Most people expect that the economy of 2021 will be an improvement from 2020. I don’t think so. Perhaps COVID-19 will be somewhat better, but other aspects of the economy will likely be worse.
Back in November 2020, I showed a chart illustrating the path that energy consumption seems to be on. The sharp downturn in energy consumption has occurred partly because the cost of oil, gas and coal production tends to rise, since the portion that is least expensive to extract and ship tends to be removed first.
At the same time, prices that energy producers are able to charge their customers don’t rise enough to compensate for their higher costs. Ultimate customers are ordinary wage earners, and their wages are not escalating as rapidly as fossil fuel production and delivery costs. It is the low selling price of fossil fuels, relative to the rising cost of production, that causes a collapse in the production of fossil fuels. This is the crisis we are now facing.
With lower energy consumption, many things tend to go wrong at once: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Protests and uprisings become more common. The poorer citizens and those already in poor health become more vulnerable to communicable diseases. Governments feel a need to control their populations, partly to keep down protests and partly to prevent the further spread of disease.
If we look at the situation shown on Figure 1 on a per capita basis, the graph doesn’t look quite as steep, because lower energy consumption tends to bring down population. This reduction in population can come from many different causes, including illnesses, fewer babies born, less access to medical care, inadequate clean water and starvation.
What Is Ahead for 2021?
In many ways, it is good that we really don’t know what is ahead for 2021. All aspects of GDP production require energy consumption. A huge drop in energy consumption is likely to mean disruption in the world economy of varying types for many years to come. If the situation is likely to be bad, many of us don’t really want to know how bad.
We know that many civilizations have had the same problem that the world does today. It usually goes by the name “Collapse” or “Overshoot and Collapse.” The problem is that the population becomes too large for the resource base. At the same time, available resources may degrade (soils erode or lose fertility, mines deplete, fossil fuels become harder to extract). Eventually, the economy becomes so weakened that any minor disturbance – attack from an outside army, or shift in weather patterns, or communicable disease that raises the death rate a bit – threatens to bring down the whole system. I see our current economic problem as much more of an energy problem than a COVID-19 problem.
We know that when earlier civilizations collapsed, the downfall tended not to happen all at once. Based on an analysis by Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov in their book, Secular Cycles, economies tended to first hit a period of stagflation, for perhaps 40 or 50 years. In a way, today’s economy has been in a period of stagflation since the 1970s, when it became apparent that oil was becoming more difficult to extract. To hide the problem, increasing debt was issued at ever-lower interest rates.
According to Turchin and Nefedov, the stagflation stage eventually moves into a steeper “crisis” period, marked by overturned governments, debt defaults, and falling population. In the examples analyzed by Turchin and Nefedov, this crisis portion of the cycle took 20 to 50 years. It seems to me that the world economy reached the beginning of the crisis period in 2020 when lockdowns in response to the novel coronavirus pushed the weakened world economy down further.
The examples examined by Turchin and Nefedov occurred in the time period before fossil fuels were widely used. It may very well be that the current collapse takes place more rapidly than those in the past, because of dependency on international supply lines and an international banking system. The world economy is also very dependent on electricity–something that may not last. Thus, there seems to be a chance that the crisis phase may last a shorter length of time than 20 to 50 years. It likely won’t last only a year or two, however. The economy can be expected to fall apart, but somewhat slowly. The big questions are, “How slowly?” “Can some parts continue for years, while others disappear quickly?”
Some Kinds of Things to Expect in 2021 (and beyond)
[1] More overturned governments and attempts at overturned governments.
With increasing wage disparity, there tend to be more and more unhappy workers at the bottom end of the wage distribution. At the same time, there are likely to be people who are unhappy with the need for high taxes to try to fix the problems of the people at the bottom end of the wage distribution. Either of these groups can attempt to overturn their government if the government’s handling of current problems is not to the group’s liking.
[2] More debt defaults.
During the stagflation period that the world economy has been through, more and more debt has been added at ever-lower interest rates. Much of this huge amount of debt relates to property that is no longer of much use (airplanes without passengers; office buildings that are no longer needed because people now work at home; restaurants without enough patrons; factories without enough orders). Governments will try to avoid defaults as long as possible, but eventually, the unreasonableness of this situation will prevail. The impact of defaults can be expected to affect many parts of the economy, including banks, insurance companies and pension plans.
[3] Extraordinarily slow progress in defeating COVID-19.
There seems to be a significant chance that COVID-19 is lab-made. In fact, the many variations of COVID-19 may also be lab made. Researchers around the world have been studying “Gain of Function” in viruses for more than 20 years, allowing the researchers to “tweak” viruses in whatever way they desire. There seem to be several variations on the original virus now. A suicidal/homicidal researcher could decide to “take out” as many other people as possible, by creating yet another variation on COVID-19.
To make matters worse, immunity to coronaviruses in general doesn’t seem to be very long lasting. According to an October 2020 article, 35-year study hints that coronavirus immunity doesn’t last long. Analyzing other coronaviruses, it concluded that immunity tends to disappear quite quickly, leading to an annual cycle of illnesses such as colds. There seems to be a substantial chance that COVID-19 will return on an annual basis. If vaccines generate a similar immunity pattern, we will be facing an issue of needing new vaccines every year, as we do with the flu.
[4] Cutbacks on education of many kinds.
Many people getting advanced degrees find that the time and expense did not lead to an adequate financial reward afterwards. At the same time, universities find that there are not many grants to support faculty, outside of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields. With this combination of problems, universities with limited budgets make the financial decision to reduce or eliminate programs with reduced student interest and no outside funding.
At the same time, if local school districts find themselves short of funds, they may choose to use distance learning, simply to save money. This type of cutback could affect grade school children, especially in poor areas.
[5] Increasing loss of the top layers of governments.
It takes money/energy to support extra layers of government. The UK is now completely out of the European Union. We can expect to see more changes of this type. The UK may dissolve into smaller regions. Other parts of the EU may leave. This problem could affect many countries around the world, such as China or countries of the Middle East.
[6] Less globalization; more competition among countries.
Every country is struggling with the problem of not enough jobs that pay well. This is really an energy-related problem. Instead of co-operating, countries will tend to increasingly compete, in the hope that their country can somehow get a larger share of the higher-paying jobs. Tariffs will continue to be popular.
[7] More empty shelves in stores.
In 2020, we discovered that supply lines can break, making it impossible to purchase products a person expects. In fact, new governmental rules can have the same impact, for example, if a country bans travel to its country. We should expect more of this in 2021, and in the years ahead.
[8] More electrical outages, especially in locations where reliance on intermittent wind and solar for electricity is high.
In most places in the world, oil products were available before electricity. On the way down, we should expect to see the reverse of this pattern: Electricity will disappear first because it is hardest to maintain a constant supply. Oil will be available, at least as long as is electricity.
There is a popular belief that we will “run out of oil,” and that renewable electricity can be a solution. I do not think that intermittent electricity can be a solution for anything. It works poorly. At most, it acts as a temporary extender to fossil fuel-provided electricity.
[9] Possible hyperinflation, as countries issue more and more debt and no longer trust each other.
I often say that I expect oil and energy prices to stay low, but this doesn’t really hold if many countries around the world issue more and more government debt as a way to try to keep businesses from failing, debt from defaulting, and stock market prices inflated. There is a danger that all prices will inflate, and that sellers of products will no longer accept the hyperinflated currency that countries around the world are trying to provide.
My concern is that international trade will break down to a significant extent as hyperinflation of all currencies becomes a problem. The higher prices of oil and other energy products won’t really lead to any more production because prices of all goods and services will be inflating at the same time; fossil fuel producers will not get any special benefit from these higher prices.
If a significant loss of trade occurs, there will be even more empty shelves because there is very little any one country can make on its own. Without adequate goods, population loss may be very high.
[10] New ways of countries trying to fight with each other.
When there are not enough resources to go around, historically, wars have been fought. I expect wars will continue to be fought, but the approaches will “look different” than in the past. They may involve tariffs on imported goods. They may involve the use of laboratory-made viruses. They may involve attacking the internet of another country, or its electrical distribution system. There may be no officially declared war. Strange things may simply take place that no one understands, without realizing that the country is being attacked.
Conclusion
We seem to be headed for very bumpy waters in the years ahead, including 2021. Our real problem is an energy problem that we do not have a solution for.
“American oil executives began a pushback against some of President Joe Biden’s climate policies by making the case that fossil fuels from U.S. shale have a lower carbon footprint than imports.”
https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/us-oil-pushes-clean-shale-as-biden-mounts-climate-attack/80621822
Any of these new proposals will get pushback. Many of them required votes by congress, making the most extreme unlikely to pass.
“US shale oil: can a leaner industry ever lure back investors?
“…The only feature that matched shale’s disruptive rise in the past 15 years — more than doubling US oil and gas production and sharply reducing dependence on foreign oil supplies — was the industry’s unmatched knack for destroying investors’ money, as hundreds of billions of dollars were spent with little return.”
https://www.ft.com/content/a8d72d4d-09b1-47fb-bb6c-3c314770f1c1
My concern is the externalities they are probably not including:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drilling-abandoned-specialreport/special-report-millions-of-abandoned-oil-wells-are-leaking-methane-a-climate-menace-idUSKBN23N1NL
State and federal regulations normally require drillers to pay an up-front bond to cover future cleanups if they go belly-up. But the rules are a patchwork, with wildly differing requirements, and they seldom leave governments adequately funded. In Pennsylvania, for example, it would take several thousand years to plug its estimated backlog of 200,000 abandoned oil wells at the current rate of spending, according to data from the state regulator.
Ivan, the “bond” is a debt issued by the company. The game plan is to extract the resources, transfer the money to a safe haven, and then declare bankruptcy, so repudiating the bond. Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” has a well documented case study on how this ruined a lot of Montana.
The Romans (as usual) found the solution: the bond is backed by the private wealth of the owners of the company. And the problem is “limited liability”: it should protect the innocent shareholders, but not the decision makers.
My attention was caught by this hunters obsession.
Also the inbreeding and obvious craziness/geniality seemed to be their feature, which reflects the finite world limits.
The royal families seem to be the impersonation of the wishes of the population, which gives them respect, like being conquerors. But they also reach the finite world limits and implode like the rest of the population.
As the energy limits of the coal era were reached, there was nothing to conquer and they resigned.
No. IT was the Americans, caught with democratic zeal, trying to spread the crazy notion of democracy to peoples who never really knew anything other than autocrats.
Now USA is ruled by an autocrat, it will taste plenty of its own medicine.
This was meant to be the comment to the above Habsburgs articles.
I do not know why when using my Android with Chrome, the replies are not inserted under the corresponding comment, but introduced as a new comment…
This should prove to be an interesting week. Wonder what it means when you can’t order silver for physical delivery. Looked at several places and inventory is out or the premiums through the roof.
People are on the warpath and they have found the achellies heel – as always I’m confident our overlords will beat us into submission for our own good.
this could be an epic week for markets.
my understanding is that there is 200 times as much “paper” silver as there is physical silver.
not 200% more but 200 X more.
my friend Schadenfreude has suggested to me that it might be highly entertaining to see these markets crash due to millions of internet investors “calling the bluff” of these hypergreedy hedge funds and blowing up their leveraged positions and wiping out trillions of dollars of their assets.
but that might push IC over the proverbial cliff.
which might make life much more difficult.
oh well, pop some popcorn and watch it from afar.
https://www.apmex.com/pressreleases/apmex-statement-on-current-market-conditions
yes it looks like it is GameOn for silver.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/reddit-preparing-unleash-worlds-biggest-short-squeeze-silver
“Update (1800ET): It was the one print everyone was waiting for, and here it is: silver futures opened up 7%, surging from $27/oz to a high of $29.095 following a weekend of speculation that the next big squeeze on WSB’s radar is silver. And whether that’s true or not, may no longer matter in a world where – as described below – there is virtually no physical silver to be purchased.”
if leveraged positions blow up in the markets, then utter chaos is on the way.
True price discovery for gold and silver has always depended “taking delivery” on the comex. This certainly saw a radical increase in 2020. Price discovery occurs when somone requests delivery and the physical metal is not delivered. Price discovery is really te failure of the paper price discovery and this would render “spot” meaningless.
https://www.sprottmoney.com/blog/COMEX-Delivery-Update-Craig-Hemke-September-15-2020
I’ll put a grand in the paper market and sit on it.
As a doomster that came into this like most during the GFC of 2008-onward I’ve acquired enough physical to the point I question my own sanity.
The World Loves Renewables, but Still Needs These 3 Energy Stocks
These energy stocks will continue playing a vital role even as the global economy pivots toward renewables.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/01/30/the-world-loves-renewables-but-still-needs-these-3/?source=eptyholnk0000202&utm_source=yahoo-host&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=article
Matthew DiLallo
Matthew DiLallo, Neha Chamaria, And Reuben Gregg Brewer
(TMFmd19)
Jan 30, 2021 at 9:22AM
Author Bio
The global economy is moving away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. However, the transition won’t happen overnight. Because of that, even though all the talk these days seems to focus on renewables, we still need companies that produce, process, transport, and store fossil fuels.
We may need fossil fuels, but renewables are subsidized, giving them an unfair advantage over fossil fuels. Prices don’t stay high enough for fossil fuels, squeezing the system at all points.
Dear OFW folks, the idea that an injection with some mRNA in it will turn a person into a computer makes no sense to me. It is not an operating system it is just a short string of nucleotides. It may or may not get inserted into the nuclear DNA, this is an open question. If it is not inserted into the DNA how long can it stay in the cell cytoplasm? All it can do it produce a protein or several proteins.
It’s not a computer, it’s a tracker designed to eliminate private property and turn us into Communists. Don’t you know anything about medicine?
😉
I say give everybody crazy pills
‘Difusa’ technology is one instance, developed at DARPA.
Together with a ‘smart patch’, you have tracking, monitoring and drug delivery all in one.
I hope they make us go out on a high, like Aldous Huxley…..
Thats a good question Ed. From one perspective it would seem that the DNA is unaffected that only the byproduct of it as created by the interaction with the MRNA is introduced into the body by the vaccine. From this perspective the DNA remains unaffected and in fact it would seem that the MRNA would be consumed at some point with only the virus fighting byproduct of the DNA MRNA interaction would remaining and the DNA would remain fundamentally unchanged
Otherreports have seemed to me to indicate that during the “unzipping” the MRNA enters the DNA and the DNA itself is changed at that point. One question to my mind is if it is changed is that change reflected in replication.
It may be that laypersons terminology fails here but it seems to me that the fundamental question of whether the MRNA vaccine changes the DNA or simply uses DNA to create something else is a important one philosophically. It would seem that this would be clear cut and someone could answer. Philosophically the question posed is our innate essence being changed by the injection of the MRNA actor. While others may be more interested in the actual effects on the body of the vaccine I would like to understand whether the DNA is changed and whether that change is duplicated in replication as well as the effects and side effects of the vaccine.
https://www.britannica.com/science/messenger-RNA
An mRNA injection entails receiving a synthetic mRNA strand which will then instruct your ribosomes on which specific proteins to build. In the case of a COVID-19 mRNA “vaccine,” your ribosomes will build fragments of the SARS-CoV-2 virus’ spike protein, which will then trigger an immune response in your body.
It isn’t that an mRNA injection is going to alter your DNA, but rather that it will render your DNA obsolete during the “translation” phase of protein production. Your DNA takes the back seat while a bioengineer takes the drivers’ seat. The bioengineer knows better, after all, how to create mRNA than your DNA does. 😉
Using the computer analogy, you could view mRNA technology as follows:
Bioengineers (computer programmers) create synthetic mRNA strands (computer code) which are injected into your body (the computer) to produce specific proteins (program an action).
So, bioengineers can effectively “program” your body in the sense that their mRNA strands tell your cells what to build.
We can take all of this a step into the not-too-distant future with consideration of real-time in vivo measurement technology, 5G and the “internet of things:”
From, “Real-time measurement of small molecules directly in awake, ambulatory animals:”
“The ability to monitor arbitrary molecules directly in living subjects as they undergo their daily routines remains one of the ‘holy grails’ of bioanalytical chemistry. Such a technology would, for example, vastly improve our knowledge of physiology, pharmacokinetics, and toxicology by allowing the high-precision measurement of drugs and metabolites under realistic physiological conditions. Real-time molecular measurements would also provide an unparalleled window into health status (e.g., kidney function) and would facilitate ‘therapeutic drug monitoring,’ in which dosing is personalized to the specific metabolism of each individual patient. Finally, the ability to measure molecules in the body in real time would provide unprecedented new routes by which drugs with dangerously narrow therapeutic windows could be safely and efficiently administered.”
“The development of a technology capable of tracking the levels of drugs, metabolites, and biomarkers in the body continuously and in real time would advance our understanding of health and our ability to detect and treat disease. It would, for example, enable therapies guided by high-resolution, patient-specific pharmacokinetics (including feedback-controlled drug delivery), opening new dimensions in personalized medicine. In response, we demonstrate here the ability of electrochemical aptamer-based (E-AB) sensors to support continuous, real-time, multi-hour measurements when emplaced directly in the circulatory systems of living animals. Specifically, we have used E-AB sensors to perform the multi-hour, real-time measurement of four drugs in the bloodstream of even awake, ambulatory rats, achieving precise molecular measurements at clinically relevant detection limits and high (3 s) temporal resolution, attributes suggesting that the approach could provide an important window into the study of physiology and pharmacokinetics.”
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/01/03/1613458114
Many people are already conditioned to monitor their bodies in real-time via wearable devices (e.g. Fitbit, Apple Watch, etc.). The next step is to ditch the wearable device altogether in favor of real-time measurement on a molecular level in vivo. Before we collectively make that step, however, there will need to be an infrastructure in place for collecting and transmitting all the biometric data that will be produced in real-time. This is where 5G technology and the “internet of things” come in. 5G towers and nodes will need to be virtually everywhere and inescapable. We will become part of the “internet of things” under this model, providing real-time biometric data whenever we’re within tower or node range. Proponents of mRNA technology will be able to monitor the biological effects of this technology on a given population in real-time. They’ll have endless reams of data to pour over and analyze with the assistance of “machine learning” and “A.I” technology. Changes, improvements, “tweaks” to a given population’s biology via mRNA “upgrades” will be facilitated by the data. It will be a golden age for bioengineering and eugenics – subject to the constraints of depleting energy sources on a finite planet, of course.
Thanks! Reading this I feel like I’m beginning to get a rough grasp of what mRNA technology is aimed at achieving.
Sounds like a recipe for absolute slavery!
5G is an absolute disaster in terms of human health, privacy, energy consumption, and security of the system as it makes many more access points for hackers.
https://financialpost.com/telecom/attack-surface-has-multiplied-5g-networks-more-vulnerable-to-hackers-conference-told
But hey there’s money to be made so full speed ahead the ship of fools goes…..
If we had sense we’d realize the diminishing returns of high technology and focus on feeding ourselves rather than adding more complexity.
10 Crazy Facts About Europe’s Bizarre Habsburg Rulers
“Before he became famous as the beginning of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was famous for killing any animal he saw. A passionate hunter, Franz traveled the breadth of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, unleashing bullet-based death on its fauna. On a single day in the 19th century, he killed 2,140 animals. By the time he met his end at age 51, it was estimated that he had personally shot nearly 300,000 living creatures.”
https://listverse.com/2016/10/06/10-crazy-facts-about-europes-bizarre-habsburg-rulers/
“A sharpshooter, somewhat ironically
The Archduke was a passionate, some may say, obsessive hunter and notched up 272,439 kills, among them deer, tigers, and kangaroos. He was constantly challenging fellow sharpshooters and usually won.
He once boasted of killing 2,140 birds in one day.
On a trip to Yellowstone where guns were banned, he was so determined to bring back a trophy that the resourceful aristocrat and his companions used sticks and rocks to get six squirrels, a skunk, and a deer.
His final kill was an ordinary domestic cat on June 21, 1914, at his estate on Chlumec. From a parked car.”
https://news.expats.cz/czech-culture/25-fun-franz-ferdinand-konopiste-facts/
So I guess all the other stuff was just karma catching up with him.
But 10 million Europeans had to pay for it. And the Third World laughed, a situation which will be reversed this century
Useless people: they had nothing else to do other than ride, shoot and change their clothes about 6 times per day.
Handsome uniforms, though; and the Habsburgs do seem on the whole to have good manners and the art of making themselves respected and even loved – I’d take that over Klaus the Swabber any day…..
Still far better than what came after him
A news story here in New Zealand about the Climate Change Commission’s plan for cutting New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions and the government’s determination to follow the recommendations.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/124079047/the-government-will-not-hold-back-jacinda-ardern-on-how-nz-could-go-zero-carbon
“By 2032, new homes won’t have gas connections, we’ll be cycling twice as much, and you won’t be able to import a petrol car, under a blueprint for making the whole country carbon neutral.”
When I read the article, it looks clear to me that the assumption is being made that the resources required for building wind turbines, electric cars and so on shall always be available, plentiful, affordable. It looks like the assumption is being made that the energy from skat, wind, hydrogen, biomass shall be enough to keep our economy going largely as it is but “cleaner” and “greener”. There continues to be the belief that wind turbines and solar panels are somehow renewable.
The whole proposal looks idiotic to me, but Labour and the Greens insist that this report suggests the way of the future.
One despairs at the idiocy of leadership. Did nobody in Parliament ever attend a physics lecture or open a physics textbook? Did the purportedly qualified authors skip school more days than they attended?
Oh dear. After posting it I noticed an error resulting from using my smartphone to write it with. “Energy from skat” should read “Energy from solar”. My apologies.
You have many sheep in NZ so scat energy may work better than you think.
“Energy from SCAT”!
That’s not really an error, we CAN get energy from scat, haven’t you heard of farmers fermenting “scat” also known as poo, crap, sh*t etc to generate METHANE?
They then pipe that gas into their homes or shop for heat & cooking, if you put the methane into a huge bag on top of your vehicle, redo the carberator, you can then run your transport on it.
What’s left after it’s been de-gassed is FERTILIZER!
Pipes are needed to transport gas. Fossil fuels are needed to make the pipes. Don’t expect a major increase in the use of methane. Perhaps small amounts at a few farms.
Oh dear. I can understand the “electric cars” boondoggle; politicians who have no idea typically follow the herd, But what is the problem with cows?
Cows are carbon neutral; the carbon they emit as steaks is simply the carbon they obtained from plants (they are herbivores, you know), and that carbon was sequestered from the atmosphere by photosynthesis. Look up “carbon cycle” in any high school biology textbook.
Ah, but cows emit methane! Guess what, so do rotting plants: where do you think marsh gas comes from? And anyway, methane doesn’t stay around for long; it is oxidised by strong electrical discharges, of which the Earth has an abundant supply.
The more I listen to modern politicians, the more I find Wells’ notion of rule by a scientific elite of “Guardians” more attractive.
The price of silver rising may well have somthing to do with JPM exiting their decade long short position and going long.
The price of silver can rise without causing any insidious financial contagion now. For those in the game (not I) I would keep a close eye on whether JPM establishes a short position again.
Disclosure long 60% cocoa chocolate. 4 bars in my possession.
https://gsiexchange.com/with-jpmorgan-back-in-the-mix-the-hammer-is-now-about-to-fall/
no gold bars or silver bars for me, but dark chocolate bars are at “more than” 4.
#silversqueeze has been trending.
looks like JPM saw this coming weeks ago and went long, and with the GameStop etc situation where millions of investors now know that they can blow up the shorts, I don’t see JPM going short again any time soon.
I’m for chocolate digestive biscuits. You are free to buy biscuit futures from me for a mere $50 per biscuit. I promise not to eat them (fingers crossed).
Wow, wonder what that creature was “thinking” about his species fate back 220 million years ago?
WEIRD NEWS
Four-year-old girl discovers 220 million-year-old dinosaur footprint at a beach in Wales
The creature probably stood about 29.5 inches tall, was about 8 feet long and walked on its two hind feet, paleontology curator said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1256260
Fun fact – the chicken is the closest genetic descendent of T Rex. Elephants, alligators, sea turtles, ostriches, snakes, sharks, bees and many other species are descended from dinosaurs.
Evolution and adaptation are the keys. A species is either a stepping stone to another or else eventually a dead end, though some do last a ‘long’ time.
And so it will be for H. s. s. which still seems to be in the stage of speciation after an unusual length of time. The one thing that can be said about present H. s. s. is that they will not be tomorrow.
Any attachments are aimed at a moment in time, nothing more.
“Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
You were right about chickens being related to T-rex then you lost it, all those other animals, other than the ostrich, are NOT related to dinosaurs except in the most distant way in that we are related to every living thing on this planet including plants, mushrooms, mice, reptiles, snails, etc & every living thing is also distantly related to all of US.
Hss might survive the great culling but those that do survive will never live like this again, more like stone age humans & very few of them.
But if Guy is right, we will soon be fossils.
I was obviously speaking metaphorically of animals descended from that period and thus running with the active metaphor of old species surviving. But whatever, thanks for your insights.
It is not that easy, sentient beings breed lesser sentient beings to their liking and advantage.
Dogs, cats, cows, etc., in the case of humanoid shenanigans. As for hypothetical extraterrestrials, the could easily eradicate the worst leftovers of primate shenanigans down here on earth with some spiffy coding sequences, at least if the biosphere is under threat.
However, I do wonder why it went so badly the last time? Perhaps the hypothetical aliens aren’t so omnipotent as we expect, just another species going sentient and synthetic, you know, being young, dumb and all the usual stuff that comes with growing up. Sometimes life is a harsh mistress and eradicator of foolishness. But it’s only to be expected.
Dear earthlings, carry on. Oh, right, the cheap stuff of Mother Earth is depleted. What now? Yup, beats me. I’m outta here.
What’s wrong with nothing? Can it be stuffed in a freaking handbag perhaps? 🤣👍
/sarc off
http://megacancer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/saupload_Peak-Oil-Plateau.jpg
is this to much optimistic?
from: https://megacancer.com/2021/01/31/zee-time-has-come/
Saludos
el mar
I believe that Paul Chefurka calculated a long-term human carrying capacity of earth at about 35 million which isn’t unreasonable in light of past long-term, pre-exponential growth population levels.
megacancer has always been an interesting read, but I haven’t kept up on it lately.
I am not sure that there really is a long-term human carrying capacity, because humans (with their control of fire) have learned to outsmart many other animals, at least as long as fossil fuels are available. If there is such an amount, it likely is very low. 35 million may be reasonable.
It seems pretty likely then that the planet was not ‘conceived’ for human benefit. Or if it was, then it was pretty badly conceived.
But of course that makes all sorts of assumptions. For human ‘benefit’ does not necessarily imply ‘purely’ for benefit or ‘purely’ for human benefit – or ‘forever’. It is certainly a two-edged sword however one looks at it.
One thing that is for sure is that the present herds are coming to an end, whether they like it or not. Herd grunting will not change that. And it will not ‘matter’ – it certainly does not matter to me.
It may be that humans will evolve as much more independent in rational thought and social need. Or that new needy herds will form. Much will certainly have to change – and ‘benefit’ may yet be sustained – but not by present types.
Present man is a ‘crossing over’ to something different, whether they like it or not.
I am surprised to see for a change people who see the carrying capacity lower than I do. I have been using 80 million.
As to sustainable we need a society where the land owner keeps the excess humans from entering on his or her land. The sheriff is the hero of this story. I am sure Ted Turner, Klaus, Gates and company understand this.
Resources are pretty tapped out now. That is part of the problem.
Gail, in terms of BAU right the resources are going going soon to be gone. In terms of keeping the uber rich on top of the social pyramid land ownership rights for the few and full surveilled city life for the small support staff can be made to work. Yes, no economy of scale so much lower living standard for the small support staff. How many tech toys the uber will have is not clear. I am sure they want to keep high tech life extension tech going.
I have usually gone for about 1% of the current global population, about 80M, or less. However, I don’t expect there to be any survivors long-term in the UK or Ireland. Cold, damp places and no-one has the skills to survive a Medieval lifestyle now. And with no doctors or dentists, or rather, none with modern day equipment or drugs.
As long as there are fish and deer there will be people in England. Remember they are proud English fish.
Don’t know where you live Oh Dear but in southern England it’s quite idyllic. There is also plenty of fossil fuels.
Demand has already started to fall off. It will continue to fall off before the time indicated. We will never build many electric cars.
How right you are Gail. With our clueless RULERS sending all our good jobs off to China, Mexico & India etc, we don’t have the $$$ to buy those EV’s & soon we won’t be able to meet their ELECTRICAL demand either.
The UK already has plans to cut off the mains to those with home recharging units when their are shortages like in summer when the demand for electricity is high or in winter when it’s even higher.
EV’s like wind turbines & solar panels will become a very expensive & FAILED experiment.
Government warns of ‘economic crisis’ due to Canada’s suspension of flights
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coronavirus/government-warns-of-economic-crisis/
BIDEN INSURANCE POLICIES ALREADY CREATING JOB LOSSES, POWER PRICES WILL SKYROCKET – WATTS UP WITH THAT?
https://shepherdgazette.com/biden-insurance-policies-already-creating-job-losses-power-prices-will-skyrocket-watts-up-with-that/
This is a story by someone who believes that cutting off the Keystone Pipeline and Rejoining the Paris Accord will raise oil and electricity prices.
Trucking companies, drivers dealing with skyrocketing insurance rates
https://www.660citynews.com/2021/01/29/trucking-companies-drivers-dealing-with-skyrocketing-insurance-rates/
I don’t understand the underlying cause. Alberta related?
Funds are flowing into silver…and from the other side 35 million paper silver contracts were added to meet the demand.
The banks win again…
Canadian Pastor Caught Unaware by Country’s Updated COVID-19 Travel Policy
https://heavy.com/news/pastor-nikki-mathis-quarantined-canada/?fbclid=IwAR31rzp8a65q23BZHFleyWftUSrZTT3pOPnUAONxV-ST-WDS3jc-S2CiIwU
Matt Hancock tells Britons they can expect ‘a happy and free great British summer’ THIS YEAR thanks to Covid vaccine rollout – as a top medical expert warns lockdown restrictions will have to be lifted ‘very slowly’ to avoid a surge in cases
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9207105/Matt-Hancock-tells-Britons-expect-happy-free-great-British-summer-YEAR.html
Interesting post on Reddit about the GME short squeeze
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/l98urv/the_real_reason_wall_street_is_terrified_of_the/
According to the post:
Also:
This post is written by an physics engineering student, who had nothing to do with the financial industry.
When ever such logic-physics mind tends to meet the “markets” – as we know in 999 cases out of 1k the former looses his shirt bigly, lolz.
If this GME thing was truly anywhere near capacity to crash the overall market, trillions would be dispatched asap by whatever means and channels. At best it could potentially threaten some of the bigger systemic players and that’s usually solved by the rest encircling the problem and sinking down only the one pre-selected victim, but the system as whole marches on.
Yes, it could serve as another smallish dent in support of the overall distrust of the markets but this is still a ~longer term game and as of now there are way more greedy participants from all over the world who will brave the course of BAU no matter what till the last minute – irrespective of few activist investors making shallow wave action on the lake.
Goldman warns that the markets could crash if the short squeeze continues.
As I understand it the banks and hedge funds are long stocks and short the dollar and silver.
The Reddit traders are now flocking to silver. A massive silver short squeeze that will cause the dominoes to fall?
Something will eventually cause a crash. It is hard to know whether this will be it.
Scotty…..WARP Drive….seems the Universe may have thousands of objects going at warp speed…FASTER than the Speed of Light….which is not possible a cording to the Laws of physics
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RaELad94KZs
Remarkable
The Theory of Relativity says that nothing can travel faster than light. This has been disproved in the laboratory, for instance by Wigner’s “delayed choice” experiment.
The fallacy is simple: relativity says that matter (and information) must be transmitted across a timelike interval. But the sum of two timelike intervals can be a spacelike interval, as proved by Kurt Goedel. Incidentally, that is how Hawking radiation works: a particle escapes the black hole by travelling backwards in time, and then reverses its temporal polarity by using some of the energy embedded in the gravitational field.
Time Travel…Count me ALL In with Elon Musk and Company…
Maybe Mister Spock and myself will join minds….mindbender
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uT8npGLg2g8
Why Austria gave birth to Adolf Hitler, the leader of WWII?
Austria was an energy poor state as regards the fossil fuels and it is situated on the northern slopes of the Alps, i.e. it was a really dire energy poverty. Now it is one of the leaders in using intermittent green energy.
https://youtu.be/YLWiXuv6BIo
Some colored history: Franz Joseph I.
The energy crises in Europe in the 20th century gave brith and promoted the development of Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC):
https://www.ytong.ro/ro/docs/Xella_Sustainability_Report_2012.pdf
“Ytong autoclaved aerated concrete is a classic among modern building materials. Thanks to its superior thermal insulation properties, it makes a unique contribution to sustainable building, the reduction of CO2 emissions, and the creation of a healthy living environment. With its eye-catching yellow packaging, Ytong has been known for decades all over the world. The industrially produced block’s roots can be traced back to the energy crisis in Sweden after World War I, when saving energy became a matter of vital importance”
https://www.ytong.si/si/docs/Multipor_Insulation_guide_2018.pdf
“It was not until the publication of ‘DIN 4108: Thermal insulation in high-rise buildings’ in the middle of the last century that the term ‘minimum standard of thermal insulation’ was coined, signaling an initial awareness of the issue – even though the primary aim was to satisfy requirements for comfort and hygiene. The impact of the first energy crisis finally convinced us of the need to change the parameters again. This led to the
rapid publication of the first German Ordinance on Thermal Insulation (Wärmeschutzverordnung) in 1977. It was not the scientists‘ words of warning, but our own experience of energy shortages which brought about this rethink.”
https://www.thisoldhouse.com/masonry/21014916/autoclaved-aerated-concrete-aac
“The 80s’ energy crisis revealed the need for an energy-efficient concrete product. When construction codes reflected that need, American builders started trying AAC. And now, says engineer Shuldes, “I’d say it’s here to stay.”
https://www.buildinggreen.com/news-article/autoclaved-aerated-concrete-aac-will-us-ever-lighten
“Although it certainly has some nifty properties, AAC isn’t new and isn’t miraculous–but it’s certainly popular in Europe, and has been for decades; according to one source, it accounted for 60% of all new construction in Germany in 2006. It has enjoyed pretty flat market share (of near zero) here in the U.S., though, since it was first introduced in the 1990s.”
“This alone makes this material especially interesting in areas with high pest problems such as Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and some of Texas.”
“There are many other materials that actually do better than AAC in any one of these categories. Wattle and Daub houses when raised off the ground and kept dry last thousands of years, have low energy use and cost in construction, and can be very air-tight . But they are not pest resistant at all. The same goes for hay-bale construction. Wood construction is easy to work with, can be fast, but has no fire resistance and has pests like termites that eat it. The drywall that goes on it is fast for making walls but acts as a superhighway and hidingspot for pests. Concrete is airtight by default, but is harder to work with, and takes a lot more time because you cannot build the next section until the first has cured. It is pest resistant, but not against rodents who actually like chewing on it to sharpen and wear down their teeth. It is also solid and crystaline and transfers sound incredibly well. Brick lasts a long time but again, rodents like to chew it, and takes more man hours to construct. Its not typically a hiding spot for pests, but it is actually hard to insulate without leaving voids (which can become super highways. AAC is a jack of all trades and that is what makes it so good.”
Just had our house tented for dry wood termites here in Florida with the gas Vikane.
Turned out it is a very potent greenhouse gas and it’s use has been on the rise.
The insects attacked the roofing rafters and trusses. I used spot treatments but we had a policy in place for a tenting.
Wood is still used for roofing here in Florida.
Now there is an invasive Termite from Asia
The Formosa Termite, which is a SUPER fast wood eater….spreading through the region.
If there is a construction feature that clearly distinguishes the USA and Canada construction and the European construction, it is definitely the use of this autoclaved aearated concrete:
This is such construction site in my vicinity in Slovakia:
https://www.nehnutelnosti.sk/4256296/na-predaj-16x-novostavba-rodinny-dom-bungalov-4-izbovy-127-m2-pozemok-cca-500-m2-mikusovce/
https://t1.aimg.sk/inzercie/ne_orig_44799943_domy-rodinny-dom-banska-bystrica-na-predaj-19-x-novostavba-rodinny-dom-bungalov-4-iz.jpg?t=Lzc3MHg1NzgvZmlsdGVyczpxdWFsaXR5KDgwKQ%3D%3D&h=LpF_z12SVJtWkpV9-ow1Gg&e=2145916800
With the increasingly stricter construction rules as regards the energy consumption, based on the EU legilsation, only the passive houses can be built, which this material is ideal for.
What I do not like on the above mentioned new houses in my vicinity is the lack of the massive ceilings/roofs from AAC:
https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=ek265W9scJd&brand=0
I would prefer them to be from this autoclaved aerated concrete because of overheating, too.
https://www.google.com/search?q=strecha+ytong&oq=strecha+ytong&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2j0i22i30l3j69i60l2.3031j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Wow! I didn’t realize
“Ytong autoclaved aerated concrete is a classic among modern building materials. Thanks to its superior thermal insulation properties, it makes a unique contribution to sustainable building, the reduction of CO2 emissions, and the creation of a healthy living environment.”
We can’t make this without fossil fuels, either. China makes its concrete with coal.
Then only “wattle and daub” remains to us. Like it was before…
AAC Block Manufacturing Process @ Saudi AAC Block Factory
Making that concrete is a VERY energy & water intensive process!
IF we survive climate disruption, overpopulation & biosphere destruction, it will be back to waddle & daub, mud bricks, wood slabs, wood frame or stone construction if your rich. There will be very little concrete.
Sheila: Roman concrete was neither energy nor water intensive. Indeed, their extensive harbours needed no additional water, because they invented concrete that would set after being sunk in the ocean. Neat.
It is fascinating to see those old perspectives in colour, thanks for that. The German aristocracy truly were a magnificent people and they knew it. Whether that ‘justifies’ that social order is obviously a matter of opinion but it is interesting to see the old footage.
Thanks to Woody Wilson who listened to the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks in USA and took away Austria’s resource bases.
That is an interesting point of view that Woody Wilson contributed to the WWII. It was during his era, when the Federal Reserve originated.
Funnily enough, it was theirs way before Austria (& friends) took over their respective kingdoms, regions.. And at that time Woody Wilson’s ancestors were living in some mud hut in England.
And how all those Poles, Czechs and Slovaks salivated at being able to gobble large parts of central Europe, including parts with almost no Poles, Czechs, or Slovaks. Fifteen years later, they learned that having failed to hang together, they would now hang separately.
Germany, Austria, and Russia had kept the peace ever since the Congress of Vienna. Not good enough for Wilson, who needed to pander to the votes of immigrants. Immigrants such as the Black Hand, for instance.
kulm and Robert seem to have very peculiar outlook on that section of CEE region, they seem to enjoy very short term selective bias within their parallel historical perspective only.
For one thing, true the Polish border fluctuated through centuries (and even disappeared for some) a lot. Yes, they ruled rather ruthlessly at times in today’s parts of Ukraine and Russia. Given the ~largest per capita toll they were arbitrarily (over) re-compensated by the end of the WWII, also to benefit USSR as future buffer against the W. So as the frontier moved a lot the polish guys also settled into former extended German-Prussian territories, which were even in the past part polish mixed settlements anyway.
Bohemian (Czech) borders fluctuated the least, actually under Hapsburg (Austrian) rule they lost some provinces. Germans were invited by Czech kings to colonize some woody border areas in the Middle Ages. Because it was briefly the capital of the Holly Roman (German) Empire in the late medieval period a lot of foreigners mixed in. After Czech nobility lost control of the state (after almost one millennium on the territory during ~16-17th century) the minority ~German element took over the entire country in terms of govs for next three centuries. Again ~corrected after WWI-II, especially because “W-allies” fed them infamously to Adolf in 1938-9.
Slovaks had limited sovereignty out of these three for the longest time, mostly living under Hungarian or Austro-Hungarian rule. And not exactly to be recognized around as the chief expansionary power hungry nation.
Having myself visited Budapest and seen the ‘corona latina’, the Holy Crown, my perspective may indeed be biassed, but I think it is fairly long.
New clinical trials raise fears the coronavirus is learning how to resist vaccines
https://news.yahoo.com/clinical-trials-raise-fears-coronavirus-040855671.html
Why should this be a surprise? It has happened with antibiotics as well.
All as planned:
Lock-downs, to avoid an awful death!
Vaccines will save you from perpetual lock-downs – if you all take them.
The virus is evolving: more lock-downs!
Oh so very, so deeply boring,…..
Some days, you know, to escape from the imposed dullard from, well, humanoid shenanigans in search for more, vanity and “social status” of what essentially is rapacious primate business.
Imagine this; slightly genetically modified tree dwellers busying themselves with pretenses. It is beyond absurd. Not even wrong. The wicked dance of rapacious primate princesses. 🐒
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00187-9
“Regulators will soon grapple with how to safely administer powerful psychedelics for treating depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“A week or so later, he was out with friends at a shopping centre and sensed the return of optimism and openness. “It felt like somebody had opened a window in a stuffy room.” Five years later, his depression has not returned.”
No, I am not depressed. Just sick and tired of the smoke and mirrors.
Hilarious!
Their aim is to induce a perpetually drugged state in which one dos not find shopping malls to be the most depressing places on earth?
God save us from the Devil: and even more from such experts.
Of course, once I’ve been Neurolinked I’m sure I’ll see things quite differently: assimilate me now, O Great Borg!
Yes, why not mix it up with the vaxx and call it a double whammy of conformity. 🤘🤩
You are supposed to be depressed from the bovine droppings of contemporary IC. It’s a healthy sign.
Those that thrive in mundanities are the sick ones. Psychedelics to the healthy people! Let’s goooo!!11!1!1!
Ah yes, shopping malls. Singapore built a lot of them. First, 80% of the stores catered to women, and most of them sold the same overpriced brands. Understandable, because the malls were owned by a private company that charged exorbitant rents.
For the same reason, even a light lunch was expensive. Example: shepherd’s pie and a glass of beer, SGD 40 (EUR 25). No appetiser, no dessert, no coffee. Even worse. the malls had a large atrium between here and anywhere else, and there was almost always some tout screaming into a microphone. And no chairs, because the owners believed people sitting were not shopping.
By contrast, small cafe in an old Victorian building: tom yum chicken soup and Chinese tea: SGD 10 (EUR 6.25). And absolutely no music.
Eating out is beyond pathetic, as there were not enough reports over the years (boom and bust time alike) about disgruntled employees (waitress, cooks) deliberately finger printing trace of feces on edge of the plates in general retribution act etc..
Exactly. That’s why I ate lunch at cafes where the owner’s family and friends did the cooking and serving. Or at Japanese restaurants where you could see the food being cooked. Salmon sashimi, hanasaki tempura, and warm sake, o my!
Psilocybin does work for ‘depression’, that is clinically proven now. It has instant and long-term benefits of activating neural connections across the entirety of the brain and ‘normalising’ brain function. If you can get them, then my advice would be definitely to use them. They will help you to ‘realise your yourself’ with less concern for social norms and for the ‘herd’ and the ‘poseurs’.
They were legal in UK (not dried) until 2005, after they were made widely available fresh at high st. markets. They still grow wild if people wish to pick them for themselves. All psychoactives are banned in UK since 2016 after chemists flooded the market with constantly changing analogues to traditional psychoactives.
Micro dosing is latest thing, particularly with psilocybin and lsd. Many find benefits in their working and private lives but many would choose not to. It is really up to you but, from what I have seen of your ‘condition’, my advice would be to definitely go out of your way to get mushrooms or lsd and try micro dosing. (I am not a doctor and you may want other opinions; the medical community is becoming much more favourable.)
“The majority of U.S. cities were ill-prepared for any financial crisis last year, let alone the one brought about by their respective state shutdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report published by the nonprofit Truth in Accounting (TIA) concludes.”
https://www.news-daily.com/news/report-majority-of-u-s-cities-unprepared-for-financial-fallout-from-statewide-shutdowns/article_3d087893-6412-5d22-84ae-834a47b872d6.html
“Biden’s First U.S. Jobs Report to Show Challenge Ahead: Economists are expecting the January jobs report to show a stagnant and still elevated unemployment rate — holding at 6.7% — according to a Bloomberg survey ahead of Friday’s data.
“That’s nearly double the level before the pandemic struck early last year.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-30/biden-s-first-u-s-jobs-report-to-show-challenge-ahead-eco-week
“Thousands of demonstrators in Paris were met with water cannon as protests against a new privacy law attracted larger crowds keen to air their grievances over coronavirus restrictions and France’s slow vaccine rollout.”
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-paris-protests-over-privacy-law-boil-over-amid-anger-at-coronavirus-restrictions-12203997
“The spiralling cost of shipping goods from Asia is causing a shortage of consumer goods in Europe for importers of everything from home furnishings, bicycles and sports kit to children’s toys and dried fruits.”
https://www.ft.com/content/40d23da5-c321-4b56-8ec7-551573a7a485
“India has blocked mobile internet services around New Delhi where hundreds of farmers are staging a one-day hunger strike in protest at new agriculture laws.
“The interior ministry said internet services at three locations on the outskirts of the capital had been suspended until 11pm on Sunday (5.30pm UK time) to “maintain public safety”.”
https://news.sky.com/story/india-cuts-internet-near-new-delhi-as-hundreds-of-farmers-begin-hunger-strike-12204043
“India’s economy contracted by 7.7% in the 2020-21 financial year, battered by the coronavirus pandemic according to a report released Friday.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/indian-economy-shrinks-77-in-fiscal-202021-amid-pandemic-economy-economy-coronavirus-pandemic-nirmala-sitharaman-new-delhi-b1794730.html
We remember that the new laws basically take away the guaranteed high prices on foods grown by small farmers. Large farmers will benefit; small farmers will lose out.
“It’s starting to look like Saudi Arabia’s concerns over the oil demand recovery were well founded…
“…there are worrying signs that the recovery in transport fuel has not only ground to a halt, but has actually gone into reverse in some key areas.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-31/saudi-arabia-s-oil-recovery-fears-look-well-founded
“On Friday, January 29, the impoverished people of Iran continued their protests against the government and its institutions’ economic failures and wrong policies. In this context, Iranian citizens held at least three rallies and strikes in two cities.”
https://irannewsupdate.com/news/insider/iranians-continue-protests-at-least-three-rallies-and-strikes-on-january-29/
“Police detained more than 500 people at rallies in Siberia and Russia’s far east on Sunday as supporters of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny took to the streets to protest against his jailing, despite biting cold and the threat of arrest.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/russian-protests-continue-for-second-weekend-in-support-of-jailed-kremlin-critic-alexei-navalny
It would be hard to find a country without protests of some sort.
Articles in Foreign Affairs have for twenty years seen Iran as over populated without infrastructure to support its people. This is not news.
“…little has improved in Turkey. The lira remains anemic, food and consumer prices have dramatically increased, and life for people in the country has grown all the more difficult — not to mention more expensive.”
https://www.dw.com/en/turkeys-erdogan-fails-to-get-double-digit-inflation-under-control/a-56392772
“Tunisian authorities are expected to begin new negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan of 6.4 billion Tunisian dinars (about $2.3 billion)… The government is facing unprecedented economic hardship…”
https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2774506/tunisia-begin-new-negotiations-imf-loan
“Argentina’s Economy Minister Martin Guzman is pushing for a deal by May with the International Monetary Fund to repay $44 billion in debt, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing his interview.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-imf-idUSKBN29Z0IV
“\No Change in Dollars: a New Challenge for Venezuelans: As the economy turned to an informal dollarization, there isn’t enough cash or a proper solution to protect the meager buying power of customers.”
https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2021/01/30/no-change-in-dollars-a-new-challenge-for-venezuelans/
“The federal government has warned that Canada’s three-month suspension of flights to Mexico could cause a “profound economic crisis”… Canada is the second most important source country for travelers to Mexico after the United States…”
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coronavirus/government-warns-of-economic-crisis/
“China’s mutual fund industry assets surged 48 per cent to a record $3.1tn (Rmb20tn) in 2020 but huge demand for new funds is stoking fears that volatile investor inflows could spur a stock market bubble…
“A senior adviser to China’s central bank warned this week that the risk of asset bubbles would increase if monetary policy was not tightened.”
https://www.ft.com/content/e9a7f4a9-7cf9-4733-b3a6-c371a1400cf4
“Factory activity in China slowed slightly in January, official data showed Sunday, as the country rushed to stamp out a recent coronavirus wave in northern China.”
https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/01/31/21/china-factory-activity-slows-slightly-on-new-covid-19-wave
“Tensions between the U.S. and China have been steadily escalating on a range of issues, but there’s one place where a clash of superpowers would be most likely to happen: the South China Sea. Even with a new U.S. president, the disagreements that led to this moment won’t be easy to resolve.”
Bloomberg Video:
“Tensions between the U.S. and China have been steadily escalating on a range of issues…”
The wire services have received many complaints about their reliance on the “tensions” metaphor, which is passive and avoids assigning said tensions to any particular source, but the editors remain obdurate and persist in clinging to this turn of phrase.
China may have a lot worse time with COVID this year than last.
“Bubble Markets Display Bizarre Behavior Right Before They Tumble: Like the Dot.Com bubble of the late ‘90s, the typical signs of an approaching bubble bust were on full display in the equity markets last week…”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2021/01/30/bubble-markets-display-bizarre-behavior-right-before-they-tumble/?sh=69fb573c328a
“Powell Won’t Pop This Bubble (Yet): …One reason the Fed isn’t fazed by stock valuations is that it is among those arguing that, in the current low-interest-rate environment, stock prices aren’t dangerously excessive…
“Still, if Fed officials aren’t alarmed by what is happening in the stock market, they should at least be worried. Most standard valuation measures show stocks are alarmingly expensive, and the reason the gauge the central bank has highlighted doesn’t is that one of its inputs—the 10-year Treasury yield—is so low.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/powell-wont-pop-this-bubble-yet-11612018980
“There are no real options for the Federal Reserve unless they are willing to allow the system to reset painfully.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4402236-macroview-2021-disappointment-of-growth-and-disinflation
Good point!
Don’t know what would come out if stock bubble pops out. Here people whose wages have been preserved and who can’t spend their money because of lockdowns or restrictions started to invest on markets and seem to be happy with their apparent gains. What if it burns in fumes? Everything is so tense.
Bizarre behavior before crashing–not a good sign at all.
“The coronavirus pandemic has meant a brutal period for UK high street retailers, many of which were struggling before last spring as more and more consumer sales moved online.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/31/retail-is-at-deaths-door-and-tinkering-with-business-rates-wont-save-it
“More than a third of UK hospitality businesses – an estimated 650,000 – fear collapse in the next three months, it has been revealed, amidst reports of the current lockdown lasting until May.”
https://aboutmanchester.co.uk/650000-hospitality-businesses-at-risk-of-collapse-before-lockdown-ends-as-labour-accuses-ministers-of-economic-negligence/
“Hundreds of millions of pounds of promised UK government cash for devastated youth services has “gone missing” prompting warnings that many more will disappear.
“Anger is growing over the failure to open up the flagship £500m Youth Investment Fund – amid fears the money will be redirected to other crisis services as part of a “review” of priorities.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/covid-funding-cut-youth-services-b1791372.html
“gone missing”. Silly euphemism, because everyone knows where the money has gone.
The government decides that a “good cause”, custom wigs for transgender boys, perhaps, needs L100 million in funding. That is given to the bureaucrats, most of whom are corrupt, incompetent Common Cause apparatchiks. They pass the money on to their crony private sector contractors, in exchange for the usual vigorish, let’s say 10%.
Given some 20 bureaucrats, that’s L500K each, a nice fillip for the pension pot. The contractors then spend the money, on administration, planning, oversight, affirmative action, gender equity, press releases, and so on, say about 80%; there are lots of opaque jan jars in which to hide the loot. The final 10% may go to the “youth”, or of course to the managers of a selected “youth charity”, who eat whatever is left.
And presto, it’s all “gone missing”.
I am afraid I am not going to have as much time to respond to comments today. I need to get a new post written, and Sunday is normally a day that I have family things going on.
A people who give up their freedom in exchange for emancipation, and their liberty in exchange for autonomy are in danger of loosing their independence and their sovereignty, not to mention their self-determination.
Hands up if you thought John Stuart Mil said that. He, didn’t. But he did warn us about the tyranny of the majority in no uncertain terms. And all of us who have felt the cold eyes or heard the harsh words of our friends, neighbors and fellow countrymen—or should that be countrypersons or countrypeople?—because we misgendered someone or forgot to don a facemask at the local supermarket, will doubtless give a nod of approval to Mill’s views about the need for protection against the tyranny of prevailing opinion, if you can past his old-fashioned prose written for people with longer attention spans than most people possess these days.
“Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compels all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. “
Clear headed thinking never gets old. It doesn’t even have to be right for it to be a pleasure to wrap your mind around and poke at with your logic circuitry.
It sort of reminds of your prose Tim, always agreeable yet sometimes not agreeable at the same time.
Here is a short YT video on the same subject, well worth the time.
https://youtu.be/A4jzzDYLgro
Yes,I find this to be a very good video, and I’ve subscribed to the channel. Thanks!
I enjoyed the narrator’s voice, the subject matter, and the choice of illustrations—including a lot of classical and Renaissance art—that accompanies it.
Entitled “Why Caring What Others Think Breeds Mental Illness”, the video mentions Cato the Elder (I think) and Diogenes the Cynic as examples of people who were not put off by other people’s disapproval or ridicule. There are also some quotations of Jung’s that fulfill the promise implied in the title. And the comments also contain more examples of other people who have made the same point, including:
“Care About What Other People Think, And You Will Always Be Their Prisoner.”
– Lao Tzu
“It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.”
– Charlie Chaplin
++++++++ And the art in Kow’s YT clip points us in a good direction too.
Leading English journalist Peter Hitchens has published an article in the Sunday Mail that is totally resigned to the departure of Scotland from UK. This really is quite remarkable.
> PETER HITCHENS: Say goodbye Scotland, put Wales on our flag – and let’s save England!
Quite soon we will have to redesign the Union Jack. I can see no way of stopping Scotland from leaving the Union, so there goes St Andrew’s Cross.
At least that will give us a chance to right a historic wrong and include some symbol of Wales on the national flag, provided they don’t declare independence too.
Did you know that the Royal Arms of England used to feature a lion for England and a dragon for Wales? The dragon was dropped, in favour of a unicorn, when the English and Scottish crowns were united in 1603.
I find this a useful way to think about it. We have in recent years seen major nations, including Yugoslavia, Germany and the USSR, change shape utterly. Perhaps we should get used to the idea we are about to undergo the same thing.
When the Blair Government began its revolution in 1997, I thought there might be some chance of saving the United Kingdom. But when the Tory Party adopted Blairism under David Cameron, the last hopes of that faded. Not that they were very strong by then. I don’t see how anybody can stop it now.
Nationalism makes many people in Scotland feel good about themselves, and anyone who supports British independence from Brussels can’t really argue against it. I suspect that, against all logic, if I were Scottish, I would favour it for the sheer exhilaration of it.
And I now think that our only hope of reunifying Scotland and England is to say: ‘We will be sorry to see you go, and continue to regard you as friends and allies, closer to us in all ways than anyone else on Earth. But if you must go, you should know that you will always be welcome back if you change your minds. We’ll leave a light burning.’
The last thing we should do is behave as Spain has towards Catalonia. Heavy-handed rigidity will only make the divorce worse when it comes. It really is going to be very hard to prevent another vote, and we shouldn’t try.
Attempts to argue about finances, or defence, or currency just won’t work. Younger people in Scotland are used to the idea. Many don’t share the English view of the EU – not surprising, as Scotland’s law and politics are much closer to the continental model than ours. Why cover ourselves in bruises in a vain effort to keep hold of people who – for now at least – prefer to leave? Far better to stay on the best terms with them once they go.
Let us, for a while, think rather harder about whether we can save England, our beautiful, free prosperous country, its unique liberty, its limited government, its literature, music, architecture and landscape, its inventiveness and its courage, the things that made us great in the first place and which – if we take the trouble to preserve them – might keep us in being in the future when others fail.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9205833/PETER-HITCHENS-Say-goodbye-Scotland-Wales-flag-lets-save-England.html
The Financial Times is running with an opinion piece that argues that the Scottish independence movement can ‘win big’ in the referendum so long as it presents its case properly to the middle ground. The atrocious performance of the UK economy, Brexit and the TP handling of c 19 have all changed the debate. The economic benefits of independence would be instant; it will take time to fully emulate the success of other smaller countries in northern Europe but it would be ‘worth it’ in this FT view.
> Now is the time for a detailed plan for Scottish independence
…. The UK’s economic performance last year appears likely to have been among the worst in the OECD group of 37 industrialised countries. Pro-Union campaigners are struggling to articulate a positive case for the more than 300-year-old Anglo-Scottish union in the face of today’s political and economic realities.
All that Scots hear is that the starting point is too poor and that the transition would be too hard. Life as it is, they are told, is as good at it gets. Scots used to buy this perspective and added on top their own positive sense of the story of the UK and their part in it.
Brexit changed this, both the fact of it and the manner of it. It was a populist campaign without any prospectus or detail on what would happen next and a result which a significant majority of Scots didn’t want. This and the handling of the pandemic have changed many minds.
Whether they remain changed and are joined by others will in part depend on the quality and conduct of the pro-independence argument. If the nationalists take the populist low road of the Brexiters, it is unlikely centre-ground Scots will be persuaded. Produce a prospectus that is honest and clear about the transition, timings and trade-offs, as well as positive about its vision of why this matters, and the Yes side could win big when the choice is put.
Material benefits could accrue quickly, but the full impact of any reform strategy to emulate the best-performing small countries like Denmark will take time. Rome was not built in a day after all, but it was worth building.
…. The choice will come. There is no question that choosing will carry trade-offs and challenges to weigh up, whatever the decision. Independence would be hard work and effort — anything worth having always is. It would not be easy, but more and more Scots believe it is worth it.
https://www.ft.com/content/4ec7158d-fe9f-4aa6-9757-4b86a9800157
Yawn!
On the one hand, the (IMO likely) break-up of the UK fundamentally stems from the issues Gail writes about, so it does have relevance to OFW, but on the other, this is a blog with a very international readership, the majority of whom, I suspect, will see the ongoing debate over Scottish independence as a geopolitical footnote and will have little interest in its minutiae.
Honestly, I am English but resident in Scotland and I’m simply not interested in what such luminaries as Peter Hitchens or Gordon Brown have to say on the matter. Perhaps Mirror could post fewer paragraphs from each article so that these posts can be more easily scrolled past?
Also, on a personal note, it’s hard to shake the suspicion that Mirror’s endless posts around Scottish independence are rooted in a gleeful desire to see the UK state he despises broken up, which gives them a rather mean-spirited energy, as does his prickliness when challenged.
++++++++++
I think as someone else suggested recently, it would be better if Mirror posted a single intro paragraph followed by a link for those who are interested in following up. Probably should be true for everyone – no cut and paste of entire articles from other sources.
if I second that
will it be entered in the ofw rulebook?
I am not sure if I have seen any written rules. At the Oil Drum, what we were told was the amount that can be copied varies with the length of an article.
If it is a long article, maybe four or five paragraphs can be copied. If it is a short article, only one. You don’t want to copy over half of an article. Of course, not everyone is terribly interested in the Scotland situation, and that may make a difference, too.
With the current version of the WordPress software, it seems to be impossible to search the comments. It is hard to believe that publishers would notice. But it does make a lot to scroll through.
I agree, point to stuff if you can, this comment field isn’t a old fashioned letter.
Harry, sure, it is all about what you want and anyone who does not conform to that is somehow ‘wrong’ and has to account for themselves. That is the arrogance of the Anglo herd mentality. British society is much more diverse now, your herd mentality is no longer dominant in the same way and you are just going to have to cope with that. It is ridiculous that English pensioners try to treat the internet as their herd ‘retreat’. The internet is for everyone, not just for your herd. It is not the new British Empire where you get to lay down colonial regulations for everyone else. So, cope with it.
Whatever happened to your legendary objectivity, Mirror? And, more importantly, wherever did you get the idea that I am a pensioner? 😂
funny transformations happen on ofw
I got labelled as a dentist
I am not interested in having some petty personal East Enders public squabble scene with you. Let us just agree not to address each other. Try to act with some dignity, it may help.
Norman,
I think you were confused with Dennis L., who is a retired dentist.
Some people have problems with Mirror posting long tracts and some people have problems with Harry posting lots of snippets. Some people have problems with long or short posts that they disagree with but no problems with the ones they agree with.
I have no problem with any of that. I’m just happy that this forum is a haven for freedom of expression that has many fine contributors who often disagree with each other, and not just another echo echo echo chamber chamber chamber.
I’m also happy that my browser has a scroll bar, so I can race past anything that doesn’t interest me.
I don’t know, Tim. I rather suspect you’d burst a blood vessel if I posted endless, multi-paragraph tracts about globbly wobbly.
Nah. But if I was in the mood, I might post equally long attempted rebuttals.
I’d bring up the fact that it was warmer in the 1930s, in the Medieval Warm Period, the Holocene Optimum and during the previous Eemian Interglacial. I’d bring up Hannibal’s elephants and Otzi the frozen iceman and hippos wallowing in the mud where Trafalgar Square now stands.
I’d also mention that Charles Onians in the Independent in 2000 telling us ” ‘Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past’ and George Monbiot in 2005 writing:
“It is now mid-February, and already I have sown eleven species of vegetable. I know, though the seed packets tell me otherwise, that they will flourish. Everything in this country – daffodils, primroses, almond trees, bumblebees, nesting birds – is a month ahead of schedule. And it feels wonderful. Winter is no longer the great grey longing of my childhood. The freezes this country suffered in 1982 and 1963 are – unless the Gulf Stream stops – unlikely to recur. Our summers will be long and warm. Across most of the upper northern hemisphere, climate change, so far, has been kind to us.”
And if that doesn’t dissuade you, I’ll have go go nuclear and start talking about Professor Peter Wadhams, who has made more predictions of ice free Arctic summers than the average Eskimo has had hot dinners. Prof. Wadhams has made multiple predictions of an ice-free Arctic (extent as low as 1M km2), which resulted in the birth of of the metric: 1 Wadham = 1M km2 Arctic ice extent. However, the smallest extent recorded in the modern era remains 3.4 M km2, or 3.4 Wadhams, during the summer of 2012, nine long years ago.
well–you did bring up all those points
we cannot and will not see a smooth progression from cold to warm
the 60 mile long flatland I see from my bedroom window was a post glacial meltwater lake, it was there for about 4000 years or so, there were numerous hotter and colder spells during that time.
If there were humans around here 12000 years ago—I have no doubt there would have been shaking of hairy heads–”I toldya global warming/cooling was just a hoax, put out by those denisovians over in Siberia–troublemakers”
Maybe the Inuit just make it all up, just to get royalties on those wilderness survival programmes then they can buy chainsaws, tractors and outboard motors, and fly in petrol to use in them
Yes, indeed. I’m sure you would and the comments section would become bogged down and tedious and take on a generally negative energy, so I don’t, even though it is a particular interest of mine.
Or the British Nationalists could just set up their own blog on which they get to control what everyone says to flatter their nationalist egos.
This is not your blog and it is not your ‘territory’. So frankly, mind your own business.
You might be happier on the Daily Mail comments or Breitbart.
The thing is, Mirror/Oh dear, if your primary focus and passion is for Scottish independence winning out over the evil British nationalists then it is you who might be happier elsewhere. There are myriad other blogs that cater specifically to such interests.
The issue has relevance to OFW in the sense that the likely break-up of Scotland and England is at root a result of both nations being energy-constrained – but independence does nothing to ameliorate that predicament, so the endless “Will they? Won’t they? Should they? Shouldn’t they” articles are somewhat moot as far as a ‘limits to growth’ audience is concerned and indeed as far as I am concerned.
Now, if it does actually happen then suddenly it becomes a bit more interesting and we can start looking at supply-chain disruptions, trade chaos, the affect on the £, the FTSE and all of that good stuff.
This is certainly Gail’s blog and she is, by and large, happy for it to self-organise as it will – but the readership and commenters also have their role to play, so in that sense it is my business.
I also have to wonder what sort of person would even want to continue imposing their agenda on a comments section in the manner you do when multiple commenters have expressed dissatisfaction with it? It seems bizarre to me. As someone who posts a lot of articles, I am ever sensitive to criticism of that and happy to adapt accordingly.
Your opinions on what other people should post are of no interest to me.
No one has to account anything to you.
So, either cope with it or go somewhere else.
Let that be the end of any exchange between us.
Au contraire, Mirror, I reserve the right to continue calling you out on your inconsiderate posting habits ad nauseam and, now that your political agenda is clear, I look forward to pointing out repeatedly that Scottish independence is doomed to end in disappointment and disillusionment, thanks to the issues Gail writes about.
You do not have any ‘rights’, they are all made up.
Your gossip and slander have had zero affect on me. Those are bully boy herd grunts that only work if someone could care less about your herd, which I do not.
Nothing that you have said has made any impression on me and neither will it ever.
It would make no difference to me if there were a hundred of you all slandering and attacking me. Your herd means nothing to me. It is practically a category mistake that you would think it would.
It really is water off a duck’s back. In fact I find it quite informative. The herd is what it is but it is always good to have a refresher.
You chose to make this personal. I have no interest in your person or in any of your complaints.
You can say whatever you like about me, I really could not care less what your nasty, resentful, spiteful primate brain comes out with. You are beneath me when you act like that.
As far as I am concerned, this ‘conversation’ never happened and I have already forgotten about it. I am not a herd animal and I really do not care about your hostile grunts. Cope with it. : )
I find Harry’s opinions always interesting, and often refreshing. He is one of the guardians of sanity on OFW, and a mighty force for finding and disseminating relevant information. Thank you, Harry, and may your shadow never grow less.
Mirror,
I think you should greatly tone down your writings about Scotland’s independence. If you have relevant comments about other things, tell us about them.
Bless you for that, Robert. You are a gent.
Gentlemen would never feel the need or the inclination to flatter each other in public. And they would certainly never behave the way that you have today. Your entire modus operandi assumes a lower class that actually cares what anyone says about them. So do not flatter yourselves. It is East Enders not gentlemen in case you do not even know the difference. There is nothing gentlemanly about you whatsoever.
no use quoting East Enders to our cousins in the colonies, especially those north of Hadrians Wall
The scripting rule for East Enders is 4 shouting matches per episode, 2 either side of the commercial break. Ive never actually sat through an entire episode, but I think it should be called Yellalot Square
Whereas the Picts used to climb over the wall every few minutes, causing mayhem. and never observed commercial breaks.
what with that and the weather, the Romans jacked it in and went home.
Where would you want to spend your retirement? On Hadrians wall or on the Amalfi coast?
“…they would certainly never behave the way that you have today.”
Honestly, Mirror, it’s like being chastised by some unusually gauche headmistress.
I went to a covid themed party recently where you either wore a mask with a slogan or a tee shirt.
My slogan was
DON’T TRUST THE PRICKS
feel free to use it.
“The Injection Fraud – It’s Not a Vaccine,” by Catherine Austin Fitts – May 27, 2020
“If you look at what is being created and proposed in the way of injectibles, it looks to me like these technological developments are organized around several potential goals.
The first and most important goal is the replacement of the existing U.S. dollar currency system used by the general population with a digital transaction system that can be combined with digital identification and tracking. The goal is to end currencies as we know them and replace them with an embedded credit card system that can be integrated with various forms of control, potentially including mind control. ‘De-dollarization’ is threatening the dollar global reserve system. The M1 and M2 money supply have increased in the double digits over the last year as a result of a new round of quantitative easing by the Fed. The reason we have not entered into hyperinflation is because of the dramatic drop in money velocity occasioned by converting Covid-19 into an engineered shutdown of significant economic activity and the bankrupting of millions of small and medium-sized businesses. The managers of the dollar system are under urgent pressure to use new technology to centralize economic flows and preserve their control of the financial system.
“Just as Gates installed an operating system in our computers, now the vision is to install an operating system in our bodies and use ‘viruses’ to mandate an initial installation followed by regular updates.
“Now I appreciate why Gates and his colleagues want to call these technologies ‘vaccines.’ If they can persuade the body politic that injectible credit cards or injectible surveillance trackers or injectable brain-machine interface nanotechnologies are ‘vaccines,’ then they can enjoy the protection of a century or more of legal decisions and laws that support their efforts to mandate what they want to do. As well, they can insist that U.S. taxpayers fund, through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the damages for which they would otherwise be liable as a result of their experiments—and violations of the Nuremberg Code and numerous civil and criminal laws—on the general population. The scheme is quite clever. Get the general population to go along with defining their new injectible high-tech concoctions as ‘vaccines,’ and they can slip them right into the vaccine pipeline. No need to worry about the disease and death that will result from something this unnatural delivered this quickly. The freedom from liability guaranteed by the PREP Act through the declaration of an emergency—and the ability to keep the emergency going through contact tracing—can protect them from liability for thousands if not millions of deaths and disabilities likely to follow such human experimentation. Ideally, they can just blame the deaths on a virus.
“A colleague once told me how Webster’s Dictionary came about. Webster said that the way the evildoers would change the Constitution was not by amending it but by changing the definitions—a legal sneak attack.
“I believe that Gates and the pharma and biotech industries are literally reaching to create a global control grid by installing digital interface components and hooking us up to Microsoft’s new $10 billion JEDI cloud at the Department of Defense as well as Amazon’s multibillion cloud contract for the CIA that is shared with all U.S. intelligence agencies. Why do you think President Trump has the military organizing to stockpile syringes for vaccines? It is likely because the military is installing the roaming operating system for integration into their cloud. Remember—the winner in the AI superpower race is the AI system with access to the most data. Accessing your body and my body on a 24/7 basis generates a lot of data. If the Chinese do it, the Americans will want to do it, too. In fact, the rollout of human ‘operating systems’ may be one of the reasons why the competition around Huawei and 5G telecommunications has become so fractious. As Frank Clegg, former President of Microsoft Canada has warned us, 5G was developed by the Israelis for crowd control.
“In the face of global ‘de-dollarization,’ this is how the dollar syndicate can assert the central control it needs to maintain and extend its global reserve currency financial power. This includes protecting its leadership from the civil and criminal liability related to explosive levels of financial and health care fraud in recent decades.”
https://home.solari.com/deep-state-tactics-101-the-covid-injection-fraud-its-not-a-vaccine/
So the US government is secretly plotting to bring about de-dollarization? Now I’ve heard everything.
It depends on who you ask [in the US]. Perhaps there isn’t a choice.
Not the government. TPTB. They have no country since they can control most of them. Governments are puppets.
They like a tough game, no rules
Some you win, some you lose
Competition, good for you
To die to be free
They’re the powers that be
They like a bomb proof Cadillac
Air conditioned, gold taps
Back seat gun rack
Platinum hub caps
They pick horses for courses
They’re the market forces
(Nice car, Jack!)
They like order, make-up
Lime light, power
Game shows, rodeos
Star Wars, TV
They’re the powers that be
If you see them come
You better run, run
You better run on home
You better run, run
You better run on home
They like treats, tricks
Carrots and sticks
They like fear and loathing
They like sheep’s clothing
And blacked-out vans
Blacked-out vans
Contingency plans
They like death or glory
They love a good story
Internet-enabled vaccine/medication/bio-monitoring/locating patches have been around for some years already – see videos made by DARPA and others.
So, the technology certainly exists, and the will to subjugate us to a level of micro-managed subservience like the mainland Chinese, the slave-rat people who are, we are told, ‘happy’.
Of course they are: they have been conditioned to accept their state, in which they can still find some outlet for basic drives (food, drink, sex, ambition) and they know the punishments that await them if they depart from what is acceptable in the eyes of their overlords.
Despite all of this, CAF describes herself as an optimist. She believes it will all crumble.
Physics itself perhaps tends to support that hope – but what will be left of us after it does? And in what part of the globe?
I guess the population decline will come later…when it’s too late and be chaotic and violent. There’s no way to cull the population in an orderly manner… except through a pandemic….
“I guess the population decline will come later…”
yes.
there is still no data showing a slowdown or reversal of the 200,000 per day population increase.
which could mean that the global situation will have to become even more chaotic and violent etc before the decrease kicks in.
it’s coming “later”, perhaps mid or late 2020s.
energy decline is reasoned to precede population decline, and indeed FF was down about 9% in 2020.
a large portion of energy has been used for non-essential purposes, but further declines in energy will eat into more essential purposes and the big one which is food supply.
UN reports more food insecurity around the world, and that will only get worse.
energy supply should continue as a leading indicator of food supply.
Even before food supply. Shortfalls of medical supplies will lead to more corona,AIDs, Bubonic and other infectious disease deaths.
As well as chronic diseases and co-morbidities turning deadly. Likewise with infant mortality and maternal mortality.
perhaps.
for most people, a few weeks without food is probably more life threatening than a few weeks without medical supplies.
both will be increasingly problematic.
so add medical supplies to the list.
energy supply should continue as a leading indicator of medical supplies.
A decline in energy supply leads to a decline in fertilizer availability. This by itself may lead to less food.
Also, all of the self-organizing changes taking place now leads to less demand for total goods and services (less tourism, less fancy clothing, less use of public transit, less office building space, fewer shopping malls, less cosmetics). Fewer people worldwide will have jobs. Perhaps more human labor can be directed toward growing food locally, but the result is likely to be many poor people eating inadequate diets and because of their poor diets, becoming vulnerable to almost any kind of bacteria or virus that comes their way. Babies especially will have a higher death rate.
The navy and its pilots have briefed the Senate about large black triangles coming out of the ocean, rising up through the atmosphere and shooting up into space. They are talking about transmedium objects. Imagine having a space rocket coming out of the ocean, hanging in the air and then shooting up into space.
The Senate asked for a UFO report.
your source surely must be a weirdo.
I am a weirdo too.
the oceans are millions of square miles.
just the chance of a pilot being in the exact spot at the exact time is “astronomical”.
Well surprise surprise. Could they have made it anymore obvious?
“World leaders pledge a ‘great reset’ after the pandemic”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/01/29/davos-merkel-macron-coronavirus/?outputType=amp
A Great Reset based on a wrong understanding of our problem.
https://youtu.be/_WUyZXhLHMk
Why do you think they don’t understand the situation? They coincide with you in that there will be much less energy, but they just try to present it as a voluntary choice, that’s the only difference (and a bit of renewables BS)
There is NOTHING voluntary about the Great Reset. It’s already in happening, hence the lockdowns around the world.
I didn’t said it was your (or my) will. It’s the will of those that rule, from the top, as Schwab, to my cousin. But what would had happened if the scamdemic had not appeared? Do you thing we’d be living just as we were? Everything would be just fine? Or 2020 would have been like 2008? Perhaps even worse?
Can’t understand it myself Rodster….seems just about everyone is caught in the matrix of forced lockdowns.
Read tales of school children taking their own lives due to the isolation and depression of this reset.
For myself, oh well, what can I do?
Just humm along and let the progrom unfold and try to duck as it swings.
Amazed that the my co workers are not at all concerned with the money borrowing, continuous extententions of rents and mortgages…or job losses .
I’m employed for a major Airline and in the news United Airlines announced another notice of furloughs 14,000.
The Unions responded by asking another 9 billion dollar
Handout from Uncle Joe!
Wouldn’t it be more practical just to nationalize the Industry?
Our world has changed permanently…hold on tight
“Russia’s population shrank by about half a million last year, its first contraction in 15 years, the country’s statistics agency said on Friday.”
The coming population decline is going to happen? It has to happen with the energy decline…one way or another.
The article I found about Russian population falling by 500,000 attributes this to a combination of COVID deaths, migration and low birth rate.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/29/russia-population-shrinks-for-first-time-in-15-years
In Poland: GUS added that according to preliminary data for 2020, about 477,000 people had died, or around 67,000 more than a year earlier. I have also seen another report that said the number of excess deaths was around 84,000 and was the highest since 1946.
The population shrinkage was mostly from people moving to other countries. Also, not having babies. The demographic mix is also quite old.
By Jove
There must be something going on here….either Peak Oil and or CC is REAL….
https://qz.com/1966116/electric-cars-will-speed-up-depreciation-of-everything-gm-owns/?utm_source=YPL
ELECTRIFY OR DIE
The Quartz
GM just sped up the depreciation of everything it owns
GM is going to try. On Thursday, Detroit’s biggest automaker said it plans to exclusively offer electric light-duty cars and trucks by 2035, five years ahead of a previously announced goal and part of a broader mission to make its production and operations carbon neutral by 2040. That timeline puts GM well ahead of market forecasts: Less than half of the US vehicle market is expected to be electric by 2035.
GM is taking a big risk, but it’s not a profile in courage, says Sven Beiker, a former BMW engineer who now runs the consulting firm Silicon Valley Mobility. The writing is on the wall. Overseas, where GM sells about two-thirds of its cars (pdf), Europe, Japan, and China have all said the internal combustion engine’s days are numbered. In the US, combustion engines will be phased out in California and Massachusetts by 2035, and other states are sure to follow. The Biden administration is also planning to use the federal government’s procurement budget and policies to accelerate
Or collapse is real.
🙂
So how are people without money supposed to be these electric cars? People are tapped out. What about people who live in apartment buildings and don’t have anywhere to plug in their vehicles for overnight charging?
PS I quite agree: the top reptiles all have Ivermectin, etc, on tap and are over-dosing on vitamin D,etc, while they laugh at us up their sleeves.
Boris Johnson can hardly suppress his laughter on camera in Parliament. Imagine what they do behind closed doors……
Well, Yorchichan, if loathing the thought of a global totalitarian regime which is built on secret murder and insultingly puerile ‘scientific’ lies, wants to invade my body – and what passes for a brain – restrict my freedom and exercise , AND make me eat worms and insects, makes me a rebel, that I now am.
No one on earth comes between me and my chorizo!
One of my ancestors was imprisoned by wicked King John, who tried to starve him to death. He wasn’t having any of that, buried an axe in the head of the jailer and escaped. I do believe in role models…….
Keep your Viking Yorvik spirits up!
This will add an interesting oriental flavour to Britain’s diversity. Over five million HK’ers are eligible to settle in the UK under TP plans to boost the post-Brexit economy. Brexit voters chose to end EU free movement and TP now has complete control of the borders. HK’ers are seen as especially rich pickings for the UK economy.
> Why Enough Hong Kongers to Fill Belfast May Flee to the U.K.
The U.K. expects some 322,000 Hong Kong residents to take advantage of the pathway to citizenship over the next five years.
When the U.K. starts accepting special visa applications from Hong Kong residents on Sunday, Chen will be among the first in line. The 40-year-old former Airbnb host believes time is running out as local officials urge action to discourage people from relocating to their former colonial homeland.
“If we don’t leave now, we many never be able to leave again,” Chen, who asked not to be identified by his full name due to fear of reprisal by the government, said in an interview Thursday. He and his wife plan to leave immediately and hope to settle in Brighton, because, “like Hong Kong, it’s near the sea.”
The U.K. expects some 322,000 Hong Kong residents who hold special passports created before the city’s return to Chinese rule in 1997 to take advantage of the new pathway to citizenship over the next five years. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government announced the visa program for British National (Overseas) passport holders in July, after accusing Beijing of violating the terms of Hong Kong’s handover by enacting a strict national security law.
Such an exodus — equal to roughly 4% of Hong Kong’s population — could have a profound impact on both Hong Kong and the U.K., fresh from its break with the European Union. The departure could result in a capital outflow of HK$280 billion ($36 billion), according to a Bank of America report published earlier this month. The projected number of immigrants would be almost as large as the population of Belfast.
“We have honored our profound ties of history and friendship with the people of Hong Kong, and we have stood up for freedom and autonomy — values both the U.K. and Hong Kong hold dear,” Johnson said in a statement Friday. The plan allows for BN(O) holders to settle and apply for full citizenship after five years, provided they can meet stringent health and financial requirements in the initial application.
As many as 5.2 million people are potentially eligible for the BN(O) visa, a figure equivalent to more than two-thirds of Hong Kong’s population.
Almost 44% of Hong Kongers would emigrate if they had the chance, according to a Chinese University of Hong Kong survey published in September, and threats to punish BN(O) passport holders provide another motivation to act quickly.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-29/why-enough-hong-kongers-to-fill-belfast-may-flee-to-the-u-k
So these people would start new businesses in the UK? How would that work? What profitable businesses can be started in the UK?
Wouldn’t the UK have more people it couldn’t support with food and transportation?
Bicycle-powered electricity generation? A Hong Konger in every house, sleeping in those cupboards they just love……..
It’s being done, it should be generalized to the millions in lockdown
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-18832768
British State only really knows one way to do things, get more workers, grow GDP. It is a money-grabbing cult that exists for no other purpose. In fact the bourgeois economy has to grow to survive.
At least HK’ers have a higher IQ, as immigrants generally do now. If the economy collapses then most of them can die, the same as everyone else. There is not really any long-term plan anywhere – just keep BAU going until it don’t.
does any other state know differently?
Clearly other socio-economic models are possible.
UK has a capitalist model and it is very committed to it. That is ‘fine’, but choices have consequences. There can be no complaints about inward bound workers in a society that is committed to perpetual growth, especially when it has terminally collapsed productivity growth.
The TP no longer has to make much pretence about limiting entrants anyway, so people will have to either like it or lump it. Kids with other backgrounds now make up 40% of kids in UK and it will likely be a majority within a decade or so. The people of the future will be a new people.
Most people in UK are cool with that. 97% of pensioners are still natives, and they tend to be more insular and tribal in their mentality but they will soon be passed on anyway.
It will be a new people with a new beginning and HK’ers are ‘welcome’ to join in on that. The more the merrier.
The Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese states, for instance, have looked west and not liked what they saw. They have and do accept immigrants, but with various restrictions to try to keep out the tired poor huddled masses.
The chatter is that the Reddit nerds are targeting SLV and GLD. As most here probably know there are around 200 paper oz of silver for every physical oz.
Wonder what that fight will look like.
If you ask me, using natural resources as a proxy for value is crazy. It should be valued for its utility as engineering materials (or as energy). I.e. extraction cost + margin.
The same for the green energy scams, let it burn. Prop up the FF companies, those that is shorted, to the skies making game stop stock looking like amateur hour shenanigans. Make new issues so that the FF industry gets some love for investments.
The gold vaults of CB’s and privately held metal should be stuffed into the furnaces of prosperity and not sit and rot in some stupid safe.
But I am not the master of the universe, what do I know.
🤔
The prime utility of gold isn’t its use as a conductor or as an industrial material, but precisely because it’s the perfect medium of capital; non-corrosive, easily malleable and fashioned, and portable.
On top of all that, it’s shiny- what more could you ask for in a currency?
When we came off the gold standard, all sense in monetary policy went out the window with it. Time to bring it back I say.
And I say, stuff it back into the furnaces of prosperity. A badly implemented monetary policy isn’t a matter of how a proxy of value is denoted, but rather how it is implemented.
But I understand there is solace and hopium in nostalgia.
It seems like we have been through something like this before with silver, with what is often referred to as the Hunt brothers accumulation.
https://www.silverinstitute.org/silverprice/1979-1980/
Let this linger for a minute
https://cambridgehouse.com/news/7696/jp-morgan-may-be-sitting-on-almost-700-million-ounces-of-physical-silver
a lot of silver used to be used in coins, B&W photography and mirrors. the coinage largely stopped, film photography is now only used by a few film buffs, and aluminum has replaced silver in a lot of applications, like reflectors and conductors. there must be some applications, like in high-end utensils, but i wonder what they are.
If I wanted to wreak havoc on world financial markets, I would spread the rumor that somebody has achieved a cheap method for the transmutation of gold, and that governments are covering this up / killing people associated with the lab for threatening the global economic order. Then buy gold when the price drops (if the scheme works).
Pedantic comment: officially, ‘SLV’ is XAG, and ‘GLD’ is XAU.
In this case, they are not targeting the actual metals.
GLD AND SLV are ETFs trading gold and silver stocks respectively.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GLD/
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SLV/
China bought more U.S. corn this week than the USA has ever shipped to the country in an entire marketing year.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Es7dwzDVEAILOH5?format=jpg&name=large
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-corn-exports/china-books-biggest-deal-yet-for-us-corn-idUSKBN29Y2CG
Food export restrictions by a few countries could skyrocket global food crop prices
https://phys.org/news/2021-01-food-export-restrictions-countries-skyrocket.html
I suppose the hope is that with higher prices, at least the richer portion of humanity might be saved. The higher food prices would tend to attract more of the fossil fuels that are available toward the food chain, keeping it operating longer, in theory.
India plans to introduce a law to ban private cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin in the country and provide a framework for the creation of an official digital currency during the current budget session of parliament.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/30/india-plans-to-introduce-law-to-ban-bitcoin-other-private-cryptocurrencies/
It seems like creating their own digital currency is playing with fire.
I doubt it would be internationally tradable. The use of local currencies would ultimately lead to the end of widespread international trade. There still might be some, based on treaties between selected countries.
The people of India have been hoarding gold for centuries. They will probably laugh at amy digital currency, and rightly so.
How I would love to see the gold prices drop like a rock until priced as its utility as an engineering material.
I.e. take some money from the disgusting upper castes of sociopathy.
The gold hoarders are the ordinary people of India, for many of whom inherited jewellery is their only untapped source of wealth. The sociopaths are those who would take away from them even that small control over their lives.
The “ordinary” people of India got nothing.
Agreed unreservedly. But under the Modi regime, they will not be allowed to keep even what they have obtained for themselves. Once again, the top of the pyramid consumes the bottom, unaware that its own collapse will inevitably follow.
Gail’s thesis that the UK is liable to break up, as energy consumption per capita is falling particularly badly in UK compared to other countries, has received a further boost, this time from the British secretary of state.
A consensus is growing that now is the time to discuss the future reunification of Ireland. The TP secretary of state Brandon Lewis has now called for a discussion about what the terms and benefits would be of Irish unity.
The Brexit disaster has left supermarket shelves empty in NI and supply lines cut off from Britain. NI remains in the EU single market and customs union and the integrated all-island economy is further developing.
Former TP chancellor George Obsbourn wrote in the Sunday Times last week that NI is “becoming part of a united Ireland” as a poll showed that a majority in NI want a referendum on Irish unity within five years and that two-thirds in England would not care.
Sinn Fein is likely to take a plurality of seats and the post of First Minister at the Stormont elections in May 2022. It is now established as the opposition party in the south, while all parties there are at least nominally committed to Irish unity.
It looks pretty clear that the dissipative system has got its own ‘ideas’ about what happens next and it is inevitable that serious discussions on Irish unity, that involve Stormont and the Dublin and UK governments, will soon get underway.
> Civic nationalism welcomes Brandon Lewis’s acknowledgement of a conversation about the north’s constitutional future
BRANDON Lewis’s acknowledgement that there should be a conversation about the north’s constitutional future has been welcomed by civic nationalist group Ireland’s Future.
The secretary of state said on BBC’s Question Time that he agreed with Michelle O’Neill and the DUP’s Gavin Robinson that it was right to “debate and discuss” the merits of constitutional change.
Ms O’Neill (SF) told last Thursday’s programme it was important not to “fall into the trap of Brexit” by failing to plan ahead of a referendum.
She also made reference to Mr Robinson, who told The Irish News that his namesake and former party leader Peter Robinson was “absolutely right” to urge unionism to ready itself for a border poll.
The secretary of state said the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement meant “we can have these debates in a proper way”.
His remarks were welcomed by Ireland’s Future secretary Niall Murphy, who said they were “yet another step change that should not be ignored”.
“The British secretary of state joins a growing number of people, including key figures in political unionism such as Peter Robinson, Gavin Robinson and Gregory Campbell, who have all said it is important to have this conversation,” he said.
“The significance of this step change from the British government should not be lost on the current Dublin government.”
Mr Murphy said Dublin needed to “take heed of the fast moving and quickly evolving conversation regarding Irish unity” and that the British government needed to outline its proposed criteria for a referendum.
https://www.irishnews.com/paywall/tsb/irishnews/irishnews/irishnews//news/northernirelandnews/2021/01/25/news/civic-nationalism-welcomes-brandon-lewis-s-acknowledgement-of-a-conversation-about-the-north-s-constitutional-future-2197080/content.html
Polls in NI are pretty evenly balanced. A majority want a referendum on Irish unity within five years and exactly as many say that they would be pleased with Irish unity as with the status quo. Importantly, a plurality of traditionally non-aligned voters support Irish unity, which may swing the final outcome. A majority in NI expect it to leave the UK within 10 years.
> Northern Irish back border poll within five years
A majority of voters in Northern Ireland want a border poll to be staged in the next five years, according to a new poll by LucidTalk for The Sunday Times.
The finding is likely to upset unionists at the end of a week when George Osborne, the former UK chancellor, declared “Northern Ireland is already heading for the exit door”.
Though the headline result suggests Northern Ireland remains narrowly pro-Union, other findings in the poll raise questions about the direction of public opinion on the constitutional issue. Asked how likely it was that Northern Ireland would leave the UK within 10 years, a majority believed it would. When the 8 per cent “don’t knows” were stripped out, 52 per cent believed the north would leave and 48 per cent believed it would remain within the Union.
The survey found a significant majority of non-traditional voters — those who do not support unionist, nationalist or republican parties — were in favour of Irish unity. Of those who voted Alliance, Green Party, People Before Profit and independent in the last general election, 38 per cent said they would vote in favour of Irish unity in a referendum, 26 per cent said they would vote to remain in the Union, and 36 per cent did not know.
Asked how pleased they would be if Northern Ireland left the UK and became part of a united Ireland, 47 per cent said they would be either very or mildly pleased, 47 per cent would be mildly or very upset, 4 per cent said “it wouldn’t bother me either way”, and just 2 per cent did not know or were not sure.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/northern-irish-back-border-poll-within-five-years-6ndbkz80s
Federal government faces imminent lawsuit over unlawful confinement of returning Canadian travelers
https://www.jccf.ca/federal-government-faces-imminent-lawsuit-over-unlawful-confinement-of-returning-canadian-travelers/?fbclid=IwAR0ctqXqYAc8IzUcQubxIk6S_KQ_fZoOAQIyJ_8
This says:
I can see why the regulation would be unpopular.
sounds like a failed lawsuit after looking at our Quarantine Act which gives the minister special powers.
26 If a quarantine officer, after the medical examination of a traveller, has reasonable grounds to believe that the traveller has or might have a communicable disease or is infested with vectors, or has recently been in close proximity to a person who has or might have a communicable disease or is infested with vectors, the quarantine officer may order the traveller to comply with treatment or any other measure for preventing the introduction and spread of the communicable disease.
If the law conflicts with Canada’s “Charter of Rights and Freedoms” it will probably be struck down. But the Trudeau regime will enforce it anyway. What is that like from “The Weapon Shops”? ‘The right to bear arms is the right to be free.’
The US Senate has asked US Intelligence Agencies to submit a UFO report by the end of June.
Why?
The navy and its pilots are encountering the UFO phenomenon every time they go out to sea. They feel observed and intimidated. Occasionally the phenomenon freaks them out. The navy is sick and tired of it and want answers.
The phenomenon has now started to demand engagement.
Some say they are planning a fake ‘Alien Reveal’, or even a ‘Jesus Second Coming’ – now won’t that be entertaining?
Probably just more smoke and mirrors so that the Techno- otalitarian take-over goes unnoticed.
The most boring thing would be a benign and philanthropic ‘alien’ who says that its civilisation passed through a similar moment of deep crisis, but was saved by a plan under a one-planet government just like that proposed by the WEF.
Like the old TV episode on the Twilight Zone, Architects of Fear with Actor Robert Full
The scientists’ plan is for Dr. Leighton, as the Thetan creature equipped with an energy weapon and spaceship, to land at the United Nations in an effort to create initial panic. This panic, in theory, will be resolved as the world unites to fight the invader. Leighton, now a perfect simulation of an inhabitant of the planet Theta, is launched into orbit as a weather satellite, but the mission goes awry when the spaceship comes down off course and lands in a wooded area near the United Labs facility.
Great story
My bad ..it was actually Outer Limits and Robert Culp was the actor played scientist that was transformed into an alien…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X7LtkIrG8Vg
Scary stuff
The Twilight Zone is at present often less disturbing than everyday reality….
Serling drew on his own experience for many episodes, frequently about boxing, military life, and airplane pilots. The Twilight Zone incorporated his social views on racial relations, somewhat veiled in the science fiction and fantasy elements of the shows. Occasionally, the point was quite blunt, such as in the episode “I Am the Night—Color Me Black”, in which racism and hatred causes a dark cloud to form in the American South and spread across the world. Many Twilight Zone stories reflected his views on gender roles, featuring quick-thinking, resilient women as well as shrewish, nagging wives.
From Wikepedia
DANGER! DANGER! DOES NOT COMPUTE!
I think the navy is concerned about possible damage to their belongings by devices such as drones. These might be mistaken for UFOs.
they might start by checking on what the Russians and Chinese are up to.