Why are we seeing so much violence recently? One explanation is that people are sympathizing with those in the Minneapolis area who are upset at the death of George Floyd. They believe that a white cop used excessive force in subduing Floyd, leading to his death.
I believe that there is a much deeper story involved. As I wrote in my recent post, Understanding Our Pandemic – Economy Predicament, the problem we are facing is too many people relative to resources, particularly energy resources. This leads to a condition sometimes referred to as “overshoot and collapse.” The economy grows for a while, may stabilize for a time, and then heads in a downward direction, essentially because energy consumption per capita falls too low.
Strangely enough, this energy crisis looks like a crisis of affordability. The young and the poor, especially, cannot afford to buy goods and services that they need, such as a home in which to raise their children and a vehicle to drive. Trying to do so leaves them with excessive debt. If the affordability problem changes for the worse, the young and the poor are likely to protest. In fact, these protests may become violent.
The pandemic tends to make the affordability problem worse for minorities and young people because they are disproportionately affected by job losses associated with lockdowns. In many cases, the poor catch COVID-19 more frequently because they live and/or work in crowded conditions where the disease spreads easily. In the US, blacks seem to be especially hard hit, both by COVID-19 and through the loss of jobs. These issues, plus the availability of guns, makes the situation particularly explosive in the US.
Let me explain these issues further.
[1] Energy is required for all aspects of the economy.
Energy is required by governments. Energy is required to operate police cars. Energy is required to build schools and to operate their heating and lighting. Energy is needed to build and maintain roads. Tax revenue represents available funds to buy energy products and goods and services made with energy products.
Energy is needed for any type of business. Operating a computer requires electricity, which is a form of energy. Heating or cooling a building requires energy. Growing food requires solar energy from the sun; liquid fuel is used to operate farm machinery and trucks that transport food to the locations where it is sold. Human energy is used for some of these processes. For example, human energy is used to operate computers and farm machinery. Human energy is sometimes used to pick the crops, as well.
Wages paid by governments and businesses indirectly go to buy energy products of many kinds. Food is, of course, an energy product. The heat to cook or bake the food is also an energy product. Metals of all kinds are made using energy products, and lumber is cut and transported using energy products. With sufficient wages, it is possible to buy or rent a home, and to purchase or lease an automobile.
Interest rates indirectly reflect the portion of goods and services produced by energy products that can be transferred to parts of the system that depend on interest earnings. For example, banks, insurance companies and those on pensions depend on interest earnings. If interest rates are high, benefits to pensioners can easily be paid and insurance companies can charge low rates for their products, because their interest earnings will help offset claim costs.
Interest rates are now about as low as they can go, indicating a likely shortage of energy for funding these interest rates. The last time interest rates were close to current levels was during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Figure 1. Ten-year and three-month US Treasury interest rates, in chart made by FRED.
[2] When there is not enough energy to go around, the result can be low commodity prices, low wages and layoffs.
This is not an intuitive result. Most people assume (low energy = high prices), but this is the opposite of what actually happens. The problem is that the amount workers can afford to pay for finished goods and services needs to be high enough to make production of the commodities used in making the finished products profitable. When affordability falls too low, the system tends to collapse.
We are really dealing with a two-sided problem. The prices of commodities such as oil, wholesale electricity, steel, copper and food tend to fluctuate widely. Consumers need these prices to be low, in order for the price of finished goods made with these commodities to be affordable; producers need the prices of these commodities to rise ever-higher, to cover the cost of deeper wells and more batteries, to try to partially offset the intermittency of solar and wind electricity.
Most people assume that the situation will be resolved in the direction of commodity prices rising ever higher. In fact, commodity prices did rise higher, until mid 2008. Then, something snapped; commodity prices have been falling ever-lower since mid 2008. In fact, ever-lower commodity prices have been a world-wide problem, causing huge problems for countries trying to support their economies with export revenues based on commodity production.
Figure 2. CRB Commodity Price Index from 1995 to June 2, 2020. Chart prepared by Trading Economics. Composition is 39% energy, 41% agriculture, 7% precious metals and 13% industrial metals.
Even before the lockdowns, low commodity prices were leading to low wages of those working in commodity industries around the world. These low prices also led to low tax revenue, and this low tax revenue led to an inability of governments to afford the services that citizens expect, such as bus service and subsidized prices for certain essential goods/services. For example, South Africa (an exporter of coal and minerals) was experiencing public protests in September 2019, for reasons such as these. Chile is a major exporter of copper and lithium. Low prices of those commodities led to violent protests in 2019 for similar reasons.
Now, in 2020, lockdowns have led to even lower commodity prices. At times, farmers have been plowing their crops under. Oil companies are laying off workers. The trend toward lower commodity prices had been occurring for a long time; the recent drop in prices was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” If prices stay this low, there is a danger of falling production of commodities that we depend on, including food, metals, electricity, and oil. Businesses producing these items will fail, and governments with falling tax revenue will be unable to support them.
[3] Historical energy consumption data shows that violence often accompanies periods when energy production is not growing fast enough to meet the needs of the growing population.
Figure 3 shows average annual growth in world energy consumption, for 10-year periods:
Figure 3. Average growth in energy consumption for 10 year periods, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent.
Economic growth encompasses both population growth and rising standards of living. Figure 4 below takes the same information used in Figure 3 and divides it into (a) the portion underlying population growth, and (b) the portion of the energy supply growth available for improved standards of living. During most periods, increased population absorbs over half of increased energy consumption.
Figure 4. Figure similar to Figure 3, except that energy devoted to population growth and growth in living standards are separated. A circle is also added showing the recent growth in energy is primarily the result of China’s temporary growth in coal supplies.
There are three dips in the Living Standards portion of Figure 4. The first one came in the 10 years ended 1860, just before the US Civil War. Most of us would say that was a period of violence.
The second one occurred in the 10 years ended 1930. This is the period when the Great Depression began. It came between World War I and World War II. This was another violent period of our history.
The third dip came in the 10-year period ended 2000. This was not a particularly violent period; instead, it reflects the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union, leaving the member republics to continue on their own. There was a huge loss of demand (really, affordability) on the part of countries that were part of the Soviet Union or depended on the Soviet Union.
Figure 5. Chart showing the fall in Eastern Europe’s materials production, after the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991.
[4] The world is facing a situation in which total energy consumption seems likely to drop by 5% per year, or perhaps more.
If we look back at Figure 3, we see that even in very “bad” times economically, energy consumption was rising. In fact, in one 10-year period, the average increase was more than 5% per year.
If the world economy is reaching a point in which we consumers, in the aggregate, cannot afford the goods and services made with commodities, unless commodity prices are very low, we will likely experience a huge drop in energy consumption. I don’t know exactly how much the annual change will be, but energy consumption growth and GDP growth tend to move together. We might guess that GDP growth is shifting to 5% GDP annual shrinkage, and energy consumption will be shrinking by a similar percentage.
Clearly, shrinkage of 5% per year would be far worse than the world economy has experienced in the last 200 years. In fact, for the 10-year periods shown in Figure 3, there has never been a reduction in energy consumption. Even if I am wrong and the shrinkage in energy consumption is “only” 2% per year, this would be far worse than the experience over any 10-year period. In fact, during the Great Recession, world energy consumption only shrank in one year (2009) and then by 1.4%.
History doesn’t give us much guidance regarding what impact a dramatic reduction in energy consumption would have on the economy, except that population reduction would likely be part of the change that takes place. If half or more of energy consumption growth goes toward rising population (Figure 4), then a shrinkage of energy consumption seems likely to reduce world population.
[5] What the world is really facing is a competition regarding which parts of the economy can stay, and which will need to be eliminated, if there is not enough energy to go around. It should not be surprising if this competition often leads to violence.
As I indicated in Section [1], all parts of the economy depend on energy. If there is not enough, some parts must shrink back. The big question is, “Which parts?”
(a) Do governments, and organizations that bind governments together, collapse? If countries are doing poorly, they will not want to contribute to the World Trade Organization, the United Nations or the European Union. Governments, such as the government of Saudi Arabia, could be overthrown, or may simply stop operating. In fact, any government, when it faces insurmountable problems, could simply stop operating and leave its functions to lower levels of government, such as states, provinces, or cities.
(b) Do pension plans stop operating? Are pensioners left “out in the cold”? How about Social Security recipients?
(c) Can international trade be kept operating? It is a big consumer of energy. Also, competition with low-wage countries tends to keep wages in developed nations low. Without international trade, many imported goods (including imported medicines) become unavailable.
(d) Which companies will collapse, leaving bond holders and stockholders with $0? People who formerly had jobs with these companies will also find themselves without jobs.
(e) If the world economy cannot support as many people as before, which ones will be left out? Is it people in rich countries who find themselves without jobs? Is it people who find themselves without imported medicines? Is it the ones who catch COVID-19? Or is it mostly citizens of very poor countries, whose income will fall so low that starvation becomes a concern?
[6] The violent demonstrations represent an effort to try to push the problems related to the shortfall in energy, and the goods and services that energy can provide, away from the protest groups, toward other segments of the economy.
In an ideal world:
(a) Jobs that pay well would be available to all.
(b) Governments would be able to afford to provide a wide range of services to all, including free health care for all and reimbursement for time off from work for being sick. They would also be able to provide adequate pensions for the elderly and low cost public transit.
(c) Police would treat all citizens well. No group would be so poor that a life of crime would seem to be a solution.
As indicated in Section [2], back in 2019, before COVID-19 hit, protests were already starting because of low commodity prices and the indirect impacts of low commodity prices. One reason why governments were so eager to adopt shutdowns is the fact that when people were required to stay inside because of COVID-19, the problem of protests could be stopped.
It should be no surprise, then, that the protests came back, once the lockdowns have ended. There are now more people out of work and more people who are concerned about not having full healthcare costs reimbursed. Social distancing requirements are making it more difficult for businesses to operate profitably, indirectly leading to fewer available jobs.
[7] Violent protests seem to push problems fueled by an inadequate supply of affordable energy toward (a) governments and (b) insurance companies.
In some cases, insurance companies will pay for damages caused by protesters. Eventually, costs could become too great for insurance companies. Most policies have exclusions for “acts of war.” If protests escalate, this exclusion might become applicable.
Governments of all kinds are already being stressed by shutdowns because when citizens are not working, there is less tax revenue. If, in addition, governments have been paying COVID-19 related costs, this creates an even bigger budget mismatch. Governments find themselves less and less able to pay their everyday expenses, such as hiring teachers, policemen, and firemen. All of these issues tend to push city governments toward bankruptcy and more layoffs.
[8] Dark skinned people living in America tend to be Vitamin D deficient, making them more prone to getting severe cases of COVID-19. Vitamin supplements may be an inexpensive way of reducing the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic and thus lessening its diversion of energy resources.
There are a number of reports out that suggest that having adequate Vitamin D from sunlight strengthens the immune system and helps reduce the mortality of COVID-19. Adequate Vitamin C is also helpful for the immune system for people in general, not just those with dark skin.
Dark skinned people are adapted to living near the equator. If they live in the United States or Europe, their bodies make less Vitamin D from the slanted rays available in those parts of the world than they would living near the equator. As a result, studies show that Vitamin D deficiency is more common in African Americans than other Americans.
Recent data shows that the COVID-19 mortality rate for black Americans is 2.4 times that of white Americans. COVID-19 hospitalization rates are no doubt higher as well. Encouraging Americans with dark skin to take Vitamin D supplements would seem to be at least a partial solution to the problem of greater disease severity for Blacks. Vitamin C supplements, or more fresh fruit, might be helpful for all people, not just those with low Vitamin D levels.
If the COVID-19 impact can be lessened in a very inexpensive way, this would seem to be helpful for the economy in general. High-cost solutions simply divert available resources toward fighting COVID-19, making the overall resource shortfall for the rest of the economy worse.
[9] Much more equal wages would seem to be a solution for wage disparity, but this doesn’t bring the wages of low earning workers up enough, in practice.
There are a huge number of low-earning workers in many countries around the world. In order to increase commodity prices enough to make them profitable for producers, we really need wages in all countries to be much higher. For example, wages in Africa and in India need to be much higher, so that people in these parts of the world can afford goods such as cars, air conditioning and vacation travel. There is no way this can be done. Furthermore, such a change would add pollution and climate change issues.
There is a fundamental “not enough to go around” problem that we do not have an answer for. Historically, when there hasn’t been enough to go around, the attempted solution was fighting wars over what was available. In a way, the violence seen in cities around the globe is a new version of this violence. Governments of various kinds may ultimately be casualties of these uprisings. Remaining lower-level governments will be left with the problem of starting over again, issuing new currency and trying to make new alliances. In total, the new economy will be very different; it will probably bear little resemblance to today’s world economy.
Another video that displayed in my YouTube recommendation list:
10 Myths About Government Debt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPjrFjAxwlw
A lot of v. interesting info until Myth 10 when the presenter loses the plot. “If we do this.. in 5 years time all will be ok”. Clearly not an OFW regular.
What a load of rubbish in that video. The person clearly has an agenda to push. His arguments have so many holes without explanation that his entire presentation is useless.
No explanation for when everything doubles because of money printing, savings stay the same. Flawed argument if you don’t explain why.
No explanation of why there would be interest payments from the govt on unfunded liabilities, but he includes it.
No explanation of why the tax grab stays at 17% when there is a reduction for the rich and corporations paying tax. The answer here is obvious, the poor and middle must be paying more to maintain.
Are his numbers real?? He never gave any source for those numbers.
Of course there will be a flawed conclusion, it was based on flawed analysis of some dubious numbers.
On the topic of violence in a post-peak everything society, David Stockman just posted this on his website:
Portugal Won the War on Drugs by Giving It Up
https://fee.org/articles/portugal-won-the-war-on-drugs-by-giving-it-up/
The gist of what Portugal did was to stop criminalising drug users but not drug dealers. According to the article, the number of drug users in USA jails is ridiculous. I am pretty sure it is the same in the UK.
“According to the article, the number of drug users in USA jails is ridiculous.”
Very few people are in prison in the United States merely for drug use. When they are sentenced for “drug use”, it is usually as a result of that being just the easiest to prosecute out of a raft of other crimes (property, violence, motor vehicle/DUI) that they might have been charged with.
As to the actual number:
“On December 31, 2017, about 14% of sentenced state prisoners had been convicted of a drug offense as their most serious crime (183,900).”
https://drugwarfacts.org/chapter/drug_prison
That does not match the claim of “ridiculous” numbers at all.
As for decriminalization, I have never understood exactly what that means. Does it mean that I can home-produce meth in my garage and sell it? In Portugal, selling all such drugs is still punishable by imprisonment. They still interdict tonnes of cocaine every year from South America. So what is the story there?
While I support every effort to provide medical and educational support to addicts, the Portugal story is not one that I buy, I am afraid. In particular, I very much doubt that it has great lessons for the USA. The story says “Drug use among 15- to 24-year-olds has decreased dramatically and drug-induced deaths dropped from 80 in 2001 to 16 in 2012.”
Really? They make an unsustantiable claim about youth drug use (because everyone self reports very well on such matters) and their 2001 drug deaths was 80?! 80?! In the United States, it is 50,000 opiate overdoes every year! 50,000! It doesn’t sound to me like they ever even had much of a problem in the first place!
We hear the Portugal story all the time. But it is always really just Guardian-style selective reporting and fingerpointing. Again, medical support and education is worthwhile. But letting anyone who wants to to use “personal use” (a 10-day supply!) laws as a cover for dealing ketamine, PHP, meth, heroin, MDMA, fentanyl, etc, is to just turn control of our families and schools and society over to the cockroaches.
The nature of the fighting on the India-China border has become clearer.
Hundreds of men bashing one another with rocks and iron bars, on a God-forsaken ridge, largely in the dark, the unlucky hurtling down to their deaths.
This really doesn’t give one much to hope for in human nature…..
WW4 was supposed to be fought with sticks and rocks.
A map with war history in the region.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EasugAzXkAEQs0Y?format=jpg&name=small
China and Pakistan are already occupying Indian territory.
Your compatriot Goya said it perfectly with paint:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Duelo_a_garrotazos%2C_por_Goya.jpg
Perfect, JMS. I’d forgotten that painting by Goya of two hate-filled men beating one another in a wilderness.
I once had the honour to rebind an early edition of his ‘Disasters of War’, which said it all -very moving. Only a few images are ever reproduced from that book, but it is full of horrors.
I hate the Chapman brothers for scribbling their cheap cartoons over Goya, not worthy even to lick his shoes.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Goya-Guerra_%2828%29.jpg
i think we will probably do just fine us finite worlders we are mentally prepared for any hardship coming our way thanks to many years of debate on OFW make sure you keep on prepping with enough food for the hard years to come another 30 years of staircase collapse buy some physical silver the bailins are coming all fiat currency is at risk of confiscation by banks
“… another 30 years of staircase collapse…”
yes! you might be correct!
so is it a 30 year plan?
There is no plan, there is no carefully laid out path, there is no cabal huddling together in secret to stitch together the tapestry of future history over caviar and champagne.
The leaders of the European Union can agree on little more than setting a date for a meeting to discuss the possibility of considering the option of agreeing to disagree on whether or not they should help fellow member states in need. The branches of government in the USA refuse to agree over a one sentence difference because they don’t want to be seen as being just like the opposition whom they view as worse than merely enemies. Here in New Zealand whenever there is a change in government the polices of the new government take the nation in a completely different direction without doing anything that actually makes a difference in areas that all parties agree on but can’t agree on how to agree or what the nature of the agreement should be.
Nazis and other right wing extremists agree with Communists and other left wing extremists that Jewish bankers are the root of all evil but will not dare admit that they agree even as the same bankers support both of them and come from a range of faiths – something which both sides are well aware of but dare not acknowledge other than in reference to the evil enemy opposition who really aren’t so opposed after all.
There is no cabal controlling the world, no shadowy group conspiring together to carefully enact a cunning secret plan, no world government lurking behind every drape.
The closest we might possibly come to that would be a wreck of almost eight thousand million fools firmly believing ourselves to be the ultimate manifestation of wisdom as we seek the ship of Utopia by finding ways to push ourselves ever more rapidly to the inky depths of Davey Jones’ Locker without having any chance on agreeing on which way to turn the wheel whilst insisting that it must always be full speed ahead but adamantly pointing out the differences in the agreement.
unfortunately, your canned food willl not last that long. silver coin a good idea, also bullets.
my heart and lungs will not last that long either…
it is a race… bAU or me?
Certain kinds of freeze-dried food in #10 cans last 30+ years, friend…
Cheers,
-GBV
perhaps available in survival stores? not your usual grocery store fare.
I suppose properly sealed honey can last for decades.
Thinking and planning helps, but when the action starts, the fog of war sets in and nobody is safe.
“everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face.”
—-Iron Mike Tyson
I wonder if biting someone’s ear off could be considered to be a “plan”…
I suspect we’ll see a lot of those kinds of “plans” (read: savage knee-jerk reactions) once everything starts to fall apart.
Cheers,
-GBV
“I suspect we’ll see a lot of those kinds of “plans” (read: savage knee-jerk reactions) once everything starts to fall apart.”
looks like we’re seeing bits and pieces now, hiding under “outrage”.
adonis,
I don’t think most are mentally prepared for much of anything. No one has a clue what is coming any more than anyone had a clue this virus was coming.
Humans are more resilient than most give them credit for, Look at German citizens after WWII, living in cities, nothing left; they made it. Some will make it, some won’t.
Find someway to be useful, develop a skill set.
Tuesday, in the cities at a site of a former temperature controlled near 100K sq ft plant, were people picking up their auction wins. Waiting for a forklift chatted with a Mexican fellow from TX, hot shot trucker, going south with about 24K pounds behind his Dodge. He was proud of purchasing a used Freightliner ambulance, at auction, low miles, he was going to repurpose it to pull his trailer and sell the Dodge. He had a smile on is face and I picture a Latina back home who knew how to ease the pains of the day and perhaps a few children at the door. The large mill on his trailer would soon be making parts.
The machinery, tools, tooling was moving on, the capital to be used by others, it did not disappear. The people loading were temps previously employed at the plant, one woman I chatted with had been there 37 years, they were sad but pleasant, doing their jobs to the end, all of course were enjoying white privilege. The hard part is many of the truck license plates were out of state, make people feel unwelcome and they leave. We need to acquire skill sets and tomorrow’s skill sets are not the same as today, not much new, same stress as losing your job at 50.
Enough,
Dennis L.
remember i said the big bosses have a plan and i said that they have done a brilliant job so far well that was only possible because of the lockdowns which seems to me to be controlled demolition plan as fast eddie put it this can be the only logical conclusion so batten the hatches it is going to be messy there will probably be bailins food shortages cryptocurrencies elimination of physical notes negative interest rates forced vaccinations civil unrest ww3 have i missed anything
“… have i missed anything”
yes, you have missed the part where lockdowns are now ending and the “big bosses” are doing anything and everything to get the economy growing again…
the “big bosses” want economic growth because then they get richer and more importantly they get to continue being “big bosses”…
if the demolition of IC happens (the illlogical reeediculous tin foil seeeecret plan), they won’t be the bosses of anything anymore…
so yes, you have missed a lot…
the lockdowns will come back just wait and see they will bombard us with the news that a spike in covid cases has occurred and lockdowns will come back again
wanna bet?
follow the money…
lockdowns damage the economy, therefore no more lockdowns…
And didn’t they know that beforehand? So, they decided to impose, for the first time in human history, a global quarantine and lockdown, but it didn’t even cross their minds (dmb as they are) that it could have an irreversible catastrophic effect on an economy that was already in a coma, kept alive only thanks to the ventilators of QE .Sorry, David, that story makes no sense.
a third party did all the lockdowns… politicians…
so yes, politicians dmb as they are etc etc etc…
our top politician is also a billionaire businessman…
he wanted to totally end the US lockdown on April 12th…
the businessman in him knew… as did all the other billionaires/elites…
I believe there is no third party in the game of power. There’s only two parties: the Owners and the Military. Politicians do not decide anything, or at least anything that matters. They have no real power and AFAIK they just do what they are told.
The idea that politicians plan or decide anything…you can’t be serious. They are just puppets. That’s basic.
Your looking at it the wrong way, it’s not growth from Jan. 2020 it’s growth from the bottom which may not have happened yet. Look at airlines, down 90% are thereabouts, so a month of 10% growth would put them at 11% of the Jan 2020 level but still up 10%.
Thanks everyone for the morning wrapup and this crisis is happening in Months not years like in 2008…so…..we need a conference of the top financial minds
https://www.yahoo.com/news/bernanke-yellen-more-140-top-223001905.html
Bemanke and Yellen want more STIMULUS….the patient is dying and going fast in a coma
A group of more than 140 top economists, including former Federal Reserve chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen as well as Nobel laureates and former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers, is calling on Congress to pass another aggressive coronavirus relief package.
“Congress must pass another economic recovery package before most of the support in the CARES Act expires this summer,” the economists write in a letter to congressional leaders published Tuesday by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a think-tank focused on inequality.
“Given current projections of economic need, this new bill should provide, at a minimum, continued support for the unemployed, new assistance to states and localities, investments in programs that preserve the employer-employee relationship, and additional aid to stabilize aggregate demand. While the signers of this letter have different views on the optimal size and composition of the package, we all agree that an adequate response must be large, commensurate with the nearly $16 trillion nominal output gap our economy faces over the next decade, according to CBO estimates.
Never mind the other measures being pumped in the system…do I see desperation in the air….
the titanic is about to sink into the depths of the ocean
“It passes on this knowledge, along with its surplus equipment, including sophisticated equipment for wholesale surveillance, drones, heavily armed SWAT teams, grenade launchers and armored vehicles, to police at home. Smashing down a door and terrorizing a family in a night police raid in Detroit looks no different from a night raid carried out against an Afghan family by Army Rangers in Kandahar.
Empires eventually consume themselves. Thucydides wrote of the Athenian empire that the tyranny it imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. ”
At least Athens brought thought and new governmental structure—
True. And beautiful art and poetry which rendered it famous for several thousand years, and Athens a place which all civilized people in the Ancient World wished to visit.
The US?
San Franfeces…
Blues, basketball and corn flakes?
(And the great Gore Vidal, of course.)
“Never mind the other measures being pumped in the system…do I see desperation in the air….”
yes, there is some level of desperation…
this is just one more in a long series of stories that support the idea that govs/CBs/billionaires/elites are trying to do anything and everything to keep bAU moving along…
desperate measures are now included…
we are not seeing some seeeecret plan being implemented to take down IC… we are seeing the opposite where all of TPTB are trying to keep it from crashing…
“we are not seeing some seeeecret plan being implemented to take down IC… we are seeing the opposite where all of TPTB are trying to keep it from crashing…”
Agreed!
the lockdowns dont make sense because TPTB made them happen they done this because the crash was gonna happen because of PEAK OIL in NOV 2018 so the lockdowns were done to shift the blame onto a virus instead of PEAK OIL . Sounds like a plan to keep CAPITALISM going by depopulation and theft of people’s hard earnings
Agreed! I see this situation like Fast Eddy aka “CPD”. These guys running the show and at the top, I’m talking about the power players like Bill Gates, George Soros, Christine Legarde and the other members of the Davos group. They know what’s going to play on side B of their favorite album if BAU continues. It all comes crumbling down because “that which cannot continue, won’t”.
Covid 19 is such a blatant excuse to crash everything, steal whatever wealth is left and blame it on a scapegoat. Covid 19 may have happened by accident but as Rahm Emanuel once said “never let a serious crisis go to waste”.
“we are not seeing some seeeecret plan being implemented to take down IC… we are seeing the opposite where all of TPTB are trying to keep it from crashing…”
This misrepresents the Control From Above argument. The CFA argument is NOT that there is a plan to take down Industrial Civilization (that will happen anyway). Rather, the hypothesis is that as the crash of IC must happen, then there should be some attempt to manage it, for example by taking it down in managed stages.
The current obvious Covid scam would be one example of a tool in this plan and it has been excellent in that role so far. I do not see how it could the opposite, part of a plan “to keep [IC] from crashing”.
I concur with this statement, Kim. Managed collapse needn’t be controlled demolition all the way to the bottom. It could be controlled demolition of parts of the structure currently considered impractical to keep running, while persevering parts that the controllers deem essential.
My disagreement with the argument that the sheeple herd has no shepherds rests on the observation that without the stewardship of “good” shepherds guiding us from the shadows with their rods and staffs and the occasional cattle prong, we would never have been able to build up the current system in the first place.
“The govs/CBs/billionaires/elites are trying to do anything and everything to keep BAU moving along”.
Yea, they shot BAU on purpose, with a frangible bullet called economic lockdown, and now they are trying desperately to save poor BAU. Does this narrative make any sense? How can anyone believe that TPTB were not fully aware of the chaos that the imposition of a lockdown would cause in a global economy as fragile as the one we had already in December 2019? Are we going to believe that only us here at OFW are smart enough and informed enough to know that the effects of a global lockdown would be immensely worse than the effects of any virus?
Wow, i never thought OFW’s were so exclusively clever, and that the global leaders were so blind stupid. Sorry, this is simply absurd.
Agreed. There’s probably a majority of low-level pols (and high-level economists) who are clueless and being dragged along, but I can’t imagine intelligence/military folks and the real banksters not grokking the situation.
Yes. But it is such an audacious and ambitious project. I would have been fascinated to be in on the planning meetings…and the ongoing management meetings.
In particular, I would love to see their strategic and tactical “bibles”, their playbooks, principles for planning and rulesets.
Of course, many of the rules are age-old, like divide and conquer, and identify and demonize an enemy, but I am sure that they are also applying a wealth of modern psychological knowledge, about things like the relationship of mass stress on mass obedience, repetitive messaging, the effects of social isolation on suggestibility, the effects of not seeing other human faces for long periods, the sciences of humiliation and demoralization, the mass uses of porn and drugs to weaken society and make different sections more controllable, more or less violent or cruel, more or less availble to reason or hysteria.
It must be a fascinating project for the Cass Sunstein stimulus-response types who are involved in it. They get to play with the biggest cage of white rats in the universe.
Hopefully, they will publish the minutes of their meetings someday. 🙂
I’m sure it would be highly instructive, and a bit of a shock, for many people.
https://rigcount.bakerhughes.com/rig-count-overview
Shows the oil-extraction business isn’t booming.
This seems to coincide with the 5-year oil price data at http://oil-price.net/ — US EIA data provide a case that world “peak oil” occurred in about November, 2018 — oil prices seem to have peaked off at about $70-80/barrel, at about that time.
Right! Higher prices go with higher extraction. As the prices go down, extraction tends to fall.
Rig counts have fallen in the US, Canada and Internationally.
Pingback: ¿Fin de los combustibles fósiles, fin de la globalización? | Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica |
“While the world economy was locked down by coronavirus, with the heavily indebted corporate sector at grave risk of default, Private Equity firms were circling carcasses of bankrupt firms and markets felled by the lethal pandemic.
“According to the Financial Times the sector has raised $1.5 trillion of “dry powder” for acquisitions, while US distressed-debt funds are hoping to raise more than $67 billion – a capital-raising effort that would smash the previous $44 billion record of 2008.
“These trillions will be used to scavenge bargains in whole sectors of the economy. PE firms intend to profit from the current crisis much as they did after the 2008 financial meltdown.”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/vultures-are-circling-our-fragile-economies-we-must-not-let-them-feast/
I have noticed that the “home rehab” business seems to be going strong as well. There seem to be people who want to fix up older (fairly inexpensive) homes and sell them for more.
Makes sense if they are barred from other work, as many are now.
also makes sense if the near future has no disconnect from the recent past…
if the housing market stays strong, then flipping will continue to be profitable…
if the housing market crashes, then there will be many fixed up older homes that won’t be able to be sold for a profit…
the trend for family size is definitely going to be expansion, where parents bring Granny back to live with them and young adult children move back home due to job losses… I think the economy is going to self-organize in the direction of more people per household, which will push down the demand for houses…
flipping will work until it doesn’t work…
send kids down coalmines and up chimney where they can make themselves useful
We should stop calling them “kids”… They’re just “small adults”.
And if I remember Schindler’s List correctly, small hands are good for polishing the inner parts of munitions 🙂
Cheers,
-GBV
The involuntary increase in household density will also significantly assist infectious disease: another downward bump.
Let’s add a higher murder rate, too, in all likelihood.
SHOTGUN HOUSES
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10222953663776211&set=p.10222953663776211&type=3&theater
Very much a matter of “flow-through.” Christopher Alexander in “A Pattern Language” advocates for buildings that are simple rectangles, whether in a horizontal or vertical direction. Long and skinny or tall and skinny give you a counter intuitive sense of spaciousness. The shotgun might be the best example of long and skinny there is.
We could consider a land trust development scheme that buys land and develops very affordable (but stylish) skinny-type houses, either vertical or horizontal.
– Given prevailing sentiment, there might be public support for this type of housing on the basis of social distancing.
– If the houses are owned by an organization, they can be inspected (allowing for generous prior, scheduled notice) regularly fo compliance to regulation.
– If houses are furnished to accommodate single residents, it becomes onerous for residents to move out furniture for extra residents to satisfy regular inspections.
On Vancouver island our real estate is on track to reaching normal sales levels this month! Our area of 1 million people only had 5 deaths due to Covid 19 – average age 86.
I think we lucked out?
The Chechens fighting the Arabs in Dijon France are ISIS members.
Just another day in Europe.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1272651381657264129
And the morning news is that France is sending a heavy police and special ops force to Dijon to restore order. Why? If two gangs of barbarians want to wipe each other out, how can that be a bad thing for France?
Well at least stand back and see. But ready your troops just in case? At worst, you need a balance of force there. But if one side gains hegemony, I don’t know how France would manage that.
“If two gangs of barbarians want to wipe each other out, how can that be a bad thing for France?”
Because they bad guys won’t actually wipe each other out. They never do. What in fact happens is that they become more practised in violence, better at it and more willing to use it.
More realistically, what we will get after the two sides fight to a standstill or receive sufficent damage, is that they will make common cause in some way. Recognizing the weakness of the State and the French people, and the opportunities for power and profit, they will decide to ally or at least live in a cooperative truce to prey on France. It always works like this.
The correct move is for the State to ruthlessly crush these scvm. But those who are managing the State are not interested in that. They are more interested in crushing heritage France, and these groups are tools in that project.
The choice tends to be ruthless state force (for which energy is scarce), or stand by lamely and let the thugs go at it. A third alternative would be to foster a massive increase in small local governance units that police themselves.
“Small governance units that police themselves.”
“Police themselves” is a kind of illogical concept. We don’t really police “ourselves”. We police unruly others. That is the nature of things. That is why diversity has been shown – as expected – to not be our strength.
That said, if there are no larger governance units around that think they can govern you, then you might pull it off. And of course as long as you have a coherent local group that is not riven by all kinds of competitions. But like they say, if you want peace, prepare for war.
Thank you, Kim, an excellent analysis.
My own instinct would be to bury the losers and deport the winners, but we know that won’t happen. Even if France wakes up, Brussels will never allow her to be free.
You may have read that in the UK serious criminals have challenged their deportation after serving sentence as their home countries are too dangerous and it would put their lives at risk. So low have things sunk here.
BLM UK claim that ‘serious criminal’ is itself a ‘racist- capitalist’ concept which should not be applied to Black people, and that, in any case, no one should ever be deprived of their home.
“Black-owned businesses reel from a triple blow… between February and April, the number of working business owners in the US fell by 3.3m or 22 per cent. Among black business owners, the decline was 41 per cent, compared with 32 per cent of Latino business owners and 25 per cent for female business owners.
“The relative declines reflect a deeper historical disparity for black business owners. While the percentage of black, Latino and female business owners in the US has risen sharply over the years, according to the most recent census data, there is overwhelming evidence that black business owners face steeper barriers to entry than white business owners.
“A recent Brookings report notes that in 2018, large banks approved around 60 per cent of loans to white small business owners versus just 29 per cent for black small business owners.”
https://www.ft.com/content/78c25cd0-d185-499e-b7af-cf2ed1d548f2
“U.S. black-owned small businesses are highly concentrated in retail, restaurants and other service industries most affected by shutdowns and social distancing. Their owners typically have had fewer resources to fall back on and a tough time getting aid, research shows.
“Economists are sounding alarms that coronavirus-related damage may be permanent.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-economy-blackbusiness/why-some-black-owned-u-s-businesses-are-hardest-hit-by-coronavirus-shutdowns-idUKKBN23N33H
“Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell expressed concern about the disproportionate loss of jobs among women, black and Latino workers as a result of the coronavirus.
““A lot of the lost jobs were from people who work in the service economy dealing with the public, for example, and relatively, compared to other jobs, relatively low wages,” Powell said. “Unemployment has gone up more for Hispanics, more for African-Americans, and women have borne a notable share of the burden beyond their percentage in the workforce. That’s really, really, really unfortunate.””
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-10/powell-says-there-s-no-place-at-the-federal-reserve-for-racism
These folks increasingly get left out of the goods and services of the economy. No wonder that they are unhappy.
Yes, indeed, the damage is likely to be permanent. And there will be pressure to try to push the damage to other sectors of the economy.
“Energy demand is as good a barometer of global economic conditions as any other indicator. If the International Energy Agency’s forecasts prove accurate, we can forget optimistic projections of “V-shaped” recoveries…
“It expects demand to fall by 8.1 million barrels a day this year – the biggest fall on record – before rising 5.7 million barrels a day, to 97.4 million barrels a day, in 2021. That would still leave demand 2.4 million barrels a day short of 2019 levels…”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/oil-s-bleak-outlook-is-bad-news-for-the-global-economy-20200617-p553fm.html
“China has been filling its oil storage facilities at record pace, propping up global energy prices at a time demand has plummeted due to shutdown orders designed to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
“Over the first six months of the year, Chinese oil inventories climbed by 440 million barrels a day, dwarfing the previous record of 111 million barrels a day set by the United States in late 2014 and early 2015…”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/China-at-record-pace-on-storage-propping-up-oil-15343381.php
“After flooding the U.S. with crude earlier this year, Saudi Arabia has all but cut off the taps to the American oil market. The kingdom has exported just one cargo to the U.S. so far in June, equivalent to about 133,000 barrels a day, tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show.”
https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/246392/saudi-oil-exports-to-us-fall-to-lowest-level-in-35-years/
Wow! If it weren’t for China’s actions, oil prices would be even lower than they are now.
Good point! CO2 emissions will likely follow a similar pattern. If the economy is operating poorly, CO2 emission will be down. The fight will be over the limited goods and services that can be produced with this lower energy production.
“The head of the City [of London] watchdog has told banks to prepare for a surge in business customers falling behind on their debts, but warned firms must be treated fairly to avoid a replay of 2008 when trust in lenders collapsed.
“Speaking to a virtual roundtable of bank bosses on Tuesday, the Financial Conduct Authority chairman, Charles Randall, said it was “an inescapable fact” that some UK businesses would accumulate unaffordable debt during the Covid-19 crisis but that those debts must be dealt with “quickly and fairly”.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/16/banks-debt-fca-chair
“Europe faces a fresh banking crisis if the economic shock caused by coronavirus stretches into 2021, according to a new paper by a network of think tanks in the European Union… it would only take a fifth of loans not being repaid across EU banks to wipe out their reserves.”
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/eu-faces-banking-crisis-if-coronavirus-stretches-into-2021-1.4280838
If another shutdown is added, it is pretty much certain that EU bank reserves will disappear. In fact, they may have a problem already.
Gee, it now takes a “network of think tanks” to reach the conclusion Irving Fisher reached 90 years ago: that fractional reserve banking will always fall off a cliff in the end. Economists have become more stupid in every generation since Samuel Smiles.
“Weak global appetite for cars and slowing business spending could drag on Japan’s export-led economy, as China-bound trade remains weak, dashing hopes mainland demand could offset the weakness seen in other major trading partners.
“Official data out on Wednesday showed Japan’s exports fell 28.3% in the year to May, the largest slump since September 2009.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-economy-trade/japans-exports-fall-most-since-2009-as-u-s-demand-slumps-idUKKBN23O0O2
“A prized Densuke watermelon grown in northern Japan sold at auction on Monday for about $2,000. That’s a lot for a piece of fruit, but down more than 70% from last year’s season-opening auction.
“It was another sign that Japan, the first modern advanced economy to tackle deflation more than two decades ago, is facing the return of its stubborn foe.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/2-000-for-a-watermelon-thats-a-bargain-as-deflation-returns-in-japan-11592308373
Japan seems to have a lot of make-work jobs. Producing a few prized watermelon, apples, and other fruit seems to be part of the make-jobs program. If there isn’t enough land to grow many fruit, the plan seems to be to make a small amount of high-priced food.
Of course, deflation is a problem, as the article points out.
Wow! All of the spending growth numbers we have been seeing for May seem to be “excluding automobile purchases.”
“On 8 June, the business cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that economic activity in the US had peaked in February 2020, formally marking the start of a recession…
“The committee’s relative speediness [in making the announcement] this time is a testament to the unprecedented suddenness of the pandemic-induced collapse.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/16/us-recession-coronavirus-crisis
“More U.S. companies have sought bankruptcy protection during the last two days than in the prior two weeks combined… This week’s filings pushed the year’s bankruptcy total to 111, the most since 2009 for the first six months of a year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.”
https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/u-s-bankruptcy-surge-is-worst-since-the-great-financial-crisis
“The Trump administration is preparing a nearly $1 trillion infrastructure proposal as part of its push to spur the world’s largest economy back to life, according to people familiar with the plan.
“A preliminary version being prepared by the Department of Transportation would reserve most of the money for traditional infrastructure work, like roads and bridges, but would also set aside funds for 5G wireless infrastructure and rural broadband, the people said.”
https://fortune.com/2020/06/16/trump-trillion-infrastructure-plan-roads-5g/
The article says:
I wonder whether funding for public transit and Amtrak make any sense, given people’s concern about catching COVID-19. The 5G network doesn’t make much sense either. A lot of our bridges, tunnels and roads are falling apart. Investment in them doesn’t really make the economy grow more; it keeps it from collapsing further.
the hardest lesson to learn, it seems, that it wasn’t Roosevelt who ended the great depression, it was Hit ler
Good point!
“The global economy is on track for a more significant contraction than the International Monetary Fund estimated in April, the institution’s chief economist said Tuesday.
“When European countries were in their first weeks of lockdown, the IMF said the global economy would suffer the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. At the time, it forecast a contraction by 3% in 2020.
[For ref, the global economy as a totality needs to be growing at around +2.5% p/a – anything less is considered a recession. 2009, the worst year of the Global Financial Crisis, saw a contraction of just -0.1%].
“Now, despite some economies beginning to reopen, the fund has warned that the decline could be even worse.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/16/imf-set-to-slash-economic-forecasts-amid-crisis-unlike-no-other.html
“The world is seeing a “striking divergence” between financial markets and the real economy, which may lead to greater volatility and sharp corrections if health and economic news worsen in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the International Monetary Fund…
““This divergence may portend greater volatility in financial markets,” she said in a blog post. “Worse health and economic news can lead to sharp corrections.””
https://www.thenational.ae/business/economy/financial-markets-disconnect-from-real-economy-may-lead-to-corrections-imf-says-1.1034378
No kidding!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-deaths-in-u-s-nursing-long-term-care-facilities-top-50-000-11592306919
“As U.S. Nursing-Home Deaths Reach 50,000, States Ease Lockdowns”
nothing new… most of the death is older unhealthier persons…
nothing new… most of the death is older unhealthier persons…
as it always was and will ever be with viruses’
Our fairy princess PM Jacinderella has brought the army into the fray now. A couple of new cases have caused an uproar as safety protocols were ignored and they were let loose upon a hapless ‘Team of 5 million’ (minus 1).
So ‘she who is a legend’ has given academia a taste of power (the airwaves were awash with learned beards spouting all sorts of nonsense), the police their turn during lockdown, the medical boffins were inflated with self importance, and now the army gets to float their boat. A good workout all round, with funding cheques in the mail.
Wow this is so tiring. The ICL models have been termed the biggest ‘software code’ mistake ever, but no one is questioning anything.
People get old, make poor lifestyle choices, and are generally reckless with their diets. Nature has to clean up the mess and test for fitness to reproduce. Viruses are one of her many tools. Mother nature has my vote.
https://apnews.com/93e8e62393993ae78cb0df88f95d3951
“American shoppers ramped up their spending on store purchases by a record 17.7% from April to May, delivering a dose of energy for retailers that have been reeling since the coronavirus shut down businesses, flattened the economy and paralyzed consumers during the previous two months.
The government’s report Tuesday showed that consumers’ retail purchases have retraced some of the record-setting month-to-month plunges of March (8.3%) and April (14.7%) as businesses have increasingly reopened. Still, the pandemic’s damage to retailers remains severe, with purchases still down 6.1% from a year ago.”
In stores, not for autos, however. And still below a year ago.
maybe the lockdowns are an energy rationing system
You are right: The lockdowns are an energy rationing system. They benefit the elderly and discriminate against the young and minorities.
what we are seeing is an energy rationing system for countries using lockdowns and a virus induced fear is fuelling those lockdowns the big bosses planned this but the worlds population is too high relative to resources so 2020 was the start date for the cull to begin if there was no plan the world would have ended years ago so the big bosses have done a brilliant job so far
just curious
when the ‘big bosses’ have shut down the world, the economy, the excess population, (you name it) as some kind of deliberate policy, just who will they ‘big boss’ around?
after all—if they have been clever enough to figure out the first part, surely they will have been clever enough to figure out the second part as well?
How much did a mercenary earn in Europe of the 14th Century relative to a worker? Did poverty drive people into the mercenary ranks? Or greed? The numbers, such as they are, are interesting. (from Janin: Mercenaries in Medieval and Rennassance Europe)
LABOURERS
Typical construction worker – 9.4 solidi a day
Farm laborer – 9.4 solidi a day
Spinner of wool cloth – 12.17 solidi a day
Master builder – 17.1 solidi a day
MERCENARIES
A lance unit (three men with three horses to maintain) – 44 solidi a day
Crossbowmen – 9.7 solidi a day
Common infantry man (no skills) 3.8 solidi a day.
John Hawkwood, who ran the famous mercenary White Company, received 37,500 solidi a month.
A common infantry man would have been better paid as a farm labourer. Crossbowmen does ony a little better. The lance unit looked like a rough deal. Horses are expensive to maintain. Financially, in terms of daily pay, the life of a low level mercenary didn’t seem so great. And disease in particular often made it a short life. If you were lucky, there was the opportunity for pillage.
Was it worth it? Was it better to be a soldier than a farmer (if there was a choice)? Was money the issue? It seems not for the infantry man. Maybe he should have learnt to code? Maybe it was a lifestyle choice. Maybe murdering and burning and destroying was just an easier life and more psychically rewarding than following a plow and dancing around the maypole. Economics may not always be the answer for why people do things.
perhaps its an energy problem as it is less energy intensive to murder and pillage than to plow the fields. this leaves more time left over to have wine women and song something the farmers were probably too tired to enjoy after a hard day in the fields.
EROEI is always a tough calculation.
I might describe the situation as better return on human energy invested for murder and pillaging than for farming.
I think the real issue is the return on human labor needs to be high enough. Cheap fossil fuels are good for leveraging human labor, so that the return on human labor is higher. The EROEI calculation is mostly used to indirectly try to figure out how “cheap” fossil fuels and other approaches for levering human labor.
Generally, those who volunteered for wars -as opposed to the aristocracy for whom it was their job by birth, like it or not – were the restless who would have caused trouble in villages and towns anyway.
There were also many poor ‘men-at-arms’ (cavalry but not knights) who could barely pay for their horses and servants – but that’s all they knew how to do in life, so they did it. This was much the same for the British gentry in the 1930’s: army pay was terrible, promotion very rare, but at least they had a life of riding, shooting and lots of spare time to travel, and it was their tradition. They regarded going into business as beneath them.
There was a lot of part-time and even seasonal soldiering, and it could pay well in plunder: mountain men from hard and poor regions – Basques, Swiss, Savoyards, etc – often set off for the wars in youth, hoping to return with enough to buy some land and build a house. It happened often enough to make to worth the gamble.
When life was so brief, what did you have to lose, really?
That is a way of looking at the problem. Young people now are facing a bad situation as well.
I forgot to add one of the most obvious factors: over-population also made the soldiering life attractive. Also true of the nobility -send your young sons out and see which ones hit the jackpot.
in its original basic form, becoming a soldier/sailor bet your life against the chance of loot
in the (old) British navy, taking an enemy ship meant the government split the value of the ship (unequally of course) between the crew. but Even £100 could set a man up to buy a pub and retire.
Of course if things went the other way, and your ship got taken as a prize, you lost everything
My wife’s dad was expelled from the Seaman’s orphanage at age 14 and went directly into the British Army. From there he had a lifelong career, even serving in the king’s guards, as did one of his sons.
i was really talking about a period maybe 200 years before that, and more
In Nelson’s time, the usual split was 1/8 to the Admiral, 1/4 to the Captain, 1/4 to the other officers, and the remaining 3/8 to Jolly Jack Tar. However, to be fair, the officers were supposed to put their lives on the line in battle. Unlike today’s generals.
Those 3/8s added up.
Come my own one, come my fair one,
Come now unto me,
Could you fancy a poor sailor lad
Who has just come from sea?
You are ragged love, you are dirty love,
And your clothes smell much of tar
So be gone, you saucy sailor lad,
So be gone, you Jack Tar….
https://youtu.be/IgSwnL4au64
unless hit by a bomb from a Predator drone, like the USA did to the Iranian general in Iraq.
‘Unless the government intervenes…..’
This theme is becoming the norm.
People have yet to realise the gubbermint is the problem, not the cure.
Similarly;
the medical system is not a health system
the legal system is not a justice system
the penta-gone is not a defence system
the capitalist countries do not have a market economy
etc, etc
We use words with abandon, especially the narrative carried by the MSM, without examining the context they are used in.
The big daddy of them all of course, is the reference to the ‘Free world’, and the US as the global Policeman’. The mafia could learn a thing or 2 methinks. 6% of the worlds population consuming 30% of its resources is not by accident.
“6% of the worlds population consuming 30% of its resources is not by accident.”
Of course it is not an accident. But what is it? And is it just one thing or is it many things at once, some of them paradoxes?
We need to be careful here. Does “not an accident” mean “it’s a plan”? No, of course not. Is “it” best explained as “emergent”? Or is it “inevitable”?
Of course, it might be a good idea to decide first what “it” is.
It is a bad state of mind where we look for an explanation for a phenomenon we haven’t yet defined.
Is “it” best explained as “emergent”? Or is it “inevitable”?
Best explained as temporary.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/16/30percent-of-americans-missed-their-housing-payments-in-june.html
“As the United States continues to face record unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic, 30% of Americans missed their housing payments in June, according to a survey by Apartment List, an online rental platform.
That’s up from 24% who missed their payment just two months earlier in April and about on par with the 31% who missed payments in May. Renters, younger and lower-income households and urban dwellers were the groups most likely to miss their housing payments, Apartment List found.
At the same time that this “historically high” rate of Americans are missing their housing payments, eviction protections put in place at the beginning of Covid-19′s spread in the U.S. are beginning to expire. Additionally, the current 30 million unemployed Americans will lose the extra $600 per week in federal unemployment benefits at the end of July.
Taken together, experts warn of a coming housing “apocalypse” unless the government intervenes. Some 37% of renters and 26% of homeowners are at least somewhat worried that they will face eviction or foreclosure in the next six months… ”
we are only in the beginning stage of this economic disaster…
Economic disaster and young people who will revolt if this is what the economy gives to them. We have two quite old presidential candidates. It is hard to believe that either of them will appeal to the many young people who have been hurt badly by this huge shutdown experiment that didn’t work.
actually the shutdown did work at the expense of the economy. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/06/08/shutdowns-prevented-60-million-coronavirus-infections-us-study-finds/
are we sure it “prevented” all 60 million of those un-infections?
or just somewhat delayed them?
well it is up to each of us to make sure we as the “prevented” do not become us as the “delayed”
the article is just a summary of https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2404-8_reference.pdf
I think people have missed the point that what we have done is used a very expensive method to buy ourselves a little time to figure out how to deal with COVID. It is not something we can continue for the long term. We need to use a portfolio of approaches to deal with it now, rather than kidding ourselves that a vaccine will quickly come along and provide a 100% cure.
brian, if there is one entirely positive outcome from this virus, it is that the US medical profession has utterly discredited itself. As has most of the UK medical and “medical research’ profession. Good riddance: maybe medics can now go back to curing the sick instead of writing research papers. As well as “primum non nocere” we can have “secundum non scribere”.
“Economic disaster and young people who will revolt if this is what the economy gives to them.”
Are there any (or even just very many?) examples in history where people spontaneously became involved in a bottom-up revolt?
There were a couple of medieval peasant revolts where the farmers grabbed a few warlords, pulled them of ftheir horses and killed them. May even have grabbed the castle. Then the nobility would turn up in force, with horse, sword, armor, and experience, and slaughter eight or ten thousand of them. End of revolt. Lesson learned.
So no, there is not going to be any kind of “revolt” with its implications of throwing off the shackles. Anyone who believes that probably also believes that BLM really thinks that black lives matter.
Successful violence has to be well organized and led. There is no such thing as a successful spontaneous revolt from below and never can be. It is a fantasy. It will not happen.
If you look at successful violence and can’t see the puppet’s strings – so you tell yourself that this is the people spontaneously rising – then you are fooling yourself.
Successful large scale violence requires experience and professional organization. End of story.
depends on your viewpoint. as a rioter it is a revolt. as somebody sitting on the sideline it is a group yelling and kicking as they are slowly being pushed towards a cliff.
“Successful large scale violence…”
also depends on one’s view of the ultimate “success”…
these recent ryiots perhaps will bring a small measure of success, if the measure is how a small portion of bad policing becomes even smaller…
what most all of these ryioters/protesters don’t realize is that they are forcing their big cities to reorganize at a lower economic level, where those who can afford to move out are going to, and where crime will only get worse as the police lessen their enforcement in these inner cities…
if they are hoping for “success” in the form of greater income equality, then they will be shocked when the opposite happens, and how swiftly it happens…
but they shouldn’t be shocked that same-race vyiolence, which is the great majority (especially black on black in inner cities), will continue at least at the current level if not even higher…
all in all, these ryiots will backfire spectacularly…
The irony in the UK is that while BLM march and posture about overthrowing the whole system, we have just seen yet another terrible black gangland shooting involving a whole family.
Drugs and vengeance at the bottom of it , as far as one can tell – that’s their real problem, not ‘White Privilege’.
When BLM march against the drug gangs and drive them out of their communities I’ll take them more seriously as a group truly concerned with saving black lives and improving the prospects of black people.
Perhaps there will be more income equality. Everyone with reasonable incomes will move out.
Peasant revolts were frequent in old France. Admittedly it was only in 1789 that one actually won.
neil, I don’t think it did win. Yes, there was the usual unrest, but the turning point came on 5 May 1789, when King Louis XVI summoned the Estates General, because he had run out of money and only they could raise new taxes. Before them was a proposal to tax the nobility, who did not like the idea and under the current constitution held veto power.
On 17 June the representatives of the lower classes (over 98% of the population) set up their own assembly in an indoor tennis court, and began to enact reforms. Yes, the moderate, progressive, middle class types decided on an evolutionary approach for France, in what would be a model reform. And, of course, they were among the first to meet Madame la Guillotine. As somebody said in this forum, the Left always eats its own.
You probably have a point.
Of course, if there is a major change, such as much more heavy manual labor needed, then somehow the system will tend to evolve in that direction, whether through revolution or otherwise.
back to a current topic:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-arrested-deaths-activist-oluwatoyin-142140815.html
“Man arrested in deaths of activist Oluwatoyin Salau and volunteer Vicki Sims in Florida: What we know”…
“Aaron Glee Jr., 49, was arrested early Sunday morning in Orlando on a warrant for murder, according to jail records.
The arrest came hours after police descended on his dilapidated home Saturday night, when police found Salau and Sims’ bodies on the property.”
what we know:
Salau was a black woman and Sims was a white woman…
Glee is a black man…
now, who can tell me why he would do this to a black woman… don’t black lives matter?
People like to explain these things as race issues (which of course the statistics clearly show they are) but they are also law-and-order issues and the reactions people have reflect their basic attitudes to the idea of upholding the law.
Take for example, the recent police shooting incident where the man stole the police officer’s taser. Putting aside the resisting arrest, the attempted vehicular homicide (yes, as the video shows, on two occasions he drove his car around the car park at high speed and at police) the theft of the taser, and the shooting outcome, let’s consider that some people have argued that the police were at fault in this case because in attempting to arrest the man they were practising unjustifiable “over-policing” and that was the root of the incident.
But is that true? Were the police “over-policing”? The man was drunk in his car in the Wendy’s drive-thru – apparently blocking the drive. So the suggestion has been that the best way for police to handle the situation would have been not to arrest the man but to let him sleep it off in his car.
Is that reasonable?
Consider: by his own admission the man drove drunk to Wendy’s. That DUI straight away. But let’s put that aside. Instead let’s say that the police had left him to sleep in his car. What might have happened? Might he not have slept 15 minutes, then awoken and driven off? And would that not again be DUI?
Yes, it would be DUI, but is DUI a problem? Perhaps the DUI laws are something that the police should not take so seriously and enforce? Well, what are the statistics?
https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving
“Every day, almost 30 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes — that’s one person every 50 minutes…more than 10,000 lives per year.
10,000 deaths a year! It appears that DUI is a very serious felony. In fact, DUI + homicide is sometimes charged at the level of murder. Given these facts, I personally would not approve if police just let DUIs slide. And I feel the same way about a raft of other crimes that modern police are now supposed to ignore, “minor” crimes such as “minor” assaults, or trespassing (burglary) or theft to a value less than $1000, or public damage, or so many other “minor” crimes.
Of course, the damage done by DUI so often produces tragic and depressing stories like this one:
Driver charged with DWI in St. Charles County crash that killed 4 on Valentine’s Day [I can’t link this but itis easy to find]
ST. CHARLES — A 29-year-old man is charged with several counts of driving while intoxicated for causing a collision four months ago that killed four people, St. Charles County Prosecutor Tim Lohmar said Monday….All four of those people were killed: Carrie McCaw, 44, and her daughter Kacey McCaw, 12, and Lesley Prather, 40, and her daughter Rhyan Prather, 12, all of Louisville, Kentucky. They were heading to a weekend volleyball tournament in Kansas City.
Should police be trying to enforce the laws or not? Or just for some ethnicities, the one’s who comply with lawful directions? The other groups, those who won’t comply, and who escalate every interaction so that they all become life threatening struggles, can be left to rule the streets and endanger us all every time we leave our houses…and often inside our own homes as well
This video shows just a “minor” incident of course, Should this sort of thing be policed? Maybe the old lady deserved it, given her white privilege. At 92, of course this could have killed her.
Of course, the fellow in the video may have had an unfortunate childhood. So there’s that.
92-year-old woman randomly attacked in Gramercy Park, Manhattan
If she dies, we’ll just mark it down to COVID-19.
I come to this site for information and insight on economic and resource topics. There are plenty of sites where comments like this are welcomed, I’m sure, but I somehow don’t think this is the place for this kind of thing.
The topic of this post is “increased violence” and its putative roots in thermodyamic issues, usually presented here as “poverty creates crime”.
My position is that there is no such relationship. Thus, my comment and similar comments by other contributors are entirely on-topic and appropriate.
Of course, I understand the discomfort that some readers may feel when confronted with viewpoints unlike their own…but isn’t that the price of open discussion?
Finally, is it really so hard to ignore the on-topic comments that you disgree with? Or do you insist on having alternative vews suppressed?
BLM in the UK distinguish, it seems, between real Black and ‘politically black’: maybe the wrong kind of ‘black’ and therefore of lesser value?
Want more info on this story?
You can read this story from the Tallahassee Democrat, but it is so sordid that you’ll probably want to throw up. It seems that Mr. Glee is living in hell and has been making life hell for everyone he comes into contact with.
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2020/06/17/aaron-glee-jr-murder-suspect-tallahassee-florida-history-jail-battery/3204588001/
The world is full of trigger words now, and the results are in;
Cli.m8 change did it = more funding
I am a victim of ***** (fill in the blank) = more funding
Con-vid demic = more funding even if the patients died with it, not because if it.
All of these take agency away from the victims/institutions and enable the blame to be put elsewhere. Trouble is the problems remain if your behaviour doesn’t change. Hence the mob turns on itself. Witness CHAZ in the US.
Right now Govts all over the world are blaming Con-virus for their economic/social/political problems. It is focussing peoples attention away from the real issues.
The virus is genuinely a nothing burger for its medical impact; its a collossus for its propaganda value. Stop taking the cool aid people. Tribes are being formed, and you better find one before you find yourself in a no-go zone.
‘But the big psychological shock will be to a middle class that rapidly finds that its employment is surplus to requirement and that everything it took as certain in life is collapsing around its ears.’
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/06/15/a-rude-awakening/
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
It certainly is convenient to have COVID-19 to blame problems on. The UK, where Tim Watkins writes, is in a worse position than the US. Its COVID-19 problems have been worse; its shutdown has been much more extreme; and it was in worse condition to begin with.
The US Center for Disease Control has put out an analysis of US COVID-19 cases through May 20.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6924e2.htm?s_cid=mm6924e2_w
Among other things it says,
A bit like flu then?
There are thousands of no-go zones across Europe that governments have lost control over.
Governments are trying to deny the existence of no-go zones and the media is censuring information about it.
CIA predicted that those zones will turn into war zones when European economies spiral out of control.
gov and media don’t like the inconvenient truth that immigrants of a certain religgion have a certain S law which they think should be “the law” in their neighborhoods…
I have seen unsubstantiated reports that there are these same no-go zones in a few American cities… in Minnesota and/or Michigan… I would not be surprised if this was true…
Depends on your skin color…..if you are white you don’t go to Detroit, Camden NJ, Gary, Indiana, Southside Chicago, etc.
You can take the girl out of Mogadishu but it isn’t so easy to take Mogadishu out of the girl.
https://i.imgflip.com/391zl2.jpg
Tim, I learned a far more politically incorrect version of that saying. It seems a perennial trope; I’m sure the Romans said ‘you can take the Pict out of the bog, but you can’t …” Not true, of course, many of my blue painted pictish ancestors settled down and became good Roman citizens.
I think the mistake we moderns have made, in our racist bigotry, is to allow the picts to bring the bog with them, in the belief that they could not learn better. Hence our ghettos, no go zones, Sharia enclaves, and black inner cities. No: they can learn better, as I saw myself. We never gave them a chance, and we allowed those who exploit minorities free rein further to debase them. It will be a long road back to sanity.
They can learn to live “different”, but not necessarily better.
I’m not sure how we live is much better in the long term. In fact, I’m almost convinced that it’s actually worse. But we certainly do get to act like preening peacocks, pointing out how knowledgeable / enlightened / civilized we are, for this short period of time that we find ourselves sitting at the top of the shit-heap…
Cheers,
-GBV
Absolutely true. Are we “better” without the torn and flimsy veil of IC?
Without that, the whitey savagery will be a magnitude worse. And trust me, no person of any color would have a hope in hell of diverting such an onslaught, unless completely nativized and woven into the bread and circuses of the IC core countries. The bad part is that we would all participate in whatever it takes to prevail.
From the WSJ: How Exactly Do You Catch Covid-19? There Is a Growing Consensus
Surface contamination and fleeting encounters are less of a worry than close-up, person-to-person interactions for extended periods
Yup, personal anecdote: I had a small spat with a chief physician (not wearing PPE, the nurse was) while assisting my dad for a routine check up in the hospital.
The Swedish response to the corona virus is nothing else than a national disgrace comparable to the atrocities perpetrated by the Stockholm bureaucrats across the ages.
From Med Page Today: Finally: Common Drug Improves COVID-19 Survival in Trial
— “A ground-breaking development,” according to preliminary data from an ongoing trial
I saw that.
Helps the very sick, not so much for others.
A step in the right direction.
It is the very sick who are most likely to die, so the help is much appreciated.
Yep–
Good news.
Lets hope the data holds.
“The effect of dexamethasone was most striking among critically ill patients on ventilators. Those who were receiving oxygen therapy but were not on ventilators also saw improvement: their risk of dying was reduced by 20%. The steroid had no effect on people with mild cases of COVID-19 — those not receiving oxygen or ventilation.”
–Nature
Yup, lets hope it works and in the mean time: Plenty of oxygen from concentrators or flasks to the stricken old coots and younger chronically ill.
https://www.healthproductsforyou.com/ar-top-10-reviewed-oxygen-concentrators-2018.html
Things seems to spiral out of control at an accelerating pace… Big cascade of problems ahead
I am afraid you are right.
This is what happens when politicians who only work to get future votes shutdown the global eCONomy without thinking it through. It’s as if they are making things up at this point. One minute there’s a lockdown, the next minute there isn’t, the minute after that, they are considering another lockdown.
The global economy along with the OVERLY complex supply chains are way too complicated to have to deal with lockdowns and shutdowns.
the overly complex supply chain is another name for free trade
daft perhaps, but we all wanted in on it when it became available
the alternative is only being able to buy cars—for example—made where you live, or eat food grown where you live. Or take holidays in the country where you live.
Decide if that’s what you want.
If it is what you want, then there will have to be a ‘governing body’ to control every aspect of trade. ‘for our common good’.
Hitting a ‘lockdown’ like now, inevitably brings the entire system into a state of chaos, from which we may not recover.
There nothing deliberate about it–the virus hit a system that was inherently unstable. Nobody foresaw it, nobody ‘planned’ it. Yet it was inevitable because the system could not go on forever, even though we were promised that it could.
Shutting the economy down was a knee jerk reaction, like a driver hitting the brakes when he sees a thick fogbank ahead. He doesn’t know whats ahead, but the chances are he’s going to get rear ended anyway. He has no time to take that into consideration.
Of course there is a prevailing obsession with the whole thing being somehow ‘deliberate–shutting down the economy etc etc )killing off excess population and so on)
Few stop to consider the ramifications of that:
1—there has to be a centre and reason for producing it with malicious intent
2—several hundred people have to be recruited to deliberately spread it within weeks,
3— Economic shutdown isn’t selective. Shut down the economy and we all go down the pan–including Bezos et al.
4—-politicians do not have the collective control (or intellect) to work out the above and make it happen.
5–leave 1 bn or less people alive and they move back into the stone age. There will be no ‘elite’ of superior beings.
6—the real issue is too many people chasing too few resources.
7– a few dim politicians may see COVID as some kind of solution, but dont really understand the implications of their thinking.
Just sayin.
Self-organizing systems act strangely. A lot of people seem to see the same action (shutting down) useful for many different reasons: It cuts off protests; it keeps worried elderly from catching the coronavirus; it deflects questions about why the factories are closed (not enough demand); it gives an excuse to keep unwanted foreigners out; there is a hope that local wages will rise, if competition from outside and foreign workers is reduced.
No one has to organize the whole thing. Someone suggests an idea–here, it was China taking the absurd step of closing the Wuhan area down. The issue is that many people hop on the bandwagon, seeing that it provides a good solution from their perspective, without stopping to think that this is a dead end.
But people and groups with longstanding organizations, communications, messaging, unoforms, common executive memberships, conferences, planning, training, and tactics exist to take advantage of, foment, reinforce and amplify these situations.
There are lots of such groups and they are all networked. Organizations like the various color revolution groups, La Raza, BLM, Antifa, and so on have existed for years, been already successful in doing chaos all around the world, and have been calling for it for years and have already had a number dry runs in the United States. And they clearly have substantial maintream and large-corporate support.
Disney has recently given such groups $5 million. Lots of other mega-corps are doing similar. The mass media and internet controllers work 24/7/365 to promote certain narratives and suppress others.
Isn’t all of this certain evidence of planning?
https://jamesfetzer.org/wp-content/uploads/103699027_4280054292012188_2037524335864985433_n.jpg
taking advantage after the fact isn’t the same as planning before the fact.
i agree, numerous groups have sown discontent in various ways over the years, hoping and ‘planning’ for certain outcomes advantageous to themselves, but not on the scale of world social-economic collapse.
even ‘calling for it’ sees only ‘self advantage’, with ‘disadvantage’ to everybody else—ie somehow their particular version of how things should be will in fact be the ‘controlling’ system of the future
whereas the imminent chaos will be bloody for everybody
i don’t doubt a ‘ruling’ class will emerge, but i dont think it will be part of anyone’s current planning
Thank you, Norman! You are a constant voice of reason.
Norman, you are a master of the art of coincidence theory. An adept even.
There nothing deliberate about it–the virus hit a system that was inherently unstable. Nobody foresaw it, nobody ‘planned’ it. Yet it was inevitable because the system could not go on forever, even though we were promised that it could.
Doubtless you are familiar with the Amazing Dr. Fauci? He is a seer, a sage, and a soothsayer of considerable renown. In 2017, he made an unequivocal prophesy at a public forum that has turned out to have been right on the money. How’s that for foreseeing?
“Based on my experience, and you’ll see that in a moment, is that there is no question that there will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases—both chronic infectious diseases in the sense of already ongoing disease…but also there will be a surprise outbreak. ”
https://youtu.be/puqaaeLnEww
i look back on my life—no doubt you can look back on yours, and pin down those ‘coincidences’ to a precise moment in time that shaped the direction of your life.
nothing pre-planned—they just happened, and perhaps resulted in marriage–kids—grandkids, all from a split second that could have spiralled off unknowingly somewhere else.
or a chance meeting that led you to a new job and career.
Those ‘coincidences’ are just what we call life and living. You could just as ‘coincidentally’ got run over by a bus. Most people don’t.
Not altogether sure about what point you are making on the Fauci video
////in 1969, US Surgeon General William Stewart, said it was time to “close the book on infectious disease.” ////
How ‘clever’ was that? Would you want an idiot of that calibre in charge right now? Yet he was the head doc of the American military.
The fact that humankind crowds itself together makes outbreaks of rampant disease inevitable. That level of common sense is so basic it hardly needs stating, or a ‘seer’ to anticipate it. Fauci isn’t a seer. Humankind has weakened itself by our sheer weight of numbers. Simple concept really.
If ‘seers’ intrigue you, one told me the same thing 40 years ago, but without pinning a date on it.
Someone told you 40 years ago that the Trump administration would face challenges in the arena of infectious diseases—both chronic infectious diseases in the sense of already ongoing disease—and also that there would be a surprise outbreak?
If that’s so, then as a seer, I would put them right up there with Senna the Soothsayer.
Is the Virus natural or manmade?
I don’t know. What I do know is that the MSM and the science journals are reporting that it is natural and that the idea that it’s a bioweapon is a con-spiral-cy theory.
However, some experts disagree. For instance:
French Nobel prize winning scientist Luc Montagnier has sparked a fresh controversy by claiming that the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from a lab, and is the result of an attempt to manufacture a vaccine against the AIDS virus.
In an interview given to French C News channel and during a podcast by Pourquoi Docteur, professor Montagnier who co-discovered HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) claimed the presence of elements of HIV in the genome of the coronavirus and even elements of the “germ of malaria” are highly suspect, according to a report in Asia Times.
“The Wuhan city laboratory has specialised in these coronaviruses since the early 2000s. They have expertise in this area,” he was quoted as saying.
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/world/nobel-winning-scientist-claims-covid-19-virus-was-man-made-in-wuhan-lab-report-73697
If it’s natural then this virus got very lucky. But if it’s artificial or genetically modified, then we can surmise that it wasn’t a surprise to the people who modified it.
seers only give general forecasts–if you knew anything about the subject you would be aware of that
as in Macbeth:
////Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him.
MACBETH:
That will never be.
Who can impress the forest, bid the tree
Unfix his earthbound root? ////
and so on.
Shakespeare took his own experiences and wrote them into his plays. Thats why they live today.
(Through a glass darkly is the general expression.)
Apparently the supposed quote by William Stewart is an urban legend. He seems to have made statements to the opposite effect.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3707092/
Apparently the supposed quote by William Stewart is an urban legend. He seems to have made statements to the opposite effect.
Norman, if you knew anything about the subject you would be aware of that. 🙂
https://www.quotemaster.org/images/93/93c7332c03a0f7ea8bb6cf7526c07417.jpg
oops–looks like i made a mistake there—it happens, even with me. But when I do , I admit it readily and openly.
What I don’t do is hang on to daft theories and conspiracies long after they are debunked, in order to preserve an error free self image, or select a line that is in error as ‘proof’ that everything else is wrong
btw—I have notified your local police department to divert traffic in your area to accommodate dancing in the streets for you today. They said it will be OK—as long as it doesn;t go on over the weekend
It must be bloody trivial to predict an outbreak in the aftermath of previous SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Spanish Flu pandemics.
To imply conspiracy is pure carbon filtered N95 breathing tinfoil hattery. I can predict within 10 years another great pandemic will ravage mankind. Well, then the conclusion must be that I am a part of the Illuminati.
What haven’t you been able to source since the lock downs began?
Dennis L.
The conflict in Himalayas is heating up.
“BREAKING – Indian officials claim that China suffered 43 casualties, including 20 were killed by Indian Army during #GalwanValley fight.
On the other side, India lost also 20 of its soldiers.
#China #India #Ladakh”
Seems to have been a punch-up, caused by weeks of tension and frustration, as the soldiers are apparently kept more or less unarmed. Got to put their martial arts training into practice I suppose.
After those “55 days at Peking”, we should have taught the Chinese how to play cricket. That would have given them a far better way of settling any quarrels with India.
If the West hadn’t acquiessed in China’s takeover of Tibet, there wouldn’t be a Chinese-Indian border problem in the first place.
Dijon is no longer under French control.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1272615613190615040
“Dijon is no longer under French control.”
Very much exagerated. First, it’s not Dijon the whole city that was under a state of “chaos” but only a suburb area that is a area where poor people live and some smuggling and drug traffic happens.
I think it’s now under control. But yes it’s shameful, humiliating, worrying. Everything is becoming so tense, the economic crisis, the weakening of the state, the social structures falling apart. We are sitting on a powder barrel. Any incident could light sparkles that would blow it all.
Now that the BIG T is in office Trump has changed his aka to TRILLION T…
No more Billions, chump change…
Yahoo Finance
Stock market news live updates: Stock futures rise after report Trump administration is considering $1 trillion infrastructure package
Emily McCormick
June 16, 2020, 8:32 AM EDT
Stock futures extended gains Tuesday morning followed a report that the Trump administration was poised to unveil a $1 trillion proposal for U.S. infrastructure work, in a move to help boost the domestic economy. A record jump in retail sales in May also helped fuel an early rally.
The early move higher in equity futures put stocks on track for a third straight session of gains. A day prior, stocks closed out Monday’s choppy session higher, with the Dow erasing earlier losses of as much as 762 points, or 3%, to settle 157 points higher.
The advance came after the Federal Reserve announced it was expanding its own stimulus program for the virus-stricken economy. The Fed said it would begin purchasing individual corporate bonds as part of its emergency lending program, expanding the Fed’s previously announced Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, which had until Monday only included purchases of exchange-traded funds.
Man, they are going FLAT OUT, nothing being held back…. Astounding, Astonishing, Astronomical
Trump has been bankrupt 6 times.
This could be his perfect job– he can’t go bankrupt?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/general-election/real-time-fact-checking-and-analysis-of-the-first-presidential-debate/fact-check-has-trump-declared-bankruptcy-four-or-six-times/
I agree, Herbie, and on the topic of National debt, it just recently surpassed 26T which began as 19.7T before Trump took office, so in less than 4 years more than 6T added. The last Trillion was added in a mere month, so room for more T’s in the coming months. Part of the reason is 33% less tax receipts. I wonder how that huge tax cut is being viewed now?
But the debt/bonds being built up by the FED is another kind of situation. I notice they don’t pick up main street debt, only Wall Street’s. But they did give us that 1200 stimulus ck., but as my Mother said, “That was a drop in a sea of bills.”
I also heard on the TV news last evening that 3 million small businesses have gone under, while there is talk of having to go back to ‘Shelter in Place’ because (even though people figured the Virus wasn’t active any longer they went out and mingled, many without masks), and now the # of cases is rising in many US states. Who woulda thunk it?
But here’s the kicker, https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/502819-trump-on-coronavirus-if-we-stop-testing-right-now-wed-have-very-few-cases
“If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,” Trump said during a White House event highlighting administration actions to help senior citizens. Now why didn’t Fauci think of that? LOL
Thanks, Chrome Mags, for pointing out the Feds program of picking up Wall Street debt and mainly ignoring Main Street. Same as it always was….Trump was just on Tvee with a promotion of police reform. Nobody could have done it, nobody…
On the other spectrum Powell of the Federal Reserve was before the Senate Banking Committee, like that really will contain their Whatever it Takes to save Wall Street
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XkALtUYzxQE
Didn’t have the stomach to watch it now….it’s obvious by their actions this Private Bank makes their own rules, regardless…
I seem to remember big talk about infrastructure spending during the 2016 election, from big T of course, I dont follow very closely, maybe it happened.
I was thinking about that too. If I remember correctly it was dropped as being way too costly. Now it seems like a good idea and not so unaffordable after all.
Many officials or people in various uniforms are practically persons that hide their in inability under the clothes with various decorations. They rule based on providing grace in exchange for humility.
The current anti-police protests are something more deeper than just about the police.
It can also be about the persons in uniforms who suck the state finances via their pensions. There was a lot of jobs for uniforms created. Now, with the ageing populations, there is a lot of former uniformed persons who want their higher pensions than the poor.
Also, the police is more and more incompetent, as with the ageing populations, there is not much to choose from. See the video of shooting down the school knife killer in Vrutky, Slovaka that happend last week. The police looks like a bunch of amateurs:
https://www.facebook.com/100015017652016/videos/873530216490892/
Many with high pension promises are government workers in the US, and probably elsewhere. This way they could be paid less in early years, with promises of more later.
In the UK, public sector workers used to be low paid but with a decent pension. Now public sector pay outstrips many in the private sector with final salary pensions indexed linked. As a school governor I calculated that the pension for our teachers was worth 50% extra on top of their basic salary. This is of course a hidden cost and I can’t see future governments affording these promises.
This article is four years old, from the USA. I am amazed it has not been a bigger issue since, but it will be soon enough:
270,000 truckers told their pensions will be cut up to 60%
http://republicbroadcasting.org/news/270000-truckers-told-their-pensions-will-be-cut-up-to-60/
David Stockman had an article this too:
The Pension Crisis Begins——407k Workers To Get 60% Cut, But Still Not Enough
https://www.davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-pension-crisis-begins-407k-workers-to-get-60-cut-but-still-not-enough/
The game is rigged. From the article:
“Pensioners will have the chance to vote on whether to accept the proposed cuts. The Treasury Department says if someone doesn’t vote, or can’t vote, the ballot counts in favor of the cuts.”
So all the pension fund has to do is lose 51% of the ballots, and they are home free. As the saying goes, “that’s how big people treat little people”.
Someone planned ahead!
Pension plans that were set up years ago are aimed at guaranteeing additional income, over and above Social Security, for certain people. To a significant extent, these pension plans have disappeared, and “defined contribution” plans been substituted. They are basically way too expensive to be affordable. They can only be funded based on actuarial assumptions that were way too optimistic, when they were put together.
Pension plans are a way of allocating energy and other resources. They very much favor older people, to the detriment of younger people.
“Global foreign direct investment flows are likely to plunge by 40 percent this year due to the coronavirus crisis, the UN said Tuesday, with worse expected in 2021.
FDI will shrivel from its 2019 value of $1.54 trillion to below $1 trillion for the first time since 2005, said the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
“”The global economy is in a direr situation than it was during the 2008 financial crisis,” UNCTAD secretary-general Mukhisa Kituyi told reporters.“The pandemic represents a supply, demand, and policy shock for FDI.””
http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/272580
Rogoff interview (This time really is different):
“The political ramifications will be just massive. There were trends already in place, such as de-globalization and populism, and my guess is those trends will be reinforced—and not just in the United States.
“Obviously, the concern about inequality just blows up in this situation with 20% unemployment. People who don’t have adequate space and adequate resources are suffering inordinately.”
https://www.investopedia.com/rogoff-why-this-time-is-really-different-5024875
Interesting interview with Rogoff.
One thing he talks about is the possibility of deeply negative interest rates. That would be a way of taking wealth away from those with financial assets. I don’t know how it would work for buying property, however.
Another comment he makes is
An Arab Chechen war is ongoing in Dijon France.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1272608762025652224
“When all else fails, they take you to war”
– Gerald Celente
Heard on the radio this morning that the UK has 9.8 M people on furlough and 2.6 M people on a similar scheme for the self-employed. Harry has just posted an article that says UK benefit claimant levels now at 2.8 M. Total = 15.2 M. Just under half the pre-Covid 19 working population. No chance of the BBC publishing that figure.
Here in Scotland we are still in full lockdown. We can shop for groceries, go to work in exceptional circumstances, visit dependants and the doctor, and exercise outside once a day, but not a lot else. It is for our own good you understand.
Given the public sector in the UK employs 5million and has not been hit at all, I make it 56% of private sector workers out of a job at present. We will be lucky to see half that number get their old jobs back.
>> We will be lucky to see half that number get their old jobs back.
Agreed. A calamitous outcome already set in stone, the general public just don’t realise it yet. And why I think a fascist state is now inevitable. I know some folks think we are a fascist state already, but we are just getting warmed up. Furlough-funding lasts until October in the UK. It’s going to be one hell of a Christmas.
As Fast Eddy would say: “CPD”. The more I read, the more I can’t help but think, Covid 19 is being used as a cover to blowup the Global eCONomy. It was headed in that direction but the “Plandemic”, is pushing it over the cliff.
>>Covid 19 is being used as a cover to blowup the Global eCONomy
I am not too sure at all what TPTB plan is, but the political leaders are just doing what they think is right / taking orders. They really are not that bright and have zero interest in widening their horizons by reviewing posts on OFW. But I suspect that Boris has realised, or someone has told him, lockdown is a really bad idea and he needs to get the economy going again. Damage done of course.
A few months back, was one of those who helped Eddy come to the conclusion that we may be looking at a controlled demolition of the global economy. Recently my view has evolved along the following lines.
The pandemic response was planned as an excuse for a controlled demolition of the third industrial revolution in order to ease the world into the fourth industrial revolution.
Klaus Schwab, the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, wrote about this in general and fluffy terms in 2016:
Impact on business:
An underlying theme in my conversations with global CEOs and senior business executives is that the acceleration of innovation and the velocity of disruption are hard to comprehend or anticipate and that these drivers constitute a source of constant surprise, even for the best connected and most well informed. Indeed, across all industries, there is clear evidence that the technologies that underpin the Fourth Industrial Revolution are having a major impact on businesses.
On the supply side, many industries are seeing the introduction of new technologies that create entirely new ways of serving existing needs and significantly disrupt existing industry value chains. Disruption is also flowing from agile, innovative competitors who, thanks to access to global digital platforms for research, development, marketing, sales, and distribution, can oust well-established incumbents faster than ever by improving the quality, speed, or price at which value is delivered.
Major shifts on the demand side are also occurring, as growing transparency, consumer engagement, and new patterns of consumer behavior (increasingly built upon access to mobile networks and data) force companies to adapt the way they design, market, and deliver products and services.
Impact on government:
Ultimately, the ability of government systems and public authorities to adapt will determine their survival. If they prove capable of embracing a world of disruptive change, subjecting their structures to the levels of transparency and efficiency that will enable them to maintain their competitive edge, they will endure. If they cannot evolve, they will face increasing trouble.
Impact on people
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, finally, will change not only what we do but also who we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships. It is already changing our health and leading to a “quantified” self, and sooner than we think it may lead to human augmentation. The list is endless because it is bound only by our imagination.
Well, this revolution is in progress, and the response to COVID is helping to move it along. Where is it taking us? I think we are racing towards Technofeudalism, Technofascism and Technototalitarianism. In this new world, there will be much less demand for labour of all kinds, so much of the formerly working class and the formerly middle class will both be squeezed into what’s left of the gig economy with all the uncertainties and anxieties that produces.
At the same time, the surveillance state is going to get tighter and more oppressive, monitoring everyone and keeping them in their place, while the words “Freedom” and “Privacy” will be expunged from the Newspeak lexicon. Future generations will no have no more understanding of or use for them than the bulk of people today have of/for such archaic concepts as “Honor”, “Dignity”,”Grace”, “Chivalry” and “Etiquette”.
There are currently two things that make me think there is some sort of uncontrolled demolition (‘controlled’ demolition suggests we are moving from one relatively stable system to a lower stable system – what are the chances of that working out in a complex society with almost 8,000 million people?).
Firstly the behaviour of the mainstream media. They are paying lip service to the seriously bad economic effects of lockdown; seem to have some sort of universal embargo on any research that suggests the virus is not as apocalyptic as first thought; and are still pushing the virus day in day out in the UK.
Secondly various videos on YouTube but especially this one, I have posted it before:
“Global Health Mafia Protection Racket”
It is about 40 min long, but all you need to watch is the first 4 min. although the whole video is worth watching. The first 4 minutes explain why / how so many governments are singing from the same hymn sheet. Also interesting that hits are so low, only a few thousand.
That video is by Amazing Poly, and her reporting and analysis is indeed amazing.
She shows that the Globalist Bureaucracy and the Big Pharma people are all reading from the same hymnbook.
Each group needs to have a story to tell itself. These stories can be as far from reality as ancient myths about Thor, but people are willing to believe them. Many of today’s economic models are also in this fanciful category.
I think more or less like you. Techno-totalitarianism, or techno-communism is obviously the plan being implemented at least since 2001. Surveillance, militarization, digitalization etc all point in the same direction: control of human herds in a time of strong economical and social disruption.
It’s impossible though to know how long that degrowth process can take us. It’s the longest shot ever. I don’t think it can be sustained for more than a few years, but who knows?.
Quote from above———-/////////mpact on people
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, finally, will change not only what we do but also who we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships. It is already changing our health and leading to a “quantified” self, and sooner than we think it may lead to human augmentation. The list is endless because it is bound only by our imagination.////////
The above was written by a fantasist.
this is reality:
Industry can be defined very simply:
‘Industry’ is a means by which we convert elements and compounds into materials by which we generate commerce and by so doing influence living standards. (food, housing etc)
There will be no ‘Fourth Industrial revolution’
why not?
Because we no longer have the (cheap) elements and compounds with which to bring it about.
Whizzing electrons around on a computer screen is not ‘industry’. It is a aid to industry. Problem is, vast numbers of people have become engrossed by electronic signals, that they confuse it with ‘productive work’
It isn’t. it aids productive work.
The tractor that drives itself around the field without human intervention produces food more efficiently, not only because of the computers that drive it, but also because the tractor driver’s wages are no longer paid.
So our food is cheaper. For the time being.
Same applies to factories. More computers, fewer workers. cheaper goods.
but the ‘goods’ themselves still require resource input at a faster and faster rate. Electronic ‘revolutions’ do not increase the supply of materials, they only enable us to consume materials faster. This gives us the illusion of ‘cheaper’. And we go on expecting ‘cheaper’ year on year. And adjust our lives accordingly.
But we are now approaching (or are at) the point where our resources are no longer cheap, and cost more to get hold of than the benefit we extract from them.
So no matter how wonderfully whizzy our electronics, they will not ‘produce’ anything that is of actual use to us in survival terms.
It’s as well to bear in mind that the first ‘industrial revolution’ (1709) enabled us to rip the earth apart faster. It didnt provide any more resources for us to use.
Don’t mention FE or they”ll let him out of that Tibetan monastery again
Thank you for putting those pieces together, John and Minority of One. The figures are sobering.
Even in spite of myself, I am starting to feel sorry for Boris Johnson. What a poisoned chalice 2020 is. And he still looks so wan and deathly!
Minority
I don’t see where a fascist state would come from in the UK; we have no history of fascism and we usually ridicule them. The UK has a long history of fighting fascist states and it’s deep within our culture to do so? On the other hand it’s pretty clear to me where a socialist state might arise.
I’d agree: I don’t really think the Monty Python spirit is fertile ground for ‘fascism’.
Intolerant Leftism does seem to appeal to an alarming number of people active in politics, however – still a minority, increasingly ridiculous and irrational, but very much present and intrusive. I hope it passes.
On a more cheerful note, the Spitfire from Duxford was back in the brilliantly sunny sky this afternoon, and one could almost feel the exhilaration of the pilot after an absence of 3 months. A little more normality has returned!
Here in the Isle of Wight we get a Spitfire fly over our house most days, running leisure trips from the mainland (£5k a pop). What a beautiful plane and I look forward to its return.
Fascism – my thinking is anarchy is not far away, with huge numbers of unemployed and possibly hungry people, and therefore riots, and huge debts. To control the anarchy the govt. will need much more control, much like the Covid-19 stay-at-home policy has done except that in future the hungry and angry might not want to stay at home. It has nothing to do with us having any history of fascism or not, but of social and political survival. I have not heard of anyone else with a similar view, but hey ho. Obviously I hope that I am wrong.
Cheer up: fascism is a form of insane militarism, and that’s not on the cards at all in the UK.
I think we could perhaps do with a bit more authoritarianism, actually, to keep certain groups in check.
The state has become far too weak in Britain in the sphere of public order, leaving people feeling increasingly unsafe – drug gangs grow in the space left vacant.
>>fascism is a form of insane militarism, and that’s not on the cards at all in the UK.
I have no idea how you can be so sure of that. The elite will attempt whatever it takes to maintain control and their personal safety / wealth.
“The government will need much more control.” Very probably so, and I find your analysis most plausible. But … it is not “governments” that control, it is people. Usually low paid people who are told to put their lives daily on the line for the elite, and oppress those who may be their neighbours and relatives. What if they simply refuse? The two most powerful words in politics are “Non serviam”. As many would be tyrants have discovered.
It’s dismaying to think of the large numbers of people who are heading for the misery of long-term unemployment in a crushed economy, and life caught in the toils of the humiliating UK welfare system. People who could look forward to quite decent working lives before the idiotic blanket lock-down.
Indeed John, just 2 local examples, both companies employ 150/149 one has 49 currently working the other 40, both have the rest on furlough. One of them employs a lot of Polish workers, so if they find themselves out of work will they go back to Poland? We have quite a few firms locally in high labour sectors who employ Eastern Europeans? I remember Gail mentioned that Poland still had reasonable supplies of coal. Can anyone advise how Poland is being affected? Harry?
If you live in the UK this report (56 pages) is a good if somewhat scary read. In the UK we need to find billions but are coming up with coppers and wanting to further rob Peter to pay Paul. How the City grandees, expect Insurers and Pension funds to bail out SME’s I don’t know, they seem to assume they have large amounts of funds sitting idol. Unless the BOE buys unlimted assets from them to provide liquidity to ‘invest’ with guarantees of course. It is UK banks that currently provide the bulk of the liquidity for SME’s.I also think the amount of bailing out they will need to do is considerably under estimated and is this a back door bail out of the banks again, it would appear so.
In the UK SME’s are the economy, as many of the large firms also rely on them as subcontractors and micro firms like wise, but lets face it take even a small prop away and the knock on effects ripple around and around.
https://hwchamber.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Recapitalisation-group-interim-update1.pdf
Page 28 is interesting, the .GOV guarantee re banks is the £85k guarantee!!!!
Thanks to Nick at Wolf Street for this link and to Gail and Co for providing much food for thought. What a mess……………….
HDUK, this article gives a good overview of how Poland’s economy was faring pre-pandemic – starting to flag after a purple patch is my broad impression:
https://www.politico.eu/article/polands-economic-miracle-wont-last/
And today:
“Poland will recover further from the post-coronavirus crisis slump, its central bank forecast on Tuesday as it kept interest rates unchanged at 0.1% after a series of previous cuts…
“Government forecasters had expected the Polish economy to contract by up to 10% in the second quarter, while the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicted Poland’s economy will shrink by 7.4-9.5% this year.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/poland-rates-statement/update-1-polish-central-bank-forecasts-further-near-term-recovery-idUSL8N2DT481
Re coal, twelve of their mines have had to close temporarily due to coronavirus infections:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-poland-coal/poland-to-close-12-mines-for-three-weeks-to-stop-coronavirus-spread-idUKKBN23F0TK?rpc=401&
yes they closed the 12 mines for 3 weeks. Employees get full salary. Still cheaper for Poland to import coal,, but at least they still have it.
I tried to look in the COVID-19 database that I usually use to see what Scotland’s COVID-19 cases looked like, but I discovered that this information must be buried in the UK information. An economy cannot survive long being closed down.
This info from the BBC looks up-to-date but it does not compare Scotland with anywhere else:
Coronavirus in Scotland: Key figures and trends
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52009463
I don’t really keep up with Covid-19 rates so cannot comment on how good or bad they are.
Scotland’s population is about 5.5 million. If we are talking about 4000 deaths, this comes to about 730 deaths per million. This is a little above the UK average as reported to Johns Hopkins, which is about 628 deaths per million. (It may omit some deaths.)
This is a chart I put together of a few country’s death rates, based on Johns Hopkins data. You can see that the UK rate is quite high. Japan and many of the Asian nations have very low COVID-19 rates.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/us-vs-other-countries-deaths.png
In the US, the Northeastern States have death rates higher than this. Other parts of the US have much lower death rates. (Georgia is the state I live in. It would be part of the South grouping.)
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/ga-vs-other-areas-cumulative-deaths.png
Thanks for showing that. If Scotland had its own graph line it would be at the top. We are a very unhealthy nation. Land of the deep-fried pizza and mars bars.
The first graph shows that Sweden is in fact below the UK. The UK media have been ripping into the Swedes for not having full lockdown, although they do have a lockdown of sorts. Here is an example from the Independent:
Coronavirus tracked: Charting Sweden’s disastrous no-lockdown strategy
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-lockdown-sweden-death-rate-worst-country-covid-19-a9539206.html
Disastrous? I think not. The article looks like pro-lockdown propaganda. Lockdown good, Swedes bad.
All of this gets confusing because the ratio of deaths to reported cases is very different from country to country. I have used deaths, since I hoped that they might be more comparable.
The US Northeast had a lot of problems with respect to not really understanding how to treat early COVID-19 patients. New York City also tried to transfer very sick COVID-19 patients, without transferring their records correctly, according to one article. And more than one state sent patients who had not quite required to nursing homes to finish recovering. There, they passed along COVID-19 to the rest of the nursing home population.
The US Northeast also has a lot of public transport. This is similar to Europe. It would seem like public transportation is a significant contributor to the early spread of COVID-19 cases. Of course, over the longer term, this spread may even out.
Thanks for explaining the difference in how various rates are calculated. I had not noticed that one was total deaths versus total instances of the virus, and yours is total deaths versus total population, the only one that makes sense to me. That also explains while the Independent chose manipulated data to claim Sweden’s rates of death are so bad, it is in fact the UK’s that are worse.
My understanding is that Scotland is just the same in terms of cases and deaths per capita as the UK.
This year’s Summer solstice will occur with a solar eclipse.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EamgpKZUYAASFw4?format=jpg&name=large
According to your link, there are really three eclipses in close succession: a lunar eclipse, the June 21 solar eclipse, and another lunar eclipse.
I notice that there are various articles on the internet about eclipse myths.
https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar-eclipse-myths.html
“Peru, one of the countries worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, has seen GDP plummet by more than 40 percent year on year in April, the government said Monday.
“Mining production fell sharply in one of the world’s largest producers of copper, gold and silver, contracting by more than 42.29 percent in April.”
https://today.rtl.lu/news/business-and-tech/a/1534600.html
“Peru has freed 1,500 inmates over the past two months to ease overcrowding in prisons that have seen riots and deaths from the coronavirus.”
https://www.trtworld.com/americas/peru-frees-1-500-inmates-over-covid-19-fears-37289
“A group of 37 members of the Peruvian Jewish community flew to Israel on a special charter flight amid high rates of COVID-19 in their native country and street riots that have broken out as a result of a scarcity of food and medical supplies.”
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/peruvian-jews-move-to-israel-to-flee-covid-19-and-street-riots-631619
“South America is the region of the world where peace deteriorated most last year, followed by Central America and the Caribbean according to the “Global Peace Index 2020” report, with peacefulness expected to drop globally as a result of COVID-19.”
https://www.devex.com/news/latin-america-sees-largest-decline-in-peacefulness-as-covid-19-poses-further-threat-97475
“Vizcarra was later forced to extend the current quarantine until June 30, making Peru’s one of the world’s longest lockdowns.” What a mess!
“The Trump administration doesn’t want to extend the $600-a-week enhancement to unemployment benefits past July 31, according to Larry Kudlow, White House economic advisor.
“The White House and congressional Republicans want to provide a temporary cash bonus to those who find a job.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/15/trump-wants-back-to-work-bonus-instead-of-600-unemployment-benefit.html
“Consumption of drugs and alcohol has increased in the U.S. during the pandemic, creating an anticipated need for treatment in coming months and years. But, at the same time, there are now a host of financial challenges that threaten the existence of most addiction treatment centers in the country.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/15/865006675/a-new-addiction-crisis-treatment-centers-face-financial-collapse?t=1592293198086
I expect that half-way houses would be a problem. Addiction programs have wanted them to be high density (2 per bedroom) so as to keep costs down. But then there gets to be a COVID-19 problem.
“The coronavirus shutdowns have seen close to one million jobs disappear in just two months with new figures adding to fears Australia’s unemployment will hit ten per cent for the first time since 1994… as the health pandemic caused an even faster downturn than the 1930s Great Depression.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8424375/Unemployment-hit-10-cent-month-Australia-enters-month-partial-lockdown.html
“Australia’s lucrative exports of natural gas are being hit by a global supply glut and the coronavirus crisis destroying demand, with dozens of cargoes either anchored offshore or idling at sea as Asian buyers delay deliveries…
“…the worst may be yet to come for the gas industry as demand collapses in key Asian markets and storage facilities approach capacity.”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-s-lng-tankers-sitting-idle-as-global-supply-glut-covid-start-to-bite-20200615-p552oh.html
My understanding is that quite a bit of Australia’s exported gas is expensive-to-produce gas. LNG prices are terribly low in Asia. One article says, Japan spot LNG price falls to lowest on record amid coronavirus outbreak.
The price was $3.40 per million Btu in February. A later article talks about the spot price for LNG to Japan falling to $2.40 per million Btu in April.
At one point, prices were up in the $15+ per million Btu price range.
Global auto sales were already declining in 2009 and German industrial output was already contracting. Now we have the pandemic on top:
“The coronavirus pandemic, which shattered supply chains and forced automotive manufacturers to close their plants for weeks, caused passenger car production in Germany to tank in the first five months of 2020. Now sluggish demand and slow recovery in global markets is likely to puts tens of thousands of job in the sector at risk in Germany.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/record-slump-in-german-car-production-could-put-100000-jobs-at-risk-135101966.html
“New tensions on Monday flared in France’s eastern city of Dijon after it was rocked by a weekend of unrest blamed on Chechens seeking vengeance for an assault on a teenager.”
https://www.france24.com/en/20200616-french-city-of-dijon-rocked-by-unrest-blamed-on-chechens-seeking-revenge
A gem from the article:
“What happened is unprecedented and unacceptable,” the city’s mayor, Francois Rebsamen, told AFP.
Unprecedented? I think not; this stuff has been happening for years, ever since the Chechens were let into France. And unacceptable? Of course not; the authorities accept it because they no longer have the courage to uphold the social contract. That is how great nations die.
Who would ever allow Chechens to migrate into their country? Madness! Some of the most savage people to be found anywhere, witness the Russian fight with them. How sad for Dijon, or any of our once beautiful European towns.
They’ve integrated well in Jordan.
People could not afford the cars earlier. All of the recent requirement aimed at encouraging the purchase of electric vehicles made this problem worse. According to the linked article, this silliness continues:
“It is no exaggeration to say the United Kingdom is in deep trouble, lurching from one catastrophe to another.
“As soon as the economy gets over the coronavirus crisis, Britain faces a new disaster over Brexit… a hard Brexit shock could be the last straw… the pound could collapse under the weight of a British crash.”
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3089043/brexit-plus-coronavirus-pandemic-could-prove-too-much-britain
“Two of the UK government’s most powerful civil servants have said they were not aware of any attempt to make economic preparations for a possible global pandemic in the years leading up to the coronavirus outbreak.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/15/permanent-secretaries-not-aware-of-any-economic-planning-for-a-pandemic
“The UK’s coronavirus jobs nightmare unfolded further today as the number of benefit claimants surged to a record 2.8m, around 600,000 workers lost their jobs and vacancies collapsed.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/06/16/benefit-claims-hit-28m-uk-faces-jobs-nightmare/
“[UK] Savings rates have plunged to the lowest level on record during the Covid-19 crisis with the average account paying just 0.27 per cent… [compared to] the average rate… of 0.67 per cent at the height of the financial crisis in May 2009.”
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8423443/Savings-rates-plunge-lowest-level-record.html
The WSJ editorial pointed out today that shutdowns were premised on absurd models, such as this University of Chicago model. Not only were expected deaths overstated, but the cost of the shutdowns were vastly understated. Also, in the U of Chicago model, the benefit of preventing a death was considered a permanent benefit, rather than simply postponing when a person might get COVID-19.
The Data Are In: It’s Time for Major Reopening
Four new analyses of actual results show how the initial projections overestimated the value of lockdowns.
“The European Union has been relaxing its rule book for banks — painstakingly built up in the decade or so since the financial crisis — as it tries to manage the impact of coronavirus. Unfortunately, the move might create big problems if economic activity fails to recover.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/europe-risks-creating-another-sovereign-053025893.html
“Public trust in the European Central Bank appears to have dropped by more than in other governing institutions over the past decade…
“Having pushed monetary policy close to its limits since the global financial crisis, the ECB has faced a barrage of criticism and legal challenges…
“The bank has launched a strategy review, but the exercise had to be postponed due to the coronavirus crisis – which also forced the bank to take even more radical measures.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ecb-struggling-weak-public-trust-085207805.html
““Everybody is fed up with the lockdown and wants to return to normal life as quickly as possible,” said José Martínez, a cafe owner in the southern city of Seville, as he wiped down outdoor tables with disinfectant. “But you can certainly bet that nobody will take responsibility if the result is another wave.””
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/world/europe/coronavirus-europe-borders-reopen.html
Should “if economic activity fails to recover” perhaps should be “when economic activity fails to recover.”
“In perhaps the most peculiar of the developments flowing from the US central bank’s novel policies was last week’s approval by a Delaware judge of a plan by Hertz to raise up to $US1 billion ($1.4 billion) of new equity by selling shares to the public – while it is in bankruptcy!
Shares in the fallen car rental company have, bizarrely, traded at prices as high as $US5.53 since the company filed for bankruptcy with $US19 billion of debt, although they closed at $US1.88 on Monday. The New York Stock Exchange is planning to de-list the shares, underscoring the extent of the risk investors are taking…
“With cash pouring into the junk bond market and the Fed acting as a form of underwriter for even risky corporate debt, perhaps it isn’t surprising that investors are taking risks that they might not have contemplated previously…
“The Hertz case is… an extreme example of how the Fed’s interventions distort markets by removing risk from any price signal…
“The US corporate sector was already highly-leveraged even before the coronavirus outbreak… More concerning, since the financial crisis – even as the debt levels have climbed – there has been a steady deterioration in the quality of the credit. About a third of the corporate bond market is now in the form of leveraged or non-investment grade bonds…
“A problem for the future, and one that has been present since the financial crisis, is how the Fed and its central bank peers elsewhere can extricate themselves from the unconventional settings they’ve created and the unintended consequences and side-effects of those settings, the most potentially threatening of which are the excessive leverage and risk-taking they have encouraged.
“On the evidence of the past decade, there is no exit path without implosions in markets, another financial crisis and, at best, another very deep recession. In these circumstances investors are clearly signalling that they expect more of the same.”
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/zombies-are-stirring-as-the-fed-creates-a-monster-debt-problem-20200616-p5531h.html
“The quantity of money in the US (as measured by M3) rose by 7.5 per cent in April 2020. With further strong money growth in May, the annual rate of growth of money has shot up to a shocking 25.5 per cent…
“The rest of the world should be very concerned about the effects of the Fed’s policies over the next two to three years.
“In sharp contrast to the response during the global financial crisis of 2008, not only have both treasuries and central banks coordinated unprecedented economic stimulus policies to address the current crisis, but bank regulators have also significantly eased bank capital requirements.”
https://www.cityam.com/watch-out-for-too-much-money-and-the-return-of-boom-and-bust-cycles/
The demand for dollars is big globally that the Fed can print as much as they want without creating inflation.
The US is drinking the worlds milkshake.
Nations that run out of dollars starve to death.
Lebanon is running out of dollars. Their own currency is turning worthless, no nation accepts it as a legal tender.
The Lebanese are rioting and burning down their banks… and will continue to do so untill things get better.
Sounds terrible! Lebanon was doing poorly even before the pandemic came along.
Lebanon is in a pickle for sure:
“Hopes of a quick rescue deal with the International Monetary Fund have faded, with talks complicated by a row between the government and central bank over the scale of the losses in the financial system.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-crisis/concerns-mount-as-lebanon-struggles-to-take-first-steps-out-of-crisis-idUKKBN23N0T8
Neighbouring Syria circling the drain, too:
“Syrian government salaries have become nearly worthless. Protests against falling living standards have broken out in the southeast.
“The Syrian pound is worth so little that people have posted images on social media of bank notes used to roll cigarettes. The government is so strapped for cash that it is squeezing wealthy businessmen to help fund the state.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/world/middleeast/syria-economy-assad-makhlouf.html
Part of Syria’s problems (for a long time) have been peak oil.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/syria-oil-production-and-consumption-eia.png
Right now, we are in sort of a “boom” part of what is really a “bust” cycle.
Excellent … Derivatives in the Previous Metals Market have EXPLODED…but it makes money, even though it’s not possible in real physical actual trading….hmmm. the Magic Kingdom BAU does it again!😜👍
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LcN5_ZqNUl4&t=1183s
Craig Hemke is excellent speaker and very knowledgeable…its, as he says, “Outrageous”
Really don’t know how long this biggest circle erk in History, as one commentator put it, can continue. Gail, unfortunately, may be right…not much longer 😂
But I worker hard all my life and was promised.,.haha haaaa…
Things that can’t go on forever, don’t!
Class 8 Heavy Duty Truck Orders Crash 62.5% In May To Lowest Levels Since 2011
After a 73% crash in April, Class 8 orders once again plunged 62.5% in May, to their lowest sales levels since 2011. An improvement of 10.5% month on month. Great, isn’t it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/class-8-heavy-duty-truck-orders-crash-625-may-lowest-levels-2011
Wonder how long to go before we hit normal
You are great as Always
There is no need for more heavy trucks, with transport of goods down.
Truck driver is sometimes listed as the occupation with the most jobs in the US.
I hate to imagine, at this rate, what will happen just in a few weeks time….
Three NYPD Officers “Intentionally Poisoned” With Bleach At Manhattan Shake Shack
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/three-nypd-officers-intentionally-poisoned-bleach-manhattan-shake-shack
Woke Mobs Now Destroying Statues Of Leading Anti-Slavery Figures
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/antifa-taliban-now-theyre-coming-americas-founding-fathers
*So, they are anti slavery and bring down statue of those who have slaves. OK. fine, then you should respect the people who help slaves. So, now, these people also bring them down. So, what is the real cause of the riots? It seems the narratives is so unclear, the cause of the riots.
18 Atlanta Cops Quit, LAPD Can’t Pay $40 Million Overtime As Police Morale Hits “Rock Bottom”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/18-atlanta-cops-quit-lapd-wont-pay-40-million-overtime-police-morale-hits-rock-bottom
NYPD Eliminates Entire Plainclothes Anti-Crime Unit In ‘Seismic Cultural Shift’
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nypd-eliminates-entire-plainclothes-anti-crime-unit-seismic-cultural-shift
I don’t like Black Lives Matter. It should be Only Black Lives Matter…and everyone else should eat rat poison.
Cassius Clay didn’t like his slave name, so he changed it to Muhammad Ali…the two biggest slave owners in the world.
The Muslim Arabs were running the slave trade in northern Africa. It’s better to be a slave owner, than being a slave.
North Africans, Turks, Persians, Afghans, big consumers of African slaves into the 19th century and long after Europeans had withdrawn from the trade.
Being enslaved by the Barbary corsairs of N. Africa was still a risk for European travellers by sea as late as the early 19th century.
BLM might like to protest outside the embassies of those states which still have slave markets, and those which abuse imported BAME labourers and domestic servants – but that wouldn’t fit their simplistic narrative of exclusive White guilt.
Plenty of slavery extant in modern Africa, too:
“Africa just recorded the highest rate of modern-day enslavement in the world.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/africa/1333946/global-slavery-index-africa-has-the-highest-rate-of-modern-day-slavery-in-the-world/amp/
Poor Eritreans – 93 per 1,000 of population!
I look forward to a BLM crusade departing for Africa to free their brothers and sisters I might even chip in a few quid on Gofundme.
According to the article,
If a country has a draft to cover its military needs, is this “slavery”? If marriages are planned by parents, is this “slavery”? We live in a different world.
Really strange, and it could get worse, especially if the job situation worsens and government aid lessens.
Shopping malls and online sale (E-Commerce)
Shopping malls (or brick and mortar shopping) has a much large effect than online shopping. A lot of people just think that people will just transit to online shopping, which is the same. Not, it is not the same at all.
Shopping malls – physical building, electrician, plumbers, janitors, sales staff, building managers, interior designers, etc. They are also buying things like cash registers, broadband subscriptions, chairs, tables, lighting, carpentry, etc. The buyers (or shoppers) also spending money on gasoline and the wear and tear on the tires, lubricants, the restaurant selling food and all other knock-on effects that is helping to bring about the local economy.
E-Commerce – two types- individuals like Walmart or combined like Amazon.
Combined (Amazon as an example) – servers only in data centers, distribution centers (not as many as malls), very low wages for the staff, shipper, or courier. The margins are low and thus, not much positive economic activity from the workers (remember why Henry Ford paid good wages? So that the workers can afford a car?). Anything positive impacts only on Amazon (still low profits) and the shippers. It does not ripple through the main street economy when you have only a large distribution center (mostly automated anyway) in town.
Individuals (like Walmart) – Their profit margin may be higher but if everything sells online, like Amazon, only a small fraction of the people will benefit – Shippers, servers and data centers. No one else will really benefit.
So, no, E-Commerce is not helping the economy. It is making it worse. Let us have a look at some of the news.
Europe’s Fashion Industry Faces Nightmare
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/06/14/after-years-of-breakneck-growth-europes-fashion-industry-faces-nightmare/
Most European brick-and-mortar clothing stores have been open for three or four weeks, yet sales continue to languish. In April, when all but the essential brick-and-mortar stores were shut, sales of clothing and accessories slumped by 50% in the UK and 67.4% in France, the home of fashion. In Spain, revenues in the sector plunged by 80.5%, according to data published by the trade association Acotex.
But even in May, when stores in most Spanish cities reopened, revenues in the sector fell 72% year over year and are down 45% year to date. Those figures include booming online sales.
***SPAIN – is NEGATIVE 80.5% for April and NEGATIVE 72% for May. That is some good news, a 7.8% improvement.
On Wednesday, Inditex, one of the world’s largest fashion retailers with with eight brands, including Zara, and nearly 7,500 stores in 96 countries (at the end of 2019), reported a 44% plunge in revenues in its first quarter, February through April, to €3.3 billion from nearly €6 billion a year ago, and a net loss of €409 million, its first quarterly loss since going public in 2001. The company’s shares fell 9% on the week and are down 23% year to date.
But online sales have surged 95% in April and 50% in the first quarter. Inditex says it expects online sales to represent more than 25% of total sales by 2022, up from 14% at the end of 2019.
***ONLINE sales surge 95% in April but if you look properly, the percentage of total sales from online is only 14% (as of end of 2019). Not a lot.
At the end of April, only 965 of Inditex’s stores were open in 27 countries, about 13% of total capacity. But in May, despite seeing “a progressive recovery in sales in the markets that have reopened stores,” total sales in local currencies (including booming online sales) were still down by 51% compared to the same month last year.
*** NEGATIVE 51% in sales from reopened stores. How long before it becomes a cash flow problem?
But nobody in the fashion business is ready for what is coming. Nearly 40% of businesses in the sector are expecting the impact to be “much worse” than that of the 2008 financial crisis, according to a Euromonitor International survey. McKinsey estimates that up to a third of global fashion retailers will not survive the crisis.
*** Yay ! Online business will save the world when for one of the largest in Spain (Inditex), it is only 14% of the total sales. The largest and the most cash rich (which can afford to do online business faster and easier) is only 14% and finds it hard. What happens to the small and medium sized enterprises?
Excellent points; B&M activity radiates outwards in so many ways that people hardly think of. It’s not so simple as just shifting online.
Even the transition to selling old and rare books online didn’t go that smoothly: whole categories that once sold steadily in bookshops are impossible to sell online at the same price, or even sell at all. Browsing and impulse buying just don’t work online.
Art galleries in London have been experimenting with online-only sales over the past few months. Sales haven’t been bad, as far as one can tell, the images on the websites are very good, but collectors do have to be familiar with the artist to buy with confidence.
If art fairs fail, though, which seems possible, they will lose a valuable source of new customers.
I am not surprised at the lack of sales. Here in the UK, probably like everywhere else, the MSM and not least the BBC have done a grand job of scaring the wits out of everyone, into believing going outside is like playing Russian Roulette with the virus. Go out and you might die, especially in enclosed spaces like shops, pubs and restaurants.
The other issue is that in the UK, currently 12.4 M people are in furlough of some sort or other, which is more than one third of the working population (32-33 million pre-Covid19). If I were on furlough, I’d be saving every penny I had in case I lost my job, although if I was on furlough I might not have any spare money to save or spend on non-essentials because I would have lost 20% of my regular income.
A person doesn’t need to buy much in the way of clothing, if they are not going out, anywhere. The impetus for buying a new outfit comes from some event a person is going to: speaking at a conference, going to a wedding, going to work, attending a party, getting an award at an award ceremony. Staying at home and participating in a Zoom meeting doesn’t require much new.
The supply chain for clothing is all around the world. When Americans and Europeans stop buying clothing, it cuts off work for a huge number of workers around the world.
Up early and this caught my eye…one comment…”This is getting to be the greatest circle jerk in History!😜👍”
Fed Starts to buy individual Corporate Bonds
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gU6KeNSljRI&t=9s
And
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_jilQIhuvI
Remain calm and we got this under control…don’t panic