Many people thought that COVID-19 would be gone with a short shutdown. They also thought that the world’s economic problems could be cured with a six month “dose” of stimulus.
It is increasingly clear that neither of these assumptions is correct. Despite the claims of epidemiologists, our best efforts have never been able to reduce the number of newly reported COVID-19 cases for the world as a whole for any significant period of time. In fact, the latest week seems to be the highest week so far.
Figure 1. Chart of worldwide COVID-19 new cases, in chart prepared by Worldometer with data through September 20, 2020.
At the same time, the economy, despite all of the stimulus, is not doing very well. Airlines are doing very poorly. The parts of the economy that are dependent upon tourism are having huge problems. This reduces the “upside” of economic recovery, pretty much everywhere, until it can be corrected.
Another part of the world economy doing poorly is clothing sales. For example, many fewer people are attending concerts, weddings, funerals, out-of-town business meetings and conventions, leading to a need for fewer “dressy” clothes. Also, with air travel greatly reduced, people don’t need new clothing for visiting places with different climates, either. Most clothing is bought by people from rich countries but made by people in poor countries. This cutback in clothing purchases disproportionately affects people who are already very poor. The loss of jobs in these countries may lead to an inability to afford food, for those who are laid off.
Besides these difficult to solve problems, initial programs set up to help mitigate job losses are running out. What kinds of things might governments do, if they are running short of borrowing capacity, and medical solutions still seem to be far away?
In Section A of this post, I outline what I see as some approaches that governments might take to try to “kick the can down the road” a while longer, as well as some general trends regarding near term outcomes.
In Section B, I explain how our current problems seem to be related to the more general “overshoot and collapse” problems of many prior economies. I show that historically, these overshoot and collapse situations seem to have played out over a number of years. In many ways, the outcome might look more like “overshoot and decline” than “overshoot and collapse” from the point of view of an observer at the time.
In Section C, I explain two different types of “breakage” we can expect going forward, if we are really dealing with an overshoot and collapse situation. In the first, oil production is likely to fall because of the collapse of some of the governments of oil exporters. In the second, the international trade system breaks down because of problems with the financial system and countries no longer trusting each other’s currencies.
[A] Ideas for “Sort of” Addressing the Economic Problems at Hand
The following are a few ideas regarding possible mitigation approaches, and the expected results of these attempted solutions:
[1] Programs to keep citizens in their homes will likely be extended. Mortgage repayment programs will be extended. Renters will be allowed to stay where they are, even if they cannot afford the rent.
[2] New programs may be added, allowing those without adequate income to pay for electricity, heat, water and sewer connections. These programs may be debt-based. For example, homeowners and renters may be given loans to pay for these programs, with the hope that eventually the economy will bounce back, and the loans can be repaid.
[3] More food bank programs will be added, with governments buying food from farmers and donating it to food banks. There is even an outside chance that people will be given loans so that they can “buy” food from the food bank, with the hope that they can someday repay the loans. All of these loan-based programs will appear to be “cost free” to the government, since “certainly” the crisis will go away, and borrowers will be able to repay the loans.
[4] Loans to students will increasingly be put in forbearance, to be repaid when the crisis is over. Auto loans and credit card debt may be also be put into forbearance, if the person with the debt has inadequate income.
[5] Even with all of these actions, families will tend to move back together into a smaller total number of residences. This will happen partly because citizens won’t want to be burdened with even more debt, if they can avoid it. Also, older citizens won’t want to move into facilities offering care for the elderly because they know that COVID restrictions may limit with whom they can have contact. They will much prefer moving in with a relative, if anyone will take them in return for a suitable monthly payment.
[6] As extended families move in together, the total number of housing units required will tend to fall. Prices of homes will tend to fall, especially in areas where citizens no longer want to live. Governments will encourage banks and other mortgage holders to look the other way as prices fall, but as homes are sold, this will be increasingly difficult to do. In many cases, when homes are sold, the selling prices will fall below the balance of the debt outstanding. Governments will pass laws not allowing financial institutions to try to obtain the shortfall from citizens, at least until the crisis is over.
[7] Some businesses, such as restaurants without enough patrons and colleges without enough students, will need to close. Clothing stores without enough sales will also need to close, as will retirement homes without enough residents. All of these closures will lead to a huge amount of excess commercial space. It will also lead to the loss of more jobs, raising the number of unemployed people.
With these closed businesses, the price of commercial real estate will tend to fall. Lenders will be encouraged to “extend the loans” and “pretend that asset prices will soon recover,” when renewing loans. Even this approach won’t be enough in many cases, as businesses file for bankruptcy.
[8] With fewer residences and business properties occupied, the amount of electricity required will fall. Wholesale prices for electricity will tend to fall, pushing ever more fossil fuel and nuclear electricity providers out of business. Electricity outages will become an increasing problem, as renewables become a larger share of the electricity mix and are unable to increase supply when needed. Rolling outages will become more common.
[9] Pensions of all kinds will become more difficult to pay. Government programs, such as Social Security in the US, will have less revenue to pay pensions. There are funds set aside in the Social Security Trust Fund to cover a shortfall in funding, but these funds are simply non-marketable US government debt. In theory, the US government could add more debt to the Trust Fund and make payments on the basis of this added debt. Otherwise, the US will likely need to either raise taxes or increase the “regular” government debt level, in order to continue to pay Social Security pensions as planned.
Private pensions, backed by bonds and shares of stock (and perhaps other assets), will find the values of their available assets are falling. Governments, if they are able to, will try to hide this problem. For example, regulators may develop a new way to value assets, so as to make pension funding shortfalls mostly disappear.
In the case of pension bankruptcy, government insurance is often theoretically available. In the US, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation provides coverage; other countries may have similar programs. Unfortunately, this program is not set up to handle a large influx of new bankrupt plans, without raising taxes. The problem then will be raising taxes enough so that one year’s pension benefits can be paid, pushing the problem down the road a bit longer.
Bank accounts have similar guarantees, with similar funding problems. The guarantee organization has very little funds available, without raising taxes or somehow increasing debt.
[10] Stock market prices will tend to fall, leading those who have purchased shares using debt to want to sell quickly, pushing the stock market down further. Currency relativities will fluctuate wildly. Derivatives of many kinds will encounter payment problems. Many ETFs likely won’t work as planned. Governments will try to figure out ways to somehow mitigate these problems to the extent possible. For example, stock markets may be closed for a time to hide the problems. Or, additional time may be given to settle purchases, so that perhaps the deficiencies can be corrected. Eventually, some banks may be taken over by governments, to assure the operation of the parts deemed essential.
[11] Eventually, governments may find it necessary to nationalize a wide range of essential businesses. These could range from trucking companies to banks to oil companies to electricity transmission repair companies. If the balance sheets of these companies are too bad, governments may simply stop publishing them.
[12] These types of actions will mostly be available to “rich” countries. Poor countries can tap their “rainy day” funds, but these will soon be exhausted. In this case, poor countries will find that there is little they can do unless international organizations bail them out. Because of cutbacks in tourism and in orders of finished goods, such as clothing, these countries are likely to encounter high levels of unemployment. Without aid, the poorer citizens of these countries will find it impossible to afford an adequate diet. With inadequate nutrition, the health of low income citizens will decline, and they will easily succumb to communicable diseases, such as tuberculosis and malaria. Death rates are likely to skyrocket.
[B] What Happens When an Economy Outgrows Its Resources?
Most people think that the issue we are dealing with is a temporary problem associated with a new coronavirus. I think that we are dealing with a much worse problem: The world’s population has outgrown the world’s resource limits. This is why our current problems look so difficult to solve from a financial point of view. This is part of the reason many people feel that shutting down the economy for COVID-19 is a good choice. There are really many reasons for the shutdowns, besides preventing the spread of COVID-19: Keeping people inside stops the many protests related to low wages. The shutdowns appear to restore order to a troubled system. Broken supply lines from shutdowns elsewhere reduce raw materials availability, making it more difficult to keep production in one part of the world operating, when others are closed.
Overshoot and collapse is a problem that many smaller economies have encountered over the years. If I am right that we are now encountering a similar situation, there is a big change ahead. The change will not be instantaneous, however. The big question that arises is, “Over what time scale does such a collapse take place?” If it takes place over a number of years, it may look more like “overshoot and decline” than “overshoot and collapse” to those who are living through the era.
A recent partial collapse was that of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union was an oil exporter. Oil prices had hit a high in 1981 and had been declining for 10 years when the Soviet Union collapsed. With low oil prices, it had been difficult to earn enough revenue to reinvest in new oil fields to replace the production that naturally declines as oil is extracted. Oil, directly and indirectly, had provided many jobs for the Soviet Union. After ten years of stress, the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Low oil prices first slowed production growth between 1982 and 1987 (Figure 2). Oil production began to decline in 1988, three years before the government collapsed. Production gradually rose again in the early 2000s, as oil prices rose again.
Figure 2. Oil production and price of the former Soviet Union (FSU), based on BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.
What was surprising to me was the fact that consumption of all types of energy by the Soviet Union fell at the time of the central government collapse in 1991, even hydroelectric. The overall level of energy consumption never bounced back to its previous level.
Figure 3. Former Soviet Union energy consumption by fuel, based on data of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.
What happened was that many inefficient industries were forced to close. Some of these industries were in the Ukraine; others were in Russia and elsewhere. As they closed, less electricity and less oil and gas were used.
The loss in energy consumption was pretty much permanent. The manufacturing that left the Soviet Union was replaced by other, more efficient, manufacturing elsewhere. Also, without their previous manufacturing jobs, the people of the former Soviet Union were poorer. They could not afford to buy cars and homes, keeping fuel consumption lower.
Another indicator regarding the speed of collapses is the analysis done by researchers Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov, regarding collapses of eight agricultural economies from earlier periods. I compiled the information they provided in the book Secular Cycles in the chart shown in Figure 4. In the cycles they analyzed, the “crisis period” seemed to last 20 to 50 years. One thing that is striking in their analysis is that epidemics often played a major role in the declines. As wage disparity grew, poorer workers ate less well. They became more vulnerable to epidemics and often died.
Figure 4. Chart by author based on information provided in Turchin and Nefedov’s book, Secular Cycles.
In these early cycles, the major industry was farming. These collapses were in the days before electricity use. In these situations, collapses tended to play out over 20 to 50 years. Our more modern economy, with its just-in-time supply lines, would seem likely to collapse more quickly, but we can’t know for certain. This analysis is thus another data point that suggests that what may be ahead could be closer to “overshoot and decline” than “overshoot and collapse.”
[C] What May Be Ahead
[1] We are likely to experience the collapse of central governments of several of the oil exporting nations, in a manner not entirely different from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Oil prices have been low for a very long time, since 2008, or at least since 2014.
Figure 5. Weekly average spot oil prices for Brent, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.
Most OPEC oil producers seem to require prices in the $100+ per barrel range in order to be able to fund the programs their people expect (Figure 6). One important program provides subsidies for imported food; other programs provide jobs. Without these programs, revolutions to overthrow the current leaders seem much more likely.
Figure 6. Estimate of OPEC break-even oil prices, including tax requirements by parent countries, from APICORP. Figure is from 2014.
At this point, oil prices have been below $100 per barrel since 2014, a period of 6 years (Figure 5). Stress is increasing; OPEC producers have cut production in an attempt to try to get prices up. Prices are now in the low $40s.
We should not be surprised if, over the next few years, oil production starts to fall in several areas around the world because of internal problems. Another possible impetus for the drop in production may be wars with other nations. Some such wars might be started simply to try to get the price of oil up to a more acceptable level.
We have been falsely led to believe that oil is not important; renewables can handle our needs in the future. In fact, oil is essential for today’s farming. It is essential for transportation of goods and services of all kinds. It is essential for the construction industry and for mining. Researchers in academic institutions have received grants, encouraging them to put together models regarding what could be ahead. These models tend to be extremely unrealistic.
One of the most absurd models is by Mark Jacobson. He claims that by 2050, the world economy can operate almost entirely using wind, solar, and hydroelectric. Unfortunately, we don’t have until 2050; world oil, coal, and natural gas supplies look likely to decline in the 2020 to 2025 timeframe because of low prices. Another problem with this approach is that there is not very much fossil fuel to extract, because most of what appears to be available from resource studies cannot really be extracted at the low prices set by physics.
The underlying problem is confusion about which direction prices go, as an economy reaches limits. Economists assume that scarcity will cause prices to rise; the real story is that fossil fuel prices are set by the laws for physics because the economy is a dissipative structure. As the economy approaches limits, prices tend to fall too low for producers, rather than rise too high for consumers.1 The sad truth is that we can’t even count on the continued extraction of the small amount of fossil fuels that Jacobson assumes will exist after 2050.
[2] We are likely to see a huge change in the international financial system and in the international trade system in the next few years.
As long as there were plenty of resources, relative to the world population, the optimal approach was to do as much international trade as possible. This approach would maximize world GDP. It would also add jobs in developing areas of the world without too huge an impact on job availability in the countries moving their manufacturing to lower-cost areas.
In the last few years, it has become increasingly evident that there aren’t enough jobs that pay well to go around. This is really the underlying problem with respect to the increased hostility among nations, such as between the US and China. Tariffs are being used to try to bring jobs that pay well back to those who need them. Strange as it may seem, it takes fossil fuels to create jobs that pay well.
Figure 7. World Trade as a percentage of GDP, based on data of the World Bank.
Figure 7 shows that international trade was rising as a percentage of GDP for many years, and it hit a high point in 2008. Since then it has bounced around a little below that high point. In 2020, it will clearly take a big step down because of all of the cancellation of trade related to COVID-19 restrictions.
We saw earlier that commodity prices tend to fall too low for producers. Indirectly, this means that profits tend to fall too low. Interest rates tend to follow these low profits down, since businesses cannot afford to pay high interest rates.
With these low profits and low wages, the financial system gets strained. “Debt and more debt” seems to be the way to fix the system. Growing debt at ever-lower interest rates is encouraged. These low interest rates tend to raise asset prices because monthly payments to buy these assets fall with the falling interest rates. Stock markets tend to rise, even when the economy is doing poorly.
If the many strange approaches I outlined in Section A are used to add even more debt to keep the system afloat, eventually some part of the system is going to “break.” For example, banks will stop issuing letters of credit with respect to purchases made by buyers that don’t seem sufficiently creditworthy. Banks may stop trusting other banks, especially if the banks do not really seem to be solvent. At some point, the international financial system seems likely to start “coming apart.” Eventually, the US dollar will stop being the world’s reserve currency.
My guess is that a new two currency system will develop. Governments will issue a lot of currency for local use. It will not be useful for buying goods from other countries. Much of it will be used for buying locally produced food and other locally produced goods.
Very little international trade will be done. Any international trade that will be done will occur between trusted partners, at agreed upon exchange rates. Perhaps a special currency will be used for this purpose.
In this new world, individual countries will be very much on their own. With very little fossil fuel, countries will tend to lose electricity availability very quickly. Transmission lines will go unrepaired. It will become impossible to fix existing wind turbines. Road repair will become impossible. Electric cars will likely be as unusable as gasoline powered ones.
There will likely be fighting about resources that are available, leading to countries subdividing into smaller and smaller units, hoarding what little resources they have available.
Note:
1Energy prices tend to fall too low because, as the economy gets more complex, wage and wealth disparity tend to grow, reflecting differences in training and responsibility. The problem occurs because low-paid workers cannot afford to buy very large quantities of goods and services produced by the economy. For example, many cannot afford a car or a home of their own. The spending of high-paid workers does not offset the loss of demand by low-paid workers because high-paid workers tend to spend their wages more on services, such as advanced education, which require proportionately less energy consumption. Ultimately, the lack of demand by low-paid workers tends to pull down the prices of oil and other commodities below the level required by producers.
“Venezuela’s Oil industry May Never Recover:
“Despite President Maduro’s claims of a looming recovery for Venezuela’s economically crucial oil industry in early 2020 production keeps declining… The Latin American country’s ever deeper economic crisis is directly correlated to the collapse of its oil industry and declining petroleum production.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Venezuelas-Oil-industry-May-Never-Recover.html
Of course, Venezuela has the highest “proved reserves” of oil in the whole world. This shows that there is something amiss.
And I have one of the largest proven individual reserves of Japanese animation in the whole world. The bidding starts at 10,000 troy ounces of gold.
Venezuela is too far from possible customers, there are competitors which are closer to the USA and which are more reliable, like Canada. The land with mild climate, which can absorb largest amounts of oil supplies, forms only a thin strip in South America.
The DISTANCE and the RELIABILITY play more and more important role. That is why Russian natural gas can not be beaten as regards the deliveries to Europe, but Russia was worried when its oil supply to Europe was spoiled by the impurities last year.
I think a bigger issue is that Venezuela used some of its underground reserves as collateral for debt that it borrowed from China. It is supposed to repay the loan in oil. Even if it could extract the oil (perhaps with China’s help), the benefit would mostly go to China.
Yes, the warmer countries like Venezuela, disproportionately and faster increase their population using oil, which creates collapse situations in them. I. e. they need more and more technical devices for harder and harder oil extraction which can not match with their speed of population growth.
Even if Venezuela returns to oil extraction with the help of China, this will have little benefit for the population of Venezuela itself with the falling oil price of harder to extract oil. The Middle East with ist heavy oil reserves is ready to ship oil to China under more favourable conditions and prices, as they are building nuclear power plants to have more oil for exports, as you have pointed out.
“The coronavirus pandemic that has slammed oil demand and prices is forcing energy majors to tighten their belts on exploration, even if finding new deposits remain essential to their existence.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thejakartapost.com/amp/news/2020/10/04/oil-exploration-grinds-to-a-halt-as-prices-dive-from-covid-19.html
How much oil can really be extracted really depends on prices. If they stay too low, most of what seems to be available will stay in the ground.
The countries with the highest GDP per capita in South America are:
Uruguay, Chile and Argentina: all of them with mild climate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_American_and_Caribbean_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Favorable climate seems to be really important. Too hot and wet seems to foster too many parasites that need to be kept under control. Too hot and dry makes it impossible to grow food. Imported food and air conditioning become important. Too cold leads to the need for a lot of imported food as well.
Industrial civilization has built up in areas that were cold in winter, requiring the use of firewood, which soon became depleted. There is a question of which civilizations, if any, can continue with locally available resources. We know that firewood became depleted quickly, with much smaller population than today. We need a different way of going forward, or a very tiny population.
“There is a question of which civilizations, if any, can continue with locally available resources?”.
England has a pretty mild climate, lots of water and an abundance of fossil fuels.
The downsides are (1) the fossil fuels cannot be profitably extracted, so will pretty much stay in the ground and (2) there are way too many people compared to resources.
>>England has a pretty mild climate, lots of water and an abundance of fossil fuels.
NW England (Cumbria) has plenty of water, the East in general and South East in particular seems to be constantly on the brink of hose pipe bans during summer. Most of the population of England live in areas where the potential for water shortages are never far away.
As for “abundance of fossil fuels”, you have got to be joking. England has almost no oil, its gas production peaked about 20 years ago and is headed for oblivion, and coal production is close to zero for the simple reason that what is left is very uneconomic to extract.
In theory, many countries could probably adapt. Of course, in theory, the world could have controlled covid far more effectively with far less disruption (and a few did). At any rate, now we know how to control parasites, grow food in greenhouses if the climate is cold, build super-insulated buildings, burn firewood more efficiently, produce more food per acre even with organic farming, manage woodlots scientifically–I’m not predicting we will put all the parts together and muddle through, but in theory many countries could do it–if they are sufficiently competent and culturally cohesive. If the late Victorian generation had found itself in our position, I think they might have managed a viable transition. They were improving their societies in many ways, not just materially. In the 20th century, we have had more resources than they had in the 19th, yet many metrics of social improvement in the 19th century reversed in the 20th. I think Volkmar Weiss’s theory of the population cycle is the best explanation:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341100317_IQ_Means_Inequality_The_Population_Cycle_that_Drives_Human_History_Volkmar_Weiss_Independent_Publishing_2020
The exploitation of fossil fuels such as coal, oil or natural gas enabled the emergence of today’s global industrial society. Cheap energy has led to an unprecedented increase in population to this day. Nevertheless, the democratic society of the West, which produced the welfare state, is in the process of destroying itself again. One reason for this is that the parties fighting for majorities are outdoing each other in promises.The actual reasons for this self-destruction, however, lie deeper: while in the ascendant phase of Western societies entrepreneurial forces did predominat, since about 1970 the striving for equality dominats the public debate. Today, not only are inherited differences in intelligence denied, but false incentives discourage the high-performing and encourage the low-performing. As a result, industrial societies are often no longer able to provide a sufficient number of highly qualified young people. At the same time, the cost of energy, the indispensable fuel of industrial society, is rising. In many places there is a lack of creative potential to counteract the emerging chaotic conditions. All these developments, so the central thesis of this book, must be seen in the context of their interactions: they are the expression of a lawful regulatory cycle that drives industrial society into a permanent crisis, which is accelerating intermittently and inexorably.
Are not the greatest part of their reserves tar sands, though? Not useless, but it should not be compared with conventional oil. (They still have conventional reserves too, of course, but Chavez and Madura have destroyed the productive economy. Ah, the fruits of universal suffrage!)
“The global economy is entering the final quarter of its worst year in living memory in a precarious state with the coronavirus threatening to wreak yet more destruction on labor markets.
“The darkening outlook for U.S. employment, the impending halt to a U.K. furlough and the expiry of a moratorium on German insolvencies provide a glimpse of the trouble in store. The International Labour Organisation estimated recently that the world would lose working hours equivalent to 245 million full-time jobs in the last three months of 2020.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-04/workers-of-world-unite-in-crisis-gloom-for-their-jobs-eco-week
The fact that the fourth quarter of 2020 appears to be a whole lot worse than the third quarter of 2020 is something most analysts have not factored into their thinking. The New York Times article cited above talks about a “slow grinding recovery,” but we could be headed for problems such as widespread debt defaults.
“Lengthy era of rock-bottom interest rates leaving its mark on U.S. economy:
“Weak demand in U.S. and other rich nations explains historic shift.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/03/low-interest-rates/
“…the snapback effect over the summer has masked something… worrying: We’ve entered a longer, slower grind that puts the economy at risk for the indefinite future.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/03/upshot/pandemic-economy-recession.html
“The cascading events of 2020 have been unrelenting, at times unbelievable, at times almost unbearable. No one could have written the script of a year that has killed so many Americans, disrupted so many lives and, with the election now just a month away, left the country so politically divided and emotionally drained.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-pandemic-a-crushed-economy-racial-protests-and-now-a-president-with-coronavirus/2020/10/03/be7934d4-0586-11eb-897d-3a6201d6643f_story.html
So it all “just happened”. A typical response of left leaning organisations: deny agency and hence deny blame. The Maya thought the same: we didn’t throw all those women and girls down the cenote, it was the god’s fault for not sending us rain.
First, a death toll of 200,000, against a total annual death toll of over 2.8 million, is hardly the Black Death, and anyway that number has been grossly inflated by misattribution of causes, and by the deliberate action of politicians.
Secondly, the economic damage has nothing to do with the virus, and everything to do with the response to it: a response largely dictated by the arrogance, incompetence, and venality of the US medical profession. The last is criminal: the doctors advise against cheap, simple and effective remedies because many of then are invested in, or actually in the pay of, big pharma.
Finally, the political divisions have zero to do with covid: they have been deliberately fostered and exacerbated for the last four years by a gang of thieves who failed to steal the last election and now want to steal the country even if they first have to destroy it.
Robert, you raise an interesting point re human agency, as does Dennis L below.
On an individual level, “free will” may be a function of spiritual maturity. In other words, the more we can “rise above” our personal, biological and cultural programming, which inform the small egoic self and its behaviour-patterns, and be present in the moment, the more active we may be in our choice-making.
When Jesus on the cross said of his tormentors, “Father, forgive them, for they know now what they do,” he may have meant it quite literally. In other words, they were purely re-active entities or, in spiritual terms, unconscious.
As a collective entity we have out of this state of unconsciousness created a biosphere-destroying superorganism that carries within it the seeds of it and quite possibly our own destruction. This is one way of looking at it, at least.
Eckhart Tolle: “The mind left to itself creates monstrosities, and not only in art galleries. Look at our urban landscapes and industrial wastelands. No civilization has ever produced so much ugliness.”
Of course as you transcend the egoic self and surrender to the universal flow, you are not really gaining “free will” but rather operating in the service of something larger than yourself – He must increase, but I must decrease [John 3:30], or the less of me the more of God.
Let me add here, that I do not claim to speak from a position of spiritual enlightenment or anything close!
That quote should read, ““Father, forgive them, for they know NOT what they do.”
Most arguments about the existence of free will ignore the question of different levels of consciousness.
Stoicism, Sufism and Taoism also refer to the possibility -even necessity – of rising above one’s circumstances, of not being a merely reactive, too emotional and greedy, automaton.
The mindlessness of Antifa, BLM and Neo-Nazism show us what unaware – flesh and blood automatons are like.
Thank you, Harry, a most thoughtful comment with which I agree. We have far less “agency” than we often believe; but when I became aware of that I discovered that there were agents out there who could make better decisions than I could; it was necessary only to trust them enough to walk through the doors they had opened.
Shakespeare, as so often, said it best: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will,” (Hamlet, Act V scene ii).
Perfectly stated, Robert!
“More than £150billion of free money has helped fund the Government’s borrowing binge, a Mail on Sunday investigation can reveal.
“Our research found that money printed under the Bank of England’s so-called quantitative easing (QE) programme has been used to cancel some of Britain’s £2trillion national debt.”
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-8801909/Free-money-Bank-England-150bn-UK-debt-disappear.html
“Our research found that money printed under the Bank of England’s so-called quantitative easing (QE) programme has been used to cancel some of Britain’s £2trillion national debt.”
Ah yes: You are holding some old pieces of worthless paper. Not to worry, I shall replace them with shiny new pieces of worthless paper, and we shall both be happy.
For the reasons why that cannot work, I refer you to Samuel Smiles, “Thrift”. Or any other classical economist.
Yes indeed the mechanism used is a limited company which borrows money from the BoE with which it buys government bonds. Total holdings of the company is £750m of the current £2T UK debt. The only shareholder is the UK treasury and all interest paid by the treasury on the bonds is returned to the treasury as dividends. The original idea was to keep the interest and allow the company to eventually pay off the debt to the BoE but that has now changed. I would imagine the end game will be to bankrupt the company and right off the debt.
Sorry should read £750 billion of the total £2 trillion UK debt.
Many countries seem to have the same idea!
https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
GDPnow has Q3 at plus 34.6%.
the official number will be released in the last week of October.
The US is believed to be above the EU and Japan, in at least some forecasts of how GDP is progressing.
Jon Rappoport on Trump’s treatment:
If media reports are correct, the president is receiving 2 experimental drugs: the antibody cocktail, Regeneron, and the antiviral, Remdesivir.
Aside from their individual adverse effects…
THESE DRUGS HAVE NEVER BEEN STUDIED FOR THEIR COMBINED EFFECTS ON A PATIENT. AND NOW THAT PATIENT…THE FIRST PATIENT RECEIVING THEM…IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
You know the adverse effects of Remdesivir, Scott. They’re more than worrisome. Acute kidney injury, for example. And this drug has only emergency authorization, and it’s explicitly for patients who are SEVERE COVID cases. Trump is not a severe case. What’s going on? Why are the Walter Reed doctors piling on?
The other drug, Regeneron, the antibody cocktail, synthesized versions of mouse and human antibodies, is still in clinical trials. There is NO authorization for its use.
In past trials of antibody drugs, highly increased infection has occurred. Very dangerous.
And pray these doctors don’t suddenly opt for a ventilator. They could do that, if Trump’s condition worsens, because of the effects of the DRUGS. They will call those effects “serious COVID decline.”
In a large New York study of COVID patients in Trump’s age group, 97 percent of the patients receiving ventilator treatment died. Ventilator treatment, as you know, involves heavy and prolonged sedation.
The president is in a very dangerous situation.
Every damn doctor who has any ethics at all should be screaming bloody murder right now. This is not supposition. Would you prescribe a patient not one, but two highly experimental drugs, each of which has very damaging effects? Would you prescribe them TOGETHER? EVER? Especially when the patient is not close to being seriously ill? Especially when the drugs’ combined effects have never been studied?
Much more here:
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/10/03/trump-in-danger-the-test-the-experimental-drugs/
if freedom is the ideal, free to wear a mask or not, free to socialize or isolate etc…
then similarly, Trump is exercising his freedom to take those treatments (as he did a few months ago when he was taking hydroxychloroquine).
(ps: I freely choose to wear a mask in most public settings. I hope to be free to reject any vaccine.)
I agree, let Darwin sort it out.
Will get rid of the less fit genetically.
Eliminating those with genetics that are undesirable. Ok herr Idaho.
Oh noes, what if he survives, but with long-term changes to his personality?
(surprised Pikachu face)
It’ll be like Scrooge or the Grinch!
We will see what the next few days brings. There seem to be a number of others with White House connections who have caught COVID as well. If everyone ends up fine, that could be a plus.
Inflation again:
Executive summary, 8% and rising.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/cost-living-far-higher-official-inflation-rate-harvard-professor-finds
A person really should be in debt right now, the problem is finding an asset and also keeping the costs of that asset covered by income and maintaining sufficient liquidity not to be thrown out of the game.
Land is great as long as those who do the work don’t become ill; even if they recover if that illness is over planting or harvesting, things are not good, miss the first and take the rest of the year off, miss the second and have all the costs associated with planting plus asset costs.
Dennis L.
yes, every person on Earth really should have sufficient assets and income to overcome the real inflation rate.
anyway:
higher inflation calculations are consistent with what Shadowstats has been publishing for many years.
it seems that political changes to the calculations were done over the past few decades to hide the reality, which boils down to the fact that average inflation has been higher than average wage gains, thus the average person is less prosperous.
because the decrease in net (surplus) energy never sleeps.
Thank you, Dennis. I read the paper and was utterly unconvinced. First, said professor reported the inflaition rate was 1.85%. Shock, horror! And hence 40% more than the official CPI. So what? We all know the CPI is about as trustworthy as a Harvard Professor.
The reason? “the Covid-19 Pandemic has led to changes in consumer expenditure patterns that can introduce significant bias in the measurement of inflation.” Which of course is what is happening continuously: people change their pattern of expenditure in response to changing circumstances. Gee, did we really need a professor to tell us that?
And after the “bait” comes the “switch”: “Not surprisingly, the Harvard professor also shows that low-income households are experiencing more inflation, compared to high-income households, simply because spending on non-core products which act more as a tax on consumers, and whose prices have been surging, represents a far greater percentage of the monthly paycheck low-income consumers take home each month.”
Fact, obvious fact: low income households spend proportionately *less* of their income on “non core” products, so if the professor knew how to compute averages correctly, he would reach the opposite conclusion.
Just another superfluous academic needing to get published, be cited by other redundant scribblers, and maybe make a headline somewhere.
Are shortages hyperinflation? $27 for a sheet of OSB. Thats 250% increase. People need a tool they buy it. No one is bargain hunting. No bargain hunting effectively raises prices 25% at least. Feds hands are tied. No ZIRP and no additions to fed balance sheet means end of financial system via contagion. Inflation/dollar destruction will be ignored by fed.
There are an awfully lot of assumptions that go into the CPI calculation. One of the big ones is that all of the “improvements” added to vehicles, to phones, and to many other kinds of things are really highly valued things that we would be willing to pay for outside of what is counted as inflation. Thus, stronger bumpers, fancier paint on cars, backup camera, fancy stereo systems, electric openers and closers for windows and for doors, and antilock breaking systems are all things we would willingly pay for, so are not part of inflation. If apartments now come with air conditioning, and didn’t earlier, that would be considered an upgrade we would willingly pay for (even if an apartment without air conditioning is not something we could actually find).
Gail, I agree 100%. That is the main reason I am always most reluctant to upgrade the software on this machine. “Welcome to Version X+1. It is twice as big, four times as complicated, and it will take you ten times as long to find out how to do anything, if you are lucky. Otherwise, try our online manual, which explains every feature in terms of every other feature, which it assumes you already know.”
Or the online forum, where every question is “How do I do (something very simple)”, and the replies say “open terminal and type (gibberish)”. Look, IT people, I can read the Egyptian hieroglyphic script more easily than I can read Unix cryptograms.
+++++++
CHS is up with his “Musings.”
“In our complacency and hubris, we attribute this to our wonderful technologies, which we assume guarantee us permanent surpluses of energy and food. The idea that technology has reached hard limits or that it could fail doesn’t occur to us.
We’ve taken good luck to be our birthright because it’s all we’ve known. We attribute this good fortune to things within our control–technology, wise investments and policies, etc. The possibility that all these powers that we consider so godlike are insignificant doesn’t occur to us because we’ve enjoyed the favorable winds of luck without even being aware of it.”
Most of us here are aware that perhaps we don’t control as much of life as we would like.
Dennis L.
On the other hand, all the really nice things in my life did not arise as part of any deliberate plan or quest on my part, so I’m quite happy about a lack of control in some respects.
Xabier, i am almost 100% in agreement. Many of the best things in my life have happened “by chance”. Or so I thought, until I met some of the personages behind that chance. Well, they appear as personages, but I believe they are metaphors for what Jung called the “Archetypes”. But I am convinced by these experiences that there are, indeed, “more things in heaven and Earth”.
Fully in agreement, Robert. We have little idea as to the forces, entities or Fates which lie behind our experiences, and it is presumptuous and probably even unlucky to seek to control as much as possible – a point made by Sir Francis Bacon in one of his essays, as you will know.
I like to refer to Sauron, in Tolkein’s mythology, who sought through magical power to create a world which he could dominate completely, perfectly ordered to his way of thinking, and only made an empire of nasty monsters, the enemies of everything good and beautiful.
Thank you, Xabier. If memory serves, the essay in question was “Of Studies”. It is good to seek to control oneself, rather than try to control others or even ones own fate. Marcus Aurelius, I believe, said the same.
Like most people, I’ve struggled and I’ve strived and planned and schemed, and gotten some excellent rewards as a result. I’d call it a proven strategy for achievement. But on the other hand, many of the best things in life have been dropped into my lap or showered upon me without much effort on my own part. And in many cases my own efforts at bettering my position have been catastrophic.
Even as an oldster, with little ambition and enthusiasm for making my life great again, and probably more cynicism than is good for me, I still find myself enjoying life without really trying and, at times, ruining my enjoyment by trying too hard.
There is something to be said for “Providence” as the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over all living creatures—the Great Provider—the Force that providentially provides us with the provisions that allow us to be provident without being miserly.
The force that provides, the force that kills: humility and submission open the way to understanding and peace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGz3S754NzA
‘Red States Are Getting Hit With MASSIVE Covid Wave Right Before Election’
Because Red States know stuff the rest of us don’t. If you can’t see the virus, then it can’t be in the air we’re breathing, therefore you don’t have to wear masks, because you can’t get infected by the Corona Virus. Therefore, Trump must have gotten the virus some other way, lol.
Mark Torkaski writing today at Piece of Mind:
There are no regulations in place in Colorado regarding outdoor wearing of masks except in places like Boulder, aka the “People’s Republic,” an oppressively liberal place. Up here in the mountains, I rarely wear a mask indoors, and never outside.
Today on the trail, I roughly kept track. Perhaps 90% of the hikers we passed wore masks, many stopping to shield up as we approached.
There is no requirement, and these are not employees forced by their bosses to mask up. This is free and voluntary behavior. This is an indication of how deeply penetrated now the brainwashing is.
But there never was any hope. The old axiom that if it is on TV, people think it is true, holds firm. That is the nature of the human race, a herd that is easily frightened and manipulated. It doesn’t hurt that the schools teach them to be passive and to obey, but still, a better showing would be 10 or 20% in rebellion. I think it is now more like 1 or 2% of us with the intelligence to see through the hoax and the moral courage to resist. I do appreciate our readers here.
https://pieceofmindful.com/2020/10/03/two-numbers-90-and-3628800/#more-89072
What can I say? if you own the mass media, you can feed the people anything you like and the mass of them will lap it up. Critical thinking was always at a premium among the general population, and these days the high-tech pseudo-reality of the Matrix is almost irresistible to most of us.
Most of us who managed to live with a modicum of freedom and human rights didn’t fight for those rights. We inherited them from previous generations that did all the donkey work. As a result, we didn’t appreciate what we had and on top of that we’ve grown lazy and dull-witted, so we are letting all those rights slip away.
Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,. That has such people in ‘t!
From our vantage point at of now (us mere plebeians) it’s still impossible to categorically state the virus is weaker than seasonal flu or that it doesn’t have (even in mild form) unforeseen organ crippling/failure effects or how it was conceived in mil lab or not..
Therefor precaution is a must, so why not entertain both thoughts at once, i.e. wearing a mask diligently and especially in crowded or tight badly ventilated spaces, but at the same time being aware it could be some form of imposed hoax (social-political control mechanism) to some degree with say ~25% or higher probability.
Your view sounds very reasonable at the outset. But I can see a slight problem with it.
I typed “even mild flu can” into Google and the following popped up on the first page of results. Both are from 2009, when Swine Flu was being hyped by the same types now hyping Covid-19.
Swine flu is a mild flu, but even mild flu can cause complications for elderly people, young children and those with an underlying medical condition.
—Dr Marion Lyons, head of the health protection teams for the National Public Health Service for Wales
As we know, early experience points to this being an illness with relatively mild symptoms, leaving aside the obvious exception of the current case in Glasgow. However, we need to be quite clear that even mild flu can be unpleasant and debilitating and that, in exceptional cases, flu can cause complications or even deaths.
—Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, at the Scottish Parliament
So there you have it, mild flu can be a killer and cause complications. We get flu epidemics and outbreaks every year all over the world, and accordingly, to the modern liberal progressive persuasion, we will all have to mask up, lock down, social distance and obey meaningless mandates from here to eternity, just to make sure we don’t infect the vulnerable. This is not the kind of liberalism that John Stuart Mill would have been familiar with.
Yep, thanks that was in fact my point as well, I should have written it more clearly..
Re-reading, I think I can grasp now more clearly what you were saying.
By the way, Trump in the video above looks like he stayed too long on the subbed. Scarlet is the new orange?
In the best tradition of the Edinburgh grandees who in the sixteenth century brought Scotland to th edge of the abyss, Nicola Sturgeon is a power hungry egomaniacal control freak.
But Wales?? The Cymri have a long tradition of liberty, longer even than England’s. But based on her name, Marion *Lyons* is probably a Norman.
Well yes, worldof, and the two views are not incompatible: I am fairly sure that Bill Gates sees himself as a benefactor and philanthropist, and is quite unaware of his secret desire; not to make more money I am sure, but to control others and prescribe for them, and globally.
And, of course, far more sinister forces have latched on to the crisis to further their own plans – above all the cancellation of the cash economy and the rapid acceleration of the internet-of-all-things and 5G-enabled micro-surveillance.
Not to forget the corporations, who saw demand turning down severely in 2019 and are now demanding bail-outs and state support for their ‘vital’ sectors ad infinitum. They too have latched on parasitically to this gift from the gods.
Tim, thank you again for quoting from my favourite Shakespeare play. (The Tempest, Act V scene i)
Tis flu’ season after all….lol
.. not «failed values», but stranded assets (in english;)
“.. not «failed values», but stranded assets (in english;)”
This is a very pithy aphorism and it well captures the epiphenomenality (an effect in consciousness without its own further causality back into material reality) of the political ‘psychoses’ (BLM, Green New Deal) that you highlight.
The ‘psychoses’ are epiphenomenal to the physical dissipative structure (capitalist society) as it adjusts to the dissipation of less energy available to maintain itself.
BLM and GND are at base two ways of saying that the growth on which the maintenance (and the survival?) of capitalism depends is no longer possible. A frankness about the situation is not possible either and political society can express the reality only by deforming the material and energetic problem into the ‘moral problems’ of ‘racism’ and ‘environmentalism’.
The moralisation of the problem will in no way solve the problem and restore the material conditions of growth; the ‘psychoses’ are acausal and purely epiphenomenal to the problem, ‘as steam from boiling water’ – or as thinning vapour on energetic decline.
The dissipative structure will adjust to less energy, regardless of the ‘moral’ posturings; they are no more than ‘expressions’ in consciousness of the adjustment of the physical dissipative structure (economy, society) to no more, and ultimately less, to ‘go around’.
The issue is at base not one of the failure of ‘values’ (liberty, equality, anti-racism) but ‘stranded assets’ (unprofitable energy).
The ‘psychoses’ (BLM, GND) are a moral/e disorientation, a collapse of the narratives of growth and the rise of ‘narratives’ reflective of the inadequacy and downsizing of the economy.
“There is not enough to go around, some are disadvantaged and that is wrong, it is racist.” “It would be better if there were less to go around, better for the planet.”
Plainly the two ‘moral’ expression of the demise of growth are contradictory – capitalist society is headed to a very socially disordered, and mentally disordered place – to a stressful cognitive dissonance (at base a material frustration) that can only be ‘alleviated’, made temporarily more bearable, through moralistic BLM tantrums on the one hand and by self-righteous displays of ‘green virtue’ on the other.
But they are both ways of ‘approaching’ the same reality that capitalism has hit its limits to improve (and even to maintain?) productivity and living standards. The one approach is displaced ‘complaint’ about decline; the other ‘ennobles’ decline, bestows it with the gloss of a sense of ‘virtue.’
The dissipative structure (society) is adjusting to its new physical conditions, to its situation of unprofitable energy production, and that systemic adjustment manifests epiphenomenally as ‘moral’ angst in consciousness, as frustrated, displaced tantrums and angelic postures in the streets.
– ‘Moralism’ as merely epiphenomenal ‘symptoms’ of material, social ‘decline’, of the adjustment of the dissipative structure to less available energy to maintain itself – as tragicomic ‘entertainment’?
We have to find a way to tell ourselves that it is “good” to do without and it is essential to help those at the bottom of the economic hierarchy.
There is no way we can make the whole system stay together, but these new values can make it look like we are doing is for the good of future generations of people living on earth. In fact, we don’t even know whether there will be future generations on earth. We do know that ecosystems will eventually adapt, whatever we do. It may be that the ecosystem will need to be different, for a new civilization to evolve.
It may require more radiation (to hasten changes in DNA) and a warmer climate (to give access to currently stranded fossil fuels) are what are needed in order for a new ecosystem to evolve. We simply don’t know. But we assume that the past is what is best. We really don’t know. The self-organizing system (or the Higher Power behind such a system) is the one determining what happens as we go forward. We are not the ones determining the outcome, even though we may think that we have great power over what happens next.
Yes, from our historically located human perspective, we tend to think of ‘peak energy’ and the ‘end of growth’ as akin to an ‘end’, as a ‘disaster’. But those evaluations are conditioned by a limited perspective, as if our own civilisation is an historically detached ‘cosm’ of its own.
Our everyday values and perspectives reflect and concern the functioning of the dissipative system (civilisation) around us and within which we are located as nestled and subordinate dissipative systems (persons). And the values adjust to reflect changes in the dissipative system.
We tend to think about the ‘system’ in a very personal way these days. We tend to see people as ‘ends’ in their own right, in the Kantian way that suits a dissipative system in which energy exchanges are arranged by ‘shares’ and waged labour.
Our bourgeois moral philosophical orientation encourages us to view system outcomes in terms the affects on persons today and their individual well-being. The welfare state is an extension of that bourgeois orientation.
But beyond our own limited, historically located and conditioned perspective, capitalist society and the persons within it are merely a snap shot of a part of the cosmos in its self-evolution toward ever concentrated energy dissipation.
We (persons) ‘matter’ objectively as components of the dissipative system, in the same way as hydrogen atoms on the sun ‘matter’ – we are part of what allows the dissipative process to proceed.
And we ‘matter’ subjectively to ourselves, as in need of maintenance, and it is objectively ‘correct’ that we should do so as our maintenance allows the continuation of the wider dissipative process.
Objectively our subjective ‘values’ are located relative to our place within the earthly, and ultimately within the cosmic, dissipative system. But they are subjectively so located in such a way that we are aware mainly of ourselves, and of our own local, societal and earthly systems and how they affect us.
As you say, capitalist collapse, and even civilizational collapse, are not ‘ends’ or even ‘disasters’, they are just moments in the ongoing ‘history’ of the planet and of the cosmos. The earth will survive, ecosystems will survive, and likely humans will survive too.
But they will all be different. And that is fine.
Our limited perspectives, and located values, ‘tell’ us that the present ‘should’ remain, things ‘should’ be ‘as they are’. They are ordered to this particular dissipative set up, even this status quo, to its maintenance and operation. Because that is what we ‘are’, dissipative parts of this dissipative set up.
But a wider, less located perspective, and ‘values’, allow us to see that the cosmos is always in flux. That is the ‘nature’ of reality, as Heraclitus, pointed out long ago. ‘Nothing is, all is becoming’. And that is how it is ‘meant’ to be.
It is ‘meant’ to be, objectively speaking, that the present dissipative system should be temporally limited, just as it is locally limited. Every local dissipative system has its time as well as its place. That is how all things ‘are’. It performs its function of dissipating energy and ‘history’ moves on to the future dissipative systems.
So yes, the planet will ‘evolve’, ecosystems will be ‘different’, people will evolve genetically and change, and so will human societies. From the wider, perhaps more Stoical, perspective, that is exactly what we should ‘expect’. And it is even what we might ‘want’.
The cosmic perspective affords its own ‘values’ by which we might ‘evaluate’ the giving way of the present to a largely unknown future. What ‘matters’ is the continuation of the cosmic cycle. And that inevitably continues onward, with all things in flux, as it ever has. In that sense, ‘- as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.’
That perspective can afford consolation, or at least calm – the ‘ataraxia’ sought by the ancient philosophers of all ‘schools’. The term was introduced by the Pyrrhonic Sceptics and was adopted by the Epicurean ‘hedonists’ and the Stoic ‘functional ascetics’ of Greece and Rome alike.
‘A lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry.’
Perhaps, ‘the kingdom of God is within.’
Yes, one can if one wants equate the cosmic process with a ‘Higher Power’, a guiding ‘principle’ – a ‘noumenon’ of which the cosmos is somehow ‘reflective’. Kant has made it an ‘unknown’ and ‘unknowable’ to us, so by definition no one can really say one way or the other these days. Metaphysics has been ‘cordoned off’ to us.
(Arguably Kierkegaard built his Christianity on sceptical themes. Perhaps paradoxically, ‘tradition’ is the historical Pyrrhonic move.)
That perspective too, albeit hypothetical, can ‘gel’ with the cosmic ‘perspective’ and ‘values’ and afford ataraxy.
‘All is well, and all will be well’ (S. Therese.) ‘- just different,’ we might add.
Thanks.
I was listening to a deep techno EP by this guy on the cans while I was typing that. LOL
Thanks for your thoughts. They are helpful. Perhaps people need to be reminded that things will work out as they need to work out according to the laws of physics, without our stressing out over the situation.
The way things work out will be perfectly fine, even though this might be quite different from what has been the case in the past and what we have been hoping for in the future. CO2 levels may be high; temperatures may rise; California’s forests may burn.
All of these things are part of the way dissipative structures “work.” Perhaps, ‘the kingdom of God is within.’ We can only trust that the situation will work out the way that the overall system requires.
“For I saw truly that God doeth all-thing, be it never so little. And I saw truly that nothing is done by hap nor by adventure, but all things by the foreseeing wisdom of God: if it be hap or adventure in the sight of man, our blindness and our unforesight is the cause.”
Juliana of Norwich, ca 14th century. The first (and almost only) devotional work written by a woman anchorite. And yes, it was written in English.
From an ivory tower perspective, certainly peak energy is not a disaster for the human race, but for most of those who must live through it, it will be disaster. Yes, I expect mankind to *eventually* recover and create a life that seems satisfying to most persons, but that is well down the road, and possibly beyond the lifetime of anyone alive today. It is even possible that civilized man might slowly die out, to be replaced by a vast but gradual expansion of primitive peoples who now abide in remote corners of the world. I hope not, but I do not consider such an outcome to be farfetched.
A new ecosystem will take some Millions of years…
Quite possibly. We are really concerned about humans, not the ecosystem. The vast majority of species have gone extinct. Humans may become extinct as well. New dissipative structures of various types will form, to dissipate energy that is available.
‘A million years are like a day to the planet’ – anyway, eco-systems do not take nearly so long as that.
Eco-systems are open systems in flux and they are always liable to change due to migration, natural disasters, disease, invasive species and climate changes. Some, like ancient forests and deserts, may last hundreds of thousands of years.
New, stable eco-systems from entirely blank-slates are very rare these days bar freshly laid volcanic plains but they can begin to be populated from nearby species within decades as on Pacific islands.
Entirely destroyed eco-systems can begin to revive in centuries or millennia, as in North America after the glaciers retreated 15,000 years ago and left barely more than rock and dirt. Mosses appeared and then small plants, then evergreens trees, then deciduous trees and fauna like today.
Especially diverse and fragile eco-systems, like coral reefs can take centuries, thousands or tens of thousands of years to be entirely re-established with all of their species, it really depends. Tropical rainforests re-use nutrients fast and little is left in the soil if they are destroyed, so that takes time too.
Eco-systems are always changing, disappearing, re-emerging and giving way to new ones. The planet is in constant flux and all things on it. It is the nature of the cosmos, even galaxies and solar systems come, change and go.
All is contingent and temporary, all is in flux – it is just how things ‘are’. Our ‘perspective’ is limited but planets exist on a much larger time scale than us – ‘a thousand years are as a day.’
Thank you. I respectfully present a two word summary: Πάντα ῥεῖ. (Herakleitos of Ephesus, 535 to 475)
I have always remembered the introduction to THE STORY OF MANKIND by Hendrik Van Loon (1921) to put human actions into perspective:
“HIGH Up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.”
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/754/754-h/754-h.htm
Millions? Nah. Think about vast ecosystems that were totally obliterated by glaciation during the most recent ice age. Within a few millennia of the ice having melted, they were thriving again–no doubt somewhat different than what preceded them during the previous interglacial, but entirely functional.
i am working on an essay which i was thinking beginning like this:
The implosion of capitalism triggers political psychoses
Black Lives Matter and a Green New Deal are manic reactions to the ghosts that haunt the capitalist world: declining profits, declining productivity and failed values.
At the end i have some thoughts about the GND and the Modern Money Theory:
The basis for the idea of a green new deal is a so-called modern money theory, Modern Money Theory (MMT). This theory has the same basic view as John M. Keynes, who believed that digging up hypothetically hidden bags of money in the coal mines would have the same economic effect as the coal itself.
Keynes helped turn the relationship between energy resources and money upside down, so that he could use the sum of money transactions as a measure of economic activity. Thus arose a new science – economics – and by extension an economic policy, which was concerned with regulating the money supply in the economy.
Supporters of a green new deal, such as Rethinking Economics, stand by this Keynesian tradition. According to MMT, a state that issues its own currency does not need to get into debt in the international financial markets.
The argument is that with spare capacity and low inflation, the state can print money and spend it on a green shift, without this leading to a weakening of the currency, at least not in the short term. In the longer term, however, this depends on the green investments becoming profitable.
However, there is little reason to believe that billions for so-called green transition and circular economy can stagnate the decline in both labor and capital productivity that has also occurred in well-organized countries such as Norway with high confidence and low levels of conflict, and despite digital IT the revolution.
Money is a symbolic representation of physical energy flows, and a post-war Keynesian-inspired policy only worked as long as the economy had access to a new cheap fossil energy source – oil – in addition to coal. Keynes was lucky.
I do not think it was a coincidence that the United States left the gold standard at about the same time as conventional oil production reached a peak. Since then, debt growth has been necessary to compensate for increasingly expensive and more complex fossil energy extraction.
MMT is a kind of logical consequence of the implosion of fossil capitalism, because according to the theory, a monetary sovereign state does not have to demand that those who use the printed money pay them back with interest. Thus, one can say that one has freed oneself from the environmentally destructive growth constraint, even though one will soon experience the consequences of the objective economic value of so-called renewable energy being vanishingly small, compared with fossil fuels.
Please feel free to comment and criticize!
apart from diehard doomsters in OFW, it is impossible to convince people that (infinitely) increasing prosperity is entirely dependent on (infinitely) increasing supplies of cheap fungible energy resources.
To quote a cousin of mine, who had control of a multi million municipal function of a large town:
“what’s energy got to do with it?”, was the reply when I tried to put over the above reality.
No intellectual slouch, obviously, but he simply did not understand the correlation between capital and energy. That without energy input,, the capital of his town would cease to be.
And given that wall of stupidity, it is impossible to explain the problem in understandable terms to the majority
That said, fossil fuelled capitalism is bound to implode. And as it does so, governments will print money to make up the shortfall in values. (they have no other options)
As that too fails, physical confict is inevitable, and will go on until the economics of the global system rebalances itself.
Whether that ‘rebalanced’ system includes humankind is anybody’s guess. As things stand right now, one gets the impression that the last man standing will cut down the last tree standing in order to cook his dinner.
One of the best short summaries ever, thanks.
Sven, tank you for your analysis. And once again, I shall respond with a comment from one wiser than I: “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” (Ayn Rand)
I see added debt as a promise of future goods and services, made with energy products. When there really is inexpensive to produce energy products, the added demand created by this debts (for example, for new cars and homes) can help bid up the price of energy products. Because of this higher price, more energy products can actually be produced.
Unfortunately, we went past the “enough is enough” point in 2008. There was too much sub-prime housing. There was too much credit card debt. The debt bubble was burst in mid-2008, and the price of oil dropped dramatically. It was only when the US started Quantitative Easing near the end of 2008 that oil price started to rise again.
Later, when the US phased out QE in 2014, prices dropped dramatically, proving for certain the connection of oil prices with QE. When the US Central Bank later tried to sell off some of the securities it held Bank (late 2018?), the stock market started to “tank.” It then became clear that selling off these securities was not possible. The stock market really needed to support of these securities held by the central bank.
Renewable energy doesn’t really have any reasonable return. Electricity generation ideally needs to be able to follow the demand of customers. If it can’t do that, a level load, which fossil fuels can add to, also works well. The random generation of wind, and the solar generation at times it is not needed or wanted is not helpful at all. It would need to be greatly buffered by batteries or something similar, to be “sort of useful.” Even this is not very useful, unless renewable energy is “dirt cheap” to produce and (as I discuss in the next two paragraphs) can be sold at a very high prices as well.
There is something I didn’t stop to think about until recently. Oil is the product that historically customers would pay large amounts for. A large percentage of these high prices went into taxes of various kinds. These taxes, in a sense, represented at least part of the surplus energy oil was able to generate. Some of high prices went into dividends to shareholders. These shares were owned by pension plans. In a way, these oil profits thus helped to subsidize pension plans.
When people talk about electricity replacing oil, they lose sight of the fact that the price of oil has historically been hugely higher than the cost of extraction of oil, so that the energy surplus could be returned to the rest of the economy. If renewables are to replace oil, they really need to replace this function as well, playing high taxes and lots of dividends. Instead, they need subsidies and more subsidies.
Great observations, I recall one poster (sorry name escapes me) was vehemently recommending to short oil after the ending of QE phase ~2014. Very good actionable prediction in the hindsight..
Thanks. As a mostly uncomprehending observer re industry details, this seems like one of today’s posts that comes close to being comprehensible to the interested “outsider.” I wonder if there’s a point to clumping these posts together into a kind of booklet could help?
Were one to take today’s notational wealth(assuming one had some) and “invest” it in solar, might that be better than nothing?
Gold seems to have carrying costs, at the extreme bury it and forget where it is, more reasonable, build a castle to protect it along with associated soldiers, etc.
Crops are a well known method of solar collection with storage issues as well, rats, thieves, rot.
Perhaps mitigation is all that is possible, solutions are not obvious.
Dennis L.
“…China does not have enough fresh food to go around – and neither does much of the world.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-food-shortage-clean-plate/2020/10/02/578daa0e-0223-11eb-b92e-029676f9ebec_story.html%3foutputType=amp
So it is vegetables, besides pork, that are problems. I hadn’t really connected it to the vegetable problem.
Might be seen to be in the interest of China, therefore, to seed COVID throughout the world (remember how they insisted that unrestricted flights should continue and the WHO supported them?) and hopefully benefit -eventually, this is a mid-term game – from reduced competition due to initial deaths and lock-downs, and, much more importantly, the cascading implosion of rival advanced economies -which would itself lead to accelerated population decline and less pressure on food supplies?
“A world awash with debt: can governments learn to rule while drowning in the red?
“…If growth, inflation and sustained austerity are all implausible strategies for rapidly dealing with the debt, then one other logical avenue remains open, at least in principle: namely default.”
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/debt-deficit-economy-recession-coronavirus-covid
Debt default does indeed seem to be at the end of the road. Default pulls down a whole lot of things, including banks, pension plans, and insurance companies.
Gail, debt is almost always defaulted at the end of the road. It is rolled, and when that fails it is passed around, and when that fails, it dies. Unless of course you can burn your creditors at the stake, as Philip IV of France did.
In my academic paper, “Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis,” I quoted Rogoff and Reinhart as saying in a working paper covering eight centuries of debt repayments as saying, ““It is notable that the non-defaulters, by and large, are all hugely successful growth stories.”
An economy can repay debt only if it is growing fast enough that the growth allows the payment of debt with interest.
I read that to be the daily cost of crewing a ship, not the individual cost.
” These ships can fit much larger crew sizes, but the crew tends to be composed of no more than about 20-30 people. There are usually 6-14 main officers responsible for overseeing each deck, maintaining safety systems, and keeping the ship going. Besides the officers, there will be 6-14 crew members who assist them.Jul 17, 2018″While ship crews have long been sprinkled with sailors from different ethnic backgrounds, the ethnic mix has shifted dramatically. The number of British and American seafarers has plummeted. In 1961 Great Britain had some 142,462 working seafarers; a half century later the figure had dropped to a mere 24,000. That same year the United States owned 1268 ships while today it is less than 100. Only 1% of trade at US ports arrive on American-flagged ships and the US fleet has dropped by 82% since 1951.”
This is a different source from that below, both have about the same idea. A guess is a crew member can quit any time they wish, trouble comes when one wants to return home.
“In another cost cutting measure – the frantic global search for cheap labor, while it is generally core, rich countries that own ships (Japan, Germany, Greece, China) they are manned (very few females) by Filipino, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Indonesian labor in the main paid between 10-20% of what the old British and American seafarers make. Not only that. As the number of seafarers decreases their workload increases. There are many accidents, making seafaring, never an easy job, one of the most dangerous in the world.The Philippines has emerged as a major source of seafarers. In 1974 the county set up their first maritime academy. Today there are ninety of them, turning out 40,000 seafarers annually. In 2011 they sent home some $4.3 billion in remittances. These Filipino and other Asian seafarers are a part of an increasingly apartheid like labor system, where the captains and officers on ships are almost always European, the crews Asian with little chance for advancement”
While ship crews have long been sprinkled with sailors from different ethnic backgrounds, the ethnic mix has shifted dramatically. The number of British and American seafarers has plummeted. In 1961 Great Britain had some 142,462 working seafarers; a half century later the figure had dropped to a mere 24,000. That same year the United States owned 1268 ships while today it is less than 100. Only 1% of trade at US ports arrive on American-flagged ships and the US fleet has dropped by 82% since 1951.
In another cost cutting measure – the frantic global search for cheap labor, while it is generally core, rich countries that own ships (Japan, Germany, Greece, China) they are manned (very few females) by Filipino, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Indonesian labor in the main paid between 10-20% of what the old British and American seafarers make. Not only that. As the number of seafarers decreases their workload increases. There are many accidents, making seafaring, never an easy job, one of the most dangerous in the world.The Philippines has emerged as a major source of seafarers. In 1974 the county set up their first maritime academy. Today there are ninety of them, turning out 40,000 seafarers annually. In 2011 they sent home some $4.3 billion in remittances. These Filipino and other Asian seafarers are a part of an increasingly apartheid like labor system, where the captains and officers on ships are almost always European, the crews Asian with little chance for advancement
https://robertjprince.net/2015/02/23/global-container-shipping-bigger-ships-smaller-crews-a-formula-for-disaster/
Your interpretation is no doubt correct.
I can believe that these ships are now sometimes understaffed, making accidents of various kinds more common. I am sure that in the small quarters, there is not room for a “men’s room” and a “women’s room.” Having workers with very similar needs helps keep down costs.
“Shipowners are facing rising labor costs as widespread Covid-related restrictions limit movement of seafarers and make crew swaps more expensive.
“Because relieving and replacing ship workers has become so difficult during the pandemic, daily crew costs have increased 10% from January to mid-July, up to $3,144 for capesize dry-bulk carriers, according to the Baltic Exchange…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-30/seafarers-stranded-by-virus-spark-a-sudden-jump-in-labor-costs
Daily crew costs of $3,144? The graph suggests crew costs averaged $2,850 before the latest run-up. How much are these folks being paid? If we multiply $3,144 by 365, we get $1.1 million per year. Some of the unemployed around here might start looking for jobs of this kind.
The daily cost is split between a number of people. Here are some maritime job listings that give an idea of the salary ranges:
http://maritime-connector.com/jobs/
Interesting! There is quite a wide range of wages, but none of them nearly as high as the average of $1.1 million per year. Of course, the wages include room and board. If a person mostly jumps from ship to ship and stays at hotels in between, he (or theoretically, she), doesn’t even need a different residence otherwise. He doesn’t need a vehicle either. Of course, it is hard to spend much of what is earned that way.
“Oil Companies Cut More Jobs As Demand Recovery Remains Uncertain:
“Suncor Energy is cutting as much as 15 percent of its workforce—a total of 2,000 jobs—as demand destruction and low prices have created an adapt or die scenario for oil companies to contend with.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Companies-Cut-More-Jobs-As-Demand-Recovery-Remains-Uncertain.html
“Norwegian gas and oil company, Equinor (EQNR) has announced its slashing 30% of the workforce in its exploration unit, to increase efficiency and reduce cost.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-norway-equinor-oil-gas-industry-job-cuts-exploration-112712504.html
Current prices are way too low.
It seems Equinor is still in denial. What is the point of funding an “exploration unit”, when anything they find will be worthless? Why not have a leprechaun exploration unit instead? At least it might make an episode of “ancient aliens”
“‘It’s a ghost town’: City of London market reacts to Covid slump:
““Hibernating through the winter is not an option for our economy,” warned Catherine McGuinness, policy chair at the City of London Corporation, the Square Mile’s governing body and landlord of Leadenhall market. “We are building up an economic crisis which has the potential to impact more people than the health one. It is vital that we protect livelihoods as well as lives.””
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/03/city-london-market-covid-leadenhall-boris-johnson
“Nearly 300,000 jobs in the UK’s ailing hospitality trade will be lost unless the government moves quickly to save them with a sector-specific bailout, some of the industry’s largest pubs and restaurant groups have warned the prime minister.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/02/uk-hospitality-industry-fears-300000-job-losses-unless-pm-helps-now
London seems to be a little late in figuring out the nature of their problem.
Harry,
Do most of these jobs even matter? If none of them are done tomorrow, will it make a difference to the real economy? Finance to me appears over, there is no real capital allocation anymore, those with money snap up the good deals before they hit the street.
If Catherine Mc Guinness never goes to the office again, will it make a difference? Let those affected sweep the streets, it will solve the cost issue regarding gym memberships. The stuff that still matters is still there, it is the overhead which is reduced.
Dennis L.
I guess one big problem with financial collapse would be the failure of pension plans. These indirectly finances nursery homes as well. At least here in Norway, they will collect 85 % of a person’s pensions (or other income streams) to pay for a stay at an institution.
There are two different pension plans here (1) the government sponsored plan, which is basically a pay as you go plan (from contributions from young working people) and (2) supposedly funded plans, typically by prior employers. In a sense, both of these types of plans are in trouble, with the second kind being in perhaps more trouble than the first kind.
Nursing homes tend to be more expensive than the amount that either type of pension would pay for, unless a person really had a high prior income. There seem to be a number of different programs so that these homes can recover their high costs. A program called Medicaid often pays the cost. This program varies by state. The program might pay for a share of a double or triple room, rather than for a person’s own room, for example.
I found this link. https://www.medicare.gov/what-medicare-covers/what-part-a-covers/how-can-i-pay-for-nursing-home-care
Payment for this cost tends to be a problem.
Norway is such a rich country in terms of *wide spectrum natural endowment I would not worry about the collapse itself much, perhaps only tangentially by it severity aspects (e.g. %pop crash, neighbors/invasion, ..).
—
* sea shore, forests, river system suitable for low tech waterwheels, pastures, ..
Quite true: but reading 18th century accounts of Norway (just as in say Switzerland, or the green and well-watered parts of Spain ) life was pretty hard and required great toughness and unremitting industry to prosper at a basic level of necessities – and this is why at an earlier age England was so attractive to the Vikings and the Norse kings.
The fact that they treated their draught animals – such as mules and horses – kindly, walking beside them rather than riding them, suggests that: they simply didn’t have the abundance of them found in Britain or the Netherlands – the Dutch wouldn’t walk anywhere, even getting dogs to pull them along, very lazy people in that respect!
And Norway is today grossly over-populated in relation to resources, as everywhere: the elimination of the dependent elderly would be a great help in that respect, and that would come quite naturally with a collapse scenario as sophisticated medical treatments disappear, as to higher general mortality and elimination of weak dependents.
So yes, perhaps grounds for less pessimism!
When my husband and I visited Norway a few years ago, we visited a site that dated from about the year 1000 CE. The settlement seemed to be far behind what was described in the New Testament times in Israel. The cold weather was clearly holding the country back.
We were also told that the country suffered disproportionately when the Black Death came through. Business people from Germany came up and filled in, because so many of the people in Norway had died.
“Do most of these jobs even matter?”
They matter to the economy when the people who held those jobs can no longer service their debts or consume.
I would guess that the unhappy unemployed are also more likely to contribute to social unrest or become a burden on the health and legal/penal systems.
I spotted in the news this morning that Cineworld, the largest cinema chain here, is shutting down its UK operation entirely. It’s scary when entire business models and the people who rely on them for jobs are no longer viable.
“…the firm is writing to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden to say the industry is now “unviable”.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54407213
Quite apart from the importance to individuals and families, there is really no such thing as an ‘inessential’ job when the economy has been so completely financialised.
Dennis, thank you, and I agree. These jobs have already been lost; they are now “zombie” jobs, kept unalive by continuous infusions of unserviceable debt. Better to admit the truth, and work at creating new, productive jobs for the workers to move to. For example, how about some apprenticeships? Small classes taught by experienced workers and craftsmen, in areas where there is still demand and where energy can still be used as an efficient multiplier of effort? Or older service industries that do not require contact: tailoring, haberdashery, small household luxuries such as pottery, mirrors, curtains, …
Yes, it is a descent from video games, integrated resorts, and passenger jet aircraft; but that will happen anyway, and those ahead of the curve will probably be the winners.
“The eurozone is sliding further into a debt-deflation trap, risking a protracted economic depression in the southern countries and a slow-motion insolvency crisis…
““The European Central Bank has completely lost control of the inflation process. It is very serious,” said Professor Ashoka Mody, the International Monetary Fund’s former deputy director in Europe…
“The downward lurch comes as a second wave of Covid-19 threatens to truncate the fragile recovery before it has reached “escape velocity”. Madrid is back in quarantine. Paris is on “maximum alert” after the ratio of coronavirus patients in intensive care reached the danger threshold of 30pc.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/10/02/deepening-deflation-pushes-southern-europe-closer-debt-spiral/
“The European Central Bank has identified several scenarios that would require it to launch a digital euro and said it was confident of overcoming any challenges as it started a public consultation on the idea…
““A digital euro would preserve the public good that the euro provides to citizens: free access to a simple, universally accepted, risk-free and trusted means of payment,” the ECB said.”
https://www.ft.com/content/b6f0c233-0b35-45d1-896f-1c6599558d9b
A new second form of currency?
Hm, so they are signaling both the crypto USD and EUR are already prepared for the occasion, not mentioning the Asians, who got there first. So, another huge step up in the dystopian existence is on order for the near-mid term..
Therefore in not so distant future it’s going to be interesting to watch the [disorderly?] sloshing of various asset classes across various made up barriers likely put between them by CBs/GOVs at that time: stock market, real estate, cash equivalents in banks, cash, food and energy (per capita expiry date ration), royalties/revenue stream from IP, ..
“A digital euro would preserve the public good that the euro provides to citizens: …”
Here we go again. “When a man talks about the good of humanity, he is getting ready to commit a crime.”
National crypto will be non-debt currency issued directly by national treasuries to counteract the deflationary aspect of the banks going under as businesses and individuals deleverage.
Non debt? Worthless? Not accounted for?
all currency represents the exchange of one form of energy for another
If there is no energy, or too little energy, available in any commercial system, then currency can have no value.
Creating ‘crypto’ currency cannot increase the amount of energy available to the people ‘using’ that currency. So the ‘value’ of the currency itself depends exclusively on what the users ‘think’ it is.
Which happens to be the definition of a ponzi scheme
a ponzi scheme has no material value, and is supported only by the influx of actual cash to support the ‘imagined’ value of the scheme itself. (what people collectively ‘think’ the value is) Ponzi schemes are based on infinite growth. Bitcoin is the same.
Thoughts are like a tide. When they change, the ponzi scheme gets washed away.
Bitcoin is no different
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/the-myths-of-crypto-currency-f5dea863d116
I notice they said nothing about “private.” And I think calling anything conducted over the internet “secure” is a stretch.
France’s level of cases seems tp be up on the order of the US Midwest’s right now, which is higher than the US’s overall level of cases. All of these places that damped down cases before are finding out that doing so provided essentially no long term benefit.
The article’s title makes it clear that debt defaults are a potential part of the problem as well.
Harry,
Not being an economist, could you give some things that cost less in nominal terms now than a year ago? Here I am looking at everyday things, things most people use in their lives.
Commercial buildings are down, but during the oil crash in the US, I think it was a fellow named Bass looking at see through buildings in Houston, bought a bunch and filled them.
Housing prices in the US are going up, Rochester is nutz, earlier I made a list of what I am seeing, very little down and based on everyday purchases, the gross rate was very much up.
Some of the numbers are made on the last fool in, rents are down in SF, but the bay is still there, it is still beautiful, it is still very expensive.
Thanks,
Dennis L.
Dennls, the whole inflation/deflation/stagflation debate has never been my strong suit and it’s even more complex and bewildering now with the multifarious supply and demand shocks brought on by the pandemic/lockdowns.
My experience in the UK is that fuel prices are slightly down while food is mostly up (some poor harvests here may be having an effect on the latter). My general and entirely unscientific perception is that life *is* getting more expensive. The weaker £ thanks to Brexit uncertainty may be playing a role in that.
Kunstler recently summed things up nicely:
“Of all the things that have made Americans anxious and hysterical this year, this horror of middle-class financial ruin has not quite expressed itself overtly in the public arena — at least, not in the streets. For sure, the Antifas and BLM mobs have been active looting, burning, and smashing things up, but many of these are unemployables, and the ones burdened with college debt may be counting on Democratic Party promises of a jubilee on that.
The foundering middle-class may be people most sympathetic to Trump and Trumpism. You can’t sell them on the identity politics nonsense that has become the Dems’ stock-in-trade. Laid-off airline pilots, hair stylists, and insurance adjusters are probably not interested in critical race theory, gender dysphoria, re-imagining law enforcement, able-ism, and the travails of the ‘neuro-diverse’ (the latest term-of-art for the mentally ill). They may also catch a whiff of yet deeper economic calamity in the Democrats’ relish for more lockdowns, and even in the promised ‘universal basic income’ schemes that would pay the able-bodied to not work. The question for this large group is how many will swap their liberty for the very sketchy and conditional security of a Woke nanny state that requires strict obedience to whatever crazy crusade it thinks up next?
There’s your true friction point in the current disposition of things. People used to being busy, productive, and independent may feel a mighty resentment about becoming that kind of society, and they may fight over it. At least they’ll turn out to vote on it. Maybe they’ll do both.”
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/caution-low-flying-black-swans/
I think he is right. It is the many people in the middle who are really having difficulty. The people at the bottom have been having difficulty for a long time. With the whole system having difficulty, it is even more difficult than before to help the people at the bottom, much less the people in the middle as well.
Maybe not,
“Nationwide, our study found that the wage‐equivalent value of benefits for a mother and two children ranged from a high of $60,590 in Hawaii to a low of $11,150 in Idaho. In 33 states and the District of Columbia, welfare pays more than an $8‐an‐hour job. In 12 states and DC, the welfare package is more generous than a $15‐an‐hour job.
Of course, not everyone on welfare gets all seven of the benefits in our study. But, for many recipients — particularly the “long‐term” dependents — welfare clearly pays substantially more than an entry‐level job.
To be clear: There is no evidence that people on welfare are lazy. Indeed, surveys of them consistently show their desire for a job. But they’re also not stupid. If you pay them more not to work than they can earn by working, many will choose not to work.”
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/when-welfare-pays-better-work?gclid=Cj0KCQjwwuD7BRDBARIsAK_5YhWSZkNThFWKCeThLtUigTNMmORNojxRNgx5Bo–77VkFcGUZSXRvnAaAq4GEALw_wcB
This if from 2013, I am taking less time to scan articles these days, I recall seeing that the total benefits were more like $60K a few years ago. Given one does not have to work one’s time is their own, this is basically retirement.
There are other real issues, those have been alluded to on this site, they are real.
Rich is an interesting term, if you are rich and have $10m, that is about $100-200K annual income.
Medicare is not means tested on the lower end, so that is easily worth $10k/ year for the elderly in avoid insurance/copayments compared to under 65.
Dennis L.
The Kaiser Medicare Advantage Plan in Georgia costs exactly $0, except for deductibles on individual services, including drugs. These tend not to be terribly high either. It would be at the extreme end of the cost savings, I would think.
Tim Morgan:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
“The real economy, and the people who comprise it, can tolerate stagnation, or a modest decline in output – but the financial economy relies absolutely on continuity and growth.”
“For the financial system to survive at all, the real economy must carry on growing, and the absolute, irreducible minimum is that it must not contract, other than by a very small extent, and for a very limited period.”
“… even something well short of de-growth – for instance, a severe and prolonged recession, well short of what was experienced in the 1930s – would bring down the financial system.”
okay.
so he supports the idea that “the financial system will collapse” after a “severe and prolonged recession”.
that idea will be tested by 2021 or 2022.
This SEEDs seems worth some study, it seems to be a more detailed explanation of what Gail and others on this site are seeing and experiencing.
“Measured on the basis of C-GDP, economic output per tonne of oil equivalent (toe) of energy consumed has declined steadily, from $7,400 in 1999 to $6,730 last year, reflecting the observation that C-GDP has increased by only 40% over a period in which primary energy consumption expanded by 54%.
This deterioration in conversion efficiency may seem counter-intuitive, but has several important inferences, in addition to the obvious statement that we are using energy less, rather than more, effectively over time.
Specifically, changes in the ‘mix’ of the energy slate seem to be trending towards lesser conversion efficiency, whilst technology has concentrated much more on finding additional applications for energy than on the more efficient use of energy itself.”
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
Personally, I am experiencing inflation, grapefruit are up 50% today, investing going forward is a real issue. Buying farmland seems like a good bet until up and personal one sees the few people who are farming, their close proximity and the chance they will become ill. A crop not harvested returns nutrients to the soil, but no cash with which to pay taxes. Should the “peasants” die, it is a generation to train the next – this is real in my case, the next generation is seven year old.
The above referenced link seems to be an excellent summary, it will take me a few reads to digest even basically, then what does one do? Maybe, another glass of wine to digest the ideas.
Dennis L.
I would agree that many of Tim Morgan’s posts are well worth reading, including his most recent one, The Castaway’s Dilemma, Part 2: WE CAN’T RESCUE FINANCE UNLESS WE RESCUE THE ECONOMY.
I would be more enthusiastic about SEEDs, if I it weren’t a black box that he has put together. I expect he would get a similar result if he simply looked at the amount of primary energy consumed.
.Yes, I too have looked for the box, can’t find it, would be nice to see the insides of it.
Dennis L.
Thank you for the reference. I enjoyed the paper, but I would have enjoyed it rather more if the author had given just one convincing reason *why* we should rescue finance. Why should we “rescue the economy” merely in order to siphon off more hard earned wealth into the pockets of liars, rogues, and thieves? They made their bed; why should they not lie in it?
“rescue the economy” always means “make the economy grow,” so the current financial system apparently depends on ETERNAL GROWTH, and since growth requires energy, an eternal increase in energy consumption.
Dr. Tim leans more on earlier spectrum of crash ~2020-22-25, he is worried about few $T printed y/y, which supposedly is going to spook the markets.
I’m not sure of that at all, in the great scheme of things we probably have to go first through period (perhaps brief) of more naked printing on way higher level, e.g. say US/FED printing ~$20T and key RoW providing another $20-30$ for aggregate of ~$50T globally each year..
I’ve been a long time reader of Gail’s writing, going back to the Oil Drum. She cleverly saw the flaw in what was conventional peak oil groupthink, that oil could become very highly-priced, and remain highly-priced for prolonged periods of time. On the other hand, many of her articles since the Oil Drum days have lacked any coherent conclusions. Her articles have essentially been just a string of introductory paragraphs, leaving the reader with more questions than answers. This article is finally one that does have coherence. There will certainly be seismic changes in American society. Areas of interest include: what are some tipping points for economic well-being, (in lieu of the Dow being buttressed by aspiration more than reality)? How can a nation with a ruling political party that is so thoroughly Machiavellian respond to such an enormous crisis? When firearms outnumber people, how can order prevail when law enforcement won’t be so pervasive? What are some potential timelines for such upheavals?
I am afraid I don’t really know the answer to all of these questions.
We are dealing with systems that have lots of things that could go wrong. Trump could die of COVID. Biden could die from COVID. Those involved with international trade might suddenly find themselves unable to get credit insurance regarding international transactions. This could happen because the business desiring credit is not very creditworthy. It could also happen when the country where the business is located has a currency that is deemed to be not very secure. It might fall very suddenly, very far. Or, some major banks may need suddenly need bailing out and not being able to get adequate assistance. Or governments could be overthrown, especially governments of oil exporting countries suffering (for years) with low oil prices.
The direction I see things happening is in the direction of international organizations “coming apart” and countries made up of smaller units (such as states or provinces) coming apart into smaller units. Parts of a country my come under the leadership of one leader, and other parts under the leadership of another leader. International trading will go downhill, partly because there will be many new currencies representing the new smaller countries..
It would seem like some of these changes could start taking place in the next few months. At the same time, some business may go on as usual, even with these changes, at least for a while.
With such a changing, different types of leaders will be needed. Some of them may appear to be “thoroughly Machiavellian.” To change the system, we really need leaders who are willing to push for major changes. They cannot be the statesmen of days past.
The thing that limits the use of firearms is the amount of ammunition for these firearms. Also, transportation of this ammunition limits the usefulness of the firearms. If ammunition is not being made locally, these firearms may not be useful for very long
I would never have thought of the idea of a shutdown going on at least partially for months, would be eing possible. A self-organizing system can “come up with” solutions to “not enough” that none of us individually would overthink of as being possible..
We may have to just wait and see what happens. Maybe, timelines will become more clear as we go along.
Interesting times, The President is reported as taking vitamin D among other things. This is dramatic, no easy solutions.
Dennis L.
I’m sorry Vit C is being left out. It has worked for me for around 40 years. No flu-like symptoms. No colds.
https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1312122950133272576/photo/1
polyclonal antibody cocktail.
scientific manmade artificial antibodies.
no hydroxychloroquine, so he is agreeing to the currently best devised treatment plan.
it’s interesting to see that the regimen includes vitamin D, which we have learned about here months ago.
though he is not asymptomatic, his symptoms should disappear soon.
Hillary Clinton is still testing negative for being President.
add Remdesivir:
https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1312249103473143812/photo/1
The second instalment, Die Walkure, has been released of Simon Rattle’s new Ring cycle, with the Bayerischen Rundfunks.
Simon is criticised for his ‘light’ style of treatment but I find it most agreeable. I have over 40 Ring cycles in any case, covering all the conductor styles from the noble vigour of Furtwangler, the grace and violence of Karajan, the silky textures of Solti, to now the elegant and restrained lightness of Rattle, and they are all gorgeous in my opinion. There are too many names to drop, but Krauss 1953 has a certain vividity in my opinion. There would not be much point to new interpretations if they all sounded the same.
Anyway, it is difficult not to think of finite world themes while listening to Das Rheingold on the cans and pondering its symbolisms; the buried treasure, the gold of the Rhein – fossil fuels, I dare say; the ambitious appetite of the worker Alberich and its resented frustration; the overstretch of the nobles, the gods, and their pact with the giants, the bourgeoise with their workers, to obtain their mountain palace in return for the marriage of Freya – all risked in ambition and everyone cursed in overreach and the pursuit of power – all classes unable to avoid the fate bestowed by their own appetite and ambition. It is all headed for its gotterdammerung.
The new Rattle releases have the benefit not only of the conductor but also of the latest recording technology. 1950s live recordings have a lovely sound, and boast the heights of Wagnerian performance, but there is no arguing with the warmth and detail of modern recordings. This is Rattle conducting Die Walkure live in Munich in 2020. To my ear, he presents an elegant, calm, ‘matter of fact’ approach to the Ride that is often done with more ‘drama’ – a very welcome ‘take’ on it, if by no means the only.
it’s fascinating how a composer can create a work for voice and orchestra, and the vocal music can be so different from the instrumental music.
I find the voices to be usually unappealing, and yet the instrumental music can be amazing.
(this occurs often in pop and rock also, where how many hundreds of times have I heard an appealing instrumental introduction only to be quite disappointed when the singing began.)
I thought this was amazing when I discovered it (and only about an hour, so it’s the best of the best of the 15 hour Ring):
Interesting. I enjoyed the Solti Ring for many years, but finally had to move on. But by far the best “Ring” is Anna Russell’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN5dAQLYYrs
Interesting. I enjoyed the Matthew Gospel for many years, but finally had to move on. But by far the best “Gospel” is Terry Jones’s:
The Soviet Union and its Soviet bloc is a very good example of how the oil production and consumption works and this example is worth a deeper analysis.
1. It consisted of a country with bad natural conditions (too cold) producing oil, namely Russia and the consumers, namely the countries with mild clmt, namely East and Central Europe.
2. The collapse happened only on the level of the Soviet Union, the total collapse, i.e. the desintegration of Russia, was prevented by the extensive use of nuclear enertgy and by increasing the natural gas production for exports
Based on the abovementioned facts, if an oil producing country (like Venezuela) loses its consumers in the mild clmt (like the USA), its collapse is inevitable.
The countries with mild clmt need just one element – energy. The hot countries need cooling down and water, which requires a lot more energy.
That way Africa was not and will never be an important oil consumer, because it is hot and dry.
It is just the countries with a mild clmt that can consume oil and provide some benefits to the oil producers in exchange for the additional energy they get from oil.
That way the land area of the mild countries is a limiting factor of oil consumption. With the rising temperatures and hot summers, the water shortages endanger this land area, which contributes to the lower oil consuming capacity, as these countries turn into countries with harsh natural conditions.
That way rising of the clmt temperatures using fossil fuels creates the very limit for the oil consumption, as the dry countries are not suitable for the humans, which require water free of germs and dirt for drinking and hygiene.
Maybe we could better define the consumers as the countries with clean water and temporary cold temperatures during the year.
United States, European Union and China are the first three regions in the world with by far the biggest oil consumption, consuming almost 2/3 of world oil production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption
With Japan, Russia, South Korea and Canada we have like 3/4 of the world oil consumption by such countries.
If their populations stop to grow, it means that there is no space for a higher oil consumption in the world. And this is happening. Their populations are ageing. Such ageing populations are consuming less and less, although the productivity is preserved using the automation.
There is no way out than issue more and more debt and inject it into consumption in the oil consuming countries, as long as this can work with the rising costs of oil extraction…
Very interesting analysis, I have had similar lines of thought regarding lack of population growth as a reason for collapse in itself. Why do families in developed countries have much less children now than previous generations? In some sense I think it is because we have become spoiled and detached from the old survival game. Fossil fuels have given us a life of leisure and lots of technological distractions and spare time that provides a “meaningful existence”. Raising children is hard work, but might have provided the “meaningful existence” for many in past generations.
If Mr. and Mrs. Jones would suddenly pop out a few extra kids each, the economy could boom in some of these mild climate countries. But at some point you would anyway hit another resource limit, and back to beer and doomer blogs it is…
With the ageing populations, the energy per capita is divided disproportionately: the elderly consume directly or indirectly higher amounts, thus leaving less for the younger generations.
Also, there are simply other resource limits that stop the population growth, like water availability, too low incomes for more energy efficient homes required by higher energy prices or lower/intermittent wages etc.
First UK deep coal mine in 30 years approved.
https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4021126/green-light-uk-coal-council-grants-approval
The UK has more fossil fuels that the rest of the Europe put together and this is the beginning of a big change back towards energy self-sufficiency.
uk coal output peaked in 1914
I come from a mining family, and I’ve watched mine after mine close. The energy cost of extraction exceeds the energy extracted
60 ft beneath my desk here, there’s seam of coal 6ft thick. Unless you can find miners willing to work for £2 a week, it will stay there.
And in any event, mining skills are set apart from all others. You can’t just ‘decide to open a mine’ in the way you can decide to open a food factory.
There may well be specialist coal extractable for highly specialised uses—but trust me, there’s no way UK coal is going to meet UK energy needs—ever.
Eventually that fantasy is going to die.
Maybe
With the ageing populations, the coal demand falls, importing coal is cheaper. Natural gas has got better perspectives.
mining is a young man’s game
who do you think is going the get it out of the ground to keep the old folks warm?
And don’t say ‘automation’
miners manually put machines in position to do the coal getting part.
then they are moved again
“importing coal is cheaper” — yes, for now, but the last I read there are only four net coal exporters left in the world. One day we will get to “then there were none.”
Coal sitting at some depth beneath your chair is exactly the same as for me on my old coal town. Everyone, without exception, would find the idea of mining any of it unthinkable. All the machinery and documents that could provide some clue how to mine and use coal have been scattered far and wide. We are somewhat isolated along a long rural highway, and although we have the grid still I caution folks that the grid will likely go down eventually, and that coal could at least serve our small community in some small way. But no one’s listening.
People who put together the estimates of coal resources available for extraction never thought these details through at all, unfortunately. The estimates are all way too high.
Gail, there is no need to send miners down to dig out the coal. Underground gasification of coal (UGC) was pioneered here in the 1920s Durham coal fields and again piloted in the 90s by the UK and Italian governments. The department of industry report produced after the pilot showed that all UK electricity could be produced from just six coal fields, There are currently five companies with licenses to develop UGC fields in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification#:~:text=Underground%20coal%20gasification%20%28UCG%29%20is%20an%20industrial%20process,coal%20seams%20using%20injection%20of%20oxidants%20and%20steam.
Gas, in general, is very difficult to deal with. We have huge amounts of natural gas that we considered stranded gas, before energy companies got the idea that perhaps delivered natural gas prices could rise very high. We saw long ago in the US that natural gas prices can’t stay high for very long. We are now finding that this is true around the world.
The killer in any kind of delivery system is the cost of either (1) pipelines to the destination or (2) the cost of compressing the gas, using ships it get it to the destination, and then turning it back to gas, and piping it to its ultimate destination. Needless to say, there needs to be a use for a product in this form as well.
We have not been able to overcome this cost hurdle with shipping natural gas. I expect it production will fall shortly, because its price cannot rise high enough. If we have to add the cost of gasifying coal to the equation, the cost would almost certainly be higher.
all coalfields carry a contingent if free flowing gas within them, hence the danger of explosions etc
the possibility of gasifying coal has been around for years, but as i understand it (some new technology may have been developed I don’t know about) to release gas from the coal itself requires heat, and lots of it.
this was the origin of town gas. Coal was heated in retorts at the gas works (using more coal of course)
if gas is going to be released from the coalseam itself, then the coal has to be heated underground
that is the difficult bit I think, controlling it
There are a lot of uncontrolled underground coal fires, I understand that cannot be put out, or can be put out only with great difficulty. I would expect that they contribute to world CO2 emission as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire
I am surprised that the CO2 from these fires amounts to only three percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. As a percentage of coal emissions, it would be higher.
Another study by Kong et al. [14] calculated the EROI for the Datang coal
gasification project; the results of their study showed that imported natural gas generally had a higher
EROI than coal-based synthetic natural gas, even when environmental inputs were not considered.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiFjKfV3KPsAhUKS6wKHfOIBvIQFjABegQIBhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2F1996-1073%2F11%2F2%2F313%2Fpdf&usg=AOvVaw2dSI0rZx4Vw-c-rQZ173DW
I am a little confused. Are you referring to “Analysis of Point-of-Use Energy Return on Investment and Net Energy Yields from China’s Conventional Fossil Fuels,” by Jingxuan Feng, Lianyong Feng and Jianliang Wang? The current EROIs they are calculating for these fuels are dreadfully low.
I think we are rapidly reaching a point when nothing under consideration will work because the EROI is too low. The price will not stay high enough to permit producers to make an adequate profit. It doesn’t matter if it is imported natural gas or gassified coal.
By the way, I know the authors of this paper.
I looked at this paper by in more detail. I think that the most critical exhibit is Exhibit 9, regarding net energy from conventional fossil fuels. It shows that this flattens out after about 2012, which seems to be what has happened. This puts China in a terrible position, but the people who wrote the paper just assumed that lots of imports would be available. This isn’t really true, as you point out.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/china-net-energy-yields-from-fossil-fuels-feng.png
Re: Scottish independence – UK CEOs say ‘YES’
I still find this surprising but perhaps I should not. UK CEOs overwhelmingly believe that Scotland will become independent and 95% of them are confident that their companies will be able to adapt to the prospect.
As Gail has so insightfully explained, the move toward Scottish independence is underpinned by fundamental energetic principles. Structures, be they cosmic, ecological, biological or social, increase in complexity in order to dissipate more energy; and social structures shed the complexity involved in centralisation, they devolve into simpler structures, in order to utilise less available energy. UK is ‘ahead of the curve’ in its devolution into its simpler, regional, dissipative parts, because UK is ahead of the curve in the decline of the consumption of energy per capita. The one is reflective of the other.
UK CEOs may not have a profound energetic perspective on the growing tendency toward Scottish independence but they seem to sniff which way the wind is blowing. They see Scottish independence as inevitable now and they are confident that their companies will not be worse off for it. 55% of Scottish voters now support independence so it seems that Gail and the CEO weathercocks are on to something.
> Scottish independence is inevitable and nothing to worry about, UK CEOs agree
ONLY 4% of the UK’s most senior business leaders believe Scotland will not become independent, with most chief executives and finance directors relaxed about the prospect, according to a dramatic new poll.
The survey carried out by leading research company Ipsos MORI found 95% of the top executives are confident their company would adapt to the consequences of the new constitutional arrangement.
It also revealed 54% of those questioned either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement: “If Scotland became an independent country it would be a significant risk to my company.” Some 22% either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, while 19% had no opinion.
The survey, published today, was based on interviews with 102 chairmen, chief executive officers, managing directors, chief operating officers, financial directors or other executive board directors. Their companies are all among the UK’s top 500 by turnover.
The research was carried out between February to July this year before the UK Government announced it intended to override the withdrawal agreement it signed with the EU – a move which Brussels has warned increases the prospect of a No-Deal Brexit.
A series of recent surveys have suggested that there is rising support for independence, with one poll saying 55% of Scots now back it.
Some pollsters have found that swing voters have switched believing that an independent Scotland would offer greater future certainty than remaining in Brexit Britain.
…. Emily Gray, managing director of Ipsos MORI Scotland, said: “With a Holyrood election looming and recent polls showing that public opinion has tipped in favour of Scottish independence, we are likely to see renewed debate about the economic implications of independence.
“This survey shows that the leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses are relatively relaxed about the potential implications of Scottish independence for their companies, viewing it as something they will adapt to if necessary.”
The mood about independence among business leaders marks significant change from before the 2014 vote and is a welcome further boosts for the Yes side.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18764101.scottish-independence-inevitable-nothing-worry-uk-ceos-agree/
Scots are on average obese, old and geographically wide spread. They are now more than anytime in the last 50 years dependent upon the largesse of the English tax payer. Good luck trying to create a separate country with that baggage.
So you’re saying they’ve got nae faloorum.
nae….
Time for the young fit Scots to seize the day. Free Scotland!!!!
BON has an article on some of the silliness of the USA presidential campaign. The Biden and media obsession with the far right is a displacement activity for facing up to the carnage wrought by BLM – and to the ‘complex social, political and cultural problems afflicting America in the 21st century’ due to a divisive identity politics.
His analysis is similar to my own, the campaign is bogged down in silliness and displacement, but BON stays firmly in the realms of culture and avoids any discussion of the stagnant productivity that is the underlying reason why the ‘American dream’ has given way to ‘social division for votes’ and the great ‘American displacement activity’.
People cannot be lifted out of poverty, and disparities alleviated, unless the economy creates more productive, higher paying work, and that is no longer possible. Gail has explained the energetic basis. ‘Biden or Trump’ makes no difference to that underlying situation. And indeed, neither candidate even discusses the real situation, they resort to pure divisive silliness to get votes, which is only heightening divisions.
To my mind, this is the election (pick your own favourite) where USA formally bowed out as a country with any pretence to either a better future or to a serious democracy. The USA economy is exhausted and so is USA democracy. All that USA can look forward to now is division and the disintegration of its civil society as its economic base seizes up. Chaos lies ahead. UK has similar tendencies, if not so pronounced yet. The ‘West’ is basically finished.
> The media’s mad obsession with white supremacy
It isn’t the Proud Boys who have been rioting for the past two months.
…. There is a bigger issue at play in the media elite’s obsession with white supremacist groups. It speaks to their alarming inability, or unwillingness, to face up to the real source of disarray and conflict in the US today. It isn’t white-supremacist groups who have taken part in the worst, most nihilistic riots to rock America for five decades – it is people who, right or wrongly, identify as ‘left’ or as ‘progressive’. It isn’t the Proud Boys who have laid waste to entire blocks in often quite deprived areas in Kenosha, Minneapolis and Portland – it is supporters of so-called ‘Antifa’ and of Black Lives Matter. It isn’t the Proud Boys who have harassed diners and stormed into suburbia calling people ‘motherfuckers’ and insisting that they bow down to the supposedly correct political worldview – it is the upper middle-class, often white supporters of BLM who have done that, most of whom will shortly be voting Biden for president.
…. The media’s myopic focus on white supremacy is a displacement activity of epic proportions. For weeks now, the mainstream media, and much of the Democratic-leaning political class, have refused to speak honestly about the instability in the US and about the divisive, identity-based ideologies that have fuelled it. Perhaps nervous that their own role in fomenting the dogma of identitarianism will be exposed, or worried that criticism of Antifa and BLM could accidentally benefit Trump, they have either ignored or downplayed the mayhem of the past couple of months. ‘Mostly peaceful protests’, they’ve said about fiery, nihilistic destruction. As statues were toppled and beheaded, as businesses were burnt to the ground, as people were accosted and attacked for being white or for failing to raise a fist in support of BLM, the media have shrugged their shoulders or said ‘It’s not a big deal’. And now they want us to get heated about the Proud Boys, an ineffectual bunch of muppets? Are they kidding?
The events of this week have confirmed the role that the ‘Trump is racist’ narrative plays in American politics. This mantra is uttered, on a loop, as a kind of distraction. It is used to steal attention away from the complex social, political and cultural problems afflicting America in the 21st century. Incapable of grappling with these problems, or with their own part in causing them, the cultural elites fall back all the time on the easy sloganeering of ‘Trump is racist’. Blocks are burnt down, American heritage is destroyed, people are publicly shamed and abused for their skin colour or their belief system, and still all the commentariat and the Dems can say is: ‘But Trump is racist.’ It has become like a child’s cry. Public discussion in America needs to grow up, and quickly.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/01/the-medias-mad-obsession-with-white-supremacy/
The spiked team has released a pod cast to follow up on the ‘debate’ debacle.
> Why anti-Trumpers could still get Trump re-elected
We discuss the presidential race, the latest from lockdown Britain, and unconscious-bias training.
https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/why-anti-trumpers-could-still-get-trump-re-elected/
“Corporate America, city governments and federal and local law enforcement across the country are making plans to deal with political instability, civil unrest and violence around the upcoming presidential election.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/01/politics/extremism-violence-election-preparations-invs/index.html
One has to simply look at the sheer number of news excerpts posted by Sir McGibbs to deduce that the world’s problems are going exponential quantitatively and qualitatively.
Thank you Harry… Now I need a drink
You are welcome, VFatalis. Nazdarovya!
You are correct, we now have the McGibbs index, a worldwide index reflecting positive or negative confidence in economic growth. It is based upon the number of worldwide article referenced on OFW.
Well, it may not be the most scientific bellwether but I am honoured nonetheless.
Useful orientation when the msm main focus is on the sensational. Broad Context is helpful
“Governments trying to contain the resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic are facing increased political opposition to the measures they think are necessary to control an alarming new wave, with the number of new infections nearing all-time-highs in many countries.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/protect-the-economy-or-the-population-the-coronavirus-dilemma-facing-governments-as-protests-escalate-2020-09-30
“Hundreds of Small Protests Mushroom Across Israel Over ‘Draconian’ Restrictions.”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-hundreds-of-small-protests-mushroom-across-israel-over-draconian-restrictions-1.9201738
It seems like these protests should not be a surprise!
“Venezuela’s Food Chain Is Breaking, and Millions Go Hungry:
“A report found 13% of children under 5 are stunted; oil-rich nation is ‘on the edge of an irreversible catastrophe’”.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelas-food-chain-is-breaking-and-millions-go-hungry-11601544601
“The second of three ships loaded with gasoline from Iran approached fuel-starved Venezuela on Wednesday amid simmering social unrest over a lack of goods and services that’s sparked protests across the South American nation.”
http://www.looptt.com/content/venezuela-receives-gasoline-iran-amid-surge-protests
“Iran State Media Express Fear of Protests Amid International and Domestic Crises.”
https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/inside-source-reports/iran-state-media-express-fear-of-protests-amid-international-and-domestic-crises/
“Thousands of Iraqis gathered in the capital and the country’s south on Thursday, marking the first anniversary of the start of unprecedented protests demanding the fall of the ruling class.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/1/iraqis-in-baghdad-mark-anti-government-protests-anniversary
“October 1 protests hit Abuja, southern states [Nigeria]:
“Following the dramatic protests, Lagos-based rights group, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project yesterday condemned attacks on peaceful activists and journalists…”
https://guardian.ng/news/october-1-protests-hit-abuja-southern-states/
It seems like protests rise everywhere, when countries are stressed by adequate revenue. Ultimately, this comes from not enough cheap to extract energy supplies.
If the percentage is 13% of children under age 5, this implies that the lack of adequate income to buy food supplies has been a problem for several years. Low oil prices since 2014 have been a problem.
“The Dubai-based construction company that helped build the world’s tallest building and other engineering marvels in the United Arab Emirates announced Thursday it would enter liquidation, the final step in a long collapse from the country s economic crisis a decade ago hastened by the coronavirus pandemic.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/dubai-builder-worlds-tallest-building-be-liquidated-builder-dubai-building-abu-dhabi-world-b741217.html
“UAE Bets Big On Space Tech To Diversify From Oil.”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/UAE-Bets-Big-On-Space-Tech-To-Diversify-From-Oil.html
This is ridiculous, space technology? How did this conversation go? Hey we have no work ethic, no high tech, I know space the final frontier that is the ticket.
Ed, there is a long tradition of mining the Moon for resources. Of course, it is all science fiction, and now obsolete science fiction (SF has the highest rate of obsolescence of any fiction genre), but it’s still fun.
The Moon has been a source of gold (JPL California), diamonds (Robert Heinlein), Helium 3 (European Space Agency), magnetic monopoles (Larry Niven), tourist revenue (Arthur C Clarke), and who knows what else.
In fact, of course, the only things ever mined on the Moon were moon rocks, and even then some cranks believe said rocks were retrieved not from our satellite but from Antarctica, by the 1967 expedition funded by NASA and led by … Wernher von Braun.
According to the article,
“Dubai has seen property values drop by a third since 2014 and its tourism and travel industry remains weak because of the pandemic.”
There clearly isn’t much demand for new building. I wonder how many workers will be laid off.
A person wonders how banks that financed these property sales are doing. With property values off by one-third, a lot of sales seem likely to be for less than the amount of the outstanding loan.
And this also means tough times for the migrant workers who did all the construction and their families back home who relied on their remittances.
“South Asians have for years travelled to wealthier Gulf countries for employment, mostly as domestic workers or in the construction and hospitality sectors.
“One migrant worker often supports many relatives and can earn far more than they would make in the same job at home.
“But their migrant status makes it much harder for them to seek justice when things go wrong – as they have for large numbers in recent months as the pandemic has closed borders and devastated economies.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-migrants-wages-insight-trfn/south-asian-migrant-workers-seek-justice-as-wage-theft-worsens-under-coronavirus-idUSKBN26000L
Good point! I remember that you posted a link about the plight of the migrant workers earlier.
several years ago I wrote something like;
‘When the oilflow dries up, the fantasy towers in the desert will collapse back into the sand whence they came’
These bankruptcies are the first stage of that process
“Shares in BP and Shell crashed to 25-year lows as oil prices fell.
“The two energy supermajors saw their shares sink as the price of Brent crude dropped back below $40 per barrel.”
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8796015/BP-Shell-shares-hit-lowest-level-25-years.html
“Lonestar Resources US Inc LONE.O filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday, joining a clutch of shale companies that have succumbed to weak crude prices as COVID-19 pandemic crimps fuel demand.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lonestar-bankruptcy/shale-bankruptcies-pile-on-lonestar-latest-to-succumb-to-weak-demand-idUKKBN26M63I?il=0
“Debt-laden U.S. oil producer Occidental Petroleum Corp OXY.N said on Thursday it has agreed to sell its onshore assets in Colombia to private equity firm Carlyle Group Inc CG.O for $825 million.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-occidental-divestment-idUKKBN26M6EL
If a genuine oil producer cannot make money by producing oil, what is the probability a “private equity firm” will be able to do so? I fear a lot if investors in Carlyle Group will come to regret their actions.
The Carlyle Group is not your average PE firm:
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Carlyle_Group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baker
http://911review.com/articles/ryan/carlyle_kissinger_saic_halliburton.html
http://culturechange.org/CarlyleEmpire.html
http://hereinreality.com/carlyle.html#.X3kUapNKips
Thank you, Lydia, a most informative reference.
Perhaps all that is needed is that the private equity firm can keep things going a little longer.
We are going to see a lot of oil company bankruptcies.
“The pile of negative yielding euro zone government bonds rose in September to just over 6 trillion euros from around 5.4 trillion a month earlier, Tradeweb data showed on Friday.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/euro-zones-negative-yielding-debt-070523426.html
“Euro zone inflation fell deeper into negative territory last month, raising pressure on the European Central Bank to add stimulus, as an ongoing recession will keep price growth below its target for years to come.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eurozone-economy-inflation/euro-zone-inflation-at-a-four-year-low-raising-pressure-on-ecb-idUKKBN26N1F2
“The euro area’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose for the fifth consecutive month in August, reaching a level of 8.1%, according to Eurostat.”
https://www2.staffingindustry.com/eng/Editorial/Daily-News/Europe-Euro-area-jobless-rate-rises-for-fifth-consecutive-month-in-August-to-8.1-55342
I expect the unemployment rate will rise a lot more, as well.
“The coronavirus brought an end to the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. That wasn’t the only problem. When the U.S. barreled into the deep downturn that followed, it was laden with debt.
“Why does this matter? Economies carrying a lot of debt generally have weaker recoveries.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-economy-was-laden-with-debt-before-covid-thats-bad-news-for-a-recovery-11601566931
“Credit-rating agency Moody’s Investors Service on Thursday downgraded New York City’s debt one notch, citing “substantial financial challenges,” faced by the metropolis amid the worst pandemic in more than a century.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-york-citys-387-billion-debt-gets-a-downgrade-by-moodys-as-it-faces-lasting-economic-economic-consequences-from-pandemic-2020-10-01
“A trio of Democrat-run U.S. states could go deeper into debt with billions of dollars in new issuance to plug holes in their coronavirus-hit budgets, if a new round of federal aid fails to materialize this year.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-states-debt/u-s-blue-states-build-debt-stockpiles-as-virus-aid-is-stymied-idUSKBN26M7DN
“As big U.S. commercial banks close their books on the third quarter, analysts expect them to report a 30% to 60% plunge in profits on the year-ago period due to the pandemic-induced recession and near record low interest rates.”
https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-banks-results-preview/big-u-s-banks-to-report-profit-plunge-as-pandemic-recession-takes-hold-idUSL1N2GQ1VZ
Don’t these states think about their debt problems as they shut down their economies for long periods?
Harry, I presume they downgraded it from “Babylon” to “Sodom”. Next step. I guess, in Machu Picchu.
“Major gaps in the international debt restructuring framework are increasing risks of a systemic sovereign debt crisis, International Monetary Fund officials warn.”
https://www.centralbanking.com/central-banks/financial-stability/7690996/world-faces-systemic-debt-crisis-imf-warns
“Emerging market debt is a bubble destined to burst. Local accommodative monetary policies are increasing financial leverage without providing concrete solutions to the economic recession.”
https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/economics/14268-emerging-market-debt-bubble-about-to-burst-thanks-to-years-of-easy-monetary-policy-in-western-economies-saxo-s-spinozzi
“Costa Rica on Thursday experienced the second day of roadblocks in different parts of the country, part of a protest against the negotiation of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meant to bolster deteriorating public finances.”
https://ticotimes.net/2020/10/01/costa-rica-endures-second-day-of-road-blockades-as-protests-continues-against-imf-deal
We seem to have a lot of debt bubbles ready to burst.
Quite a few articles lately flagging up Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities as a risk:
“The issue of ratings shopping has historically been most problematic in the market for securitized debt, where the structures of the securities depend heavily on ratings firms’ individual models, and the graders with the most lenient models can win more business as long as their ratings remain credible.
“Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, credit-rating firms engaged in a “race to the bottom,” easing their grading standards for mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations to avoid losing market share, the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations wrote in a 2011 report.
“Despite attempts by regulators in subsequent years to hold the industry to account, the problem has persisted.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-10-01/ratings-shopping-never-died-in-cmbs-market-now-facing-crisis
“Fitch placed 19 classes from three transactions, CD 2017-CD3 Mortgage Trust Series 2017-CD, JPMDB Commercial Mortgage Securities Trust 2017-C5 and Citigroup Commercial Mortgage Trust 2017-P7, on Rating Watch Negative.
“Additionally, the Rating Outlooks for nine classes from two of these deals, CD 2017-CD3 and JPMDB 2017-C5, were revised to Negative from Stable.”
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/structured-finance/fitch-places-19-classes-from-3-us-cmbs-transactions-on-neg-watch-outlooks-on-9-classes-revised-01-10-2020
How can commercial mortgages be worth much, with so much empty space and little possibility of filling it?
I think we will get through these problems just fine. All we need to do is cut the regulatory red-tape that prevents us from going to space.
https://gizmodo.com/stinky-molecules-confirm-uranus-smells-like-farts-1825467106
what do a plethora of fart smells mean?
You guessed it, lots of ENERGY!!!
C’mon, who (which one of your children) is ready to BLAST OFF?
Episode 10 of Mythbusters Jr tested exactly this proposition. The final experiment was fart propelled rocket. It worked, but alas fell well short of Earth orbit. By the way, that is a real fun show.
Came across this in Ecosophia, credit to JMG.for finding and printing it.
“That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
Bertrand Russell
Dennis L.
Thank you, Denis. By chance or synchronicity, I was contemplating last night a text on he same theme, but with a slightly different emotional slant. Here it is:
====
We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage
And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die,
We Poets of the proud old lineage
Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why, –
What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales
Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest,
Where nevermore the rose of sunset pales,
And winds and shadows fall towards the West:
And there the world’s first huge white-bearded kings
In dim glades sleeping, murmur in their sleep,
And closer round their breasts the ivy clings,
Cutting its pathway slow and red and deep.
And how beguile you? Death has no repose
Warmer and deeper than the Orient sand
Which hides the beauty and bright faith of those
Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
And now they wait and whiten peaceably,
Those conquerors, those poets, those so fair:
They know time comes, not only you and I,
But the whole world shall whiten, here or there;
When those long caravans that cross the plain
With dauntless feet and sound of silver bells
Put forth no more for glory or for gain,
Take no more solace from the palm-girt wells.
When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.
====
James Elroy Flecker (1884 to 1915), the
prelude poem to his play “Hassan”. The
“Golden Journey”, of course, was part of
the old Silk Road, and Samarkand (Greek
Maracanda) was a caravanserai. It also
holds the Gur-e-Amir (“tomb of the king”),
the mausoleum of Timur the Lame.
I suppose a smaller version comes from a comment I heard from an elderly lady who moved into a small one room apartment in an assisting living center. She said,
And of course, when she passes away, what little is left in terms of memories will be gone as well.
There’s another possibility: Trump may be lying about being sick with Covid-19. Why? To get out of the remaining debates, so his policy ideas don’t have to be directly compared with Biden’s, in debates likely to have on/off switches on the mics. The timing is very interesting.
It would also play into an idea that he’s super-human as he can at anytime trot out a well paid doctor to lie that he’s gotten better like he was 17 years of age, when in fact he never had it in the first place. Never underestimate The Master Manipulator’s capability to manipulate people’s ideas and emotions in a lead up to the election.
I honestly hope this level of paranoia and unsubstantiated speculation isn’t reflective of the average person’s thought process.
Frank, it’s not paranoia or speculation. It is plain old hate and lies. In other words, leftist politics as usual. Ignore it. Magna est veritas et prævalet.
Level or paranoia? This POTUS survived like ~20x potent attempts to dethrone him already. We don’t know all the pressures, threats and or offers on the table..
So, Chrome’s scenario stays valid, albeit with say lower% probability, given the info available so far.
Chrome, your comments about Trump are a bore.
Sorry, I don’t think this is within the range of possibility. I expect that they have both been tested twice, with different tests, to make certain of the result.
The Don may be a congenital liar
But there is one lie the rest of us can get away with, and he can’t
that is: Sending in a sickie to your boss.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1311892190680014849
vitamin D.
hydroxychloroquine and zinc.
“hydroxychloroquine”
Yes, consume gallons of the stuff. What about getting ultra-violet light inside the body somehow – that was one of his suggestions. Now he can try drinking Clorox and any other offbeat cure idea. Bring in all those far right people with ‘interesting’ ideas of how to cure this. This is a huge opportunity – I hope he doesn’t waste it ACTUALLY listening to experts, when he knows full well he intuitively knows everything since the dawn of mankind. I can see him insulting the doctors and talking over them to tell them what’s going to happen. “No, now listen to me as I know everything. Go and get me an industrial drum of hydroxochloroquine!”
This is also an opportunity for Trump to prove his Radiologist’s idea of ‘Herd Immunity’. Just take it and prove that idea as correct.
and Zmax
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1311896915538186240
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1311900919764713473
Trump has two cormorbidities, he’s 74 and he’s obese. So presuming he’ll be a hero is premature. I suggest a Trump-Covid-Cam so we can all tune in online to see how he’s doing. It will be like ‘The Truman Show’. How about an hour every morning at breakfast. Maybe he can make some money advertising certain products.
Three co-morbidities, if you count being a moron.
How will the election go if Donald does a Boris??
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1311896877940576256
“How will the election go if Donald does a Boris??”
Pretend to be ill enough for hospitalization, you mean?
Donald does not come across as frail and the last time I checked he was not checked in to a nursing home confined to his bed. Sorry guys, nothing to see here, move along …
Many betting parlors – bookies just canceled the presidential race.. Btw he was slightly loosing even after the #1 debate. Not sure why to cancel, as there is plenty of time ahead, perhaps had to re-calibrate the odds from now on.
As mentioned in comments above, given the age and un-fitness, he could likely end up on some sort medium/elevated not exactly critical condition, i.e. few days hospitalization on oxygen etc.
Some msm are spinning the story of the vector as:
~youngish personal (female) assistant -> POTUS -> FLOTUS
😉
We will have to see how this goes. The one who seems most vulnerable to COVID to me is Biden. He isn’t looking at the solutions, away from the mainstream. He is older. If he catches COVID, he could be on a ventilator for weeks, for example.
I wonder which of them has the most copies of the Neanderthal gene sequence on chromosome three.
N DNA strongly influences phenotype in various ways, as has been demonstrated through studies of the British, but there seems no reason to assume that the presence of phenotypical N DNA correlates with N DNA related to the immune system.
So, we just cannot tell by looking at Trump and Biden.
Wow, they’ve really stoked the fires in Plato’s cave this time.
WTI $38
no reason to go higher, and could go much lower as “the End of Early Stimulus” continues.
Brent is doing OK, it is up a cent.
Great article by Mercola on the benefits of vitamin D vs COVID https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/09/23/coronavirus-2nd-wave.aspx?cid_source=wnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20201001Z2&mid=DM667095&rid=976810861
I agree. Pass this link around. This is an excerpt:
This is a link to another article Dr. Mercola wrote, which he references in his footnotes: Does the Flu Shot Increase COVID-19 Risk (YES!) and Other Interesting Questions
Some of his bullet points for this earlier article include:
Regarding the influenza vaccine used in Italy, this earlier article says,
Interesting news on the multi vaccine (in IT) if legit.
Thanks
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Geneticists are beginning to identify genes involved in susceptibility to c 19. Ultimately all susceptibility to disease is genetic, though other factors like nutrition and culture mediate the genetic basis.
> Having Neanderthal genes could put you more at risk from severe symptoms of Covid-19, study finds
A genetic quirk inherited from the extinct human species, who lived 40,000 to 400,000 years ago, could make people more susceptible to Covid-19.
This genetic variation is present in modern-day humans because our ancestors had sex with Neanderthals about 60,000 years ago, researchers say
And those who have the variant, found on chromosome three, are up to three times more likely to need ventilation if they catch the virus.
In a study of 3,199 hospital patients with coronavirus in Italy and Spain, researchers found the genetic signature was linked to a more severe illness….
Lead author Professor Hugo Zeberg, from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, said: ‘The increase in risk is 60-70 per cent if you carry one copy of the Neanderthal variant and three times the risk if you have two copies – one from your father and one from your mother.
‘Later studies estimate the risk increase to be even higher, with twice the risk if you have one copy and up to a five-fold increase if you have two copies.’
The gene variant had first been found in the remains of a Neanderthal in Croatia from some 50,000 years ago, and continues to be found in millions of modern day humans.
Neanderthals were a species that lived alongside humans tens of thousands of years ago and were very similar in appearance and size but were generally stockier and more muscular….
Article link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8792441/DNA-Neanderthals-make-Covid-severe.html
In a sense, diseases are ‘aimed’ at the elimination of genetic ‘weaknesses’, and possibly c 19 specifically ‘at’ some Neanderthal genes, among many other genes no doubt.
Pandemics can strengthen a species – and harm it. Paradoxically, illness is all part of the natural cycle that on the whole keeps humans healthy.
Obviously, we take the approach of science and healthcare to mitigate pandemics and their affect on individuals, because that is the moral emphasis of our societies.
Likewise, we use science and care to overcome the consequent ‘weaknesses’.
C 19 is our ‘friend’ but so is the doctor.
It is all good, for as long as the energetic and economic basis of scientific healthcare lasts, and then the natural ‘cycle’ will kick back in and tidy up the genome a bit.
Which is fine – ‘everything in its time’ as Solomon said, a time for science and a time for nature?
This sounds like an opportunity for companies to collect saliva samples (or whatever) to determine whether a particular person has 0, 1, or 2 gene copies from Neanderthals.
Wouldn’t that fellow in the Third Reich have flipped out if he’d found out about Neanderthal ‘subhumans’ existing among his ‘pure Aryans’? He’d have set up special camps for those infected with the ‘virus of Neanderthalism’ in order to ‘purify the race’ even more. He’d have certainly suspected that it lay behind Bolshevism too.
The new paper pre-published on Nature states the matter more strongly. The inheritance of Neanderthal DNA is ‘the major factor for severe c 19.’
About 50% of South Asians carry the N DNA segment, which may go some way to explain why they seem to have higher rates of c 19 issues in UK.
Europeans have a relatively high proportion of N DNA in the genome but it seems not a higher frequency of this same segment.
Africans have low N DNA AFAIK, so there are likely other genetic factors in play too. They had 3X the fatalities in UK as the general population – unless they were just unlucky and they got that segment.
> The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals
Abstract
A recent genetic association study1 identified a gene cluster on chromosome 3 as a risk locus for respiratory failure upon SARS-CoV-2 infection. A new study2 comprising 3,199 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and controls finds that this is the major genetic risk factor for severe SARS-CoV-2 infection and hospitalization (COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative). Here, we show that the risk is conferred by a genomic segment of ~50 kb that is inherited from Neanderthals and is carried by ~50% of people in South Asia and ~16% of people in Europe today.
Nature link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2818-3
They argue that the segment of N DNA is the ‘major genetic factor’, there are other health factors postulated like obesity and supposedly smoking.
More about the paper:
> The ancient Neanderthal hand in severe COVID-19
…. Now, a new study, published in Nature, has revealed that this genetic region is almost identical to that of a 50,000-year old Neanderthal from southern Europe. Further analysis has shown that, through interbreeding, the variants came over to the ancestors of modern humans about 60,000 years ago.
“It is striking that the genetic heritage from Neanderthals has such tragic consequences during the current pandemic,” said Professor Svante Pääbo, who leads the Human Evolutionary Genomics Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST)
…. They found that a Neanderthal from southern Europe carried an almost identical genetic region whereas two Neanderthals from southern Siberia and a Denisovan did not.
Next, they questioned whether the variants had come over from Neanderthals or had been inherited by both Neanderthals and present-day people through a common ancestor.
If the variants had come from interbreeding between the two groups of people, then this would have occurred as recently as 50,000 years ago. Whereas, if the variants had come from the last common ancestor, they would have been around in modern humans for about 550,000 years. But random genetic mutations, and recombination between chromosomes, would have also occurred during this time and because the variants between the Neanderthal from southern Europe and present-day people are so similar over such a long stretch of DNA, the researchers showed that it was much more likely that they came from interbreeding.
Professor Pääbo and Professor Zeberg concluded that Neanderthals related to the one from southern Europe contributed this DNA region to present-day people around 60,000 years ago when the two groups met….
The researchers also found that there are major differences in how common these variants are in different parts of the world. In South Asia about 50% of the population carry them. However, in East Asia they’re almost absent.
It is not yet known why the Neanderthal gene region is associated with increased risk of becoming severely ill. “This is something that we and others are now investigating as quickly as possible,” said Professor Pääbo….
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200930094758.htm
A further complication is that some of the other factors, that have been postulated to dispose persons to severe c 19 outcomes, are also strongly linked to lingering Neanderthal DNA, including obesity and smoking.
The human genome is a bit of a mess, and it seems that some genes, inherited 10s of 1000s of years ago, are still messing people up.
Perhaps gene editing would eventually be the way to go, to clean up the genome a bit, if science had enough time left before economic collapse.
> Can’t lose weight or quit smoking? Blame Neanderthals! Genes inherited from our ancient cousins linked with addiction, depression and even callouses
DNA passed down from Neanderthals revealed strong links with a range of traits and conditions, including risk of nicotine addiction and obesity
…. Genes passed onto to us from our ancient cousins are linked with a host of habits and health conditions, research has shown.
Everything from nicotine addiction and depression, to obesity and the risk of suffering a heart attack can be traced back to the ancient DNA.
Even the callouses on a person’s hands may bear the fingerprints of Neanderthal man.
In other words, if you can’t stop smoking or shift those last few pounds, or are simply feeling blue, you can blame your inner caveman.
Between one and six per cent of the DNA carried by people from Europe, and much of Asia, has been inherited from Neanderthals or their ancient early human cousins the Denisovans.
Indeed, people in East Asia carry up to 15 to 30 per cent more of this prehistoric early human DNA than Europeans.
…. To find out what this ancient DNA does today, Dr Capra compared the genes of 28,000 people with information from their health records.
Zeroing in on sections of DNA known to have been passed down from Neanderthals revealed strong links with a range of traits and conditions, including risk of nicotine addiction and obesity.
…. These include:
Actinic keratosis: Neanderthal DNA affects cells called keratinocytes that help protect the skin from environmental damage such as ultraviolet radiation and pathogens.
Addiction: The study found a link between the genes inherited from Neanderthals increases the risk of nicotine addiction.
Depression: Researchers found a number of variants that influence the risk for depression: some positively and some negatively.
Malnutrition: People with a number of Neanderthal genes are more likely to be obese.
Urinary tract disorders: Incontinence and bladder infections are influenced by Neanderthal genes.
Hypercoagulation: One of the most important finds was that a section of Neanderthal DNA makes blood clot extra quickly.
Tens of thousands of years ago, having blood that clotted well would have been an advantage because it would have wounds headed rapidly.
But today, extra-sticky blood raises the odds of heart attacks and strokes.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3442488/Can-t-lose-weight-quit-smoking-Blame-Neanderthals-Genes-inherited-ancient-cousins-linked-addiction-
From The Atlantic: This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic
My summary:
The key to the pandemic is the fact that COVID spreads in clusters. Its spread follows the Pareto Distribtution: About 80% of transmissions are caused by 20% of the cases. These transmissions tend to take place in indoor places, with poor ventilation.
We should be following the lead of Japan, who has tried to stop the spread by clusters, telling people to stay away from crowded inside places with poor ventilation. Japan has now reopened sports stadiums, but without chanting.
Also, we should be “backward tracing” contacts, to figure out where a given person with COVID received his/her case. We will find more threads this way, than through forward tracing.
The author gives the UK as an example of country that is following an absolutely absurd approach to limiting COVID spread. It is leaving bars open, but limiting individual family group meetings to six. It is the bar-spreading that is a problem.
The latest estimate from UK is that pubs and bars are responsibility for only about 3% of transmission – likely because most people do not go to them at the moment.
The bulk of transmission is through schools and workplaces. Universities have seen spikes.
As you say, crowded, enclosed spaces without good ventilation. It is a real problem for the state because much of BAU does go on in such circumstances.
“The coronavirus is destroying the profitability of Europe’s oil refiners and the industry is hunkering down for a tough winter.
“Owners of plants in Finland, France and the Netherlands made announcements in recent weeks that point to the likely closure of facilities in those countries… With virus cases surging and diesel trading near its weakest in at least nine years, few are optimistic for a meaningful recovery.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-30/europe-s-oil-refineries-struggling-to-cope-with-diesel-glut?sref=866aH6XX
Without demand for jet fuel, refineries are making more diesel (since jet fuel and diesel are fairly similar). But this leads to too much diesel in Europe. With a shut down, it is clear that there would be too much of something. And prices were already too low.
All of the products in a barrel of oil need to be sold, not just some of them.
Benjamin Netanyahu says lockdwon may last forever!
(OK, the israeli Dracula said only “half a year to a year”, but everybody knows what he meant inside his dark little heart.)
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20201001-netanyahu-israel-lockdown-may-last-for-another-year/
What the article says is, “Exiting the lockdown imposed to stem the spread of coronavirus will be slow and gradual and could continue for an entire year.”
It all depends on what Netanyahu means. If he is going to leave a few restrictions on nursing homes for a while, people might live with it. In general, the more restrictions he has in place, the more he is hurting his own economy and raising the mortality rate for non-COVID illnesses.
Re the Presidential debates, Dmitry Orlov recently wrote a droll piece around the mantra “the US is not a democracy and it doesn’t matter who the President is”.
Surely nobody on here believes that at this stage anything either of those sock puppets says or does could make a material difference to our predicament? That goes for most countries, not just the US.
If you take it at face value, the whole COVID thing was a poster child for the law of unintended consequences. Alternatively you could say it was an excellent downscaling/buy some time strategy.
I suppose you could look at the debates as a metaphor for the state we’re in. Two geriatric kleptocrats squabbling on reality TV to determine the “future of the free world”.
Jeez.
make it 3x kleptocrats on the stage then..
that msm clown enjoys dozens of megabucks contract..
“Surely nobody on here believes that at this stage anything either of those sock puppets says or does could make a material difference to our predicament? That goes for most countries, not just the US.”
OFW has hosted some discussion about this recently.
if the D side wins POTUS and congress, then there is a big possibility that the USA will move more quickly and disastrously in the direction of “green” RE and away from FF.
my opinion is that there is more hope of kicking the can if the USA nationalizes FF, and that scenario is a little bit possible if the R side wins.
energy issues are the most important issues, and on these issues, the two sides have major differences.
good comment and I love the phrase “soc puppets”.
what can I say the k key is sticky
Not sure about that, SleepyJoe in the debate initially confirmed and then immediately denied green new deal.. and this again could be explained in many ways: merely tactical position before elections, ..
“I suppose you could look at the debates as a metaphor for the state we’re in. Two geriatric kleptocrats squabbling on reality TV to determine the ‘future of the free world’.”
A nationalist and an imperialist disguised as a goodfella; new US vs the old US in my view.
The bureaucracy truly runs the country. Presidents do as they are told.
“Brazil’s unemployment rate hit a record 13.8 percent from May to July as Latin America’s biggest economy suffered the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to official figures released Wednesday.
“The rate is the highest since the data set began in 2012, and two percentage points above the same period last year.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/brazil-jobless-rate-hits-record-155130752.html
“Nearly half of Argentina’s population was living in poverty in the second quarter, a sharp increase from last year, as the country’s longstanding economic crisis deepened due to the coronavirus pandemic, researchers estimated on Wednesday.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-poverty/poverty-batters-almost-half-of-argentines-due-to-crisis-plus-pandemic-researchers-idUKKBN26L31L
“Faced with a collapse in tourism and the worst economic crisis in decades, some Cuban entrepreneurs are shaking up their business models, trying to create opportunity during pandemic times.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/cuban-entrepreneurs-reinvent-businesses-survive-114549006.html
I would expect that Cuba is doing pretty poorly. It was dependent upon Venezuela for oil. Without tourists, it is getting little revenue from outside the country.
<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/01/897904872/pandemic-may-be-the-push-to-open-cubas-state-controlled-economy"Pandemic May Be The Push To Open Cuba's State-Controlled Economy
“Brazil’s unemployment rate is 2% above what it was in the same period last year.”
This should be a cause for rejoicing, given the world situation.
I gather from a Brazilian friend that these figures are misleading. The informal economy, which has been hit hard and is not factored into official data, is apparently approx 25% of the labour force.
Also the government altered the law to allow dramatic reductions in hours worked and paid for the officially employed, and this is also not factored in. A lot of the working class have more free time but less money.
Thanks for the clarification.
“Business sentiment in Japan is recovering slower than expected in a worrying sign that the bounce back from Covid-19 will take longer than hoped.
“The closely watched Tankan survey of large manufacturers rose by only seven points from -34 to -27 in the third quarter, compared with consensus expectations of -23.
“The figures suggest Japanese companies are still struggling and the shock from Covid-19 is calcifying into a more traditional economic downturn.”
https://www.ft.com/content/7bab0e26-1ce2-4723-9057-96f664430652
“The Tokyo Stock Exchange suspended share trading for the full day on Thursday as a glitch in its electronic trading system caused the worst outage ever suffered by the world’s third-largest stock market.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-japan-stocks-tse/tokyo-stock-exchange-suspends-days-trade-after-worst-ever-system-glitch-idUSKBN26M4F8
Even without a lockdown, Japan’s economy is doing poorly.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/08/japan-q2-revised-gdp-2020.html
On an annualized basis, Japan’s economy shrank 28.1% in the April to June quarter.
“More than a third of UK employers plan to make staff redundant over the next three months, according to research warning of a cascade of job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“With a month to go until the end of the government furlough scheme on 31 October, 37% of more than 2,000 managers polled by YouGov said they were likely to make staff redundant by the end of the year.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/01/more-than-third-uk-employers-planning-make-staff-redundant-job-losses
“Financial services firms operating in the U.K. have shifted about 7,500 employees and more than 1.2 trillion pounds ($1.6 trillion) of assets to the European Union ahead of Brexit — with more likely to follow in coming weeks, according to EY.
“About 400 relocations were announced in the past month alone…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-30/brexit-prompts-7-500-finance-jobs-1-6-trillion-to-leave-u-k
“European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will announce legal action against the United Kingdom over its plan to undercut the Brexit divorce treaty, RTE reported.”
https://in.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-legal-brexit/eu-chief-to-announce-legal-action-against-the-uk-over-brexit-rte-idUKKBN26M5DV
UK is certain to lose a lot of jobs between COVID and Brexit.