The COVID-19 story keeps developing. At first, everyone listened to epidemiologists telling us that a great deal of social distancing, and even the closing down of economies, would be helpful. After trying these things, we ended up with a huge number of people out of work and protests everywhere. We discovered the models that were provided were not very predictive. We are also finding that a V-shaped recovery is not possible.
Now, we need to figure out what actions to take next. How vigorously should we be fighting COVID-19? The story is more complex than most people understand. These are some of the issues I see:
[1] The share of COVID-19 cases that can be expected to end in death seems to be much lower than most people expect.
Most people assume that the ratios of deaths to cases by age group, computed using reported cases, such as those included in the Johns Hopkins Database, give a good indication of the chance of death a person faces if a person catches COVID-19. In fact, the cases reported to this database are far from representative of all cases; they tend to be the more severe cases. Cases with no symptoms, or only very slight symptoms, tend to be missed. The result is that ratios calculated directly from this database make people think their risk of death is far higher than it really is.
The US Center for Disease Control has published Planning Scenarios, based on information available on April 29, 2020.* Using this information, the CDC’s best estimate of the number of future deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms is as follows:
Ages 0 – 49 0.5 deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms
Ages 50-64 2.0 deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms
Ages 65+ 13.0 deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms
The CDC’s best estimate is that 35% of cases have no symptoms at all. Thus, if we were to include these cases without symptoms in the chart above, the chart would become:
Ages 0-49 0.5 deaths per 1,538 cases (including those without symptoms), or 0.3 deaths per 1000 cases with or without symptoms
Ages 50-64 1.3 deaths per 1000 cases with or without symptoms
Ages 65+ 8.5 deaths per 1000 cases with or without symptoms
A recent study of blood samples from 23 different parts of the world came to a similarly low estimate of the number of deaths per 1000 COVID-19 infections. It reported that among people who are less than 70 years old, the number of deaths per 1000 ranged from 0.0 to 2.3 per 1000, with a median of 0.4 deaths per 1000.
The same paper remarks,
COVID-19 seems to affect predominantly the frail, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized – as shown by high rates of infectious burden in nursing homes, homeless shelters, prisons, meat processing plants, and the strong racial/ethnic inequalities against minorities in terms of the cumulative death risk.
[2] There seem to be things we can do ourselves to reduce our personal chance of serious illness or death.
General good health is protective against getting a bad case of COVID-19. Thus, anything that we can do in terms of a good diet and exercise is likely helpful. Staying inside for weeks on end in the hope of preventing exposure to COVID-19 is probably not helpful.
Continued exposure to huge amounts of disinfectants and hand sanitizers is likely not to be helpful either. Our bodies depend on healthy microbiomes, and products such as these adversely affect our microbiomes. They kill good and bad bacteria alike and may leave harmful residues. It is easy to scale back our personal use of these products.
There are recent indications that vitamin D is likely to be protective in reducing both the incidence of COVID-19 and the disease’s severity. Web MD reports:
Several groups of researchers from different countries have found that the sickest patients often have the lowest levels of vitamin D, and that countries with higher death rates had larger numbers of people with vitamin D deficiency than countries with lower death rates.
Experts say healthy blood levels of vitamin D may give people with COVID-19 a survival advantage by helping them avoid cytokine storm, when the immune system overreacts and attacks your body’s own cells and tissues.
While we don’t know for certain that vitamin D is helpful, there is certainly enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that it would likely be worthwhile to raise vitamin D levels to the amount recommended by the National Institute of Health (30 nmol/L or higher). People with dark skin living in areas away from the equator might especially be helped by this strategy, since dark skin reduces vitamin D production.
Masks seem to be helpful in preventing the spread of infection. A person’s own immune system can handle some level of germs. If two people meeting together both wear masks, the combination of masks can perhaps reduce the level of germs to within the amount the immune system can handle. Our immune systems are built to handle a barrage of small attacks by viruses and bacteria. Continued “practice” with relatively low combinations of good and bad bacteria (as occur with masks) will tend to build up our bodies’ natural defenses.
We see dentists and dental hygienists wearing face shields. These shields are readily available over the internet and can be worn with a mask or by themselves. We don’t yet know precisely how much protection they provide, but early models suggest that they can be helpful in two directions: (a) preventing the wearer’s droplets from harming others and (b) reducing the droplet exposure from others. Thus, they may be a worthwhile way to reduce exposure to the virus causing COVID-19, even when others are not wearing masks.
[3] The medical community’s ability to treat COVID-19 cases keeps improving.
There seem to be many small changes that are improving treatment of COVID-19. If patients are having trouble getting enough oxygen, having them lie on their stomachs seems to increase their blood oxygen levels. The cost of this change is pretty much zero, but it keeps people out of the ICU longer.
Originally, planners thought that ventilators would be needed for patients with COVID-19, since ventilators are often used on pneumonia patients. Experience has shown, however, that oxygen plus something like a CPAP machine often works better and is less expensive.**
The simple change of not sending recuperating patients to nursing home-type facilities for the last stages of care has proven helpful, as well. Many of these patients can still infect others, leading to infections in long-term care facilities. Tests to tell whether patients are truly over the disease do not seem to be very accurate.
Last week, it was announced that treatment with an inexpensive common steroid could reduce deaths of people on ventilators by one-third. It could also reduce deaths of those requiring only oxygen treatment by 20%. Using this treatment should significantly reduce deaths, at little cost.
We can expect improvements in treatments to continue as doctors experiment with existing treatments, and as drug companies work on new solutions. Looking at cumulative historical mortality rates tends to overlook the huge learning curve that is taking place, allowing mortality rates to be lower.
[4] More doubts are being raised about quickly finding a vaccine that prevents COVID-19.
The public would like to think that a vaccine solution is right around the corner. Vaccine promoters such as Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates would like to encourage this belief. Unfortunately, there are quite a few obstacles to getting a vaccine that actually works for any length of time:
(a) Antibodies for coronaviruses tend not to stay around for very long. A recent study suggests that even as soon as eight weeks, a significant share of COVID-19 patients (40% of those without symptoms; 12.9% of those with symptoms) had lost all immunity. A vaccine will likely face this same challenge.
(b) Vaccines may not work against mutations. Beijing is now fighting a new version of COVID-19 that seems to have been imported from Europe in food. Early indications are that people who caught the original Wuhan version of the COVID-19 virus will not be immune to the mutated version imported from Europe.
Vaccines that are currently under development use the Wuhan version of the virus. The catch is that the version of COVID-19 now circulating in the United States, Europe and perhaps elsewhere is mostly not the Wuhan type.
(c) There is a real concern that a vaccine against one version of COVID-19 will make a person’s response to a mutation of COVID-19 worse, rather than better. It has been known for many years that Dengue Fever has this characteristic; it is one of the reasons that there is no vaccine for Dengue Fever. The earlier SARS virus (which is closely related to the COVID-19 virus) has this same issue. Preliminary analysis suggests that the virus causing COVID-19 seems to have this characteristic, as well.
In sum, getting a vaccine that actually works against COVID-19 is likely to be a huge challenge. Instead of expecting a silver bullet in the form of a COVID-19 vaccine, we probably need to be looking for a lot of silver bee-bees that will hold down the impact of the illness. Hopefully, COVID-19 will someday disappear on its own, but we have no assurance of this outcome.
[5] The basic underlying issue that the world economy faces is overshoot, caused by too high a population relative to underlying resources.
When an economy is in overshoot, the big danger is collapse. The characteristics of overshoot leading to collapse include the following:
- Very great wage disparity; too many people are very poor
- Declining health, often due to poor nutrition, making people vulnerable to epidemics
- Increasing use of debt, to make up for inadequate wages and profits
- Falling commodity prices because too few people can afford these commodities and goods made from these commodities
- Gluts of commodities, causing farmers to plow under crops and oil to be put into storage
Thus, pandemics are very much to be expected when an economy is in overshoot.
One example of collapse is that following the Black Death (1348-1350) epidemic in Europe. The collapse killed 60% of Europe’s population and dropped Britain’s population from close to 5 million to about 2 million.
Figure 1. Britain’s population, 1200 to 1700. Chart by Bloomberg using Federal Reserve of St. Louis data.
We might say that there was a U-shaped population recovery, which took about 300 years.
A later example that almost led to collapse was the period between 1914 and 1945. This was a period of shrinking international trade, indicating that something was truly wrong. On Figure 2 below, the WSJ calls its measure of international trade the “Trade Openness Index.” The period 1914-1945 is highlighted as being somewhat like today.
Figure 2. The Trade Openness Index is an index based on the average of world imports and exports, divided by world GDP. Chart by Wall Street Journal.
Many of the issues in the 1914-1945 timeframe were coal related. World War I took place when coal depletion became a problem in Britain. The issue at that time was wages that were too low for coal miners because the price of coal would not rise very high. Higher coal prices were needed to offset the impact of depletion, but high coal prices were not affordable by citizens.
The Pandemic of 1918-1919 killed far more people than either World War I or COVID-19.
World War II came about at the time coal depletion became a problem in Germany.
Figure 3. Figure by author describing peak coal timing compared to World War I and World War II.
The problem of inadequate energy resources finally ended when World War II ramped up demand through more debt and through more women entering the labor force for the first time. In response, the US began pumping oil out of the ground at a faster rate. Instead of depending on coal alone, the world began depending on a combination of oil and coal as energy resources. The ratio of population to energy resources was suddenly brought back into balance again, and collapse was averted!
[6] We are now in another period of overshoot of population relative to resources. The critical resource this time is oil. The alternatives we have aren’t suited to fulfilling our most basic need: the growing and transportation of food. They act as add-ons that are lost if oil is lost.
If we look back at Figure 2 above, it shows that since 2008, the world has again fallen into a period of shrinking imports and exports, which is a sign of “not enough energy resources to go around.” We are also experiencing many of the other characteristics of an overshoot economy that I mentioned in Section 5 above.
Figure 4 shows world energy consumption by type of energy through 2019, using recently published data by BP. The “Other” combination in Figure 4 includes nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar, and other smaller categories such as geothermal energy, wood pellets, and sawdust burned for fuel.
Figure 4. World energy consumption by fuel, based on BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Oil has been rising at a steady pace; coal consumption has been close to level since about 2012. Natural gas and “Other” seem to be rising a little faster in the most recent few years.
If we divide by world population, the trend in world energy consumption per capita by type is as follows:
Figure 5. World Per Capita Energy Consumption based on BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy
Many people would like to think that the various energy sources are substitutable, but this is not really the case, as we approach limits of a finite world.
One catch is that there are very few stand-alone energy resources. Most energy resources only work within a framework provided by other energy sources. Wood that is picked up from the forest floor can work as a stand-alone energy source. Wind can almost be used as a stand-alone energy source, if it is used to power a simple sail boat or a wooden windmill. Water can almost be used as a stand-alone energy source, if it can be made to turn a wooden water wheel.
Coal, when its use was ramped up, enabled the production of both concrete and steel. It allowed modern hydroelectric dams to be built. It allowed steam engines to operate. It truly could be used as a stand-alone energy source. The main obstacle to the extraction of coal was keeping the cost of extraction low enough, so that, even with transportation, buyers could afford to purchase the coal.
Oil, similarly, can be a stand-alone energy solution because it is very flexible, dense, and easily transported. Or it can be paired with other types of less-expensive energy, to make it go further. We can see our dependence on oil by how level energy consumption per capita is in Figure 5 since the early 1980s. Growth in population seems to depend upon the amount of oil available.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, the economy is a self-organizing system. If there isn’t enough of the energy products upon which the economy primarily depends, the system tends to change in very strange ways. Countries become more quarrelsome. People decide to have fewer children or they become more susceptible to pandemics, bringing population more in line with energy resources.
The problem with natural gas and with the electricity products that I have lumped together as “Other” is that they are not really stand-alone products. They cannot grow food or build roads. They cannot power international jets. They cannot build wind turbines or solar panels. They cannot put natural gas pipelines in place. They can only exist in a complex environment which includes oil and perhaps coal (or other cheaper energy products).
We are kidding ourselves if we think we can transition to modern fuels that are low in carbon emissions. Without high prices, oil and coal that are in the ground will tend to stay in the ground permanently. This is the serious obstacle that we are up against. Without oil and coal, natural gas and electricity products will quickly become unusable.
[7] A major problem with COVID-19 related shutdowns is the fact that they lead to very low commodity prices, including oil prices.
Figure 6. Inflation-adjusted monthly average oil prices through May 2020. Amounts are Brent Spot Oil Prices, as published by the EIA. Inflation adjustment is made using the CPI-Urban Index.
Oil is the primary type of energy used in growing and transporting food. It is used in many essential processes, including in the production of electricity. If its production is to continue, its price must be both high enough for oil producers and low enough for consumers.
The problem that we have been encountering since 2008 (the start of the latest cutback in trade in Figure 2) is that oil prices have been falling too low for producers. Now, in 2020, oil production is beginning to fall. This is happening because producing companies cannot afford to extract oil at current prices; governments of oil exporting countries cannot collect enough taxes at current prices. They hope that by reducing oil supply, prices will rise again.
If extraordinarily low oil prices persist, a calamity similar to the one that “Peak Oilers” have worried about will certainly occur: Oil supply will begin dropping. In fact, the drop will likely be much more rapid than most Peak Oilers have imagined, because the drop will be caused by low prices, rather than the high prices that they imagined would occur.
Amounts which are today shown as “proven reserves” can be expected to disappear because they will not be economic to extract. Governments of oil exporting countries seem likely to be overthrown because tax revenue from oil is their major source of revenue for programs such as food subsidies and jobs programs. When this disappears, governments of oil exporters are forced to cut back, lowering the standard of living of their citizens.
[8] What our strategy should be from now on is not entirely clear.
Of course, one path is straight into collapse, as happened after the Black Death of 1348-1352 (Figure 1). In fact, the carrying capacity of Britain might still be about 2 million. Its current population is about 68 million, so this would represent a population reduction of about 97%.
Other countries would experience substantial population reductions as well. The population decline would reflect many causes of death besides direct deaths from COVID-19; they would reflect the impacts of collapsing governments, inadequate food supply, polluted water supplies, and untreated diseases of many kinds.
If a large share of the population stays hidden in their homes trying to avoid COVID, it seems to me that we are most certainly heading straight into collapse. Supply lines for many kinds of goods and services will be broken. Oil prices and food prices will stay very low. Farmers will plow under crops, trying to raise prices. Gluts of oil will continue to be a problem.
If we try to transition to renewables, this leads directly to collapse as well, as far as I can see. They are not robust enough to stand on their own. Prices of oil and other commodities will fall too low and gluts will occur. Renewables will only last as long as (a) the overall systems can be kept in good repair and (b) governments can support continued subsidies.
The only approach that seems to keep the system going a little longer would seem to be to try to muddle along, despite COVID-19. Open up economies, even if the number of COVID-19 cases is higher and keeps rising. Tell people about the approaches they can use to limit their exposure to the virus, and how they can make their immune systems stronger. Get people started raising their vitamin D levels, so that they perhaps have a better chance of fighting the disease if they get COVID-19.
With this approach, we keep as many people working for as long as possible. Life will go on as close to normal, for as long as it can. We can perhaps put off collapse for a bit longer. We don’t have a lot of options open to us, but this one seems to be the best of a lot of poor options.
Notes:
*The CDC estimates are estimates of future deaths per 1000 cases. Thus, they probably reflect the learning curve that has already taken place. It is unlikely that they reflect the benefit of the new steroid treatment mentioned in Section 3, because this finding occurred after April 29.
**I have been told that disease spread can be a problem when using CPAP machines, however. Using ventilators at very low pressure settings seems also to be a solution.
“Britain’s grocers are gearing up for a massive price war amidst fears unemployment could rise above four million. More than 14,000 jobs were lost this week as a coronavirus jobs bloodbath hit the economy.
“The jobs cull has left supermarket bosses scrambling to show they are competitive on price as household budgets are squeezed due to the crisis.”
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8487925/Britains-grocers-gearing-massive-price-war.html?mrn_rm=rta
“A quarter of a million people [UK] are on the verge of tumbling into problem debt as a result of Covid-19, according to data from NatWest bank, seen by the Telegraph. Among the bank’s customers, 261,000 are on track to max out their available credit…
“This comes as separate research found that up to four million households could be in serious financial straits by the end of the month, as families plough through their savings to make ends meet.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/quarter-million-people-heading-debt-crunch-natwest-warns/
“A staggering 114,000 people [New Zealand] had “no payment required” flags on their credit files in mid June, data from credit reporting bureau Centrix shows…
” What are banks going to do when all these six-month mortgage holidays come to an end? …The reasons households needed those mortgage holidays are not all going to magically vanish in the next few weeks.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/121983140/ticking-timebomb-of-the-covid19-mortgage-holidays
How will New Zealand be able to import goods into the country, with a significant share of the workforce not really employed?
The cheapest foods will disappear from the shelves, perhaps?
“The world’s biggest pension fund posted a record loss in the first three months of 2020 after the coronavirus pandemic sparked a global market rout in the period.
“Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund lost 11%, or 17.7 trillion yen ($164.7 billion), in the three months ended March, it said in Tokyo on Friday. The decline in value was the steepest based on comparable data back to April 2008.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-03/world-s-largest-pension-fund-loses-165-billion-in-worst-quarter-kc5u8uhh
“US public pension funds have over the past three decades plunged deeply into alternatives such as private equity, venture capital and hedge funds… Yet all that high-priced talent has done little for their performance.”
https://www.ft.com/content/669c737a-1e91-4a9b-b334-3acab2e5b80f
Governments usually don’t fund their pensions, to any significant extent. Instead, they rely on current year taxes.
Of course, this wouldn’t work in Japan, with the population dropping as quickly as it is. So they have a large government pension fund to supplement what can be obtained from taxes on current workers.
“Countries that were already facing food insecurity before the pandemic began are particularly at risk for being pushed over the brink… we could see famine in multiple countries.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/07/03/how-has-coronavirus-pandemic-affected-global-poverty/
“Fewer than one in five of the 80 million migrant labourers allocated food aid by the Indian Government received supplies in May and June, according to new data.
“Eleven states – including Jharkhand, Odisha and Tamil Nadu – did not even distribute one per cent of the aid they were lifted, with activists fearing increased food insecurity over the upcoming months…
“Bureaucratic issues at a local level halted food from reaching those on the ground, explains Anindita Adhikari, of the Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) NGO.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/hunger-fears-millions-indias-migrant-labourers-go-without-food/
“‘Get me back to Caracas’: desperate Venezuelans leave lockdown Bogotá.
“Colombia’s migration agency has reported that daily entries from Venezuela have been cut by 80%, and that more than 71,000 have returned to the country, where they face a strict quarantine in squalid conditions on arrival.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/04/get-me-back-to-caracas-desperate-venezuelans-leave-lockdown-bogota
No country wants immigrants from anywhere else, any more.
“Bureaucratic issues at a local level” is a splendid euphemism. But we all know what it really means.
Graft? Corruption?
Poor devils.
And they say it was only wicked old Churchill who let Indians starve – it’s a tradition it seems.
But again, a stark illustration of human nature, maybe coming to the West also, in time.
I doubt we will be told how much the Indian death rate is rising from all causes combined. It will be hard to tell what deaths are from COVID-19, and how many are from inadequate nutrition and other diseases, such as tuberculosis.
“The U.S. trade deficit widened in May as the COVID-19 pandemic pushed exports to their lowest level since 2009, strengthening expectations the economy will contract in the second quarter at its steepest pace since the Great Depression…
“Exports tumbled 4.4% to $144.5 billion, the lowest since November 2009. Goods exports plunged 5.8% to $90.0 billion, the lowest since August 2009.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/usa-economy-tradefigures/us-trade-deficit-widens-as-exports-fall-to-lowest-level-since-2009-idUKL1N2E82Q4
“An astonishing 14 of the top 50 U.S. trade partners saw their total trade fall more than 40% in the most recent month, according to Census Bureau data released Thursday.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2020/07/03/14-of-top-50-countries-saw-us-trade-fall-more-than-40-new-data-shows/#2018853c2af3
A lot of these were countries we were importing oil from. Some were countries with tariffs or no planes to passenger flights to send exported goods on.
I am guessing these are physical goods amounts only. There might a change in services, too, such as foreign travel purchased by US consumers.
No. 2 Canada, down 44.56%.
No. 3 Mexico, down 53.58%.
No. 14 Italy, down 43.02%.
No. 16 France, down 51.73%.
No. 21 India — it had been No. 8 a year earlier — down 61.16%.
No. 26 Israel, down 51.47%.
No. 30 Russia, down 43.72%.
No. 31 Colombia, down 49.31%.
No. 35 United Arab Emirates, down 55.72%.
No. 45 Peru, down 54.85%.
No. 46 Norway, down 47.98%.
No. 47 Iraq, down 42.08%.
No. 48 Finland, down 47.72%.
No. 50 Ecuador, down 57.41%.
“Around 200,000 seafarers still can’t get home due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Expired and extended crew contracts are piling up. Now, some port inspectors are beginning to balk and detain arriving vessels.
““We are not just talking about a humanitarian crisis. This is turning into something that has a real impact on the global supply chain,” warned Belal Ahmed, chairman of the International Maritime Employers Council (IMEC), during a webinar presented by Capital Link on Wednesday.”
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/crew-crisis-to-trigger-ship-detentions-and-diversions/
““As the global economy and international trade entered into unchartered territory, confidence [in shipping companies] amongst both banks and owners fell,” said Ted Petropoulos, head of Petrofin Research. “The rate of loan requests and the loan throughput by banks fell as credit and risk departments by banks were hard put to support fresh lending at a time of such crisis and uncertainty and sought lending only to the strongest clients and credits often on stringent terms.”
“The pressure of the pandemic led to an increase in loan margins as perceived shipping risk rose and as banks started to face loan restructure requests from hard pressed clients, he added.”
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/bite-of-shippings-credit-crunch/
It is not just migrant workers who can’t get home; it also is the many people working on boats, shipping cargo over water.
“Some African leaders are nervous about taking up the debt relief recently offered by international lenders in the G20 group of countries to help poorer nations cope with the economic and fiscal devastation caused by the coronavirus crisis.
“Even discussing relief could downgrade international credit ratings and trigger bond repayment clauses on the Eurobonds that African governments have been issuing at an increasing rate.”
https://africanbusinessmagazine.com/african-banker/debt-relief-africas-agonising-dilemma/
“South Africa’s central bank has issued a 3.45 billion rand ($200 million) guarantee to bail out the Corporation for Public Deposits (CPD), a government investment arm hit by surging defaults at state agricultural lender Land Bank.
“The issue adds a further strain on state finances as the government props up its main power utility and airline, which were already struggling before the coronavirus crisis, and now faces rising defaults at the agricultural lender.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/land-bank-default-forces-south-160320228.html
“Zimbabwe is deep in the throes of a severe economic crisis… With a rapidly devaluing currency and hyperinflation last measured in May at close to 800 percent on an annual basis, most Zimbabweans have haplessly watched their earnings evaporate.
“Some cannot afford to feed themselves any more.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/tough-misery-crisis-hit-zimbabweans-200702073249927.html
Credit ratings are a big question mark. When do they start falling?
“Singapore retail sales in May suffered their biggest year-on-year fall since record-keeping began in 1986 amid a second month of circuit breaker measures… This makes for 16 straight months that retail sales have dropped.”
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/plunge-in-singapore-retail-sales-deepens-to-521-in-may-on-circuit-breaker-measures
““Singapore’s headline consumer prices fell 0.8% y/y +0.5% m/m sa) in May 2020, marking its third straight month of deflation.”
https://www.fxstreet.com/news/deflationary-pressure-remains-in-singapore-uob-202006240857
“Having just managed to get its coronavirus outbreak under control, Singapore is now facing a record-breaking outbreak of a second, equally deadly virus.
“Cases of dengue fever, a disease spread by infected mosquitos, are now mounting in the city-state, which has already reported 14,000 of them so far this year.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8487047/Singapore-faces-worst-outbreak-dengue-fever.html
Of course, this is a virus that doesn’t have any vaccine, and can’t have a vaccine because a mild case of one version of the virus makes a slight mutation of the virus worse.
Harry, dengue was my #1 fear when I lived in Singapore. Turns out there is a simple and mostly effective remedy: open windows. Flying insects far prefer stagnant air, as in climate controlled buildings.
Thus, the falling sales problem started a long time ago: beginning of 2019.
Lots of heavy weather in China recently,
A summer blizzard has hit Xinjiang, leading to the deaths of sheep and other livestock, and disrupting road traffic.
https://youtu.be/0SAR0abWr1Y
Xinjiang is up next to Mongolia. It is where the Uighur Muslims had been repressed.
If the Chinese government had any sense, they would set free both Sinkiang and Tibet, and perhaps also Heilungkiang. But empires rarely behave sensibly; that is why Britain fought useless wars in Afghanistan, South Africa, the Sudan, and Crimea.
https://www.oann.com/poll-80-of-nyc-eateries-unable-to-afford-rent/
“According to new data, New York City eateries are suffering major financial hardship due to ongoing coronavirus shutdown orders. A recent survey showed 80% of restaurants in the city were unable to pay their full month’s rent in June, while 36% failed to pay any rent at all.”
restaurants obviously have a better chance of survival if they own their buildings.
I wonder if big city restaurants perhaps are more renters than owners, and if small city and town restaurants are more owners than renters.
In the current situation, if a business has big overheads, then they are likely to be in way over their head.
We are in an economic winter of discontent, and the people who will make it through with the least suffering are those who can afford to hibernate until the spring.
The value of restaurant buildings as an “asset” has gone way down, I am afraid.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/we-need-live-it-white-house-readies-new-message-nation-n1232884
“After several months of mixed messages on the coronavirus pandemic, the White House is settling on a new one: Learn to live with it.”
words of wisdom from, of all places, the Trump Whitehouse.
He has four months and two main messages to send out:
1) The corona fraud is over. We aren’t playing that game any more. The economy is hereby open.
– this is vital because Trump can’t win by playing the enemy’s game because they will make things look as bad as they can right into elections day. And if the Democrats win, the flu will disappear from the newspapers the day after.
Trump has to show that he is on the side of jobs and economic recovery and he has to lead on that theme. If not, he is toast.
2) Domestic terrorist and rioters will be arrested and prosecuted. Leaders protect the people and enforce the law. This is always a successful electoral position to take.
Of course, whatever he does, the media will paint it badly, so he may as well do what is right.
Kim, you have it exactly right.
A virus that has gone global into 200+ countries will NOT disappear if the democrats win, lmfao.
Good point!
Whether it goes away, persists, or never really existed in the first place may not really matter – whoever controls the media controls the narrative (or, if you prefer, whoever controls the medium controls the message).
Thank goodness we still have several alternative news sites, blogs, etc. to get differing views and opinions out there (for now, anyway).
Cheers,
-GBV
That’s right. Perception trumps reality most of the time.
TO, the virus will not disappear, but the stories in the media will. Look at how the stories of Joe Biden’s evident mental deterioration have magically disappeared. And observe how the media a few months ago were claiming the covid deaths were all Trump’s fault, but note that now the death rate has dramatically decreased they are talking only about “cases”, a useful number that can be inflated almost indefinitely by a corrupt medical profession.
So the cases that are going higher in almost every state and in many countries are in cahoots to inflate the numbers? I don’t think that’s reality, actually. That’s people bending the situation to conform to their views aka confirmation bias.
“So the cases that are going higher in almost every state and in many countries are in cahoots to inflate the numbers?”
The simplest answer may be that as testing increases, cases increase as well?
Cheers,
-GBV
Unfortunately, that is the way it is.
Is it true that of all resources our human resources are the most important?
Be sure to watch to the end when some of those interviewed reveal their educational background and how they make a living.
Another excellent Blog from Charles Hugh Smith:
“How We Got Here: the Global Economy’s 75-Year Stumble to the Precipice”
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/07/how-we-got-here-global-economys-75-year.html
The post is OK. I would like it better if it had some graphs in it besides the one income inequality chart at the end.
This day the Lizard King of the Rock World Collapsed…
1971. Jim Morrison died taking a bath…..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fPO5aJBhPWg
Jim is laid to rest in good company
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YgNoPCBFNg4
Too bad he had some ideas for a next album after LA Woman……
You never know when the end comes down
1967 first album, and it was played constantly.
Went well with Augustus Owsley Stanley III creations.
For myself, the Who’s “Live at Leeds”….wore that one out, and out..
Humanity is on board the Magic Bus and crying “Too MUCH, The MAGIC BUS”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TmfQQC1bsf4
We are discovering the price of the ride is too much
Miles Mathis says:
“We now know that Jim Morrison was the son of Admiral Morrison, who was in command at the Gulf of Tonkin false flag (which the NSA now admits was a false flag). Just as Tonkin was staged, Jim Morrison’s career was staged by Intelligence. He was created and promoted by them, and his death was faked by them. ”
These days Jim is probably living in a gated aging hippy commune somewhere with Janice, Jimmy and the other members of the 27 Club. 😉
https://climatecrocks.com/2020/07/01/left-in-the-ground-another-major-oil-write-down/
Shell follows BP in massive write down of fossil fuel assets.
The Wall Street Journal’s assessment, below, is stunning.
“Large amounts of oil and gas are likely to be left in the ground.”
What a surprise!
That is unless the economy could rev high enough to warrant greater consumption of oil shifting to a high enough oil price to make those assets worth accessing.
I don’t know if anyone posted Charles Hugh Smith’s latest blog post but boy is it ever timely and sums up how people are being played by the Elites.
“Dancing Through the Geopolitical Minefield”
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/07/dancing-through-geopolitical-minefield.html
Good read, spot on regarding Imperial Rome and collapse….same here now
So, I wonder where the war is going to be? China? Iran? North Korea? Russia? All of them at once? (That would make for a proper WW3!)
The lethality of the virus (or lack of for most people) in no way justified the response.
A large proportion of the deaths in the UK and US were engineered for old people in care homes by deliberate lack of care, plus real data or questioning of the “terrible disease” narrative was suppressed. I have a relative working in the UK hospital system who confirmed this in discussions with senior medical staff there.
In Australia, normal average death rate = ~3,050 per week, virus deaths in the last month = ~2 (Yes, two), yet there are new lockdowns and some state borders are still closed!?? I’m stunned by how the sheeple have mostly bought into the “we must stay safe” narrative.
So what is really going on?
Take your pick from:
1. Disguising an economic collapse already underway.
2. More medical coercion and control and sales of (probably toxic) vaccines.
3. Excuses to give more free money to Elites, favoured corporates and banks.
4. Finding levers to use against Trump.
5. Distracting from imminent indictments relating to RussiaGate, FBI criminal activity etc (ref Jim Kunstler).
6. .
“The lethality of the virus (or lack of for most people) in no way justified the response.”
If you were guaranteed not to get killed in war, would you still be fearful of getting maimed? As we know in war as an analogy, about 10 times as many get injured as die. Same is true with this virus. There are people permanently losing part of their lung capacity, some going on kidney dialysis machines, others having cognitive problems, fatigue, extreme anxiety and last but not least, heart damage.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/86556
“Short- and long-term depression, anxiety, PTSD may be an issue post-ICU”
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirus-does-to-the-lungs
“Lungs, heart and other body systems work together like instruments in an orchestra,” Galiatsatos says. “In sepsis, the cooperation between the organs falls apart. Entire organ systems can start to shut down, one after another, including the lungs and heart.”
“Sepsis, EVEN WHEN SURVIVED, can leave a patient with lasting damage to the lungs and other organs.”
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-kidney-damage-caused-by-covid19
“Some people suffering with severe cases of COVID-19 are showing signs of KIDNEY DAMAGE, even those who had no underlying kidney problems before they were infected with the coronavirus. Early reports say that up to 30% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in China and New York developed moderate or severe kidney injury. Reports from doctors in New York are saying the percentage could be higher.”
“The kidney damage is, in some cases, severe enough to require dialysis. Some hospitals experiencing surges of patients who are very ill with COVID-19 have reported they are running short on the machines and sterile fluids needed to perform these kidney procedures.”
https://khn.org/news/mysterious-heart-damage-not-just-lung-troubles-befalling-covid-19-patients/
“As more data comes in from China and Italy, as well as Washington state and New York, more cardiac experts are coming to believe the COVID-19 virus can infect the HEART muscle. An initial study found cardiac damage in as many as 1 in 5 patients.”
So do you want to wear a mask in public places, social distance and wash your hands before you touch your face, or toss caution to the wind because it’s not that lethal?
Yes, we have no clue about the long term effects. 88% of people who show symptoms feel awful months later. Even asymptomatic cases are showing some lung damage. We have so little information. By sending our kids back to school to contract the virus we may be condemning them to a lifetime of medical issues that might not set in until they reach adulthood. We just don’t know. Focusing on short term death rates is idiotic.
Unfortunately, we need our economy to keep the economy going so that 7.8 billion of us can eat. If even a small share of workers stay home to try to avoid COVID-19, it kills the economy. Parents can’t work if schools aren’t providing “free” childcare. One of the big problems is failing businesses of all kinds, leading to many debt defaults.
Time for a new type of economy. It takes very few people to grow and distribute the food to the world.
What!?! It takes a whole world economy, in order for this to happen. It takes governments and businesses, for example. It takes the whole fossil fuel structure. In fact, extracting this fossil fuel must be profitable, which it is not at the present time.
Try growing crops on your own. You will discover that they are eaten by all kinds of pests. (Birds, rabbits, deer, insects, diseases). You cannot count on any kind of crop without a lot of planning/protection of various kinds. They likely need irrigation at some times of the year. If crops are planted over and over again in the same area, the soil tends to rapidly deplete of nutrients. Somehow, the waste products of humans need to get back into the soil (or a substitute must be found), if the soil is to remain fertile.
Somehow, a system must be put together that works out all of these details and then transports food around the world. It needs to preserve the food (keep it cold, pickle it, dry it, keep it in a low oxygen environment) until it is needed.
And then there is the problem with contagious diseases of all kinds. Planting big areas of crops leads to the spread of contagious diseases. Putting animals together in big pens leads to the spread of contagious diseases. Allowing people to get together in big buildings or in airplanes leads to the spread of contagious diseases. Putting people and animals together leads to diseases of animals transferring to humans. As population of humans/animals/planted crops rises, there is an increasing problem with contagious diseases. These mutate, making it virtually impossible to stay ahead of.
This is all looks and sounds very nasty, certainly.
But how do we know how much of it is true?
How do we know how much of the long term damage is due to the virus and how much is due to the treatment?
How do we know how much of the reportage and data are accurate?
The answer is, we don’t. Most of what most of us think we know about the virus consists of information we’ve been told by sources that are not noted for their honesty, accuracy or credibility.
We may believe that these sources are honest, accurate and credible, but we may believe these things not because we have evaluated or verified the sources or the information, but just maybe because we’re brainwashed. And I am not trying to put anybody in particular down by suggesting this. I freely concede that I’m as brainwashed as the next person, although possibly with a different brand of soft soap.
https://youtu.be/HYnHEmQeN6o
I agree Tim. Does anyone really know what is going on?
There are so many often bewilderingly contradictory accounts of the virus and its posterior effects from supposedly authoritative sources that it is quite impossible to arrive at a reasonable assessment of what its true legacy will be, however carefully one reviews it all.
Having said that, the majority of people have to get active once more, more or less throwing caution to the wind, or it’s game over economically in a very short time.
It was just the same in the age of the great European plagues: work and a real element of risk came to be seen as preferable to lock-downs and starvation for the masses. The very rich, and royalty, of course, isolated themselves.
The Mask of the Red Death by Poe was very much a payback to the uppity rich by a nasty plague who doesn’t care about class story.
“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
Time to revisit the 1964 movie with Vincent Price.
Ron Paul has been speaking out vociferously about the COVID-19 propaganda war, and I find him a lot more credible than most of the media. Perhaps this is because his bedside manner is so reassuring.
https://www.fitsnews.com/2020/06/29/ron-paul-media-is-lying-about-second-wave-of-coronavirus/
For months, The Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media kept a morbid Covid-19 “death count” on their front pages and at the top of their news broadcasts. The coronavirus outbreak was all about the number of dead. The narrative was intended to boost governors like Cuomo in New York and Whitmer in Michigan, who turned their states authoritarian under the false notion that destroying people’s jobs, freedom, and lives would somehow keep a virus from doing what viruses always do: spread through a population until eventually losing strength and dying out.
The “death count” was always the headline.
But then all of a sudden early in June the mainstream media did a George Orwell and lectured us that it is all about “cases” and has always been all about “cases.” Death, and especially infection fatality rate, were irrelevant. Why? Because from the peak in April, deaths had decreased by 90 percent and were continuing to crash. That was not terrifying enough so the media pretended this good news did not exist.
With massive increases in testing, the “case” numbers climbed. This is not rocket science: the more people you test the more “cases” you discover.
Unfortunately our mainstream media is only interested in pushing the “party line.” So the good news that millions more have been exposed while the fatality rate continues to decline – meaning the virus is getting weaker – is buried under hysterical false reporting of “new cases.”
Unfortunately many governors, including our own here in Texas, are incapable of resisting the endless lies of the mainstream media. They are putting Americans again through the nightmare of forced business closures, mandated face masks, and restrictions of Constitutional liberties based on false propaganda.
In Texas the “second wave” propaganda has gotten so bad that the leaders of the four major hospitals in Houston took the extraordinary step late last week of holding a joint press conference to clarify that the scare stories of Houston hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid cases are simply untrue. Dr. Marc Boom of Houston Methodist said the reporting on hospital capacity is misleading. He said, “quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now.”
In fact, there has been much reporting that the “spike” in Texas cases is not due to a resurgence of the virus but to hospital practices of Covid-testing every patient coming in for any procedure at all. If it’s a positive, well that counts as a “Covid hospitalization.”
We never fully recover from EVERY illness or injury we ever suffer from. Whatever scare story you promote about covid-19 will apply equally to lots of other diseases.
Nothing but vested interests in that list. Yawn.
Nature is cleaning up the unfit. Shouldn’t have so complacent with diet, shouldn’t have trusted that medical system.
Forget the pandemic, get ready for the panic
All of these stories are from the US medical establishment, which has a huge monetary interest in exaggerating the problem as much as possible. To be blunt: I don’t believe them.
“Exxon Mobil Corp. incurred an unprecedented second straight quarterly loss as almost every facet of the oil giant’s business slumped amid COVID-19 lockdowns that stunted economic activity.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/exxon-s-historic-losses-multiply-on-virus-driven-crude-slump-1.1459801
“Across the globe, the pandemic has tanked economies as the world faces its worst collective downturn since the Great Depression. Russia has been particularly hard hit by the twin blows of the coronavirus and the collapse in oil prices. Russia relies on taxes from the oil and gas sector for 40 percent of its budget.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/07/02/we-feel-absolutely-abandoned-how-pandemic-russia-tanked-economy-plunged-families-into-crisis/
Oil revenues are terribly important, even in an economy that is as diverse as Russia’s.
So, we can summarise:
1/ The new virus probably endemic, at best creating a very hostile environment for business, functioning of supply-chains, etc, for at least another year.
2/ Impending global banking crisis, on a scale we dare not imagine.
3/ Permanent and possibly ineradicable, large-scale unemployment at a level reminiscent – at best – of the 1930’s and 1970’s.
4/ Wide-scale destruction of businesses and even whole sectors which would probably have weathered the recession which we saw coming in 2019.
5/ Governments utterly at a loss to undo the damage they so casually inflicted with sudden lock-downs.
6/ Bewilderment, depression, frustration, and even signs of serious mental imbalance in the population, many believing the most implausible theories as to what is going on.
7/ The disturbing revelation that some groups are eager to politicise a health crisis, and also irresponsibly encourage civil disorder, arson and vandalism.
And all this with only a rather moderate disease, posing no great threat to the general population (we may be surprised by what it gets up to next, of course.)
For those who want a positive comment, well, it IS still all hanging together – just.
(And the crops here have finally got some rain after weeks of drought, which has cheered me up.)
An excellent round-up, Xabier.
For those feeling starved of good news, China is claiming turbo-charged growth in its services sector – but then China clearly sees the pandemic’s geo-political shake-up as an opportunity to stake its claim as the world’s pre-eminent superpower and its data was never very trustworthy, even at the best of times.
“The Chinese services sector grew at the fastest rate in more than a decade in June, according to data released on Friday.
“The Caixin/Markit services purchasing managers’ index rose to 58.4 from 55.0 in May, coming in comfortably ahead of consensus expectations for a reading of 53.2 and marking the highest reading since April 2010.”
https://www.sharecast.com/news/international-economic/china-services-pmi-hits-10-year-high-in-june–7563345.html
Oh, and I forgot the UK is now legalising previously ‘too dangerous to licence’ e-scooters as a ‘socially-distanced, Green Clean’ form of transport.
Most unintelligently, adults will be permitted to ride them on pavements as well as roads.
The innovative genius of the UK govt. is simply breathtaking!
Civilisational Crisis? Economic collapse? Species extinction? No! We have e-scooters!
Let’s wait for the mortality stats on that.
Is this good news, or comic news, or a tragedy? I no longer have any idea…….
As well as e-scooters it looks like Domininc Cummings will, as a living embodiment of Joseph Tainter’s theories, be wasting £100m on carbon capture technology:
“…Dominic Cummings is backing an experimental scheme to tackle climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2020/07/03/dominic-cummings-backs-100000000-scheme-12938258/amp/
It’d be better if they spent the money on inventing something that sucks the hot air out of politicians.
https://i.imgur.com/Xv2yTtV.jpg
It’s quite funny in Spain now seeing all the politicos muffled up wearing masks in meetings: if only we could stop them from doing anything as well…..
Yes: complex problem? Let’s add yet more unaffordable complexity!
Perhaps this is the tank ditch into which the lumbering bulk of each over-complex Civilisation has to fall?
Would anything change if every politician and planner had to read Tainter and assimilate his lessons – one of the greatest historians of the last few centuries, because he actually has something to teach?
I somehow suspect not. There is a profound sense of inevitability to all of this.
Similarly, Orwell and Aldous Huxley have much to teach us, expressed in the clearest and most precise language, about mass human nature, political psychopathy and the evils of industrialised totalitarian Utopian systems, but they haven’t had the slightest impact on the course of history, nor ever will.
All that happens is that we can think to ourselves ‘This is like 1984!’ or ‘Brave New World’ while we are all tagged, monitored, silenced and drugged.
It’s worth noting that Huxley decided to leave this world high on LSD……
And Orwell left us thanks to tuberculosis. If he died of that today it would probably be marked down to COVID-19.
George Orwell died in 1950 at the age of 46 from Tuberculosis. We don’t think of tuberculosis being a killer disease that recently. The major countries today are India, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and South Africa.
According to the World Health Organization:
The article says that the cost of extracting CO2 may eventually be as low as 100 pounds per tonne. Last year the UK emitted about 360 million tonnes of CO2, so it could all have been extracted for a mere 36 billion. Don’t hold your breath (although that would be a far cheaper was to reduce carbon emissions).
I’m in favor of not doing anything special to limit these emissions as the extra gas is plant food. Also, if it does end up warming the world, that’s good for the plants too as it will make the world wetter.
As I was saying to Greta:
https://youtu.be/4rnXQtUl8p0
My plants and trees LUV carbon dioxide!
“Despite the pickup in activity, Chinese companies continued to shed jobs, with employment contracting for a fifth month in June, and at a more rapid pace than in May.
“China remains on course for its slowest growth in three decades this year, as deep recessions in developed and emerging economies affect demand for exports of manufactured goods.
“Wang Zhe, senior economist at Caixin, said: “Although businesses were optimistic about the economic outlook, they remained cautious about increasing hiring, with employment in both the manufacturing and services sectors shrinking.””
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/03/chinas-stock-market-closes-highest-level-five-years-caixin-markit
Wow! China lack of success with a lockdown does not bode well for others choosing the same lockdown approach.
And that’s with just one lockdown !
We may even have the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam to add to this list at some point, adding to the problem with international trade.
Having now watched that three-gorges video posted by Kim, I am inclined to think that if the dam collapses, it is game over for China, and all that depends on China. The video stated there are 400-600M people, and about 60 nuclear power plants, downstream from the dam.
60 nuclear power plants is concerning.
There is a huge amount of shipping on the river. Also there are (used to be) many tourist boats. The Chinese like to visit their own country, in addition to having outsiders.
Downstream from the dam, and upwind from me! Yikes.
don’t worry.
the flood waters will keep the radioactive material cool.
just like the tsunami waves keep the spent fuel ponds cool at Fukushima.
Temporarily at least.
This is a link to some of the flooding downstream, on June 28.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/wuhan-submerged-in-water-as-floods-hit-downstream-yangtze-river_3410283.html
Yes, Actually it is a very accurate roundup summary and one to post and clip for future reference…well done Xavier!👍😜
“What is the credit market telling us exactly? Stresses lie ahead.”
https://think.ing.com/articles/rates-warning-signs-that-equities-have-it-all-wrong/
“…an accentuation of the economic crisis could tip more companies into insolvency – sending credit defaults at banks surging. Those spared will revisit credit lines in March and April they tapped in the initial panicked weeks of the crisis to pad their liquidity cushions.
“This type of «run» on credit, the bankers report, can lead to liquidity issues for banks – the interbank market threatens to dry up when institutes refused to lend to each other anymore (a phenomenon vividly demonstrated on a large scale in 2008/09)…
“…the fact the central bankers and financial supervisors have [this scenario] in their sights speaks volumes – and they are already issuing warnings.”
https://www.finews.com/news/english-news/41966-coronavirus-second-wave-liquidity-corporates-credit-lines-financial-crisis
We can all agree stresses lie ahead for credit markets. Most likely there will be stresses on the prices of assets that depend on the credit market (home prices, stock prices). Pensions will become harder to keep operating as well.
“Stresses lie ahead!” sounds like something you’d read in a fortune cookie.
You are right. People would like to know precisely what will happen when. Maybe it is fortunate that we don’t know.
If they don’t know there is zero chance of them rising to the occasion. Humans have been able to do great things–like evolving into our modern form–and I see no reason for them to stop there.
“Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.” From that famous fortune cookie maker, 莎士比亚.
“Latin American countries continue to struggle to control the spread of Covid-19, exacerbating uncertainty about the future of stay-at-home measures and complicating any assessment of the depth of the recession that regional economies will suffer this year.”
https://think.ing.com/articles/latin-american-latam-mexico-brazil-chile-recession-deepens-fiscal-challenges/
“Brazil’s government on Thursday revised its 2020 fiscal outlook, forecasting significantly higher debt and wider deficits due to the COVID-19 crisis, and said it will be over a decade before public debt falls back to last year’s level…
“Brazil is in for a prolonged period of severe austerity once the immediate crisis passes.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-economy-govt-forecasts/brazil-revises-2020-fiscal-outlook-sees-lost-decade-for-national-debt-idUKKBN2432CZ
“Despite comparatively solid financial indicators through the end of March 2020, Fitch Ratings revised the Long-term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) Outlooks on the large, private-sector Peruvian banks it rates (with the exception of Scotiabank Peru, which benefits from support) to Negative from Stable in late April.”
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/banks/unprecedented-crisis-challenges-peruvian-bank-ratings-02-07-2020
“A British judge rejected a claim by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro seeking the release of $1bn of the country’s gold reserves held in a Bank of England vault, a decision that sustains US-led efforts to cut off the authoritarian leader’s regime financially…
“[because] the UK government officially recognised US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president…”
https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/uk-high-court-rejects-venezuelan-presidents-claim-over-1bn-in-gold-held-by-boe-20200702
The title of this chart is “Continued rise of COVID-19 has not prevented gradual return to work.”
https://think.ing.com/uploads/charts/_w1200/Latam1.PNG
It seems like everywhere, people figure out that shutting down everything doesn’t really work. They need to somehow return to work.
“Where do we go from here?”
back to work.
“It is hard to imagine that the suffering and despair across the Middle East could worsen.
“But across Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq a new economic unravelling is continuing apace, threatening to throw the region into even deeper turmoil. In Lebanon and Syria state finances are collapsing and hyper-inflation is setting in, while in Iraq a dramatic collapse in oil revenues has depleted the budget…”
https://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_economic_meltdown_in_the_middle_east_how_europe_can_soften_the_i
“Tribal conflicts in southern Iraq have become more frequent and deadly in recent months, as security forces have been hamstrung by local power structures and distracted by the coronavirus lockdown…
“…the battles… threaten to destabilize areas around oil fields responsible for the large majority of Iraq’s production.”
https://www.iraqoilreport.com/news/tribal-conflicts-escalate-in-iraqs-oil-heartland-42913/
“Lebanon’s routine daily electricity cuts have increased up to five-fold in the capital Beirut in recent days following a corruption scandal involving Algeria’s national oil company that caused fuel shortages at power plants…
“A Lebanese judge ordered the arrest of 17 people in April after fuel imported from Algeria was discovered to be tainted.”
https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/lebanon-crisis-fuel-scandal-leaves-lebanese-in-the-dark-for-longer-1.1043191
“The Palestinian government on Thursday said it will pay its employees half of their salary for the month of May, amid the decline in the country’s revenues.
“Shukri Bishara, Palestinian finance minister, said in a news conference in Ramallah that the payment of half salary will continue in the coming period “as long as the tax revenues crisis continues.””
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestine-cuts-staff-pay-in-half-amid-financial-crisis/1897364
All of these countries are in terrible shape. A person wonders when the governments will be overthrown or disappear. Syria, Iraq and Palestine all have high birth rates, as well, putting pressure on available resources.
Conveniently forgetting that Iraq and Syria were destabilised by gratuitous US imperial warmaking, and Lebanon by gratuitous Israeli imperial warmaking.
Of course, we British, in our heyday, were far from being angels of light. But Edward Shepherd Creasy’s observation still stands: “All republics that acquire supremacy over other nations, rule them selfishly and oppressively.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/umass-nursing-dean-fired-saying-everyones-life-matters
taste of the future
First they pull the statues down, then they do the same to people and ruin their lives for ideological ‘crimes’.
Just a step away from gulags, always.
“Whenever they burn books, they will also burn people”. Heinrich Heine. In the original, “Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.”
Maybe people should say they support God’s sixth commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.
Strange!
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
he calculates June unemployment at 31.2%
So does Wolf……
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/07/02/never-before-have-i-seen-so-much-fake-unemployment-jobs-data-by-the-bureau-of-labor-statistics-while-labor-department-nails-it/
This is a chart Wolf shows. Not much improvement.
https://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/US-unemployment-claims-2020-07-02-continued-state-federal-NSA-stacked.png
the solution is simple population has too drop to rebalance energy per capita and it will the question is how many and how fast
The news report at 22:57 in the video above comes from New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television whic Wiki tells us is a television broadcaster, founded by Falun Gong practitioners (and aren’t they a determined, tyrant-resisting bunch).
I quickly duck duck goed (went?) this story. Almost no reporting on it. There was an Epoch Times article. There was just one short article on Fox a few days ago. I found a Breitbart article from July 2019.
So there is a global news blackout on this enormous story. This from a media that normally thrives on panic and fear-mongering. But for some reason (Chinese power) the mass media won’t report this.
The reporter is talking about the potential collapse Three Gorges Dam.
I put up a link earlier today that said (as of June 29), water was up to tops of cars in Wuhan, just from the excess water let out of the dam. They have a problem, just with this water.
The irony of this development is the dam was built primarily for flood control, which has been a problem for centuries. Now they have to release water causing flooding downstream due to apparent weakness, deformed center area of the dam as seen from aerial photos. It seemed odd when Three Gorges Dam was being built that they didn’t do some similar to Hoover Dam, in which it is curved inward towards the water load to best handle the pressure, much like an arch is curved to the weight above. But instead they built it straight across.
Similar to their strategy for world domination. Straight across. No nuance.
Those are 2 different types of dam. Arch dams and gravity dams are not built the same way and are chosen depending on the rock and valley shape. Rock dams are especially fragile in the case of floods because if water overflows, the dam can break. Arch dams needs really good foundation as stronger pressures are applied on the ground and narrow valley. Gravity dams like three gorge dam are more stable regarding earthquakes and ground characteristics. In this case, the only risks concerning dam failure is if it rips on the ground, or if you have water finding a path under the dam.
Regarding flood control, the fact that it’s not much efficient can come from the réservoir shape. It’s narrow, so the water it can store for 1m high of storage is smaller than for larger, round reservoirs.
the dam will have to actually fail for this to be a big story.
even then, the unfolding global depression, which is only in its first stage, is a far bigger story.
Frankly the dam collapse if ever it occurred would only be of significance to us if it were to affect Chinese production or lead to chaos and state collapse. One assumes a lot of farmland would go?
One has to avoid getting anxious over such events,as there are far too many to fret about -volcanoes, dams, glacier melt, earthquakes,repeated region-wide droughts – until they actually happen.
It was on my news sites—-
I’m on the left, but visit quite a bit of MSM.
We shall see- quite interesting and potentially destructive.
Thanks so much for posting this video. It’s very informative and not, as far as I know, exaggerating the dangers of this situation. Why isn’t the legacy media all over this story the way they were over California’s Oroville Dam crisis?
Duncan will be enjoying this! He believes dams should be removed to bring back natural watercourses, doncha Duncan?
I’m confident that this dam is going to fail catastrophically sometime. But even if it survives the current heavy rainfall, there is going to be a lot of flooding along the Yangtze this summer.
Thank you, Tim. I also believe most dams should be removed. If Egypt was the gift of the Nile, China was the gift of the floods. They were necessary to inundate the rice paddies that fed the people. China’s dams have destroyed the farmland upstream (more than a million farmers were ruined by the Three Gorges Dam) and disrupted the seasonal water flow downstream. You do not progress by destroying the lower levels of the hierarchy of needs in order to build the higher levels.
Of course, Egypt’s disastrous Aswan High Dam should have taught us this decades ago.
For background info, this video is well worth viewing too.
https://youtu.be/lDkTIHtvKac
Oddly “Crossroads with JOSHUA PHILI” videos started appearing whenever I visit YT, from about 4 days ago, I think he posts one video daily. I have never heard of CrossRoads otherwise, but the three gorges flooding has been the main them each day. And it does look pretty bad. I was beginning to wonder if it was a scam because no mention of the issue in the MSM. Other videos I have since watched seem to suggest the dams were not built as well as they could have been, and if they break then its curtains for Wuhan. Who knows.
Not my normal fare; a TED talk. But this is interesting as it includes a reference to Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov ( a Russian Imperial zoologist of Moldavian-Jewish origin best known for his pioneering research in immunology. In particular, he is credited with the discovery of phagocytes in 1882. This discovery turned out to be the major defence mechanism in innate immunity)
At about 6 min mark the young TED ‘talker/host’ mentions that Mechnnikov deliberately ingested cholera.. a number of times. Now thats a real scientist.
Also mentioned is that 90% of our cells are bacteria; antibiotics are my number one worst medical invention, and I imagine if someone correlated covid deaths with history of antibiotic use the results would be interesting.
The 6 min mark discusses role of our biome in healthy response to environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awtmTJW9ic8
The medical system is not a health system, that is why outcomes are poor where medicine prevails.
Similarly, the legal system is not a justice system.
The capitalist system is based on debt not capita
All these systems deduct from your future.
etc etc.
Choose your nouns/words crefully.
Doublethink has upended them
Lastcall, Antibiotics kill bacteria which kill you. See any leper colonies? Tuberculosis? Bubonic plague? The risk/benefit ratio for death from antibiotic use, I’d bet is almost zero in their history. They have literally saved millions.
Antibiotics are not selective in the bacteria they kill. They kill beneficial bacteria along with harmful ones. After a course of antibiotics it can take years for the beneficial bacteria in the gut, i.e. the ones that do the digestion, to recover.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, a course in antibiotics will do more harm than good. They should be used only as a last resort, I’ve taken antibiotics maybe half a dozen times in my life. Not once did they cure me of whatever ailed me. The harm they did is impossible to quantify.
Nice
Coincidentally I watched this last night. I am not sure that I would have understood the talk as well if I had not already read a book or two on the subject. It is a relatively new discipline for modern science to investigate (gut bacteria and just how important they are for good health, and their interactions with the brain), looks very interesting. But I think time has run out. Still worth watching though.
I was aware of the role of gut bacteria before listening to this talk. I am sure he is right.
He briefly flashed a list of prebiotic foods on his screen. (I expect that a lot of plant foods are prebiotic to some extent). This is a list of prebiotic foods from Healthline:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/19-best-prebiotic-foods
1. Chicory root – Often used as a caffeine free replacement for coffee.
2. Dandelion greens
3. Jerusalem artichoke
4. Garlic
5. Onions
6. Leeks
7. Asparagus
8. Bananas
9. Barley
10. Whole oats
11. Apples
12. Konjac root (also known as elephant yam)
13. Cocoa
14. Burdock root – In some parts of the world, people eat the root like potatoes
15. Flaxseeds
16. Yacon root – Root that looks like sweet potato but tastes like pear, from South America
17. Jicama root
18. Wheat bran
19. Sea weed
He also mentions the role of bacteria from aged milk. It seems like these would be the bacteria used in cheese and perhaps yogurt.
All communist/socialist governments are dictatorships, often of the worst possible kind.
This is because citizens are required to act in ways contrary to human nature and natural inclinations to satisfy attempts at social engineering.
The lockdowns are another great example here. Humans do not lockdown involuntarily, and so governments must institute them with force.
Every time the government uses force on its citizens you can rest assured it’s because ” it’s for your own good, or to save lives, or to save the glorious revolution”.
The question of evil thus arises in human governments, and this is where history has limitless examples. So it’s plain that we all need to operate within constraints to govern this evil inherent in human nature, but governments operate largely without constraint – and are a source of fresh evils on a daily basis. It’s also why governments only run monopolies- the NHS, the military, etc. They hate the free market which is a form of constraint on its participants. I’m in South Africa where the government appears to hate all businesses other than the nightmare state owned enterprises they run.
So firstly, this corona virus may have come from a government program to begin with, and the lockdown cures also come from government, but which will ultimately usher in the collapse of economies.
If that’s not an evil, I don’t know what is.
That’s not to say that there aren’t evils in capitalism, there are. If evil in the form of greed, suppression of competitors, rent seeking, is inherent in the human psyche ( and it is) then all human systems are vulnerable to evil and need to be regulated to stop it getting out of hand.
And this, as we all know, is a constant battle. It’s when government becomes the problem and not the solution that it gets totally out of hand.
All communist/socialist governments are dictatorships, often of the worst possible kind.
This is because citizens are required to act in ways contrary to human nature and natural inclinations to satisfy attempts at social engineering.
The lockdowns are another great example here. Humans do not lockdown involuntarily, and so governments must institute them with force.
Every time the government uses force on its citizens you can rest assured it’s because ” it’s for your own good, or to save lives, or to save the glorious revolution”.
The question of evil thus arises in human governments, and this is where history has limitless examples. So it’s plain that we all need to operate within constraints to govern this evil inherent in human nature, but governments operate largely without constraint – and are a source of fresh evils on a daily basis. It’s also why governments only run monopolies- the NHS, the military, etc. They hate the free market which is a form of constraint on its participants. I’m in South Africa where the government appears to hate all businesses other than the nightmare state owned enterprises they run.
So firstly, this corona virus may have come from a government program to begin with, and the lockdown cures also come from government, but which will ultimately usher in the collapse of economies.
If that’s not an evil, I don’t know what is.
That’s not to say that there aren’t evils in capitalism, there are. If evil in the form of greed, suppression of competitors, rent seeking, is inherent in the human psyche ( and it is) then all human systems are vulnerable to evil and need to be regulated to stop it getting out of hand.
And this, as we all know, is a constant battle. It’s when government becomes the problem and not the solution that it gets totally out of hand.
I am afraid you are right.
Saw a really excellent video over on George Gammon’s YouTube channel today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfX_GXPEUBQ
If you have time, check it out. I’m not sure that I agree with George’s point of view in the mid-to-late parts of the video, nor his conclusions at the end, but I really liked how he actually takes the time to try to offer a fair and comprehensive point of view of Marxism before levying any criticism against it. I wish more people would take the time (and intellectual integrity) to do this, as too often I feel like I’m reading articles or watching videos of straw man articles and/or misrepresentation of the opposing argument.
I have to admit though, I don’t think I’ve ever actually taken the time to really understand Marxist / Communist theory, and after watching this video I had to email George and tell him that I think he may have made me into a Marxist / communist (or at least more open to their points of view) 😐 Not because I’m some SJW on a quest for ultimate equality (I’m not), nor because I don’t believe the Fed is causing incredible wealth / income disparity (they are), but because I don’t understand why George assumes that free market capitalism doesn’t also create wealth / income disparity on its own, even without the help of the Fed.
While I’m not sure if they are good analogies, I compared a free market capitalist economy (as per Merriam-Webster definitions) to the game of Monopoly as well as the game of poker. My concluding question in my email to him was:
“So, unless I get incredibly lucky, the likely outcome in a fair and free competition (no tampering with the deck, bribing the dealer, having Dustin Hoffman count cards for us, etc.) is that you will eventually ‘capture’ all the capital (i.e. chips) and will be left standing as the winner. Thus, I ask you: what mechanism exists in real life to prevent this sort of outcome, aside from luck? Even if the Fed didn’t exist to exacerbate the situation, couldn’t this scenario play out where one capitalist / corporation could ‘capture’ all the capital, thus creating maximum wage / wealth disparity in a given economy (i.e. I have everything, you have nothing)? And if that is in fact the case, doesn’t that mean that only one of two outcomes are possible: a) the collapse of the capitalist economy; or b) a revolution to a new type of economic system?”
Perhaps I’ve missed something completely, but is there anyone here with a deep understanding of multiple disciplines of economic thought who can explain to me how free market capitalism doesn’t eventually get to the point of either collapse or revolution? Or perhaps Gail has an idea on how to look at this question from an energy perspective?
Thanks!
-GBV
It is lack of energy per capita that is causing incredible wealth disparity. If there were enough energy to go around, we wouldn’t need so much in the way of high tech solutions to try to make things work.
With this lack of energy, we need a huge amount of debt as well, to pay for capital goods that supposedly work, but don’t really, like wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles.
I just listened to the Alhambra Investments “Making Sense Eurodollar University” YouTube video that George references in his own YouTube video that I posted above. There’s a part where the interviewer says that he does’t believe in a limit to human imagination / ingenuity, and (sadly) Jeff Snider kind of agreed with him, even going on to say “there isn’t an end to capitalism!”.
Seems like Alhambra Investments doesn’t recognize / accept limits to growth… although maybe I misinterpreted Jeff’s response, or maybe capitalism can truly survive collapse (I’m not gonna hold my breath though).
Here’s a article on that same topic by Jeff, also espousing his view that capitalism is boundless, from last week:
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2020/06/26/a_massive_problem_that_has_them_searching_for_one_497350.html
Pretty sure you’re onto something there though Gail with lack of energy per capita contributing to incredible wealth disparity. In a post-collapse world, when energy per capita falls to next to nothing, I’m sure there’ll be some warlords running around to pillage and loot whatever is left, consolidating wealth more than we ever imagined possible. I just hope those warlords will be hiring, as I’m in serious need of a job…
🙂
Have Gun Will Travel reads the card of a man…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgvxu8QY01s
Cheers,
-GBV
“There’s a part where the interviewer says that he does’t believe in a limit to human imagination / ingenuity…”
two points:
the obvious one that without cheap abundant energy resources, not much can be accomplished no matter how much imagination/ingenuity. Someone imagined The Jetsons, but humanity is far short of the resources to get there.
the other one: human ideas are susceptible to diminishing returns. Perhaps some future Einstein v2 will think of something awesome, but I suspect that most of the best ideas have already been conceived.
It’s a mathematical certainty that one person will end up with all the capital. Anyone who has ever played Monopoly knows this. That’s why we have wealth distribution. That’s why we breakup up corporations that get too big. Communism is just another way of redistributing that wealth accumulation. You may reverse the accumulation every so often but you are never ever going to stop it. It’s human nature.
One needs to understand User Value and Exchange Value, and who takes that difference.
(Without doing any of the production).
This was a new concept when it arose in the City States in Italy in the 14th Century.
Along with double-entry bookkeeping.
Marxism results in capital distribution in theory only; the Pareto coefficient still applies.
There will always be an assymetry in capital distribution in the free market due to small differences in an agent’s knowledge, experience, or innate talent. Those small differences under the capitalist model can snowball into large differences due to ownership of equity. What Marxism proscribes is to deconsolidate the ownership of equity. The reality however is that this is unnatural for enterprise; some system has to actively force enterprise to act in an unintuitive, inefficient way and that role tends to be governmental.
The result is that where the power in a capitalist society derived from financial capital (which anyone can accrue to some extent, no matter their station or environment), you’ve substituted it with social capital, or proximity to and influence with the centres of government.
They are both capitalist frameworks really, but while liberal markets don’t pretend to be perfect, Marxism is by design utopian and proscriptive, and utopians can justify just about any god-awful practice as they’re creating “a better world”. This is the carrot used by newly empowered Marxist governments when they start short-sighted collectivization polices or anti-intellectual pograms (see Khymer Rouge). Luckily, I think we’re more likely to go down the societal disintegration route rather than end up with Marxism since that ideology still requires functioning supply lines/markets to subsist.
Lots of comments on why Marxism / socialism / communism / etc. are flawed, which I do appreciate, but I’m actually looking more for some insight on the terminal nature of capitalism, as I can’t see how it continues indefinitely (imagine a game of Monopoly that never ends… painful!).
Thanks!
-GBV
maybe, maybe not.
I can’t see how capitalism itself has something inherent that would cause it to reach some endgame where it discontinues.
yes? no?
otherwise, I think there are obvious external forces which surely will put an end to capitalism, such as population overshoot, virus/disease, unrelenting diminishing returns on resources, perhaps nuclear winter.
“I can’t see how capitalism itself has something inherent that would cause it to reach some endgame where it discontinues.”
You can’t imagine an individual, single corporation or multiple colluding organization capturing all the capital within the system?
I guess I can’t either, because I suspect capitalism as a system would collapse prior to that occurring, given all the social unrest that scenario would result in (i.e. people tend not to like being starved to death). The only way to avoid that outcome is to put some sort of mechanism that redistributes capital once any one entity captures enough of it (a solution that in itself violates the whole premise of the thought experiment I’m proposing – wealth redistribution is not free market capitalism), or for capital to grow indefinitely, forever.
Cheers,
-GBV
It isn’t the systems that are flawed. It is the human beings that operate within them. Human beings are, to varying degrees, greedy and selfish. That is natural. It is also common for humans to try to satisfy their greed and selfishness using lies and violence. This is what can be called “evil”.
Only people who do not believe in huiman evil can put their faith in the silly idea that economic systems can render justice.
Without recognizing evil as a primary fact of human life, the entire discussion is ridiculous.
If a man uses violence to “satisfy his greed” to get himself a loaf of bread to avoid starvation, is he “evil”?
“Evil” is a subjective term, Kim. Worse, it oversimplifies many of the outcomes we see in the world today, allowing us to blame others for outcomes we dislike or find unsavoury, rather than taking any accountability / responsibility for said outcomes (“we’re ‘good’ people who lead ‘good’ lives… It’s all those ‘evil’ people’s fault!”).
That being said, I think you’re correct to say that my little thought experiment is ridiculous – true free market capitalism has never existed, not will it ever, as life is not “fair”. Given the chance, I believe any entity in a free market capitalist system would quickly do everything they could to achieve regulatory capture or skew the system in their favour, as it is completely in their interests to do so.
Cheers,
-GBV
No, if a man is starving and kills to get food, that is not evil. Why not? Because to satisfy one’s basic needs is not “greed” nor “selfishness”.
It is only greed or selfishness to want more than one needs at the cost of others.
Thus, you see, the idea of evil is not subjective at all.
By “basic needs” I mean of course existential needs.
“It is only greed or selfishness to want more than one needs at the cost of others.”
And who will be the supreme-high arbiter of this? If the man takes two loaves, has he now become “evil”? How about three?
“It is only greed or selfishness to want more than one needs at the cost of others.”
By your definition, you (whether consciously or not) are an “evil”, “greedy” and “selfish” person Kim – your Western-living standard is much higher than that of the people starving to death in some parts of the world, and is only made possible by our constant exploitation of those poorer nations. Our whole existence is likely us having more than we need at the cost of others 😐
So, by all means, please be the first to end evil greed and selfishness by giving up your excess material wealth (including whatever electronic device you use to post comments here on OFW) so that others can have the meals they’re literally dying to have.
Cheers,
-GBV
GBV, two words: “creative destruction”. It was first described by Marx, but doesn’t work quite the way he described it. In brief: market leaders become big and wealthy, but they also become complacent. This creates opportunities for innovators to bring out decisively better products (often based on new technologies) that eat the market leaders’ lunch.
For example: who buys mainframe computers anymore? Who buys huge mass storage arrays? Who buys calculators? And in the near future, who will buy private cars when a shared vehicle is 5 minutes away by app? On the larger scale, how many major companies of the 1970s still exist? Even one of the biggest, Boeing, survives only by virtue of government largesse.
I’m not a zealot who claims capitalism is “infinitely renewable”. But I lived through enough nonsense in the UK to know that socialism is infinitely stagnant. For example, the UK National Health Service, which is still trapped in 1950. And is an endless money sink because two thirds of the money is spent on administration, not medicine.
Just on the point of creative destruction – as I understand it, it was first used by Werner Sombart who was influenced by Nietzsche (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-32980-2_4):
“This paper argues that the idea of ‘creative destruction’ enters the social sciences by way of Friedrich Nietzsche. The term itself is first used by German economist Werner Sombart, who openly acknowledges the influence of Nietzsche on his own economic theory. The roots of creative destruction are traced back to Indian philosophy, from where the idea entered the German literary and philosophical tradition.”
With regards to capitalism itself ending it probably begins with what Douglas Murray has been hinting at – i.e. when the youth cannot accumulate capital then it ceases to be a viable economic model – and we end up with the monopoly outcome stated above. Given that growth is over and tax revenues (in real terms) begin to shrink (see Tim Morgan) then I think Central Banks will continue to step it up from here.
What I can’t get my head around is why there isn’t a political party that sees and acts upon this – either in the UK of the US – and focuses on allocating excess debt to capital projects (infrastructure). I am not saying such a strategy is a silver bullet but it would at least create jobs, boost commodity prices, alleviate some of the indifference and potentially bring additional energy capacity on line. Perhaps it is because social media has driven everyone crazy…
Instead, in the UK, we have spent a lot of government debt on paying people’s mortgages (furlough schemes) and now the chancellor of the exchequer is talking about tax rises. OK, well let us see how that works out…
“market leaders become big and wealthy, but they also become complacent”
I think that may be more of a symptom of things like IP rights, regulatory capture, and other aberrations that occur in our pseudo free market economy. Ideally, they shouldn’t really exist in a true free market capitalist economy, as the most competitive and successful entity should continually reinvest capital to provide exactly what the consumer wants next (simultaneously starving their opponents of capital to do the same), until they reach the point of monopoly (i.e. no more competition).
Your comment was helpful though, as it got me thinking that the only reason our capitalistic system may have lasted as long as it has is due to the intervention of governments to create situations where an entity can become complacent rather than always being forced to be ultra competitive (i.e. delaying the emergence of a monopoly). I also think our anti-competition laws may be doing the exact opposite of what they were intended to achieve, but that seems par for the course with regards to many of the laws as they stand in the West today… 😐
Cheers,
-GBV
GBV, thank you for a most thoughtful response. i agree that complacency is a problem created by defects in the capitalist system, though defects grounded in flawed human nature (our propensity for rent seeking, for example). The rest of your post I shall contemplate overnight and perhaps reply to later.
I only know two ways to think. deductive and inductive. Think of Euclid’s elements and how proofs of further Truths can be deduced. Inductive is gathering data and seeing if we can find cause/effect relationships. Not like a defense lawyer who makes an assumption (innocent) and finds data to support it but more like a good detective. Marxism, inductively, has piled up 100 000 000 bodies. China, Soviet Union, Cambodia, North Korea. etc. Solzhenitsyn, a soviet prisoner among other things, wrote “The Gulag Archipelago” a look into the horror show of prison camps and how easy it was to get into one. If you read Marxism is good, read more.
Alas, Suqi, I know a third way to think, having seen it in action many times. It might be called “remunerative”: discover or conclude what you are being paid to discover or conclude. For example, conclude that a cheap drug is useless against a virus, because a big pharma company is paying you to suppress news about any existing competition to their patented expensive cure. As The Lancet did just last month.
The video contains nothing about the limits to growth, and the fact that we are reaching / have passed peak everything.
Exactly.
Perhaps Gail should write a new economic manifesto that proposes an economic model that actually incorporates debt, limits to growth, and other issues we talk about that seem to be ignored in modern economics. She could call it… OFWism! 😀
Joking aside, while none of the videos discuss energy constraints, it did discuss the concepts of limits to growth imposed by a particular economic system, and how Marx saw those limits as being inflection points (for lack of a better term) that either collapse the existing economic paradigm or result in revolution and a new economic paradigm. It was those concepts that fascinated me, as it was the closest thing to limits causing a persistent, systematic change I’d come across in any mainstream economic theory.
Cheers,
-GBV
I am shocked to find that no one here has heard of the guillotine. When some bi&*h says, “Let them eat cake.”, or similar, capitalism has reached its end.
IMO we need a guillotine on every street corner.
That is the Obamacare health plan, is it not?
https://www.newsweek.com/u-s-coronavirus-death-toll-may-higher-officially-thought-1514911
‘U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll May Be Almost 30 Percent Higher Than Officially Thought’
“The COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. may be almost 30 percent higher than previously thought, according to a study. Writing in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers said the estimated gap may partly be explained by an initial lack of widespread testing.
“The researchers estimated the number of undocumented COVID-19 fatalities by counting what are known as “excess deaths.” This is a common way for experts to measure the impact of a new infectious pathogen, such as a pandemic flu, when there is a lack of comprehensive testing, according to the team.”
30% is substantial and likely is at least that percentage higher for the rest of the world, except in China where it is likely multiple times what has been reported.
When you are totally discredited, double down on the misinformation. Forget it, JAMA, nobody believes a word the US medical profession says.
Or it may be higher because of untreated illnesses of other kinds.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/investigations/coronavirus-excess-deaths-heart/
Heart conditions drove spike in deaths beyond those attributed to covid-19, analysis shows
Fear of seeking care in hospitals overwhelmed by the pandemic may have caused thousands of deaths, experts say
Article shows charts showing spikes in heart disease and diabetes deaths in many places, especially New York City. Cases of these kinds did not show up in Emergency Rooms, for fear of catching COVID-19. Instead, they died at a higher rate at home.
Saudi Arabia has threatened to ignite an oil-price war unless fellow OPEC members make up for their failure to abide by the cartel’s recent production cuts, delegates said.
Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman issued the ultimatum in recent weeks as he asked Angola and Nigeria to submit detailed pledges to carry extra oil-production curbs, delegates said.
The hard-line stance from OPEC’s de facto leader risks a new flare-up within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. It comes just months after Saudi Arabia waged a price war against longtime oil-market ally Russia following disagreements over how to supply global markets as the coronavirus spread.
The early-March decision triggered an immediate crash in oil prices, which fell 25% in the U.S. to their lowest levels since 2016. The abrupt collapse forced Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Nigeria and other oil-producing nations to consider budget cuts, while U.S. producers moved to slash their spending. In April, the Saudis and Russians resolved their differences, joining in a 23-nation effort to reduce output by 10% to shore up prices. The group extended the agreement on June 6.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudis-threaten-new-oil-price-war-with-opec-brethren-11593619230
I am not sure that there is any way to obtain higher oil prices. Cutting production doesn’t really do it. Someone else raises their production in response. Or debt defaults bring overall demand down, as well as oil prices.
Many U.S. oil and gas drillers were already living on borrowed time even before the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to heavy borrowings from banks over the past years. But the crash in oil demand and the collapse in oil prices shortened the time for indebted companies to be able to kick the can down the road, accelerating the upward trend in bankruptcy filings.
Analysts and legal professionals expect more energy bankruptcies in the U.S. shale patch in the coming months even as WTI Crude prices more than doubled to nearly $40 a barrel by the end of June from the average in April.
The number of filings for protection from creditors in the energy sector has been the second-highest so far this year, second only to bankruptcies in the retail and entertainment industry, according to Bloomberg estimates.
In the last week of June alone, several companies filed for Chapter 11 protection, including fracking pioneer Chesapeake Energy, the biggest victim of the price crash so far and the most prominent example of the U.S. shale industry’s modus operandi of the past few years—borrow to drill.
Chesapeake has reached an agreement with creditors to restructure some US$7 billion out of its US$9 billion debt.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/40-oil-isnt-enough-prevent-wave-shale-bankruptcies
“The coronavirus pandemic and the oil price collapse are accelerating the pace of bankruptcy filings in the U.S. shale patch this year. The number of filings had already started to trend up in 2019 after a drop in prices in Q4 2018, but this year, the U.S. energy industry is setting some grim records as indebted cash-strapped producers face a day of reckoning from the borrowing exuberance of the past years.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/40-oil-isnt-enough-prevent-wave-shale-bankruptcies
Cheers,
-GBV
I can believe that we will see more shale patch bankruptcies. The question is: After the bankruptcy, with the owner/new owner keep drilling? Someone will lose out on debt, but what else will happen?
I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago – I believe it was a Chris Irons Quoth the Raven podcast, but I can’t remember – where the guest was talking about the restaurant business. I believe he suggested a general rule of thumb in the restaurant industry based on his experience: until a restaurant has gone bankrupt at least three times, it’s probably not profitable. If I remember it correctly, the (general) idea I think he was trying to get at was that the margins that could be made on a restaurant were so low that you had to wait until a restaurant went bust so many times that you could get the building and furniture / equipment / appliances at such a discount that you could actually make a profitable go at running the place.
Maybe this idea is applicable to some of the bankruptcies we’re seeing today – i.e. after a bankruptcy or two, an investment may finally pan out as the related assets / equipment / land / etc. finally fall to a reasonable enough price that some profit can be made (assuming debt levels are kept low)?
Cheers,
-GBV
Probably true. When a friend left banking he looked into starting a restaurant in London, aiming to be very good mid-level. But the margins! ‘How do they ever make anything in this business?!’
The shrinkage in size of portions and rise in cost became noticeable several years ago in London, but take that too far and customers simply feel cheated.
Perhaps it works that way. Get the land for an oil/gas investment for nothing, and perhaps it can be made to work.
Would that mean that if we abolished all debt, prices couldn’t get to the point where three bankruptcies are required for any business to be viable? 🙂
I don’t know much about it, but I thought I read something somewhere once about St. Thomas Aquinas making usury out to be a big sin in the 13th century… right around the time you had the Dark Ages 😐
Perhaps debt and balance go hand in hand… too much, or too little, becomes a problem?
Cheers,
-GBV
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Secunda Pars, Quaestio LXXVIII.
“Europe’s businesses are desperately hoping they can save something of the summer holidays as coronavirus infections drop and lockdown measures are loosened across much of the continent…
“As José Luis Yzuel, who represents an association of Spanish hotels and restaurants, says: “If the tourism industry can recover 50 per cent of last year’s sales that will be a triumph — but then if you compare something with complete annihilation, anything looks good.””
https://www.ft.com/content/f20f0b0a-200d-40ff-8d26-894dc97dc6c0
“British tourists making a quick get away to Spanish holiday resorts have found themselves charged a ‘covid tax’ by bar and restaurant owners.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8482455/Cornavirus-sends-cost-Spanish-holiday-soaring-Brits-faced-paying-one-euro-drink-more.html
“A hotel beach bar in Bodrum, Turkey has been found charging 369 lira ($A78) for a doner kebab and 550 lira ($A116) for guests who want to swim in the sea.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/travel-stories/turkey-holiday-bodrum-tourists-charged-fee-to-swim-in-sea-photo/news-story/6db9c5a0fb6eafd85db0a035770e5163
Foolish move if you are known as a cheap destination – which Spain ceased to be many years ago of course, but the memory lingers.
And US citizens cannot visit all. It is hard to believe that next year will be a whole lot better. Will these businesses still be operating?
On a roll today! Read about this man a while back…first powetball lottery winner
Be careful what you wish for…
https://news.yahoo.com/powerball-winner-scandal-jack-whittaker-171720251.html
But he quickly fell victim to scandals, lawsuits and personal setbacks as he endured constant requests for money, leaving him unable to trust others. Several times, he was quoted as saying he wished he had torn up the ticket.
His wife left him. A friend of his drug-addicted granddaughter was found dead at his home in 2004. Three months later, his 17-year-old granddaughter was gone, too.
His daughter, Ginger Whittaker Bragg, died in 2009 at age 42 after struggling for years with cancer.
And in 2016, he lost a Virginia home to a fire.
He struggled with drinking and gambling. His home and car were repeatedly burglarized. At a strip club, thieves broke into his Lincoln Navigator and stole a briefcase stuffed with $245,000 and three $100,000 cashiers’ checks.
That time, at least, he caught a break — the briefcase was later found, with the money still inside.
Whittaker was charged twice with driving while under the influence and sued repeatedly, once by three female casino employees who accused him of assault.
In a 2007 interview with The Associated Press, Whittaker knew his legacy was already written.
“I’m only going to be remembered as the lunatic who won the lottery,” Whittaker said. “I’m not proud of that. I wanted to be remembered as someone who helped a lot of people.”
Dead at 72 years old. And won 415 million at age 55
Radix malorum est cupiditas. One of the (many) beauties of the Vulgate is its brevity, and those four words say a great deal.
Persian proverb: ‘I’ll turn you into a lion, if that’s what you want: but are you ready for all the problems of a lion?’
Xabier, if memory of my time in Africa serves, lions have very few problems. The problems are taken care of by the lioness.
Gail is right again, probably can not curtail the human hoard of OVERSHOOT…here are examples..
As Bernie Ecclestone, 89, welcomes a fourth child, we chart the older celebrity dads’ club
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/bernie-ecclestone-dad-again-89-older-celebrity-dads-club-
102536616.html
The former Formula One boss and his wife, Fabiana Flosi, 44, welcomed a son.
“We have a son named Ace. I am so proud,” he told Blick magazine about the new arrival.
Ecclestone already has three daughters with his previous partners.
His eldest, Deborah, 65, was born to his first wife Ivy Bamford before welcoming Tamara, 35, and Petra, 31, with his second wife Slavica Radic.
The new dad also already has five grandchildren.
Ecclestone isn’t the only celebrity to join the older dads’ club.
Sure it might be more common for men of a certain age to be new grandfathers than new dads, but that hasn’t stopped a whole host of celebrity men embracing fatherhood in their 50s, 60s, 70s and even, like Ecclestone, their 80s.
Like…
Alec Baldwin, 62, and his wife Hilaria Baldwin, 36, are soon to become parents again. The couple announced they are expecting another child together.
The couple already have four children – Carmen, six, Rafael Thomas, four, Leonardo, three, and Romeo, two. Baldwin also has a 24-year-old daughter, Ireland, with ex-wife Kim Basinger.
So, refraining from multipling just allows others to do so and pass on their traits to their children of doing likewise…ugh
A large share of the current population explosion is in Africa and the Middle East. The UN publishes estimated Net Reproduction Rates by country and by area for five-year periods. For the period 2015-2020, the places with reproduction rates higher than 1.00 include:
Africa – Overall Rate is 1.903.
Middle Africa is 2.309
North Africa is 1.497
The Middle East has a very high birth rate. There is no aggregate given by the UN. These are a few countries with problems:
Iraq 1.703
Israel 1.473
Palestine 1.735
Syria 1.351
Yemen 1.715
The “Stan” countries of Central Asia have a net reproduction rate of 1.283
Also Pakistan has a NRR of 1.543
Afghanistan has a net reproduction rate of 1.984
India is close to balanced at 1.002
Mongolia has a NRR of 1.387
Phillipines has a NRR of 1.198
Oceana excluding Australia and New Zealand has a NRR of 1.544
A few low countries:
Southern Europe is especially low, with an average NRR of.649
This would include Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, among other places.
Japan’s rate is .662; China’s rate is .780
The US is.855; the UK is .846
Hint:
We added 83 million to the planet last year.
The population of Germany.
Thank you you OLD Guys who are be oming DAD DADS😳🚀😘
Younger wives want ‘anchor babies’, not for a passport but the Cash and the old boy is probably amazed he can still achieve it. So funny.
Thanks for the headline need, Harry,…most disturbing…
Here is a human interest story that caught my eye…
https://news.yahoo.com/feud-ends-gunfire-pastor-kills-210431443.html
Miami Herald
Feud ends in gunfire as pastor kills two in front of his daughter, Las Vegas cops say
Neighbors say a long-running dispute between two Las Vegas homeowners began as a complaint over nude hot-tubbing activities, the Las Vegas Sun reported.
Police say the neighborhood feud ended Thursday when Andrew Cote, 36, killed his 71-year-old neighbor and her friend with a shotgun, KVVU reported.
Cote’s young daughter was present when Cote shot neighbor Mildred Olivo and her friend Timothy Hanson over a brick divider between their back yards, KLAS reported. Cote told police he “noticed Hanson was still moving and shot him in the head a second time.”
When police later asked Cote why he didn’t take his daughter inside and call 911 before resorting to gunfire, he told them “words to the effect of ‘not tonight,’” KLAS reported.
Cote also told police he opened fire because he “was in fear,” but no weapons were found on Olivo or Hanson, who had reportedly been shouting at Cote’s daughter, according to the station.
He is listed as the pastor of Iglesia Bautista De Fe Y Amor, an independent Baptist church in Las Vegas, on its website.
Olivo had reportedly sprayed Cote and his daughter with water from a hose earlier in the day, KVVU reported. Cote said he had called police then, but nothing happened.
Seems this was going on for some time and Votes even built a brick wall😎 between his place for more privacy….
Temper, temper…sad and just imagine when the real🤢 issues arise between neighbors arise …
Not good
You are welcome, Herbie. I am coming across the odd optimistic article, so this may cheer you up:
“By all suppositions, the Covid Crisis should have butchered the economy. Fear, panic, and hysteria gripped even the smartest, most logical people like no other time in recent history, for good reason: according to every textbook, the pain should have been intolerable.
“Instead, everyone got a check. It’s truly extraordinary. To many, it is still – in a very literal sense — incredible. Policymakers around the world, led by the U.S. in both our swiftness and size, decided to stop calamity in its tracks. Now, supported by the most disruptive technology companies since the invention of the internet, the stock market came back.
“This was only possible because the marketplace of investors around the world continue to acknowledge America’s economy as the most stable…
“America is on top… Being able to sidestep economic collapse means saving livelihoods; the ability to stop a depression is the economic touch of God.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverrenick/2020/07/01/the-second-quarter-comeback-shows-america-has-the-economic-touch-of-god/#5cebbacd19a8
For how long?
I agree…it use MOST Extraordinary event in our lifetimes and indeed ALL of human History and likely will not be repeated again….sorry, seems they are planning another round, at least here in the United States.
You know, I’ve been around a long time and seems odd folks are so complacent…
Record debt, record unemployment, an out of control pandemic, folks not paying rent or mortgages or credit cards, Bankruptcies, and more layoffs looming…
Yet Stock market booming! Now a second wave ….V shape recovery ….
Nope, another handout coming by the Government and like a fella said we are going to expect these on a regular basis….when will it end?
This is more comedy than good news story. In both the UK and the USA above all else what is keeping the system going, badly, is furlough payments. In the case of the UK, those are to almost half the ‘working’ population. Once these stop, I doubt too many Americans will think ‘America is on top’. But you never know.
“This is more comedy than good news story.”
As you may have surmised, Minority Of One, my tongue was firmly in cheek.
Why should nude hot tubbing on ones private property behind a brick wall be a cause for complaint? But yes, the pastor of an independent baptist church decides to destroy the infidels. “Faith and Love”, made manifest.
The real-world examples of ‘living with less’ are just mounting up now aren’t they? Mass redundancies, failing economies, the spectre of starvation. Inspirational!
The Guardian recently published an excellent article on the exhausting struggles of ordinary people in Zimbabwe just to get to work, due to the imbecilic govt. lock-down which has deprived them of adequate transport.
Women in particular now have to hitch-hike very dangerously, risking robbery, rape and murder. But if they don’t, they and their children will starve. And everyone has to squeeze on to the very few over-crowded buses which the state will still permit to run.
But I suppose it’s all so much more ‘meaningful’ and takes them out of their spoiled comfort zone enabling them to develop profound spiritual qualities like exhaustion and permanent anxiety.
Maybe Charles Hughes Smith could get away from his keyboard and see a bit of the real world…..
I don’t know Mr Charles Hughes Smith, but I guess “living with less” doesn’t apply to Zimbabwe people , nor poor people in western world who lost their incomes and are left with nothing.
“living with less” is an utopian idea that could save us if only we would all be willing to share what is enough to have a satisfying and meaningful life. This a alas not the nature of human beings.
I always wonder which countries are going to bail out all of the poor people around the world.
Hard to do when you are living in an island paradise called Hawaii.
I think you’re attacking a straw man there by pointing out examples of the collapse of the current system – something I think almost everyone on OFW recognizes is inevitable? – and suggesting it is the outcome individuals like CHS talk about when the speak of an “inspirational” post-collapse world.
Trying to maintain a system that no longer functions and is on the verge of dying is not the same as the new beginning of a community / society that recognizes limits and cooperatively tries to do “less with more”.
Again, I haven’t seen anyone suggest collapse is avoidable – that process needs to occur before anything new (and even remotely stable in the longer term) can begin. In fact, I’m constantly baffled by the hypocrisy I witness here at OFW – a blog that focuses on the inevitability of collapse due to energy / resource constraints, but where every third comment seems to suggest (sometimes subtly, sometimes not) that BAU should be extended at all costs and that any action taken now (especially those which may jeopardize any remaining BAU we have left) to try to improve the chances for those is a post-collapse world is folly.
I sometimes wonder if, by dismising anything can be done to improve our chances in an uncertain future, people here are reinforcing their belief that they have no accountability / responsibility for the future and thus can kick back and enjoy BAU for as long as possible.
“Everyone’s gonna die and it’s not my fault, so f*ck it, might as well spend the rest of my time enjoying BAU and the smug intellectual superiority I feel by sh*tting all over any ideas of what I can do to improve my future and the future of generations to come!”
Apologies Xavier – I’m kind of using this response to vent about a trend I’ve witnessed here at OFW in general, and in doing so have kind of sh*t all over you as if you were the only one guilty of this (you’re not, and I’m sure I’ve even done the same on occasion during my time here at OFW).
Cheers,
-GBV
excellent!
>>any ideas of what I can do to improve my future and the future of generations to come!
I am inclined to think that we have had millennia to improve our future, change our ways, and so far, nothing. The general population is not interested. We are donkeys run by donkeys. Probably our last chance was post-WW2.
As an example, here in the UK we don’t have much native woodlands left, typically they are small, scattered, and deteriorating due to invasion by non-native species and over-grazing by 4 different species of deer. But what little we have left we are determined to get rid of. The new HS2 rail project will partially or fully destroy 108 of these woodlands. They are being cut down now, before the real work starts, before the project gets stopped. Damned few are interested in the future of civilisation or the planet. As was sung in the Grizzly Adams theme tune:
Walkin’ through the land
Where every living thing is beautiful
Why does it have to end
We are calling, oh so sadly
On the whispers of the wind
As we send a dying message
GBV I think we ALL use this excellent site to vent a bit! I only just hold myself back from ranting about the UK government and mankind in general at great and pointless length.
But I will explain why I really can’t stand CHS and his ‘richer fuller life’ rubbish: my grandmother , an innkeeper’s daughter, was born into a real peasant community, Eugi, in the Spanish mountains in the 1920’s, where in many ways life hadn’t changed for about 200 years, and some of the clothing was 18th century or even Neolithic (sheepskin cloaks, shoes). Ox carts of the same pattern the Romans knew were still in daily use, and so on.
Sadly she died rather young, so I never had the chance to discuss these things with her. She,a great beauty, helped saved the life of my grandfather, an aristocrat, in the Civil War, and left that world anyway.
But I have watched some interviews with elderly village people who had known that time, and whenever the interviewer asked ‘What was it like in the past?’ the old people pulled faces , shuddered and said ‘Horrible, hard, so hard’. Go back to that ‘richer fuller life’ in a real community’? No way!
The reality is that we will be living trapped in a collapsing global industrial system which will physically – if not spiritually – take us down with it.
No doubt we would happily exchange that fate for the hard life of the old Basque mountains,endemic typhus, TB, regular semi-starvation, and all, – but it is out of reach. We destroyed that world with modernity.
Personally I incline to telling people to man up for a rough ride, rather than promising them impossible ‘Transitions’ to something better. Maybe that’s the old peasant blood in me?
Re: old people speaking about how “hard” the old days were, consider that they lived through one of the largest and perhaps quickest explosions of “wealth” ever known in human history, so it kind of make sense that they would remember their (tangible) past as “hard” – things are far easier (though more complex) today. But they’re only reflecting on their material wealth / physical ease of their life, not of the value of the community, shared living experiences and simplicity of the lives they used to have.
For those of us that survive collapse, it will likely be the other way around – in a few decades, we’ll look back at how easy our physical lives were, but if you ask us about our community, our sense of family, the complexity of our lives, our freedom of thought / speech, etc., all these (intangible) things may be improved in the future.
Which leads me to my next comment…
Re: rough ride vs. impossible transition to something better, I see it as both. It will be a rough ride as we transition to a freer (intangible) but more difficult (tangible) future. But perhaps I should stop using the word “better”, as I guess how good or bad something is depends on the subjectivity of the person judging it.
Cheers,
-GBV
A good number of peasants I came across where I lived in Italy were happy to give up damp ruins and photogenically worm-eaten furniture to idiot Anglos: they wanted reliable central heating and Formica that was easy to clean. The old places spoke to them of the endless toil and want of earlier times.
Xabier, I enjoy all your rants. Don’t stop.
“people here are reinforcing their belief that they have no accountability / responsibility for the future and thus can kick back and enjoy BAU for as long as possible.”
GBV, on this planet no form of life is concerned with the future of its own species. The motto of life is to grab what you can and move on, “following the energy gradients”, as Megacancer James would put it.. Why should the human species be any different?
OTOH, OFW is a den of antropological pessimists. I, for one, don’t believe in human agency. Humans are not much more than puppets (of other or themselves). Any “punch and judy” show summarizes prety well The History of Humankind. And this show is now as stale as last sunday breakfast. Time to curtain close for IC. What’s next, not even my dog (who knows it all) can say.
Xabier,
The world is still a better place today than it was ten years ago, part of what is happening is exactly what some of the elites, e.g. Greta as an example only, have been preaching for years, echoed by MSM and even the Catholic Church which I respect greatly. Even the ancient Bible has a passage relating to a camel passing through the eye of a needle. We are going green, it is an experiment, the skies are bluer, the air less polluted.
Zimbabwe is now a “domestic” economy, they stopped being a colony and one of the breadbaskets of Africa. They have very few if any white farmers anymore, they have what they wanted.
Women in the US are now seeking to become combat marines, enter the special forces, why should women have to put up with the various crimes you mentioned; they only have to man up to stop all this. Buses don’t run, why don’t these women run the bus lines?
Spiritual, “relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.” Exhaustion can be spiritual in a manner of speaking, look only at all the runners in our developed world, they run for fun to exhaustion. This is a bit argumentative but if one is always comfortable, one does not grow. Historically we had religion to help us deal with anxiety, stress. The atheists relieved us of that weekly stress called worship, now we have drugs and endless commercials selling us things we don’t need, well, back to paragraph one.
Ad hominem attacks are not very helpful though all of us sometimes get worked up at the keyboard. It is a time of change, we all know it is a finite world, what we are seeing is the end of the infinite world, what did you expect? Not a few here already are making popcorn to watch it play out. Charles may have bugged out to a simpler world, some might envy his planning.
Dennis L.
If I criticise CHS it’s not ad hominem, it’s his ideas.
Then again, he does set himself up as an authoritative commentator, so ‘fair game’?
I’m a cheerful person day to day, but sometimes I can’t stomach such crap about serious matters.
“The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a $150 million cut to the LAPD’s budget for the next fiscal year, a move that followed activists’ mounting calls to “defund the police.””
https://abc7.com/los-angeles-city-council-votes-to-cut-lapd-budget-by-$150-million/6289037/?fbclid=IwAR1KafwyLJzpRLHt31ubQC-mBah6r0K-vookEC3kZ89Bqps4MTFeoFgd7aI
“Africa will need more financial help to avoid “long-lasting, terrible consequences” from the coronavirus pandemic, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, said as the fund predicted a region-wide contraction of 3.2 per cent this year, far worse than it had forecast just 10 weeks ago.”
https://www.ft.com/content/8e057a2a-88a2-494f-81b2-a5ec91ebe4d9
“South Africa’s economy was pushed deeper into contraction in the first quarter of this year, even before the full force of the coronavirus pandemic hit Africa’s most industrialised economy.
“Gross domestic profit fell 2 per cent in the first three months of the year, compared with the last quarter of 2019.” [The South African economy had already contracted by 1.4% in Q4 2019, following a contraction of 0.8% in Q3, so this is heaping pain on top of pain].
https://www.ft.com/content/683579dd-7e9b-4592-9a97-97794725b220
“Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Sudanese cities on Tuesday despite a coronavirus lockdown to demand a transition towards democracy after the removal of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir last year.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/sudan-protesters-return-streets-demand-reforms-200630154320885.html
“A large death toll was feared as protests rocking Ethiopia’s largest ethnic region continued Wednesday following the slaying of a popular singer, but details were scarce because of an Internet shutdown that made communication difficult.
“A police chief from the Oromia region, where most of the unrest took place, told Agence France-Presse that 81 people were killed in the past two days, including protesters and security forces. In a speech, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said only that “several” died.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/ethiopia-protests-spark-internet-shutdown-and-fears-of-high-death-toll-after-popular-singer-killed/2020/07/01/ff18e5de-bb76-11ea-97c1-6cf116ffe26c_story.html
All of these areas are terribly poor to begin with. They risk part of the population facing starvation.
“The World Bank projects the recession in Latin America and the Caribbean will be the worst downturn since reliable data began in 1901…
“[It expects a] gross domestic product contraction of more than 7% for 2020, making it worse than any crisis of the past century, including the Great Depression, the 1980s debt crisis and the global financial of 2008-2009…”
https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/latin-america-caribbean-face-worst-downturn-100-years-200701202047239.html
“Brazil’s national debt could top 100% of gross domestic product and the government’s primary deficit will probably rise above 15% of GDP, Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said on Tuesday, as the COVID-19 crisis blows a large hole in the public finances.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/brazil-economy-guedes/brazil-debt-could-top-100-of-gdp-primary-deficit-above-15-economy-minister-guedes-idUKS0N2DZ00E
According to the article:
What might these new industries be? Taking in each other’s washing? Uber and Lyft? Electric cars?
How about food for a potentially starving population?
Gail, most of those “old industries” don’t have any capital; they already have unsustainable debt. There is nothing to flow: the bucket has been taken to the well too often. MMT says you grow your way out of debt by taking on more debt; the economy is now at the end of that road.
I am afraid you are correct.
“At least 4 million private-sector workers have had their pay cut during the pandemic, according to data provided to The Washington Post by economists who worked on a labor market analysis for the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute.
“Workers are twice as likely to get a pay cut now than they were during the Great Recession…”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/01/pay-cut-economy-coronavirus/
“About 11.9 million Americans who are unemployed as a result of the pandemic, or about 7.2% of the workforce, have no hope of returning to their old jobs, while 5.7 million workers, or 3.5% of people, expect to get called back to work but probably won’t, writes Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at EPI.
“That puts the share of the workforce currently out of work with no reasonable chance of returning to their jobs at roughly 11%, or about 17.6 million people.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/01/millions-of-unemployed-americans-wont-return-to-their-old-jobs.html
“A senior Federal Reserve official has warned that a wave of business failures owing to the pandemic could still trigger a financial crisis, as he justified the central bank’s continuing efforts to prop up capital markets.
““We’re still in the middle of the crisis here,” James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, said…”
https://www.ft.com/content/04ee5988-7864-431a-95ff-f18388f29894
“Federal Reserve policymakers are looking at reviving a Great Recession-era promise to keep interest rates low until certain conditions are met, in a bid to deliver a more rapid recovery from the recession triggered by the coronavirus pandemic…
“The Fed has repeatedly said the U.S. economic outlook remains highly uncertain and reiterated that a full economic recovery hinges on the battle to control the spread of the novel coronavirus.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-minutes/fed-policymakers-committed-to-providing-open-ended-support-to-us-economy-minutes-show-idUSKBN24270I
“Major automakers reported a more than 30% drop in US sales in the second quarter, the biggest plunge in sales since the Great Recession and the auto bankruptcies of 2009.
“Several of the top automakers reported quarterly sales Wednesday, and the weeks of pandemic-forced dealership closures hit them hard. Sales were also hurt by record job losses limiting spending money…”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/01/business/car-sales-coronavirus-covid-19/index.html
“… a full economic recovery hinges on the battle to control the spread of the novel coronavirus.”
That battle is lost. Indeed, it was probably never winnable. So what is your Plan B? You mean, after six months of data and analysis, you still don’t have a Plan B? No surprise there.
Lots and lots of people without jobs. And new high school and college grads, with difficulty in finding new jobs, I expect.
do you think the millions of grads are counted in the unemployment rate?
I doubt it.
Government workers are also getting pay cuts, at least around here. When taxes are too low, governments have to figure out ways to work around the problem.
Curious how that will play out up where I am in Ontario / Canada; I think public sector employees may make up a larger part of the economy than they do in many US states?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/607895/gdp-distribution-of-ontario-canada-by-industry/
Has anyone has seen similar (recent) numbers for any US states that they can share?
Cheers,
GBV
For the purposes of modelling income versus expenditure, i.e the budget deficit, going forward, our university has assumed that the economy / flow of students will have returned to pre-Covid19 levels by 2023. They are working with three scenarios for the period, optimistic, middle, pessimistic. I should image by Xmas they will need to add a forth option, beyond pessimistic. Then the cut in hours and job losses will start.
Make the most of this summer, if you can.
I’m looking forward to September, which is usually perfect weather in Britain.
I believe that last summer, with evidence of an imminent recession growing, I ventured to suggest that it was a kind of ‘Summer of 1914’ , a golden time before the cataclysm: I certainly couldn’t guess how right I was!
“Like many others, I often summon up in my memory the impression of those July days. The world on the verge of its catastrophe was very brilliant. Nations and Empires crowned with princes and potentates rose majestically on every side, lapped in the accumulated treasures of the long peace. All were fitted and fastened—it seemed securely—into an immense cantilever. The two mighty Europeans systems faced each other glittering and clanking in their panoply, but with a tranquil gaze. A polite, discreet, pacific, and on the whole sincere diplomacy spread its web of connections over both. A sentence in a dispatch, an observation by an ambassador, a cryptic phrase in a Parliament seemed sufficient to adjust from day to day the balance of the prodigious structure. Words counted, and even whispers. A nod could be made to tell. Were we after all to achieve world security and universal peace by a marvelous system of combinations in equipoise and of armaments in equation, of checks and counter-checks on violent action ever more complex and more delicate? Would Europe this marshaled, thus grouped, thus related, unite into one universal and glorious organism capable of receiving and enjoying in undreamed of abundance the bounty which nature and science stood hand in hand to give? The old world in its sunset was fair to see.”
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, The World Crisis.
Inflation is happening too!
So is a Depression
“The unprecedented economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in global corporate defaults, Fitch Ratings says. The number of defaults registered in the first five months of 2020 has already exceeded the 2019 full-year number, and the crisis continues in many parts of the world.
“At the current rate, the annual volume of corporate defaults could exceed the record set during the global financial crisis in 2009.”
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/corporate-finance/2020-global-corporate-defaults-to-date-top-2019-full-year-total-01-07-2020
“Allianz’s latest Global Insurance Report predicts that global premium income will shrink by 3.8% this year, compared with growth of 4.4% in 2019.
“The decrease is more than three times larger than the 1% fall in global premium income caused by the last global financial crisis.”
https://www.theactuary.com/2020/07/01/covid-19-hit-insurers-three-times-harder-last-financial-crash
“The current COVID-19 pandemic is set to change the pace of the world economy. Countries have voluntarily staged dramatic, synchronized and persistent economic shocks to curb the spread of the virus. No corner of the world has avoided a recession of as yet undetermined dimensions.”
https://internationalbanker.com/finance/the-crisis-will-be-lengthy-and-no-sharp-upturn-lies-ahead/
Everyone says its because of the corona virus or the pandemic. In fact it is only caused by the government response to a perceived pandemic because the world was told it was a pandemic by the WHO. It is a virus. A flu type virus that happens every year in the winter season. It was first the Northern hemisphere and is now in the Southern hemisphere. No politician, from the president on down, wants to be accused of indifference when it comes to the loss of human life. They would lose power and therefore the response. So, when presented with the possibility that millions will die, as the original models predicted, they all seemed to panic. Like many countries the Governments response was panic induced. There was never any reason to lockdown the country and destroy the economy. This has been shown by the countries who did not lock down. The response is unprecedented and indicates the paranoia and herd mentality of people and politicians that has been allowed to be created by a complicit MSM.
Wow!
“In previous energy downturns, prices slumped but companies kept faith in their oil and gas investments. This time it might be different, as the prospect sinks in that the pandemic’s impact will endure…
“Executives who for years rejected the prospect of “stranded assets” are acknowledging publicly the risk that swaths of their oil, gas and refining assets will be rendered uneconomic, with vast hydrocarbon reserves never being extracted and burnt…
“Even before prices started to collapse, energy companies were cutting outlooks and planning asset writedowns late last year — from US oil major Chevron’s $10bn in impairments to €4.8bn in charges from Spain’s Repsol.”
https://www.ft.com/content/b7689fd1-5b06-42e9-bc9f-0a912c93924e
“Months into one of the worst oil price crashes in history, lenders have tightened the screws on shale producers by wiping away 20% of the credit that has helped fuel the industry’s boom.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-loans/shale-drillers-squeezed-as-banks-tighten-credit-after-oil-crash-idUSKBN2426XC
“Even before the latest Saudi-instigated oil war crashed oil prices, Oman had a budget breakeven price per barrel of Brent of over US$85, with a senior legal source in Abu Dhabi focussed on the oil industry spoken to by OilPrice.com at that time stating that the Sultanate needed at least US$7 billion ‘very quickly’ to avoid extremely negative financial consequences.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Gulf-Oil-Producer-Oman-Is-Quickly-Running-Out-Of-Options.html
“…Angola has endured a lot of strain in the coronavirus period.
“Straddled with foreign debt, the loss of oil revenues which have been making up roughly third of the government’s income, Angola was compelled to seek IMF assistance on keeping its economy afloat, including a rather risky move of suspending all debt service payments from May 01 until the end of the year.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Covid-19-Is-Crushing-This-African-Oil-Exporter.html
“Venezuela’s crude oil production tumbled by nearly 200,000 bpd in June compared to May, to just 422,400 bpd on June 28…
“The collapse in oil prices and the tightening U.S. sanctions against Venezuela have accelerated the decline of the oil industry in the country sitting on the largest crude oil reserves in the world.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Venezuelas-Oil-Production-Continues-To-Plummet.html
“Opec slashed oil production to the lowest level since the Gulf War in 1991, as it escalated efforts to revive global markets just as a resurgence of the coronavirus is threatening demand again.”
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/commodities/news/opec-cuts-output-to-lowest-since-1991-as-virus-slams-oil-demand/articleshow/76735196.cms
“Saudi Arabia’s economy contracted by 1% in the first quarter, official data showed on Tuesday, but the figures only marginally captured the collapse in oil prices and the coronavirus crisis, which deteriorated in March…”
https://www.thedailystar.net/business/news/saudi-arabias-economy-contracts-1pc-q1-amid-oil-plunge-1923261
This points out what little meaning “crude oil reserves” really has.
Credit destruction sounds like a deflationary pressure… but then you have supply reductions as a result, which are arguably inflationary.
I wish there was a more accurate way of measuring these two forces at play. I bet a super computer could shine quite a bit of light on this front – calculating the millions / billions / trillions of inflationary and deflationary pressures that occur daily – but I suppose they’re all busy being used to play games of chess and whatnot 🙂
Cheers,
-GBV
>>with vast hydrocarbon reserves never being extracted and burnt…
These are words I did not expect to see in the mainstream press. Especially the word ‘never’. If anyone actually reads this (in the FT) and understands the implications, who knows, maybe we will see them here? It is more or less an admission of ‘game over’ for Industrial Civilisation, as I see it.
I also see more and more words in mainstream media I didn’t expect, that, if you really think about it, must make you question the future of IC. For example, a newspaper announcing openly the beginning of Degrowth of supply of oil. Either you conclude “oh yeah our planes, boats, trucks, excavators, all our machines will run on hydrogen or solar power… Great, good for the climate”, or you wonder “how the hell will all our machines and infrastructures sustain and build the future growth, let’s make some search on Google, oh, what is this blog, who is this Gail Tverberg?”
“There is a way we could identify more patients who have Covid pneumonia sooner and treat them more effectively — and it would not require waiting for a coronavirus test at a hospital or doctor’s office. It requires detecting silent hypoxia early through a common medical device that can be purchased without a prescription at most pharmacies: a pulse oximeter.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-testing-pneumonia.html
https://www.google.com/search?ei=UHj9XsHVCIPd9AOL3YuABA&q=pulse+oximeter+cvs&oq=pulse+oximeter+cvs&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgAMgUIABCxAzICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADoHCAAQRxCwAzoHCAAQsQMQQzoECAAQQzoFCAAQgwE6BAgAEApQkIIDWJ6lA2DiyQNoAXAAeACAAaoBiAHQBJIBAzAuNJgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab
Perhaps we should have one of these in our homes. I see the lowest-price ones are $29.99.
well then the first half of 2020 is in the books.
it’s still bAU, though I do see that the ocean water has receded far from the shore, and the tsunami is on the way.
Yes, exactly: the strange calm which accompanies the receding of the waters, the deceptive stillness.
Now is the time for preparation: stocks of food, medicines, clothing (often over-looked) and fuel if you can, but also mental and spiritual to cope with loss and social disorder.
We have earned even in this brief period since March that governments are generally foolish and not to be relied upon, the so-called ‘experts’ are mostly lost in novel situations, and that humans will easily tip into insanity and violence, believing any old rumour that goes round and unwilling to look at things honestly and directly.
^^^This is wise counsel, Xabier.
“Now is the time for preparation: stocks of food, medicines, clothing (often over-looked) and fuel if you can, but also mental and spiritual to cope with loss and social disorder.”
Sounds like prepper talk 🙂
Curious if you would be willing to be so gracious as to share your ideas as to what to do when these preparations are eventually exhausted? Or, to be more specific, do you have any plans for the future that you hope to actively enact, or is there no plan and it’s all just responses as necessary until the time of the Big Dirt Nap finally arrives?
Cheers,
-GBV
Fresh water, or a way to obtain fresh water, would seem to need to be high on the list.
Yes, that’s definitely a necessity. But I think what I was getting at by “plan” was something larger than just meeting one’s basic needs; i.e. how does one build a community, or even a semi-sustainable existence for the short term, post-collapse?
Perhaps it was a bit of a trick question, as I’m not sure anyone here (or anywhere else?) has the answer, simply because we don’t know how long collapse will last nor what a post-collapse world will look like. But sometimes admitting what one doesn’t know can be more helpful than reciting what one thinks they know… you know? 😀
Cheers,
-GBV
Bringing back the 19th century, a period when, for a critical mass, there was a high level of civilization/technology relative to energy source (coal). But if we’re not working on it already, we’re wasting time.
I believe that Shock Delay Train was deactivated in the 70s. If we had listened to people like Hubbert, Odum, Ehrlich, E. F. Schumacher, Meadows, etc., maybe we have figured out a way to postpone the collapse to 2083 or so. Now it seems a bit late for any meaningful action, i’m afraid.
Ehrlich, E. F. Schumacher I’m more familiar with. Still trying to figure out why they never interested me. The things I’d recommend seem like they could work right now, in the middle of IC (which is more wiley and adaptable than the mind can take in). I’m not utopian in the way those listed may have been. And I try to work with whatever Gail says about whatever I have to say. I learn a lot that way, but after many years of being told, no, that can’t work, I see evidence of, yes, it most certainly can work. Planting trees could do nothing to alter climate was one of those things. The need for growth was another. We need growth to pay back debt with interest, but financial games can keep BAU running when you wouldn’t think they could. No, civilization will manage OK, but some choices made can smooth it along better than others. If it is all self-organizing, then, like water down a gradient, it must inevitably look for the most effortless way to dribble down. But I say that human choices determine the speed and trajectory of that downward “dissipation.”
The major problem in all of this is how to influence people. If that were easier, we could at least experiment constructively to see what works and what doesn’t.
I don’t really believe in “human choices”. Humans do what every other creature is programmed to do, that is: to exploit any ressources available and never waste a chance to expand and grow. The rare human beings that voluntarily choose degrowth are so special that they have honorary names like saints, ascets, etc.
A small snapshot usually gives limited data. Usually an agenda…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281488/number-of-deaths-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/
Covid is getting real boring; deaths are spiking in UK as births did post WWII. Think of this as a mop-up operation by mother nature. If you are under 60, not too overweight, without too much history of antibiotics (or other modern medical mis-adventures) then forgeddaboutit and enjoy the remnants of our growth economy. Vaccine smaccine…meh.
Distracted by the flu; who woulda thunk it be so easy to cause hysteria and deflect the sheoples huh?!
Here is the latest data:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
As best as academia can do.
Perhaps they should show these amounts as percentages of the population of each country that have been infected. Or percentages of each country that have been reported as died.
“who woulda thunk it be so easy to cause hysteria and deflect the sheoples huh?!”
Most of OFW readers, i expect!
“Distracted by the flu; who woulda thunk it be so easy to cause hysteria and deflect the sheoples huh?!”
yes, who would have thought that the Chinese Commmunist leadership would have plotted to cause worldwide hysteria by doing a Wuhan lockdown in January?
I think there’s more to it than China, which in this strategic game may even have served as a pawn. Who knows? Hard to see anyhing clearly in the midst of so much PR smoke.
The only political fact I take for granted is that the geopolitics cake has much more layers than it shows to the naked eye. Sub, deep and infra-layers, say. But let’s not argue about that. What matters most and ever (as you probably know) is BAU tonight, D!
“Death by Killing Old People, Not COVID—The Basic Deception”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/07/jon-rappoport/death-by-killing-old-people-not-covid-the-basic-deception/
Lack of contact with others is no doubt part of the problem for many of these older people. I know that in some (many?) places, residents of assisted living centers cannot even get together with other residents in the same building, even if no one has tested positive for COVID-19. This must be terribly depressing.
Also, I wonder how many home health aides are visiting older people who live by themselves at home, with social distancing. Some of these people really need the outside help, I expect.
My elderly mother is quite happy: she is slightly autistic, and her dream is for other people to leave her alone. I keep her supplied with plenty of dark chocolate almost her last pleasure in life, and she is perfectly contented!
New Hampshire is at 80% of Covid-attributed deaths being in nursing homes..
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-nursing-homes.html
In 20 states, it’s over half.
This seems to be the pattern emerging everywhere, with some outbreaks among younger groups which have a particularly high exposure, eg in a crowded workplace or public transport resulting in high loads of the virus.
A breakdown of the figures showing how many were obese would be useful.
Over the last week or two here, the only deaths have been in nursing homes, not the hospital.
Care workers and nurses are, I have noticed, often over-weight, above all African women.
An elderly friend of ours was in hospital for about 4 months beginning of last year after an accident, in two wards. We visited weekly, so became familiar with the staff. So many of the staff were overweight I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a job requirement.
Here’s an brilliantly interesting graph from Randall Munro:
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/oily_house_index.png
Neat idea!
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/06/30/10/30216512-8474031-image-a-13_1593508003683.jpg
My impression is that US deaths follow a very similar pattern. The highest deaths in the US came the weeks ended April 11 and April 18, if deaths are assigned back to the date on the death certificate. What looks like a recent uptick in US deaths in the COVID-19 database at Johns Hopkins are really deaths that took place long ago that are now being coded as COVID-19, instead of the early cause of death. This backdating of COVID-19 deaths will fill in some of the unexplained deaths. Many of these deaths seemed to have occurred in nursing homes and other care centers.
Also curious: deaths not involving COVID-19 are trending below average for England and Wales.
The people who would have died of heart attacks or something else common died of COVID-19.
Or people who died of something else were erroneously recorded as having died of COVID-19.
Gail, I believe you are correct. The daily number of “cases” i the US is climbing (and it’s all Trump’s fault), but the daily number of deaths is still declining. Of course, the media and the medical profession are endlessly talking about the former. I think the reasons are easy to find: (a) more testing is being done, which will inevitably generate more cases, and those cases will be dated to the day of the test, not the day of infection; (2) many of these tests turn up false positives (not infected) or asymtomatic sufferers (infected but at essentially zero risk); (3) the CDC has repeatedly fudged the guidelines for what counts as coronavirus, even to the point where it can now be “diagnosed” without testing.
Bottom line: trust nothing from the US medical profession, and almost nothing from their media.
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“A British employers group demanded immediate action from finance minister Rishi Sunak after a record deterioration in business in the April-June period.
“The British Chambers of Commerce said on Wednesday its quarterly survey of 7,700 firms found the share of companies reporting growth in sales was far below even the low point of the global financial crisis of 2007-08.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/uk-employers-demand-action-now-231333245.html
“The owner of Upper Crust and Caffè Ritazza is to axe 5,000 [UK] jobs after suffering heavy losses in the coronavirus crisis lockdown.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jul/01/upper-crust-and-caffe-ritazza-owner-to-cut-5000-jobs-ssp-group-coronavirus
“The United Kingdom has passed the point of no return. It has less than six months to reach a new trade deal with the European Union or risk heaping more pressure on companies that are already laying off tens of thousands of workers because of the coronavirus pandemic…
“UK companies in aviation and retail have cut over 10,000 jobs in just two days.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/01/business/uk-economy-brexit-deal/index.html