Bishop Germanos at Saint Lavra, March 25, 1821
Some of the faces of today most similar to those in Ancient Greek art are to be see in Southern Italy, parts of which were heavily settled by the Greek colonists.
And the folk dances and music are a living remnant of Greek traditions, too.
In southern Italy? Magna Graecia. Of course. Naturally, there’d be some gentic legacy. Still, there were many waves of immigrants from Greece and Albania for centuries. People were fleeing the turmoil that had been erupting in the Balkans since at least the 6th century AD, when the Slavs first descended on the peninsula, and transplanted their culture there.
Later too, when the Turks arrived. In between there was regular warfare between the Byzantine Empire, Venice, the Franks, the Genoese etc. for control of the Adriatic and Aegean seas. The Arabs took many into slavery, plus plague and starvation were a constant threat. The whole area was a shambles for centuries, right down to the present day. It is no wonder it was considered the powderkeg of Europe.
I think your timeline is incorrect, the Thracians under Lysimachas – Alexander the Great’s bodyguard – were proto-Slavs. Other groups, like the Ungari (Hungarians) Bulgari and Romani did come much later. And then the Cumans.
The Thracians were not Slavs. They were an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language of which we know little about. It’s most well known son was Spartacus. The Slavs originated in the Pripet Marshes, in Belarus, far to the north, and didn’t arrive in the Balkans until the 6th century AD. They were probably gone from the scene by the 4th century AD.
As for the Magyars (Hungarians), Bulgarians and Cumans these were Finno-Ugric or Turkic steppe peoples that dwelt in the steppes around the Caspian Sea, before the migrated into Europe proper. The Magyars having the most impact, imposing their culture in the Carpathian Basin to this day. Whereas the the Turkic Bulgarians were assimilated by the local Slav population they ruled over, leaving only their name.
This is the real drama in Italy now
Lots of drama in the last 2000 years.
The survivors (if any) will look upon this with less importance.
I am afraid all of the flights and tours were cancelled. If people wanted to go to Italy, they cannot. A conference that I was supposed to speak at in October in Vicenza, Italy, will now be handled over ZOOM, so no one needs to travel. This is terrible for the economy of Italy.
Last night, my family and I went to rather pricey restaurant. It was full (with social distancing at 50% capacity), to our surprise. This restaurant, pre-COVID19 was not full, probably at 40-50% (full capacity is 100%).They can survive but the revenue and profit will be lower and it is unlikely that they will expand, do capital expenditure or splurge on the profits. They may not be in a “just for survival mode”. Don’t spend anything extra. Yes, patrons are suppose to take temperature and record down but it is hard to enforce as people may not want to write down their real numbers.
Normal restaurants which cater for “more of middle class”, many of them are not opened to dine in. Possibly that it is just to troublesome to follow the procedure and they are barely making any profits (i.e. they are doing it on volume pre-COVID19).
I think the disparity on income is really showing up here in my country where the pricier restaurants are doing “quite ok” and the general Joe Sixpack type are not doing well or even closing down.
We went to largest shopping malls in my place (>2m sqft leaseable area). Many outlet are boarded up. Temperature checks required. As it is a holiday here, pre-CVOID19, this place would be packed to the gills but now it is probably 10% of what it is. There are many stores boarded up. Those that are opened are mostly empty. Some probably making it past the day in profits and most are not. They are likely to hope that there is “pent up demand” but that did not materialize. The merchandise are all on large discounts (deflation at work), yet the number of people who are shopping is just a handle (i.e. they carry shopping bags or their mechandise). I think most are curious how it looks like. I think that will be my last trip to the mall for at least the next few months. Just would like to compare a few weeks/months later (if nothing big happens in the mean time – looking at your FE).
Some one commented in Zerohedge that the true test comes in June where those business who hold out in the lockdown, hopes that they can make it or weather it until the re-opening. Only to find that the re-opening is not what it seems to be and decide to call it quits. So, the show did not started in April/May. That is just setting the baseline or the preview. The firework starts now.
Imagine if China decides to take a very tough stand in HK and the Western countries decides to “retaliate” (does not make sense right?). Then all hell can break loose.
As FE puts it, all these are just the “distractions” The real circus for the public when bread may be running low very soon.
It is really a toss up between “very incompetent politicians” or “God is really having fun playing this game”
We went to a Mexican restaurant that was a little more expensive than the one we usually go to last night. There were three Mariachi singers who serenaded us, even as we sat outdoors. There were a lot of cars parked by the restaurant. I didn’t really get to see how full the inside was. We took the last available outside table.
We quickly discovered the beer menu was much more limited than what the printed menu indicated. We were handed the regular food menu, and they seemed to be prepared to fix anything on it. I ordered a salad (lettuce, avocado, tomato, corn, black beans, pumpkin seeds and feta cheese). After I got home, I developed a stomach ache, and everything I ate came back up again. I was fine, after the food was gone from my stomach.
Is it really possible to get food poisoning from a salad? I could see that if a restaurant is trying to do more than it really can do, it might use food that has sat out too long, perhaps over a period of days. I called the restaurant today and mentioned the incident to the manager. What food does a person order to prevent this issue? I doubt the local inspectors are working overtime right now.
Gail, if the lettuce is not handled properly, there is a lot of surface area for microbes. When visiting Central and South America, especially places like Guatemala, you need to avoid leafy salads (uncooked anything is dangerous) and all fresh milk products. Best to try their cremated fried chicken and refried beans, grilled steaks OK at medium. Raw fish in coconut juice and lime is a local favorite but always a chance to get sick.
The US becomes a little more like Mexico, I am afraid, as things go downhill. The lettuce was mostly Romaine, which likely needed to be handled a lot.
I’ll try and be as delicate as possible. It’s been known for some migrant farm workers to poop in the fields which is why Romaine Lettuce is know to carry at times E. coli bacteria.
https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/outbreak-investigation-e-coli-romaine-salinas-california-november-2019
Only cooked food and boiled water for all of us soon, like Old Russia, unless we have picked it ourselves.
I hope you are better now, Gail, and glad it wasn’t any worse.
“Is it really possible to get food poisoning from a salad?”
Yes, especially lettuce if it isn’t handled properly and so much for the “it takes at least 12 hours to get food poisoning”. It can happen within a couple of hours.
Yes. It depends on how many germs are initially present and how fast they are multiplying. Generally it’s said that the number of bacteria can double every 20 minutes under ideal conditions, or increase eightfold within an hour. But if somebody didn’t wash their hands after going to the loo and then handled the lettuce, they could contaminate the leaves with millions of e-coli bacteria to get things off to a roaring start.
To compensate for the spacing issues…. why don’t restaurants just lease new premises that are double what they have?
https://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ba_dum_tss_ugly_americans.gif
In a city near me, in the evening they are just shutting down the street in the downtown to cars and letting the restaurants put their tables in the middle of the road.
Jason,
First, no arguments, observations.
That experience for many/most students has morphed into a life long drudgery of debt servitude and associated depression, it works poorly.
Recent political exposes seem to indicate that young women upon reflection find “free love” which was what orgies were called in the sixties is not that great an experience. A 25% rate of genital herpes is not a good experience – it looks like raw hamburger, I saw it clinically while a resident in a large county hospital. Do you personally want it, do you want your grandchildren to pass through a birth canal infected by it and have it from birth? That 25% chance is higher than COV19 and there is no cure. Social distancing does not always have to be 10 feet, sometimes 10 inches is more than enough. Herpes is used as an example and a metaphor.
My observation of the past school year was students working hard, gaining skills, behaving very well, good teachers all at a cc. What I experienced after the shut down was different, but it worked. What each person puts into the toolbox of learning will carry them through life, it is impossible to know everything that will be needed, but much will be needed. Cov19 may have accelerated a change to a different educational process, given the size of student debt that could imply significant social change. Which way?
I am an optimist, giving up is not an option. MIT is wonderful, but what about the rest? How do young people get a start in life? Many here seem to think this is the end. What do we tell our children? There is no hope?
Most here recognize there will be change, the curves in “Limits to Growth” show well what happens up to the limits, they curves are useless thereafter. Bragging, I sat next to Meadows at a DC meeting, he specifically told me what happens after peak is a question mark. We are looking for paths forward, somewhere there are a few. What do we have to lose?
Dennis L.
The future is what happens when you are sitting around making plans and projections. I know it is hypocritical of me to say that while spending time on the internet, filtering noise from signal, and trying to get a view of the near future, but the point is we should all worry less about future events and focus more on the present and our daily interactions. Unfortunately, this lock down, arguably a good idea, has taken away a lot of people’s freedom of living, and forced a lot of sitting around worrying time. Still, if we are going to try to analyze the future, let’s do it as precisely, and logically as possible, using data, theories, analysis, and honesty. If you are going to throw around statistics, like 25% of all students have genital herpes, or life for most graduates is drudgery and depression, well if they are not opinions you pulled from your imagination, let us look where you got them from so we can judge for ourselves the state of mind and the bodily health of the average young adult walking around out there. Harry does a great job posting sources that support the decline of global civilization, maybe you could do the same for the new green economy we are morphing into, it would add some interesting balance.
Jason,
Researched your concerns, will settle for one reference.
CDC, genital herpes.
https://www.cdc.gov/std/herpes/stats.htm
Won’t bore you with the rest. It is out there.
Dennis L.
Dennis, anyone suffering from genital herpes or cold sores would be well advised to consider taking Lysine, an amino acid, around 1,000mg a day, together with a dash of zinc, either as a prophylactic or a remedy. It isn’t a cure in that it doesn’t get rid of the virus, but it usually prevents or shortens outbreaks of the disease.
Back to puritanism, small, local, self-sufficient communities, no travel but for very selective tourism while we can, 80% less industrial production plus somehow safeguarding a reliable supply chain for it, really good online education while it’s possible, building with trash…
There are no longer sufficient natural resources, it is a different economy. Like all of you, looking for some rough directions. I am with FE, gardens are a great deal of work, have a fenced area on my farm, it is going to weeds, takes too much time.
Wouldn’t be here if I liked what I am seeing, can’t change a thing, can only adapt. Hated losing face to face calculus last school year, adapted, made it work, smiled went forward. It is not possible for me to read some literature without fluency in higher math, so back to school, plan, solution. We either adapt or give up, I don’t know how. I am old now, some things will be left undone, bummer.
I appreciate all of your comments, especially those directed towards me, it is a pretty sharp group.
Dennis L.
“There are no longer sufficient natural resources”
To do what?
I, too, due largely to OFW, find myself doing and advocating for less. Hubris is dangerous, but I’ll risk it just this time: I’m usually very far of those around me in understanding how to adapt to increasingly scarce resources. bEING OLD AND ENERGY DEPLETED MATCHES THE OUTWARD DEPLETIONS. This is a time for old people (and women and children) to be front and center. It’s more of a time for the weak, using commonsense, than for brawn.
ahead
It’s… Koombaya time! The meek will prevail!
The big question is… if you knew she had herpes … would you still…
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b5/11/ce/b511ce0bf719f1f1b1b7ba516b190a1b.jpg
… let her join the harem? Why sure.
Gail
> If COVID-19 were simply another influenza virus…
Ah, that’s a clue. It actually is a virus. Humanity (though obviously not all individuals) survived _all_ viruses without vaccines until 1796 (Jenner, Smallpox). Viruses have a predictable course of action — they deplete ascorbate (vitamin C) and accelerate to acute scurvy, more precisely acute hypoascorbemia. So while we wait for a vaccine we can do what Dr Fred Klenner did in 1948 to cure polio in 2 days and Dr Bob Cathcart did for almost 40 years with a wide variety of viruses — megadoses of Vitamin C, intravenously or orally, depending on severity of the virus.
Maybe both Vitamin C and Vitamin D, since Vitamin seems to reduce the severity of the illness if you get it.
I think Ron is on the ball with megadoses of Vitamin C, and Gail is too with Vitamin D.
I don’t know how much Vitamin D is too much, but conventional medical opinion for the past thirty years is that people should avoid the sun as if they were Christopher Lee, which together with the fact that most people work inside most days of the week has helped lower Vitamin D levels all over the industrialized world to levels where most of us have far from adequate amounts of this vitamin.
As for Vitamin C, you really can’t have too much of the stuff. You can swallow dozens of Vit C capsules as if they were M&Ms, and they will do you less harm than eating dozens of M&Ms.
For those who are vitamin junkies who are aching to try a new one, I would like to draw your attention to Niacin (Vitamin B3/Nicotinic Acid). Provided you can put up with the flush, you may find it does you a power of good. It’s absolutely great for the skin and for lifting depression and slowing down heart disease and preventing or reversing everything from diabetes to old-timer’s disease.
But of course, it goes without saying, you should never never take niacin at high doses without your doctor’s supervision. And you should also be very very careful in assessing health and medical information posted on the internet.
Intriguingly, there is an article in Nature that suggests benefits for treating severe COVID-19 patients with Niacin.
Lung damage is a major hurdle to recovery in those severe patients. Through producing various growth factors, MSCs may help repair of the damaged lung tissue. It is important to mention that various studies have shown that in animal models with bleomycin-induced lung injury, vitamin B3 (niacin or nicotinamide) is highly effective in preventing lung tissue damage. It might be a wise approach to supply this food supplement to the COVID-19 patients.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41418-020-0530-3
“As for Vitamin C, you really can’t have too much of the stuff. You can swallow dozens of Vit C capsules as if they were M&Ms, and they will do you less harm than eating dozens of M&Ms.”
This is definitely incorrect. If you take too much Vitamin C, you get diarrhea. I suppose you can compensate by also taking an opiate, like Imodium.
Do you think humanity could survive if everyone had HIV/AIDS and there was no modern medicine?
Some are immune to HIV:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_resistance_to_HIV
Yes. All you have to do is get to reproductive age. I read that the HIV transmission rate at birth is 25%.
HIV/AIDS is a social construct, constructed by Big Pharma to scare people and open up yet another new market in mendacious medication and dodgy drugs.
Sad to see the book below is now out of print.
We know that to err is human, but the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is one hell of a mistake. I say this rather strongly as a warning. Duesberg has been saying it for a long time. Read this book. –Kary B. Mullis, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1993
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/518B75NC6BL._SX315_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
From Zerohedge: Tracking recovery: What real-time data says about the state of the global economy
Lots of nice charts in this article.
This chart shows how much traffic is down, relative to 2019, for two different dates. The blue bar has more recent data than the tan bar, so shows the effect of the more recent opening up. German cities closest to 2019. Wuhan is still at 24% of the 2019 level. Mumbai is at 7% of the 2019 level!
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/traffic-congestion-levels-zerohedge.png
This chart shows the power consumption of Hubei province (the province that Wuhan is in). It power consumption is still far behind the level of prior years.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/hubei-power-cosumption-zerohedge.png
This chart shows changes in US consumers spending over time. There were already some changes showing at March 15, the earliest date shown.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/consumer-spending-by-category-zerohedge.jpg
Wow. Patient with a very weak pulse there.
Looking at the chart:
1. We are eating out less, eating fewer batter fried wings – that is a positive.
2. We are drinking less in bars, MAD will be pleased – positive.
3. Commercial sports are down – personal choice, a football team winning the Super Bowl may or may not change one’s life, it can be a fun experience.
4. Wholesale clubs, etc. up, people are being more frugal – personal positive.
5. Tourist attractions? It depends, Bach was said to have spent his life within 30 miles of home, he had a pretty rich life it would seem, I wasn’t there, not that old.
6. Grocery stores, we are cooking at home – could be a social and health positive.
7. Wine sales up – antioxidants are always a positive.
8. Home supply, we are fixing up our homes – a positive.
9. Airlines down, we are polluting much less – a positive and we can collect more information on climate change – we might not like the conclusions, who knows?
10. Lodging down, fewer bed bugs, Venice will be saved from too many tourists. Having been there, got my experience – a positive, your mileage may vary.
No sarcasm, but a bit of irony, these sound like points that Greta would not find disagreeable. She does nag, but she was more prescient than most of us, she even sailed the ocean blue in 2019 – where is Robert to help the poetry? These may not be great for GDP, but there are a great many positive social outcomes in that list. Maybe man is smarter than yeast?
Dennis L.
I have no idea about Bach never having gone 30 miles from home.
What I do know is that he would not have become famous if his music had only been heard 30 miles from his home.
we sustain our current way of life by making buying and selling stuff to each other
such activity requires energy consumption and ‘movement’
the more ‘stuff’ we desire, the more energy we consume, and our ‘normality’ is to consume as much as possible as fast as possible by burning as much energy as possible
how else are you going to get that payrise and pay off your mortgage?
Groan, I seem to have gotten another one wrong if this is correct.
“In 1705, 20-year-old Bach walked 280 miles—that’s right, walked—from the city of Arnstadt to Lübeck in northern Germany to hear a concert by the influential organist and composer Dieterich Buxtehude. He stuck around for four months to study with the musician [PDF]. Bach hoped to succeed Buxtehude as the organist of Lübeck’s St. Mary’s Church, but marriage to one of Buxtehude’s daughters was a prerequisite to taking over the job. Bach declined, and walked back home.”
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/546875/facts-about-johann-sebastian-bach
Thanks for questioning, it is a factoid I have had in my head for years, it was incorrect.
Dennis L.
That walk to see a fine musician was perhaps an indicator of the potential greatness of Bach himself. A sense of veneration for excellence and great determination.
And of course he was behaving, although a musician, like the craftsmen of the German-speaking, world who traditionally left their home towns to wander and perfect their knowledge of their craft.
The system for giving them free food and simple lodging at municipal expense persisted , I believe, until the 1930’s, when it helped at times the young British traveller and writer Paddy Leigh Fermor in his travels to Istanbul.
Not so sure about that — but definitely more delusional if they support what you just posted….
It all does seem so wonderful… so peaceful and quiet…. so long at the CBs are able to conjure up enough cash to keep paying people to do nothing… hey – if this is BAU Lite thing is sustainable then why in the hell did we not do this 100 years ago?
I think the sun of BAU has just set and we are now at the beginning of that beautiful but brief twilight period when the sky turns from blue to red, or orange, or purple, and then the lights go out completely.
A friend in London told me that one day last week she walked around Piccadilly Circus and found it a surreal experience with all the signboards flashing and hardly another soul to witness it, and then she heard a nightingale singing in Berkeley Square, a sound not normally noticeable over the roar of the traffic.
For most of us, this will be the last summer of peace, of relative tranquility. Every day now is worth a small fortune.
When will the cracks in the IC building start to be seen by everyone? September? December? How long will it be possible to deceive the masses with the promise of a return to pre-covid times? IOW when will the stampede begin? It’s not that this detail matters in terms of future survival (since that’s canceled by the spent fuel ponds), but i believe between the social collapse and the blackout it may take some time, maybe months or even years in some places, and I would like to watch the big show ever till the grand finale (fireworks of radiation), after all, it is not all millennia that we have the opportunity to witness the collapse of the greatest civilization of all time. it would definitely be a pity not to stay until the vey end.
My mind is to defend the fort as long as I can, and have an easy way to say goodbye to life when I have to. But like all human beings, I am very interested in celebrating the winter solstice of 2021, and if it depends on me, I will be there with the wife, the dog, the cats and the chickens.
Sounds like a scene from an old movie:
Ah yes, a beautiful twilight, before the night-things start to stir…..
BAU Lite…. the calm before the Storm
Coronavirus: Aggressive rodents looking for new food sources as restaurants remain closed, CDC warns
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-cdc-rodents-food-restaurants-closed-a9530271.html
“…Since the start of the pandemic, there have been increased reports of rat cannibalism and infanticide in New York, as well as more rat complaints in residential areas – including in Chicago – as humans produce more food waste at home. Roving rat armies, including one caught on camera scavenging New Orleans’ empty streets, are concerning to the CDC, which says rodents can carry disease…”
“Roving rat armies.. can carry disease.”
What’s coming next – the plague?
“Forced Vaccinations” will solve everything !
/s
Andes Virus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andes_orthohantavirus
human-to-human airborne, 30% CFR.
If the rats were in the restaurants, I don’t see how it is worse if they spread out into residential areas. Also, this indicates that maybe something should be done to stop restaurants from leaving so much food waste where it feeds rats?
Latest video (no link).. a girl tries to walk past a protester roadblock — another girl belts her in the face with a bamboo pole… then grabs her hair and throws her to the ground
These videos are gloomy viewing, FE. Do you think China will risk a brutal, Tiananmen Square-type intervention or are they still too fearful of HK forfeiting its status as global financial hub if they do that?
I was reading that the Chilean military were using rubber bullets this week in Santiago and wondering how long it’ll be before they’re using live ones. Things turning very nasty again in Guinea and Iraq, too.
There won’t be a Tsquare moment in this … because that would end HK on the spot. There would be a mass exodus of top local and expat talent… and it would require martial law… not possible in a major financial centre…. and the martial law would need to be permanent – because this would just flare up again.
The protests have been a LOT more violent than yesterday — and the CCP didn’t do anything more than instruct their thugs to beat the students. They are like castrated old men being run around by 18 year olds…. I am entertained.
The world is very anti China at the moment – and everyone is watching…. and hating the CCP.
Pity there are no longer any mainland tourists around… it would be so much fun to taunt them
A thing of beauty…. do not mess with the mob
https://twitter.com/i/status/1264507210983301122
Too bad he missed him with that sign 🙁
Running dog
A Hong Kong lawyer was badly beaten by several people clad in black following an argument just a few streets away from protests over Beijing’s proposed national security law for the city on Sunday.
The head of the Law Society confirmed the victim was a member and condemned the assault, saying that if the violence was over differing political stances, the state of affairs in Hong Kong was “pathetic”.
Legal sources identified the victim as Chan Tze-chin, who attended a Legislative Council session in his personal capacity last November to support a controversial law banning the use of masks to hide one’s identity. He is a partner at Cheung and Liu Solicitors and has both civil and criminal practices, and is the convenor of the Law Society’s swimming team.
According to police, the 40-year-old man got into an argument with dozens of people erecting roadblocks on Lee Garden Road in Causeway Bay at about 3.30pm. Several members of the group began hitting him with umbrellas and chased him when he tried to flee.
At one point, five “rioters” opened their umbrellas in an attempt to hide what their accomplices were doing, police said.
The attack was caught on video and circulated widely on social media, showing the victim on the ground as the masked men rain down blows to his head and torso near the head office of the Po Leung Kuk charity group on Leighton Road. As the assailants leave, he struggles to his feet, his face bloodied, and stumbles away.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3085867/hong-kong-lawyer-attacked-black-clad-mob-near-protests
Anthem please!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY_hkbVQA20
Time for the medal presentation …. I’ll need 10 of these please
https://www.trophymaster.co.uk/ekmps/shops/westbridgford/images/aura-well-done-gold-medal-50mm-2-620695-dv-p.jpg
https://twitter.com/i/status/1264428291848470529
I’m gonna get me one of these before this all ends… a mouthy one…
https://hongkongfp.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/20la5p13n.jpg
Rocking and rolling … have some video of protesters beating the sh it out of two clowns who must have said the wrong thing … but on Whatsapp so cannot upload here
https://twitter.com/i/status/1264428920784347137
https://twitter.com/i/status/1264428378196566017
The monastery system, while having its goods and bads, was very, very dysgenic since it kept a large portion of higher IQ people out from the gene pool.
That situation was kind of alleviated during 13th-15th century when a lot of higher ranked priests openly sired children via concubines. Not surprisingly, Renaissance occurred around that era.
The Lutheran reformation led to the Counter-Reformation, which led to the priests once again having to remain celibate. Not only that led to lots of same-sex molestation, it once again kept people of ability out of gene pool, and we can see how that ended up in the countries which are still kind of Catholic.
That situation persisted in Asia, too. The smartest child became buddhist monks, spending their lives reciting ancient Buddhist scripts and being out of gene pool. In Japan, following a major civil war around 1200, a monk named Shinran said monks should be able to sire children, and he did it himself. (His descendants still head Buddhist sects founded after him.) Although some Japanese Buddhist sects remained celibate, in general it is permitted for Buddhist monks and nuns to leave progeny, which is why it got ahead of other Asian cultures.
I wonder what Gregor Mendel, a priest, thought about studying heredity. Perhaps Mendel, who was not good looking, thought his genes deserved to be pulled out of the gene pool.
My impression was that priesthood (or becoming a nun) was a way of handling excess children who could not inherit a farmer’s property. Excess population was a problem even back then. Having these people remain celibate helped keep down the population, which was a huge benefit to society. There may have been a downside, in terms of molestation, but apparently the benefits of holding the population down offset any disadvantages, in the eyes of those who came up with this system.
About Dennis L’s quote on universities, it does not matter whether somebody has a degree from Harvard-Facebook, whatever. Since such degrees will be seen as bogus as all these for-profit vocational institutions.
Before WW2, few people received post secondary education. Universities were for upper classes, to network, have fun, etc.
There were land grant institutions run by states to train vocational students for their own use. A lot of state universities began as teacher’s colleges, not considered to be full universities back then. They taught agriculture, technical studies, and military tech. Humanities and medicine were for the upper class.
After WW2, the GI bill was invented to keep the returning soldiers out of workforce for some time. Because there were not enough universities to house them, all of these institutions were renamed as full universities.
Berkeley ,also called Cal, is legitimate since it began as a full university right from the start. UCLA began as the southern branch of California Normal School(teacher’s college). The main branch of CNS became the San Jose State University, which is not taken seriously; UCLA is not considered to be a legitimate university because of its origins. (Ditto to the various universities under the University of California system – only Cal is legitimate, the rest stepchildren.)
That’s just one of the examples.
No matter how much money the state universities and the second and third tier private universities might get from tech companies, their degrees will be worthless. Those who paid to take such courses will be no different from those who took huge loans to take worthless courses from a for-profit ‘universities’.
Once again, Universities will be for the upper classes, who will be paying a much higher tuition since the capacity will have to decrease significantly. Companies will set up their own technical institutions, with a preference for the family of existing employees,and smaller companies will just take experienced employees released from the larger ones.
Yep, we are preparing!
Americans use their $1,200 stimulus checks to splurge at Walmart, Target, BJ’s and Best Buy — here’s what they’re buying
Elisabeth Buchwald
MarketWatchMay 22, 2020, 9:11 AM EDT
https://finance.yahoo.com/m/4c4ff20e-1f30-34d1-8989-466bd1d65cff/americans-use-their-1-200.html
Brasil, with its favelas with high population density and the weak government, was predestined for this catastrophy:
Not nearly as big a catastrophe as this though … right?
The overall burden of influenza for the 2017-2018 season was an estimated 45 million influenza illnesses, 21 million influenza-associated medical visits, 810,000 influenza-related hospitalizations, and 61,000 influenza-associated deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm
Imagine how many deaths there would have been if they counted flu-infected skydivers etc….
So much rubbish. No one seems to recycle or care about making their environment clean.
That’s 500,000 cars in the U.S. alone.
Hertz files for bankruptcy protection as rentals evaporate in pandemic
https://www.discoverballina.com.au/visit/media/com_jbusinessdirectory/pictures/companies/629/hertz780x600-1490848155.png
New York: The more than a century old car rental firm Hertz Global Holdings has filed for bankruptcy protection after its business all but vanished during the coronavirus pandemic and talks with creditors failed to result in needed relief.
Hertz said in a US court filing on Friday, US time, that it voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 reorganisation. Its international operating regions including Europe, Australia and New Zealand were not included in the US proceedings…
And this is why, Politicians who have NEVER worked a day in their lives in the private sector should NOT be making business decisions. So watch as the dominos continue to fall.
This will have a MASSIVE impact on the Big 3 Auto makers.
Avis and Enterprise next?
It’s possible !
From blue pill land. A slight V-shaped recovery, in 1-2 years!
This could go down as one of the shortest recessions in history: Economist
Another 2.438 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending May 16. Michael Darda, MKM Partners Chief Economist, and Market Strategist joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move to weigh in on the latest jobless report and escalating tensions between the U.S. and China.
It is amazing the garbage that is spewed forth.
Paid garbage at that. Apparently the number of jobs for corporate lobbyists actually increased in the last few months. Big company and large shareholders have been using the stock market rally to sell to retail traders, who’ll be left holding the bag, when the bottom falls through. In the meantime, the little fish are being swept into the net with a constant stream of rubbish llike this.
“Scenic World is one of thousands of tourism businesses that have shut their doors in a sector that contributed A$61bn ($40bn) to the Australian economy last year. A third of people working in accommodation and food services have already lost their jobs due to the government’s policy of putting businesses into “hibernation” following the coronavirus outbreak.
“And even as Canberra begins to lift elements of its lockdown, following its success in reducing the rate of new infections to just a handful per day, some businesses will struggle to reopen as tourist travel bans threaten to kill demand for months and possibly years to come.
“Australia – dubbed the “lucky country” – has produced a record of uninterrupted economic growth that is unprecedented among developed nations. But economists forecast the pandemic will do what no crisis has done in three decades: plunge Australia’s economy into recession.”
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/m/8f187081-50a2-3ace-8e73-df667ecc664d/australia%3A-has-the-%E2%80%98lucky.html
“Up until last week, almost all the Angus beef raised on Robert Mackenzie’s 15,000 acre family farm in Newcastle, New South Wales, was bound for China.
“But a trade spat which has seen meat from four Australian abattoirs banned from China’s massive consumer market over customs documentation mislabelling has caused “great worry” for the founder of premium beef exporter, Macka’s.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3085562/coronavirus-backlash-adds-trade-war-and-decoupling-pressure
“Retirees who have lived off a steady stream of share dividends have seen their income plunge as banks cancel payouts, and they face more financial pain in coming months when research shows more companies are likely to slash their distributions because of the coronavirus crisis…
“Dividends have historically been responsible for about 60% of the income reaped from investing in the Australian sharemarket, according to research by Realindex, a division of First Sentier Investors.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/22/retirees-face-financial-ruin-as-coronavirus-slashes-share-dividends
Australia is in a worrisome situation. It needs tourists and trade with China. Neither of these are likely to stick around for long.
“Living Through 5 Economic Resets; How Life Prepared Me For The Pandemic…
“Economic Reset #1 – The 1991 Collapse Of Soviet Communism:
“In 1991 I lived in a small northern Russian town, not too far from Finland. It was full of engineers that serviced a nuclear power plant. When communism fell the economic turmoil was devastating – almost everyone lost the opportunity to earn real money.
“Many people simply gave up.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliakarayaneva/2020/05/22/economic-resets-how-life-prepared-me-for-pandemic/#5bb9fc24391c
Another piece to add to the CDP … take away the opportunity to work and make money .. and people just throw in the towel… they welcome starvation
I’ll be more inclined to take the notion of CDP seriously if I start seeing or hearing of material preparations for a semi-collapsed BAU Lite scenario, ie…
…the importation and stockpiling of resources that will be harder or even impossible to import in a situation of atrophying supply-chains; the re-localisation of essential manufacturing and food production processes; the decommissioning of nuclear power-plants; a push to get populaces ‘digging for victory’ and growing their own food where possible; multiple nations following Spain’s example and introducing UBI’s etc.
Ironically I would welcome all these developments, even if it means Melinda Gates holding me down with her powerful forearms in the shadow of a 5G mast whilst a cackling Bill Gates injects me with goodness knows what.
“I’ll be more inclined to take the notion of CDP seriously if I start seeing or hearing of material preparations for a semi-collapsed BAU Lite scenario, ie…”
Why would you expect these things? They would interfere with demoralization and depopulation. Positive actions that involve self-help, community-building and self-determination are the exact opposite of what the PTB want for the USA and Europe: despair and hopelesness. As for introducing more dependency and control through UBI, it would appear that the US is moving very nicely in that direction.
And as for the metaphor (mockery) of people being “held down” to receive Bill Gates’ “goodness knows what” vaccine, isn’t that precisely what is going to happen? Will we be permitted to pass international borders without our stamped health book? I very much doubt it. Rather, we will indeed be forced to submit to it. And indeed as you say, “goodness know what” will be in “the vaccine” as it couldn’t possible be a cure for a corona virus because no such thing exists or will ever exist. So why are we going to be “held down” and forced to take it?
“Why would you expect these things? They would interfere with demoralization and depopulation. Positive actions that involve self-help, community-building and self-determination are the exact opposite of what the PTB want for the USA and Europe: despair and hopelesness.”
Exactly !
That’s the M.O. of any Centralized Gov’t. The more chaos they create and you don’t realize it was them who did it or they pulled an Edward Bernays on you and you bought into the PR and Spin then you will look to them for the solution. This is always their wildcard in their playbook or as Emanuel Rahm once said.
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste”.
“Why would you expect these things?”
Because if we accept FE’s premise that the global economy was headed for total collapse this year then building some local resilience into the system is the only way that you could conceivably maintain some functionality and prevent everyone not in a well-stocked bunker from dying pretty much immediately of starvation, violence, radiation poisoning etc.
Otherwise, why not just let collapse follow its natural course?
Or, to put it another way, what I am seeing with this virus is another huge problem added to an already struggling global economy and governments around the world doing everything they can to keep the system afloat.
What I am not seeing is any evidence of a *controlled* demolition or managed descent.
Looks like we are well on our way to cutting oil consumption in half, with relatively minimal death and chaos. This is likely the first leg down, it is not going to be a sudden plunge to zero. Victory Gardens will be a Spring 2021 program, I think. Along with relocating people from large cities out to ghost towns.
Harry – the major economies are all paying 80% of wages up to a limit. That does sound like it was discussed… and is a plan.
Imagine what would happen if those wage subsidies were terminated today.
The PTB have orchestrated an incredibly soft landing from Full Steam Ahead to Floating Dead in the Water.
If not for their superb throttle control we’d have slammed into the brick wall.
From what I can see they have managed this incredibly well. Who would have thought we could still be alive with hotels, airlines, auto manufacturers etc… operating at less than 5% of their normal capacity….
Harry, it think it might be controlled from “their” point of view, not from ours.
Do cattle realize they are being controlled.. or is this just their normal…
http://www.bryankimsey.com/ranch/cattle_in_pen.jpg
Refining the CDP…
If you think nynewunwun was not a false flag … stop reading now … put your head in a bucket of water and breath till you drown ….
For everyone else….
I understand that Fauci has discovered the the CDC site recommends face coverings to prevent the spread of Covid. Wow. And he just graduated from primary school…. of course he knew that face coverings are a great idea…
So why is he only getting around to recommending them now????
This ties in with the drum beat of headlines ‘BEWARE THE SECOND WAVE’
The masks are a fabulous reminder that we need to stay scared …. the second wave is coming for us… oh look — see — second wave in Hokkaido!!! Over there in China…. OMD … Stay Safe.. Be Vigilant. Keep your Distance.
How is this like n11…. Covid is n11… a false flag …n11 created fear of terrorists around every corner… and it provided cover for endless wars to secure resources so that we could continue to Live Large…
Covid is the excuse to flood the planet with end of days level stimulus … while smashing the global economy to dramatically reduce our resource burn rate — because shale was no longer feasible (Big Oil losing their shirts there… major fields peaking… sweet spots sucked dry)….
Let’s bring fear into the equation — everyone is talking about a V recovery — the PTB do not want a V — any attempt to return to normal would drive the price of oil through the roof…
They have made certain that a V recovery is not possible because they have eviscerated the global economy … huge numbers of businesses are permanently out of business now.
What remains will be forcibly operated in first gear going forward… how do you get people to buy into that? You keep the threatening headlines in the news… you create a symbol of fear … The Mask…. to remind everyone that we are in this together — we will stay safe by following the rules…
And nobody will get uppity about not returning to normal… they’ll be ok with 1/4 or 1/2 of normal… because the Plague is always there…
Note the headlines ‘Covid will be with us Forever’…
Of course this is not something that is sustainable … I still think they will try to get us to lockdown when see that the End Game is imminent … and starve us… but I see the primary motive here being to throttle down to BAU Lite… conserve what’s left… and do whatever it takes to prolong our time in Purgatory.
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/charmed/images/f/fa/Purgatory.jpg
The global economy was demonstrably heading for recession, probably quite severe, in 2020, but not collapse -just yet.
Governments everywhere are quite clearly panicking now they can see what damage they have inflicted to supply-chains and demand with a mere 2 months of lock-downs.
I suppose we may compare economies to severe COVID patients themselves, who, even though discharged and off the ventilator, have severe organ damage and muscle attrition which will remain with them for what remains of life.
“As the economic carnage from the coronavirus pandemic continues, a long-forbidden word is starting to creep onto people’s lips: “depression”…
“The economic damage from the coronavirus, however, threatens to dwarf the 2008 downturn.”
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/invest/the-d-word-looking-more-inevitable
“[Here] are five key measures and accompanying charts showing that the coronavirus-induced US economic downturn is worse than the one that accompanied the Great Recession.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/5-charts-how-coronavirus-economic-fallout-compares-to-great-recession-2020-5?r=US&IR=T#the-last-nine-weeks-have-seen-an-unprecedented-number-of-americans-filing-for-unemployment-benefits-1
“Global fiscal support is now around $9 trillion, say the IMF. This figure is up $1 trillion form earlier estimates. Direct budget support is currently estimated at $4.4 trillion globally.”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/9-trillion-global-fiscal-support-covid-19
Seems like a lot of money to save a bunch of KFC munching Big Gulping slobs from dying….
This time the drop is bigger and much more immediate.
“Deflationary Spiral…
“Such is the biggest problem for the Fed and one that monetary policy cannot fix. Deflationary “psychology” is a very hard cycle to break, and one the Fed has been clearly fearful of over the last decade.
“For the last four decades is every time monetary policy tightens, it has led to an economic slowdown, or worse. The reason is that a heavily debt-burdened economy can’t support higher rates.
“The relevance of debt growth versus economic growth is all too evident. Over the last decade, it has taken an ever-increasing amount of debt to generate $1 of economic growth.
“In other words, without debt, there has been no organic economic growth.
“Running ongoing budget deficits that fund unproductive growth is not economically sustainable long-term.
“While it may appear such accommodative policies aid in economic stabilization, yet it was lower interest rates increasing the use of leverage. The consequence was the erosion of economic growth and deflation as dollars were diverted from productive investment into debt service.
“Unfortunately, the Fed has no other options.”
https://econintersect.com/pages/analysis/analysis.php?post=202005230402
“Given the squeeze on revenue streams, households have instead been covering fixed costs like rent and food. As a result, sectoral inflation has occurred. Prices for “food at home” shot up by 4 percent in April compared to a year prior. But this is largely unrelated to the stimulus. A combination of shut-downs and consumer stockpiling have outpaced rigid supply chains.
“Moreover, increasing unemployment negates headline inflationary pressures. US unemployment has hit a postwar high of 14.7 percent, and will almost certainly increase. With less people spending, prices tend to fall. The savings rate has also increased from 8 percent in February to 13.1 percent in March, the highest since November 1981. If this trend persists, so too will the deflationary spiral.”
https://globalriskinsights.com/2020/05/us-inflationary-pressures-are-highly-unlikely/
Deflation seems more likely than inflation, even with all of the stimulus.
They talk glibly about ‘productive investment’, as opposed to sterile debt-servicing, but in reality that has always meant the desecration of the Earth and the extraction and consumption of resources on an ever greater scale and with an utter lack of foresight.
The days of productive investment in the classic economic sense are clearly fast drawing to a close.
There is nothing ahead of our system except the terrible void.
The Fed has one other option: sovereign default, abandoning the dollar as a global currency, and a return to the Gold Standard. It worked for Germany in 1923.
I’m not sure that would be advisable. It would cause total panic in the markets and interest rates would spike. It would be the end of our financial system as we know it.
Thank you, Henry. Yes, my comment was extreme by today’s standards, even though it reflects a couple of thousand years of history. But consider this: the present financial system is finished anyway, so does the Fed go down with the Titanic or jump into a lifeboat? We can guess the answer: they will keep rearranging the deck chairs.
Bretton Woods III. New world financial system, possibly HyperLedger. Depends on if we can get a peaceful resolution with China or WW3.
Regardless of any “new” Breton Woods agreement, producing nations will no longer want to be saddled with fake money from consuming nations. A new order demanding some form of real wealth will emerge eventually. My bet is the US will use food for trade.
I’m not convinced there is a lifeboat, Robert, what with the system being so networked and globalised. A default by the US could be akin to it gouging an additional hole in the hull.
This hints at the level of potential chaos:
“[In 1979] the US Treasury inadvertently defaulted on $122m, because of what it said was a word processing error.
“Although the error was quickly fixed, and even though $122m was a tiny fraction of the $800bn in debt that the Treasury had at the time, a study found that the mini-default raised the cost of borrowing by 0.6%, or $6bn a year.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24453400
Harry, I fear you are right. Thank you for your comments and insights.
“Why we might not get a coronavirus vaccine
Politicians have become more cautious about immunisation prospects. They are right to be…
“So, is the virus here to stay? The simple answer is: yes.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/22/why-we-might-not-get-a-coronavirus-vaccine?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVS19XZWVrZW5kLTIwMDUyMw%3D%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&fbclid=IwAR1yJAqEmbpQ1zFk3xAszWnrgDUZWDXEXR2qYPppwvJK_EFbAV-2iI43y6w
“As sections of the global economy tip-toe toward reopening, it’s becoming clearer that a full recovery from the worst slump since the 1930s will be impossible until a vaccine or treatment is found for the deadly coronavirus.
“Consumers will stay on edge and companies will be held back as temperature checks and distancing rules are set to remain in workplaces, restaurants, schools, airports, sports stadiums and more…”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/fate-global-economy-rests-more-160000295.html
It is good that this message is getting out.
The golden era of the nuclear power plants coming online in the 70-80s in Slovakia:
https://youtu.be/1GdHmeuGYYE
And todays elderly having fun remembering the old golden times:
And what about the Slovaks in the USA?
The lonely homosexual Andy Warhol then and the tatto art lesbian now:
https://scene360.com/art/119485/ivana-belakova-tattoo/
This was my distant relative from my mothers side:
http://www.bishopaccountability.org/assign/Bistricky_Frederick_J.htm
MG, Thanks I love Polka
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_DOa5lbtdjU
English Version for Fast Eddie…Hot
The music of this kind of accordion is very popular in my area of Slovakia: a lots of festivals where such music is played. My elderly mother still plays such kind of accordion from time to time.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=heligonka
Thanks MG! Slovaks like to PARTY….
Even though this group is from nearby region, it’s my favorite get up and good time music with the two pretty ladies….
Atomik Harmonik is a turbo-folk music group from Kamnik, Slovenia. Their debut single “Brizgalna Brizga” stayed at #1 in the Slovenian pop charts for several months.
Here is a good one in their native tongue….me likes😳👍
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XfiztbxrzLA&list=RDEMsZu5fVM3iD1uLK2tdSHd9g&start_radio=1
Atomik Harmonik is a turbo-folk music group from Kamnik, Slovenia. Their debut single “Brizgalna Brizga” stayed at #1 in the Slovenian pop charts for several months
They’ve been around since 2004 and been with different members…
Great sound…my Dad also played it too!😜
This type of accordion seems to be quite popular in the moutaineous parts of the Central Europe, namely Austria, Slovenia, Bavaria, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Sweet. I love polkas!
https://youtu.be/x57Z-jFNrhU
The shortage of goods in Czechoslovakia, which was the industrial center of the Eastern Europe, in 1988 signalling the collapse of the Soviet bloc (with English subtitles):
https://youtu.be/OyvJ3CaY3Yc
Chlordioxidsolution – second
This time a link to freizahn.
Behind it hides a dentist who practices in western Germany, in the low mountain range of the Eifel, near the former Nürburgring Formula 1 race track. In a small place called Kelberg.
Very down to earth, the people there. For some city dwellers, backwoods too.
Which certainly cannot be said of Christoph Becker, the real name of the dentist. Although some of his views seem very strange to me. But that can also be said by some here on OFW.
And he is certainly not a charlatan. Just like Andreas Kalcker is not a snake oil salesman, as it is perfidiously and incorrectly suggests in the Chrome Mags post from May 21, 2020 at 2.21. For all those who have not yet seen Andreas Kalcker’s video, the link again.
I am convinced that the medical use of CDS – administered orally and intravenously – will herald a revolutionary development in medicine in this century.
https://lbry.tv/@Kalcker:7/100-Recovered-Aememi-1:7
The text by Christoph Becker is in German. The translation from google is quite acceptable. I have attached the link for this.
Pintada also receives an answer to the dangerousness of CDS.
https://www.freizahn.de/2020/04/zwei-bleichmittel-und-die-coronakrise/
https://translate.google.de/?hl=de&tab=wT
GET ONE!
https://freehk.live/
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
. . .
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
—-
No we certainly don’t go gentle into that good night. Paul Chefurka http://www.paulchefurka.ca asserts it’s thermodynamically programmed into our genes.
How about “Hell, Fire & Damnation” – a beautiful piece by Jocelyn Pook from Eyes Wide Shut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEG2Mk184A
Here we go … much bigger numbers on the streets in HK … tear gas…
I pray… to see a running dog burned alive
https://freehk.live/
FE, sadly this does not display in US.
I’ve tried it on a VPN and it works for me … the activity shut down around 9pm HK time so it may have ended by the time you go to it
https://www.mediaite.com/news/incalculable-loss-new-york-times-front-page-features-names-obituary-excerpts-of-over-1000-coronavirus-victims/
“‘Incalculable Loss’: New York Times Front Page Features Names, Obituary Excerpts of 1,000 Coronavirus Victims”
no, it actually is calculable…
a very large % were older unhealthier Americans would didn’t have many years left anyway…
old news…
Did the NYT say anything about their selection criteria?
https://rclutz.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/cv19-conditions-risk.png?w=1000&h=996
https://rclutz.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/cv19-conditions-risk.png
I guess I won’t die if I catch Covid
There is an old adage….”If the New York Times prints an alarmist fake article, does anyone read it?”
People here want to throw out thermodynamics as the end all be all but we live in a world of money velocity and money printing, quantitative easing etc…. The system is much more complex and it is not black and white as many people on here would have you believe. That being said who knows what will happen next Dennis is right. But if you want to live in moralistic ideal and think that this should happen to these people and this should happen to those People because that is the rules you will be sorely disappointed. There are no rules only luck and bad luck…
yes, it’s not just physics…
but at the base of IC is the fact that an increasing flow of energy allows an increasing prosperity…
humans could mess that up and crash IC even though there is almost as much net (surplus) energy this year as there was in 2019…
I’m closer to the camp of the optimists…
there seems to be little to gain by looking for/planning for the total collapse of IC…
as D said, the air would be cleaner!
I don’t think cleaner air is worth it if it also means worldwide poverty for 99+% of us…
Ir reminds me of the old peasant proverb, to the effect that if your farm is clean and tidy it means you have no animals left and are about to die of starvation.
In short:
‘No shit, no life.’
I would call it “the displaced pollution”.
“…as D said, the air would be cleaner!”
It might also be hotter. Loss of global dimming from reduced pollution, leading to more direct (ie less diffuse) sunlight may have contributed to Amphan’s ferocity by super-heating the Bay of Bengal:
On the other hand, the clear nights let out a lot of heat. Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. It gets down to near frost still this late in May where I am, with the clear nights. So, a stronger day/night heat gradient which may help keep the day time highs down a bit.
Or, warming oceans due to an unknown number of underwater volcanoes is releasing more moisture in the air, contributing to storms, etc. recent discoveries that part of the Antarctica ice sheet in the ocean seems to be directly over heat sources….these are most probably underwater volcanoes.
Always so quick to think that hair brained theories that man controls this earth, including the climate. I will give you credit….you did say “may”.
I hate to break it to you, but the velocity of money is in the toilet.
https://www.pinnacledigest.com/wp-content/uploads/velfeatured.png
All investment now is overseas, if anywhere. Adding more debt no longer means adding more investment.
Jason,
Man has been around for a long time, we have not crashed, I remain an optimist; there is no other choice. I did take honors thermodynamics at Madison, I did more than passably well, neat stuff.
Many have a better future now than ever before in history, we live in the present, we plan for tomorrow and accept what comes. So far, tomorrow is always been pretty damn good. The air is cleaner now than it was in 2019, CO2 emissions are down if oil consumption is an indication. These are pretty basic things, the remainder are details.
There will be a new economics, it probably is already happening around us, it will work.
Dennis L.
People have been around a long time?
Gee, thanks for informing me, I hadn’t thought about it. Tomorrow has always been better? You were born late 1940’s, gosh I can’t imagine why your tomorrows have always improved. Maybe I should read some info, like on this site that Gail has been very thoughtfully explaining, about, I don’t know, that oil stuff that we have increasingly used since you were born and how its correlated with increasing GDP. If you disagree, come with some data, facts, cause and effect mechanisms about how the next 20 years of tomorrows will be better. Anybody can spout unsupported opinions, that’s not what is helpful. My views are pretty much in line with Gail as far as economics and energy are correlated in sytems. I’m not interested in how good of a painter such and such an artist is, how innovated or how much his paintings are worth. I’m interested in where the paint comes from, how its made and what happens when its all used up. I guess I am a macro guy and you are a happy bussiness man. Anyway, I do wish you and your family well and hope you stay safe and healthy.
And 200k years is actually pretty pi$$ weak, where it comes to species longevity, before extinction. 1 million years is on the low end of the average.
https://media.giphy.com/media/ohrQCO48drf3i/giphy.gif
When you as an individual are branded – no not with an iron but with being accepted into the elites.
From the intelligencer again:
“The strongest brand in the world is not Apple or Mercedes-Benz or Coca-Cola. The strongest brands are MIT, Oxford, and Stanford. Academics and administrators at the top universities have decided over the last 30 years that we’re no longer public servants; we’re luxury goods. ”
OFW seems to assume it is game over, I am not seeing that. What is valuable is becoming more valuable not less. We have acknowledged we need a new economics, left, right, center, upside down. Is it in front of us? The billionaires are worth more now than before this pandemic began, they have done something right. We laugh about going to Mars, they are building spaceships.
Healthcare is next, Covid test, again from the referenced article: ” I think Jeff Bezos is going to offer the COVID-19 test as part of Prime membership.” Were it a bet, anyone want to take the other side with real money?
It is very ironic, but Greta was right and she accomplished her goal, the air is cleaner, there is less CO2. Yes, she is irritating to many, but how many here saw reducing emissions to the extent that has happened? Greta’s goals and the goals of many on this site as I understand them are congruent. Those are Davos ideas, OFW is closer to Davos than one might think. Solar does not have to grow to become a larger proportion of electrical energy production, coal can become less and the effect is growth of solar energy. It is a finite world, new economics, someone is going to get it right.
These are scenarios, not predictions. I come here seeking ideas, somehow I found the aforementioned site, I assume it was through a number of links related to OFW. We can see what we wish to see, we can see a long line of chickens in a dark tunnel, or we can see a bright future. It has been said, “What do you have to lose?”
Dennis L. .
” The billionaires are richer now than before this pandemic began. They have done something right” That’s some serious Ayn Rand bullshit. You need to read up on the thermodynamics of civilization. Violent revolutions occur when the balance of wealth between rich and poor gets too great and it always does because the system is set up that way. We cannot prosper going from an highly dense and transportable fuel soure to a much less dense and non transportable fuel source. The system will collapse, there is no amount of positive thinking or manifesting a better future through will that will change the laws of physics. All these fortunes and technology are the result of huge amounts of excess energy that humans seem to be great at using up as fast as possible. Basic population dynamics shows a pooulation boom to a predator free isolated species until the energy of the environment is used up then a huge crash. We are no different. Stop being mesmorized by our technical civilization. You may not see the fall before your time is up but that doesnt mean you are right.
“We cannot prosper going from an highly dense and transportable fuel source to a much less dense and non transportable fuel source. The system will collapse, there is no amount of positive thinking or manifesting a better future through will that will change the laws of physics.”
prosperity is guaranteed to decrease…
as less energy flows through the economy, there must be less economic activity…
if the worldwide flow of energy collapsed to zero this year, then IC would collapse completely…
if the energy flow declines slowly, then there is a chance that gov/CBs/elites could manage the decline in ways where the economy doesn’t break down…
or not… the Great Turning from more energy to less energy could be grossly mismanaged to the point where the system collapses even though there is still much FF energy to enable a reset economy at a lower level of activity…
it’s all balanced on a cliff edge…
I think nationalization of USA energy production may be coming in the near future, which could keep enough energy flowing to maintain a lower level bAU…
it’s not over til it’s over…
Violent revolutions occur when the balance of wealth between rich and poor gets too great and it always does because the system is set up that way.
The balance of wealth between rich and poor is just a social construct, surely. 🙂 The penniless and landless people ruled by the Pharaohs or the Incas and roped into their pyramid schemes never revolted, presumably because by and large they were happy with their place in the scheme of things.
We are coming to the twilight of a period of unprecedented material abundance and physical comfort for the masses. But by and large, the masses in the West have never been very happy with their place in the scheme of things since they were given affordable access to cars, credit cards and color TVs and deprived of their unshakeable faith in what used to be called “the Truth” of Christianity. What we have today in the West is immense, monstrously immense amounts of misery, resentment, dissatisfaction, and our old friend mutual animosity. That will make violent revolution inevitable once the supermarkets run out of food, regardless of how much the likes of Bezos and Gates have to their names.
You’re missing the entire point. It is all about the flow of energy. The units of account and government systems are almost irrelevant. The billionaires are richer because they are closest to the spigot. The new units of currency, which are claims on energy, go to the center of the hurricane first – New York, and now in the era of tech, San Francisco. The periphery gets the currency and the energy last.
I think Dennis was making an entirely different point. What you regard as the entire point may be bigger and more important as points go, but that shouldn’t invalidate what he has to say.
Emissions might be down but levels in the athmosphere keep rising.
It is very ironic, but Greta was right and she accomplished her goal, the air is cleaner, there is less CO2. Yes, she is irritating to many, but how many here saw reducing emissions to the extent that has happened? Greta’s goals and the goals of many on this site as I understand them are congruent. Those are Davos ideas, OFW is closer to Davos than one might think.
Certainly Greta and the Davos group have a similar goal in reducing FF combustion, and they appear to have made a giant leap forward on getting that done. Where this will take the world from here on is anyone’s guess though.
Solar does not have to grow to become a larger proportion of electrical energy production, coal can become less and the effect is growth of solar energy.
Thanks for pointing out that solar is playing a larger part without a single new panel being installed simply because there is now a smaller energy supply pie. That is something I’d never though of before. i rate it a brilliant insight.
It is a finite world, new economics, someone is going to get it right.
Yes, in the end, that always happens. But squeezing the current population into a lower-energy economy is not going to be easy or pleasant for most people and not even survivable for a good many of us.
“What is valuable is becoming more valuable not less.”
I think you are confusing “valuable” with “costly”. What is valuable to me is my health, freedom, family, and hopes for the future. Stanford and the big universities are garbage heaps tended by sociopaths. They have value only to other sociopaths.
Kim, I agree. I have health, freedom and family (twelve including spouses) and at 75 my main hope is that I shall enjoy all that a little longer. The other things of great value to me are all the work of the Nine Muses, especially music and poetry. But these days I tend to be thinking more about Clio, who seems to be teaching us a much needed but much unheeded lesson.
Dennis is missing or ignoring the fact that billions will starve to death…all while being so grateful the skies are more clear and solar is now a larger percentage of a vastly reduced global energy footprint.
Yes, it will be a brighter future for Jeff Bezos and members of Amazon Prime. Jeff will be worth another 100 billion electronic monetary units.
Expert warns of Covid-19 surge as Hongkongers return in summer
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3085792/coronavirus-alert-hongkongers-return-australia
C’mon FE. That’s just mainstream medical, scare the Sheeple BS. It harum scarums about people from NZ & Oz, both places with f-all cases taking the virus back to HK, another place with f-all cases.
Try this about medicine as the new religion instead: http://thesaker.is/medicine-as-religion/
I think this is a really excellent idea although it could do with being re-written in easier-to-understand prose. It’s absolute medical heresy. And I can hear the WHO shouting, “Anyone who believes this must be off their meds!”
It’s difficult to summarize this writing, but the central idea is that science/medicine as a dogma or an orthodoxy has taken some of the roles formerly played by Christianity in the lives of Westerners. The conclusion is as follows:
Just as at other critical junctures in history, philosophers will need to engage in debate and dispute with religion; this time not with Christianity, but rather with science, or at least that part of it that has assumed the guise of a religion. I’m not sure if we will see a return to the burning and blacklisting, but as already evident, the views of those who seek the truth and refuse to accept the dominant fictions will undoubtedly be excluded from public discourse, or met with accusations of purveying fake news (news, not ideas, because news is more important than reality). As in every emergency, real or simulated, the ignorant will smear the sages and scoundrels will seek to profit from the misfortunes that they themselves have provoked. All this has already happened and will go on happening, but those who bear witness to the truth will continue to do so, since no one can bear witness for the witness.
Very true: they think that any old gang of scientist who are in agreement should be able to shout down anyone who questions their orthodoxy, just as theologians could – and still do
in some cultures, eg Islam – vote for the death of heretics and ‘blasphemers’.
Mankind will probably go down into the long night gibbering rubbish.
All cultures have a red line somewhere. The Roman church killed Giordano Bruno, perhaps the most creative thinker of his time. Earlier Christians killed Hypatia of Alexandria. The Soviets killed Vavilov, their greatest geneticist. The US killed Wilhelm Reich and burned all his research.
Wasn’t Wilhelm Reich a kiddie-diddler? He was the one with the “orgone” machine and “sexual liberation”.
It would be a straight line from him to Trannie Library and Child R*pe Hour, no?
Should have burned him instead of his “research”.
For Kim: No, Reich was not. his bad reputation comes largely from two books: Christopher Turner’s “Adventures in the Orgasmatron”, written by a follower of Kinsey who approved of the latter’s sexual abuse of children, and E Michael Jones’ “Libido Dominandi”, which also was mostly slander. Reich, unlike Kinsey and many in the “free love” counterculture, understood that true sexuality was a fusion of body, spirit, and soul, as others had said before him, all the way back to Diotima Mantinike. Or, for that matter, Sappho of Lesbos.
They aren’t just going to be returning. Looks like there could be a few million Hong Kongers permanently on vacation in Australia pretty soon.
Retail landlords are sending out thousands of default notices to tenants, a situation that could tip already-ailing retailers into bankruptcy or total collapse.
Department stores, restaurants, apparel merchants and specialty chains have been getting the notices as property owners who’ve gone unpaid for as long as three months lose patience, according to people with knowledge of the matter and court filings.
“The default letters from landlords are flying out the door,” said Andy Graiser, co-president of A&G Real Estate Partners, whose firm works with retailers and other commercial tenants. “It’s creating a real fear in the marketplace,” Graiser said.
Pressure from default notices and follow-up actions like locking up stores or terminating leases was cited in the bankruptcies of Modell’s Sporting Goods and Stage Stores Inc. Many chains stopped paying rent after the pandemic shuttered most U.S. stores, gambling that they could hold on to some cash before landlords demanded payment.
The stakes are enormous, and landlords are suffering, too. An estimated $7.4 billion in rent for April hasn’t been paid, or about 45% of what’s owed, according to data analyzed by CoStar Group.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-22/default-notices-are-piling-up-for-retailers-unable-to-pay-rent
We are in a Depression and it will be a deep and very long depression. And that’s with just one lockdown. Imagine when the next one and the one after that arrives. We’ll be even lucky if there will be a BAU Lite.
I agree… depression is already here now…
and you’re on to something… a continual series of lockdowns will give almost no chance of even a bAU lite…
but imagine if the lockdown mostly ends by Summer…
I bet most people will at least have half a notion that the lockdown was reediculous and that resuming activities with masks is good enough…
and once most people have their freedom of movement back, they ain’t gonna wanna lock down again… ever…
I’m not sure this will become a prevailing meme but:
I hope that almost everyone will come to realize that every person who wants to continue to hide in their home will still have the personal freedom to do so…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-is-reopening-for-summer-and-tensions-are-high-11590163644
“My biggest fear is a resurgence of all this, a rolling lockdown type situation,” he said. “That’s the big question with everything opening back up: Is it the right time? I don’t know that and I don’t think anyone knows.”
or…
“Finally!” Ms. McIntyre said, a few days after Wisconsin’s top court overturned the state’s coronavirus shutdown order. “I think people are tired of staying home and they’ll do whatever they can to get back out.”
or…
“Americans are tiptoeing—or in some cases sprinting—their way back into a public sphere reshaped by the coronavirus. Scenes playing out across the country show that reopening will be fitful, divisive, and in some ways far more difficult than closing it down.”
or…
“Tensions are intensifying between those celebrating the end of shutdowns and those fearful of the virus’s re-emergence, between those driven by economic desperation and those eager to resume a semblance of normalcy.”
All this talk is just conditioning the masses for “forced vaccinations”. They want to stir the pot about rolling lockdowns and wearing masks. And the Sheep will buy into it because they want their sports back. They don’t realize that they have once again been worked by Politicians and the Corporate Media who is bought and paid for by the Gov’t
How does one define an economic “reopening”? I think most people would say that a reopening means that everything goes back to the way it was before the crisis; or at least as close as possible. Most people would also say that a reopening is something that will last. Simply declaring “America has reopened” while keeping many restrictions in place in certain parts of the country is a bit of a farce. And, reopening with the intention of implementing lockdowns again in a matter of weeks without explaining the situation to the public is a scam of the highest order.
For example, states like New York, California, Illinois and New Jersey have extended their lockdowns; with LA’s extension remaining ambiguous after they initially declared restrictions for another 3 months. New York’s lockdown is extended to the end of May (so far). This is the case in many US states and cities, while rural areas are mostly open. This is being called a “partial reopening”, but is there a purpose behind the uneven approach?
As I predicted in my article ‘Pandemic And Economic Collapse: The Next 60 Days’, the restrictions will continue in major US population centers while rural areas have mostly opened with much fanfare. The end result of this will be a flood of city dwellers into rural towns looking for relief from more strict lockdown conditions. In about a month, we should expect new viral clusters in places where there was limited transmission. I suggest that before the 4th of July holiday, state governments and the Federal government will be talking about new lockdowns, using the predictable infection spike as an excuse.
This is happening in Northeast China right now – another resurgence has occurred and 100 million people are now subject to quarantine restrictions. China’s reopening is barely two weeks old, and concerns of infection “flare ups” were widespread when the announcement was made. Now the mainstream media seems to be confused; is China open, or locked down? Of course, we may never know how bad the problem is and was in China as their numbers have been shown to be utterly rigged and suppressed from the beginning, but the point is that the phrase “reopening” is meaningless there, just as it will be meaningless here in the US.
This is part of the plan.
http://www.alt-market.com/index.php/articles/4229-the-economic-reopening-is-a-fake-out
He did a good job up until that point … then he goes full illogical…
I do wonder how many of these blogs are actually intended to redirect anyone who is suspicious of the real intentions…
FE,
Not a taunt, not a challenge, not an effort to win an argument. My guess, there will be no second spike, it is over. I have only a guess why it is over but if that guess is correct, it is over. There is no conspiracy in my guess, could be, but a very long shot. Some are going to get sick, some will die, it has always been this way, it is not in our hands. Sweden should be a good bellwether.
We have been on this earth for a long time and if this is the worst life can throw at us, we will be fine.
I shall see you on the fourth, if things get worse, then my reasoning was not correct and I shall adjust accordingly.
It would seem wise to stop some of this silly viral research, it did not end well.
Dennis L.
Why is it illogical?
>>but in the long run the goal, in my view, is total centralization of production and distribution.
According to the video you posted, The Century of the Self, episode 1, that was one of the first things the Nazis did once they were ‘elected’ into power in 1933.
The elite today (excludes politicians) tend to be self-obsessed and interested only in themselves (Jeff Bezos was worth about $150 billion a year or two ago whilst many of the full time workers of Amazon barely earned enough to put food on their tables). Whatever they are planning, they intend to come out on top, and alive. A command economy where the elite control everything (including economically) and puppet politicians do as they are told, they more or less have up until now, and most of the masses die of starvation and diseases related to malnutrition, and well-armed and motivated police, secret police and armed forces control the survivors, seems like a plan to me.
This is what could be called ‘Controlled Demolition’, the other side of the coin is how far and how fast it becomes uncontrolled.
As sections of the global economy tip-toe toward reopening, it’s becoming clearer that a full recovery from the worst slump since the 1930s will be impossible until a vaccine or treatment is found for the deadly coronavirus.
Consumers will stay on edge and companies will be held back as temperature checks and distancing rules are set to remain in workplaces, restaurants, schools, airports, sports stadiums and more.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-23/fate-of-global-economy-rests-more-than-ever-on-finding-vaccine?srnd=premium-europe
Confirmation that this is as good as it gets.
They’re just conditioning the “Sheeple” for forced vaccinations. It’s all part of their plan. Supposedly they are paying 100,000 to test a Covid 19 vaccination. And people will Willingly line up for this sh*t.
As comedian Ron White used to say “ya can”t fix stupid”.
They’re just conditioning the “Sheeple” for forced vaccinations. It’s all part of their plan. Supposedly they are going to pay 100,000 test subjects to test a Covid 19 vaccination. And people will willingly line up for this sh*t.
As comedian Ron White used to say “ya can”t fix stoo.pid”.
FE,
There are no temperature checks for you when you board your Gulfstream, all the crew has already been tested, you are ready to go. No sarcasm, sort of a hint that things may be changing and a broader focus sometimes is helpful.
Dennis L.
Interesting data here. Mobility was a big winner.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/daily-global-co2-emissions-cut-to-2006-levels-during-height-of-coronavirus-crisis
Okay, as all of us seek affirmation, I just came across this. It goes well with the post on education.
Basically, it is winner take all once again, this time in education. MIT has been at this for years.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/scott-galloway-future-of-college.html
This virus may not so much have changed things as accelerated processes already extant.
Enjoy,
Dennis L.
Dennis, your missing the whole social and emotional aspect of going off on your own for the first time and meeting many young people of various background learning new ideas and sharing the experience with others. Making life long friends and future spouses, researching on a team of brilliant collegues, and yes going out at night, tripping, having sex, all in a fairly safe environment. It is one of America’s initiatory rites into adulthood. Lot’s of things are better in real life like playing and listening to music, pickup game of sports, or role playing games if that’s your thing. We are losing too much to autonomy and efficiency. Why don’t we have amazon deliver the same meal to 3 different couples and they can have a zoom dinner party. Young adults want to move and touch and sweat and fight and fuck and you cant take that away from them or humanity will turn into a bunch of androgynous grey aliens.
Of course, historically, the privilege of going off to college to earn the possibility of a better standard of living and meeting a spouse has gone to the privileged few. Now we have tried to extend the privilege to almost everyone, but with a huge amount of debt attached. To make matters worse, costs are a whole lot higher now. Young people expect to have their own bedroom and own bathroom, in instead of a shared room with a bathroom down the hall. Teaching faculty have Ph.D.s instead of M.A.s or M.S.s, and are supposed to spend quite a bit of their time on (often worthless) “research.” Dining rooms are a whole lot fancier, with choices other than “take it or leave it.” Universities and colleges need to support football teams, in order to get donations from male donors.
Sigh. When I went to college (in 1962) the bathroom was three floors down in the basement. Otherwise I washed in warm water delivered in a jug. Of course, the room was over five hundred years old and built atop a former leper colony, but to me it was a little piece of Arcadia. Later, I experienced the “take it or leave it” college dinners, but in a Renaissance dining room, where we had to wear full suits and gowns, and dined by candlelight. The old world, in its sunset, was fair to see.
I ended up on a floor filled with football players and lots of hockey players (our school had no varsity hockey so they just crammed us onto the same floor as first yr football)…. so basically meat heads….
In Canada hazing is not allowed nor are there frats… but those rules did not apply to our floor. And heaven forbid if you skipped the big night …. because you’d be snatched when you least expected it … stripped naked … tied to a chair … and rolled onto one of the female floors ….
This one poor fella ended up on our floor … along with his trophies (I can’t recall but there were either for ballroom dancing or figure skating…) — probably not an appropriate floor for him… however he must answered ‘yes’ to the athletic interests section on the application form….
Anyway — he gets nabbed after coming back from skating (not playing hockey… skating) — and lo and behold he’s stripped and he’s got a hockey cup on (obviously looking to enhance…) … he got dumped onto the girls floor …
Soon after he relocated from our floor…. or maybe he hung himself… we were never told.
The good thing is… all those people that did that to him (I did not get involved… but then nor did I try to stop any of this… as I was not so keen to end up on the girls floor naked … without an invitation…) will soon be dead!!!
http://replygif.net/i/1126.gif
Perhaps a silver lining to this would be to enable adult learners (meaning older non-traditional students) greater access to higher quality education. Or even younger folk that are more highly self-driven. Having experienced on and off campus versions myself, I would think most typical college age youth would much prefer and benefit from the traditional communal campus experience.
I like Galloway’s notion of a gap year. I wish I had done that myself. I think my first college experience would have benefited with a respite from senioritis burnout. Even some college professors are recommending this as a Covid work-around.
Historically China never wanted to modernize in the first place and would have far preferred to be left to her ‘primitive’ ways if allowed to. (Same with Japan.)
And looking at where we’re all now headed, I’d have far preferred that, too.
Having visited Japan I tend to agree. We can blame Commodore Perry and the Convention of Kanagawa, I suppose, but the real damage was done by the intellectuals of the Meiji Restoration, who piggybacked on an excellent political reform to launch a campaign of westernisation.
But perhaps the most disastrous event in recent Japanese history was her victory at Tsushima. This created a sense of military superiority that gradually transformed into a sense of racial superiority, with horrific results for not just Japan, but most of Asia.
Inflation vs deflation – it depends:
Charles Hugh Smith in his subscribed “Musings” has a very interesting summary of the conundrum – do prices go up or down? As this is subscribed it would not be proper to do other than a brief quote.
“But the capacity to generate services isn’t quite as flexible, and so the cost of services such as healthcare, higher education, childcare, etc. have skyrocketed.
Part of this dynamic arises from what economist Michael Spence identified as tradable and untradable goods/ services: we can buy shampoo made elsewhere in the world (tradable) but we can’t get a haircut from an overseas supplier (untradable).”
Some of you know for the past year I have personally experienced a higher educational system which went from classroom to virtual. My impression is the non tradable aspect of higher education is over except for the absolutely brilliant(well, maybe not, Einstein did win a Nobel from a patent office) and those wanting networking. If credentialing can be done by examination(it is done in many licensed professions), then the educational monopoly is over and the economies of scale that allow many secondary areas to bleed out the student for pet projects are over. The virus has not so much changed the game as it has caused faster adoption of materials and technology already in place. Earlier I gave reference to cloud materials that went with calculus courses, some are are excellent others have room for growth. Individualized instruction using visual, auditory, kinesthetic(write notes) is all there.
A note on Zoom which my class used: before beginning the instructor notified everyone that recording would begin, everything(student and teacher), visual and auditory and keyboard entered was saved. This is a very intelligent group, you all can follow that one to some obvious conclusions.
Commuting time is nil and if students are going to move out of the house and then move back to the basement, why leave in the first place? Well, it is tough to get drunk and sex may be a bit of a challenge, but people have always managed. If you are going in debt, help mom and dad out and pay rent from a student loan, keeps it in the family.
There really is virtually no cost to this type of education and the best are in the cloud, Stanford, MIT, Harvard are all there. Tests can be done at a testing center and the cost will be trivial compared to going to a university. Want a more invasive, local means of testing, facial recognition with a web camera as well as programs that recognize keyboarding styles. Some Coursera courses seem to require web cameras for this reason, I declined as it is for credit/credentialing whatever.
Smith seems to be one of the more accessible bloggers, much like Gail without a comment section. He might be worth your time.
Thoughts?
Dennis L.
Been reading CHS for years. Lots of excellent ideas.
He used to be quite optimistic and worked hard proposing a variety of commonsense solutions to pressing issues that would work really well . . . if only people didn’t behave like people.
These days he’s more fatalistic.
“BIG TROUBLE FOR THE BIG THREE U.S. OIL COMPANIES: Financial Disaster In Its Domestic Oil & Gas Sector
While it’s no secret that the U.S. shale oil industry continues to be a trainwreck, the damage is now spreading deep into the financial bowels of the Big Three Oil Majors. Unfortunately, the largest, ExxonMobil, has the worst-performing domestic oil and gas sector in the group. So, it’s no surprise that ExxonMobil was forced to borrow money just to pay dividends.”
https://srsroccoreport.com/big-trouble-for-the-big-three-u-s-oil-companies-financial-disaster-in-its-domestic-oil-gas-sector/
Supports the CDP… what cannot continue … will stop … and it was about to stop just as Covid was introduced
Under classical economics, borrowing money to pay dividends was called a “death spiral”. But under MMT, who knows? Not I, for one.
Our Finite World. In Germany homed, I’m sure it were on the index for conspiracy-theorists.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-corona-conspiracy-theorists-protests-in-germany-see-fringe-mix-with-the-mainstream-a-8a9d5822-8944-407a-980a-d58e9d6b4aec
When the Rich feel not rich enough they go to such places. The German finance minister are to be left out in the cold.
And I estimate. One discredited closed. Three new open.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/database-exposes-offshore-holdings-of-prominent-germans-a-065050b7-88f9-48b3-83b9-d474599de2ed
For those who have the stamina and interest to read it all, the link below takes you to 44 pages on the Corona Panic, by David Crowe.
Here’s the opening:
The world is suffering from a massive delusion based on the belief that a test for RNA is a test for a deadly new virus, a virus that has emerged from wild bats or other animals in China, supported by the western assumption that Chinese people will eat anything that moves.
If the virus exists, then it should be possible to purify viral particles. From these particles RNA can be extracted and should match the RNA used in this test. Until this is done it is possible that the RNA comes from another source, which could be the cells of the patient, bacteria, fungi, etc. There might be an association with elevated levels of this RNA and illness, but that is not proof that the RNA is from a virus.
Without purification and characterization of virus particles, it cannot be accepted that an RNA test is proof that a virus is present.
Definitions of important diseases are surprisingly loose, perhaps embarrassingly so. A couple of symptoms, maybe contact with a previous patient, and a test of unknown accuracy, is all you often need. While the definition of SARS, an earlier coronavirus panic, was self-limiting, the definition of COVID-19 disease is open-ended, allowing the imaginary epidemic to grow.Putting aside the existence of the virus, if the COVID-19 test has a problem with false positives (as all biological tests do) then testing an uninfected population will produce only false-positive tests, and the definition of the disease will allow the epidemic to go on forever.
This strange new disease, officially named COVID-19, has none of its own symptoms. Fever and cough, previously blamed on uncountable viruses and bacteria, as well as environmental contaminants, are most common, as well as abnormal lung images, despite those being found in healthy people. Yet, despite the fact that only a minority of people tested will test positive (often less than 5%), it is assumed that this disease is easily recognized. If that were truly the case, the majority of people selected for testing by doctors should be positive.
The COVID-19 test is based on PCR, a DNA manufacturing technique. When used as a test it does not produce a positive/negative result, but simply the number of cycles required to detect sufficient material to beat the arbitrary cutoff between positive and negative. If positive means infected and negative means uninfected, then there are cases of people going from infected to uninfected and back to infected again in a couple of days.
A lot of people say it is better to be safe than sorry. Better that some people are quarantined who are uninfected than risk a pandemic. But once people test positive, they are likely to be treated with treatments similar to SARS. Doctors faced with what they believe is a deadly virus treat for the future, for anticipated symptoms, not for what they see today. This leads to the use of invasive oxygenation, high-dose corticosteroids, antiviral drugs and more In this case, some populations of those diagnosed (e.g. in China) are older and sicker than the general population and much less able to withstand aggressive treatment. After the SARS panic had subsided, doctors reviewed the evidence, and it showed that these treatments were often ineffective, and all had serious side effects, such as persistent neurologic deficit, joint replacements, scarring, pain and liver disease. As well as higher mortality.
http://theinfectiousmyth.com/book/CoronavirusPanic.pdf
Haven’t we already enough conflicting claims about the virus, for crying out loud? 🙁
Who’s David Crowe? How many governments have endorsed his claims? How do I know he doesn’t have yet another special axe of his own to grind with respect to his claims about the virus?
‘Endorsed by your government’ is hardly ever a recommendation – in fact quite the opposite.
‘How many governments have endorsed his claims?’
If the answer is none – then you might want to read what he says.
End of the day I have not seen anything even remotely close to being as logical as the CDP. Everything I am seeing points to that as the plan
CDP?
And perhaps my question should have been: Which governments have endorsed what he said?
Read the first paragraph – total BS
Why do you say that? Also, to “SomeoneInAsia”, since when does gov. endorsement of claims = factuality?
A friend forwarded an interview with Crowe:
https://21stcenturywire.com/2020/05/17/episode-326-covid-crash-test-with-guest-david-crowe-and-more/
It’s in the middle hour. You’d be well-served to listen to his description of how PCR testing works. I have a background in biology, and his “claims” make perfect sense to me.
I’ve noticed that every scientific study of COVID seems to come up with greatly divergent characteristics – the trend now seems to be to say that one can hardly ever catch it at all.
Which, oddly enough, accords with the current desire of governments to re-open, as their eyes widen in fear at the immense and probably irreparable damage they have caused to economies through the lock-downs.
The damage was already there to begin with. The virus — if it’s for real — was merely extra seasoning.
The whole thing seems more and more to resemble a real-life version of Kafka’s The Castle. Nothing is what it seems, and you have no way of finding out the truth. For all you know, the virus might have been just a big bogeyman invented by the world’s policymakers secretly collaborating behind our backs. Where’s the Blue Fairy when you need her? Sigh…
Perhaps this is yet another sociopolitical symptom of the coming collapse. As the whole sucker begins to go down, the panicking policymakers in desperation try to distract the people — and find a new means of maintaining control over them, hence the lockdown — by inventing a bogeyman like the virus. Yup, shrewd move. Got to give them that.
Yes, you’re cooking with fire there, my man! Someone may well have been making stuff up on purpose in order to deceive the world and make it dance to his tune.
I’d like to know the truth, the whole truth, etc., about this pandemic. But since I don’t have that luxury, I am aiming to identify as much of what is false as I can in order to get a decent idea of where the bounds of possibility lie.
Some people, whether intensely gullible, intensely cynical, or intensely astute, are blessed with a certainty that allows them to cry “BS” simply by glancing at a statement. They possess a mind like a barcode scanner, capable of reading and capturing the essence of something at a single pass. I lack this particular skill, this confident ability to feel certain about things without becoming familiar with their ins and outs. I like to keep re-examining things to see if they fit together without internal contradiction.
At present, the cyanide from fracking theory is looking promising to me. Does COVID-19 attack hemoglobin In red blood cells, rendering it incapable of transporting oxygen? If so, prey tell, what coronaviruses—indeed, what viruses at all—have ever done that? I’m not a virologist. I’ve never even read the Ladybird Book of Viruses.
Things that do attack hemoglobin and destroy its ability to transport blood include cyanide and carbon monoxide. What are the levels of these poisons in the air in winter in Wuhan, in Bergamot, and in the parts of New York where COVID-19 death counts are high? Where is James Lovelock when you need him?
Here’s one from The Gladiators:
Stop before you go, right now
You’ll get hurt and that’s for sure
Look before you leap, I say
To prevent it’s better than having to cure
Open your eyes and see
Observantly you will understand
So easy will you go to see what’s going on
The threat of re-opening actually increases the fear levels in most people….
The psychologists are doing a stellar job here….
I would agree that the tests are terrible. We can’t tell who is infectious and who is not. We cannot tell who is immune and who is not. At the same time, an article with the title of Coronavirus Panic sounds like it is quite biased in its reporting. I prefer sources that don’t put an obvious bias in the title.
Gail, what happened around 1995/6 to turn the velocity of US money negative. This is the graph I saw posted earlier.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=qRkO
Sorry, it took me a while to figure this one out.
1995 was the time when the US dollar was at a minimum relative to other currencies:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/trade-weighted-us-dollar-index-to-dec-2019-fred.png
In other words, European currencies were high relative to the US dollar, as was the Yen. All of these countries were doing well. Yet the price of oil was terribly low–too low for US producers to make money extracting the oil. A person would think that having other currencies high, would bring the price of oil up.
The big thing that happened during this time was the collapse of the Former Soviet Union (FSU). In fact, the decline in the consumption of the FSU took place between 1991 and 1995, ending in 1995-1996. This was a major contributor to the depressed oil prices.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/fsu-energy-consumption-by-fuel.png
Inflation adjusted oil prices were near a low point.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/inflation-adjusted-oil-prices-to-2019.png
These low oil prices were what allowed Europe and Japan to do well, but it would be impossible to keep getting oil out, without higher oil prices. A change in strategy was needed to get world demand for oil up, not just the US and Europe. In many ways, the world economy was humming along with Bill Clinton as president, but more demand was needed to get oil and other energy prices up.
January 1, 1995, the World Trade Organization was started. In 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was adopted by the UN General Assembly, but has not entered into force. With many countries around the world seeming to do well (excepting oil producers and the former Soviet Union), the Kyoto Protocol was put forth. This gave an excuse for countries to offshore their manufacturing to low-wage countries on the other side of the world, furthering world trade. Because reducing world CO2 emissions sounded like a do-good program, it received a wide range of support.
Of course, these actions sent world CO2 emissions higher, because there was no way of taxing all of the goods made with high coal emissions from elsewhere in the world. This was the stimulation in demand, outside of the developed world, which had been so much desired, to get oil prices up.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/world-co2-emissions-with-1990-2001-trend-line.png
With the changes in the 1995-1997 period, US federal spending stopped growing. No need for wars. It was other countries around the world that would pull the world economy forward now. Investments in the US could decline, as investments around the world grew. This chart shows the growth in the US budget by year.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/federal-government-current-expenditures.png
What I would need is a chart showing the split of investment around the world, compared to the US, Europe, and Japan, to show what happened next. While the government kept encouraging more debt, there was really very little productive investment going on in the US, Europe, and Japan after this point. Instead, lower interest rates were leading to asset bubbles. New investment was going into less developed countries, with lower labor costs.
Without productive investments in the US, there was no place for all of the new debt to go. The velocity of M2 fell and fell, even as the Federal Reserve has tried “pushing on a string,” to encourage new investment.
“The Investopedia Anxiety Index, a measure of our readers’ concerns about market and economic related issues, and the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), otherwise known as the “Fear Gauge,” have historically been closely correlated…
“But the last several weeks have revealed a notable divergence between the two as anxiety, especially around personal finance related issues, has spiked, just as markets-based anxiety has subsided. It’s not surprising that has come on the heels of April’s 14% rise in the S&P 500, while some 24 million Americans filed for unemployment.”
https://www.investopedia.com/investor-anxiety-and-volatility-diverge-sending-a-warning-sign-4845854
Bizarre! How long can it last?
This video just got posted to my YT recommendations.
Looks like a public relations effort from the Controlled / Uncontrolled Demolition team.
Aftermath: Population Zero – The World without Humans
“Poor neighbourhoods in the Chilean capital Santiago have seen a resurgence in the use of community kitchens once prevalent in the darkest days of dictatorship, as coronavirus shutdowns put pressure on jobs and send thousands into poverty.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-chile-hunger/chileans-rediscover-community-kitchens-as-coronavirus-and-hunger-bite-idUKKBN22Z00I
Minority of One, I have somehow responded to your video, which was not my intention.
“The coronavirus pandemic, c li m at e chaos and locust swarms have exacerbated the food crisis in Africa, which is already home to millions of food-insecure people.”
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/africa/africa-heads-toward-severe-food-crisis-amid-covid-19-outbreak-locust-swarms
“Singapore’s obsession with food goes far deeper than its world-famous chili crab and laksa.
“One of the most densely populated countries on the planet, its 5.7 million people rely on other nations for almost everything they eat. Just 0.9% of its land area of about 700 square kilometers was classified as agricultural in 2016, only marginally more than icebound Greenland.
“Now, as countries around the world confront the prospect of food demand that’s forecast to rise by more than half by 2050, Singapore finds itself at the vanguard of work to keep a swelling population fed while also addressing land constraints and the threat of c lim a te change…
“Years of contingency planning -– and recent moves to maintain the key flow of goods from neighboring Malaysia –- have helped keep supplies arriving through pandemic-related disruptions, even as Singapore experienced waves of panic buying that emptied some supermarket shelves of food.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-23/how-singapore-plans-to-survive-world-s-impending-food-crisis
Good to know S’pore’s govt is working hard to keep the island fed, though one is apt to wonder just how much longer we S’poreans can stay afloat as the global economic order unravels…
Or get a Nobel Prize–
Denmark, about the same size, has 14.
S’pore? 0
>> that’s forecast to rise by more than half by 2050
They must mean by ten to nine.
I wonder whether the author has ever samples that “famous” chili crab and laksa? The crab at best is no match for the crabs of Hokkaido, and in many cases it will be stale. Singapore asian restaurants seem to enjoy seeding dishes with stale seafood and then doubling the price. And laksa is perhaps one of the most unhealthy dishes ever invented. Loaded with excess salt and sugar, and cooked in too much of the cheapest oil on the market. If you want good food in Singapore stick with Thai or Japanese.
I have been to nearly 60 countries in my 54 years – it’s a toss up between Singapore and Dubai as the worst places on earth.
I’ve been to Ethiopia — and to be honest — I’d rather live there than in either of the above.
For Fast Eddy: I think in terms of overall quality of life, including of course the friendliness and honesty of the people, the best place I have visited is Belize.
Which place do you reckon has the hottest babes? Jakarta clubs are pretty off the charts… Bangkok as a crossroads for some many cultures has great genetics…
I feel a bit uncomfortable with how sharply antagonistic humankind and (nonhuman!) Nature are set up against each other in this video. Superb video otherwise, though. As compelling as any horror movie and a whole lot more educational than all the Hollywood fare thrown at us today. I sat through the whole thing; haven’t been gripped so firmly by any movie or TV show for a very long time now. Thanks so much for sharing.
Your welcome. I can recommend the book ‘World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman, most interesting book I have read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us
The contents of the video and book overlap but I don’t know if there is any formal link.
I really liked “World Without US” when I read it years ago. NY subway system would soon be filled with water, for example.
Excellent; film; although one must observe that ‘dying a horrible death’ is the fate of every animal, Man or no Man to do the killing and poisoning.
In a briefer time-scale, I saw the forest in the Spanish mountains in the process of reclaiming a speculative housing development started by a member of my family which, I’m glad, to say flopped horribly in the 1990’s.
It was a satisfying sight. A few crumbling buildings were still rented out, but trees had pushed their way up through the asphalt and the abandoned villas.
Suggested reading:to go with the film, Lovecraft’s short poem ‘Memory’.
Xabier, “Memory” is a very bad “prose poem”. I think you mean “A Memory”, which is a genuine sonnet. But my preference would be not a poem but a painting, Thomas Cole’s “The Course of Empire” image 5: Desolation. Please look it up, the available images seem (quite illegally) to be flagged as not copyable.
Good or bad it puts humans in their place,and that’s why I suggested it. Lovecraft is a hoot,
By the way, how many people died in Malta, is it locked-down -and glad to see that you are well?
Xabier, as of yesterday the death toll is 6. That is out of 609 known cases, so about 1% maximum: since not everyone has been tested the actual % is probably lower.