A $1.9 trillion stimulus package was recently signed into law in the United States. Can such a stimulus bill, plus packages passed in other countries, really pull the world economy out of the downturn it has been in since 2020? I don’t think so.
The economy runs on energy, far more than it operates on growing debt. Our energy problems don’t appear to be fixable in the near term, such as six months or a year. Instead, the economy seems to be headed for a collapse of its debt bubble. Eventually, we may see a reset of the world financial system leading to fewer interchangeable currencies, far less international trade and falling production of goods and services. Some governments may collapse.
[1] What Is Debt?
I understand debt to be an indirect promise for future goods and services. These future goods and services can only be created if there are adequate supplies of the right kinds of energy and other materials, in the right places, to make these future goods and services.
I think of debt as being a time-shifting device. Indirectly, it is a promise that the economy will be able to provide as many, or more, goods and services in the future compared to what it does at the time the loan is taken out.
Common sense suggests that it is much easier to repay debt with interest in a growing economy than in a shrinking economy. Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff unexpectedly ran across this phenomenon in their 2008 working paper, This Time Is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises. They reported (p. 15), “It is notable that the non-defaulters, by and large, are all hugely successful growth stories.” In other words, their analysis of 800 years of governmental debt showed that default was almost inevitable if a country stopped growing or started shrinking.
The IMF estimates that the world economy shrank by 3.5% in 2020. There are many areas with even worse indications: Euro Area, -7.2%; United Kingdom, -10.0%; India, -8.0%; Mexico, -8.5%; and South Africa, -7.5%. If these situations cannot be turned around quickly, we should expect to see collapsing debt bubbles. Even the US, which shrank by 3.4%, needs a rapid return to growth if it is to keep its debt bubble inflated.
[2] The Inter-Relationship Among (a) Growing Debt, (b) Growing Energy Consumption and a (c) Growing Economy
When we are far from energy limits, growing debt seems to pull the economy along. This is a graphic I put together in 2018, explaining the situation. A small amount of debt is helpful to the system. But, if there gets to be too much debt, both oil prices and interest rates rise, bringing the braking system into action. The bicycle/economy rapidly slows.
Just as a two-wheeled bicycle needs to be going fast enough to stay upright, the economy needs to be growing rapidly enough for debt to do what it is intended to do. It takes energy supply to create the goods and services that the economy depends on.
If oil and other energy products are cheap to produce, their benefit will be widely available. Employers will be able to add more efficient machines, such as bigger tractors. These more efficient machines will act to leverage the human labor of the workers. The economy can grow rapidly, without the use of much debt. Figure 2 shows that the world oil price was $20 per barrel in 2020$, or even less, prior to 1974.
Figure 3 below shows the historical relationship between the growth in US energy consumption (red line) and the dollar increase in US debt growth required to add a dollar increase in GDP (blue line). This chart calculates ratios for five-year periods because ratios for individual years are unstable.
Based on Figure 3, the US average annual growth in energy consumption (red line) generally fell between 1951 and 2020. The quantity of debt that needed to be added to create an additional $1 dollar of GDP (blue line) has generally been rising.
According to Investopedia, Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period. Notice that there is no mention of debt in this definition. If businesses or governments can find a way to make large amounts of credit available to borrowers who are not very credit worthy, it becomes easy to sell cars, motorcycles or homes to buyers who may never repay that debt. If the economy hits turbulence, these marginal buyers are likely to default, causing a collapse in a debt bubble.
[3] Analyzing Energy Consumption Growth, Debt Growth and Economic Growth for Broader Groupings of Years
To get a better idea what is happening with respect to energy growth, debt growth, and GDP growth, I created some broader groupings of years, based primarily on patterns in Figure 2, showing inflation-adjusted oil prices. The following groupings of years were chosen:
- 1950-1973
- 1974-1980
- 1981-2000
- 2001-2014
- 2015-2020
Using these groupings of years, I put together charts in which it is easier to see trends.
Figure 4 shows that for the US, there has been a general downward trend in the annual growth of energy consumption. At same time, real (that is, inflation-adjusted) GDP has been trending downward, but not quite as quickly.
We would expect that lower energy consumption would lead to lower growth in real GDP because it takes energy of the appropriate kinds to make goods and services. For example, it takes oil to ship most goods. It takes electricity to operate computers and keep the lights on. According to the World Coal Association, large quantities of coal are used in producing cement and steel. These are important for construction, such as is planned in stimulus projects around the world.
Also, on Figure 4, the period 1981 to 2000 shows an uptick in both energy consumption growth and real GDP growth. This period corresponds to a period of relatively low oil prices (Figure 2). With lower oil prices, businesses found it affordable to add new devices to leverage human labor, making workers more productive. The growing productivity of workers is at least part of what led to the increased growth in real GDP.
Figure 5, above, is disturbing. It strongly suggests that the US economy (and probably a lot of other economies) has needed to add an increasing amount of debt to add $1 of GDP in recent years. This pattern started long before President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package in 2021.
To make matters worse, GDP growth in Figure 5 has not been reduced to remove the impact of inflation. On average, removing the impact of inflation reduces the above GDP growth by about half. In the period 2015 to 2020, it took about $4.35 of additional debt to add one dollar of GDP growth, including inflation. It would take about double that amount, or $8.70 worth of debt, to create $1.00 worth of inflation-adjusted growth. With such a low return on added debt, it seems unlikely that the $1.9 trillion stimulus package will increase the growth of the economy very much.
[4] Falling interest rates (Figure 6) are a major part of what allowed the rapid growth in debt after 1981 shown in Figure 5.
Clearly, debt is more affordable if the interest rate is lower. For example, auto loans and home mortgages have lower monthly payments if the interest rate is lower. It is also clear that governments need to spend less of their tax revenue on interest rate payments if interest rates are lower. Changes made by US President Ronald Reagan when he took office 1981 also encouraged the use of more debt.
A major concern with respect to today’s debt bubble is the fact that interest rates are about as low as they can go without going negative. In fact, the interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds is now 1.72%, which is higher than the February 2021 average rate shown on the chart. As interest rates rise, it becomes more costly to add more debt. As interest rates rise, businesses will be less likely to take on debt in order to expand and hire more workers.
[5] Interest expense is a major expense of governments, businesses, and homeowners everywhere. Energy costs are another major expense of governments, businesses, and homeowners. It makes sense that falling interest rates can partly hide rising energy prices.
A trend toward lower interest rates was needed starting in 1981 because the US could no longer produce large amounts of crude oil that were profitable to sell at less than $20 per barrel, in inflation-adjusted prices. Lower interest rates made adding debt more feasible. This added debt could smooth the transition to an economy that was less dependent on oil, now that it was high-priced. The lower interest rates helped all segments of the economy adjust to the new higher cost of oil and other fuels.
[6] The US experience shows precisely how helpful having a rapidly growing supply of inexpensive to produce oil could be to an economy.
US oil production, excluding Alaska (blue “remainder” in Figure 7), rose rapidly after 1945 but began to decline not long after hitting a peak in 1970. This growing oil production had temporarily provided a huge boost to the US economy.
Up until almost 1970, US oil production was rising rapidly. Figure 8 shows that during this period, incomes of both the bottom 90% of workers and the top 10% of workers increased rapidly. Over a period of about 20 years, incomes for both groups grew by about 80%, after adjusting for inflation. On average, workers were about 4% better off each year, with the rapid growth in very inexpensive-to-produce oil, all of which stayed in the US (rather than being exported). US imports of inexpensive-to-produce oil also grew during this period.
Once oil prices were higher, income growth for both the lower 90% and the top 10% slowed. With the changes made starting in 1981, wage disparities quickly started to grow. There suddenly became a need for new, high-tech approaches that used less oil. But these changes were more helpful to the managers and highly educated workers than the bottom 90% of workers.
[7] Most of the world’s cheap-to-extract oil sources have now been exhausted. Our problem is that the world market cannot get prices to rise high enough for producers to cover all of their expenses, including taxes.
Based on my analysis, the world price of oil would need to be at least $120 per barrel to cover all of the costs it needs to cover. The costs that need to be covered include more items than an oil company would normally include in its costs estimates. The company needs to develop new fields to compensate for the ones that are being exhausted. It needs to pay interest on its debt. It also needs to pay dividends to its shareholders. In the case of shale producers, the price needs to be high enough that production outside of “sweet spots” can be carried on profitably.
For oil exporters, it is especially important that the sales price be high enough so that the government of the oil exporting country can collect adequate tax revenue. Otherwise, the exporting country will not be able to maintain food subsidy programs that the population depends on and public works programs that provide jobs.
[8] The world can add more debt, but it is difficult to see how the debt bubble that is created will really pull the world economy forward rapidly enough to keep the debt bubble from collapsing in the next year or two.
Many models are based on the assumption that the economy can easily go back to the growth rate it had, prior to COVID-19. There are several reasons why this seems unlikely:
- Many parts of the world economy weren’t really growing very rapidly prior to the pandemic. For example, shopping malls were doing poorly. Many airlines were in financial difficulty. Private passenger auto sales in China reached a peak in 2017 and have declined every year since.
- At the low oil prices prior to the pandemic, many oil producers (including the US) would need to reduce their production. The 2019 peak in shale production (shown in Figure 7) may prove to be the peak in US oil production because of low prices.
- Once people became accustomed to working from home, many of them really do not want to go back to a long commute.
- It is not clear that the pandemic is really going away, now that we have kept it around this long. New mutations keep appearing. Vaccines aren’t 100% effective.
- As I showed in Figure 5, adding more debt seems to be a very inefficient way of digging the economy out of a hole. What is really needed is a growing supply of oil that can be produced and sold profitably for less than $20 per barrel. Other types of energy need to be similarly inexpensive.
I should note that intermittent wind and solar energy is not an adequate substitute for oil. It is not even an adequate substitute for “dispatchable” electricity production. It is simply an energy product that has been sufficiently subsidized that it can often make money for its producers. It also sounds good, if it is referred to as “clean energy.” Unfortunately, its true value is lower than its cost of production.
[9] What’s Ahead?
I expect that oil prices will rise a bit, but not enough to raise prices to the level producers require. Interest rates will continue to rise as governments around the world attempt more stimulus. With these higher interest rates and higher oil prices, businesses will do less and less well. This will slow the economy enough that debt defaults become a major problem. Within a few months to a year, the worldwide debt bubble will start to collapse, bringing oil prices down by more than 50%. Stock market prices and prices of buildings of all kinds will fall in inflation-adjusted dollars. Many bonds will prove to be worthless. There will be problems with empty shelves in stores and gasoline stations with no products to sell.
People will start to see that while debt is a promise for the equivalent of future goods and services, it is not necessarily the case that those who make the promises will be able to stand behind these promises. Paper wealth generally can be expected to lose its value.
I can imagine a situation, not too many years from now, when countries everywhere will establish new currencies that are not as easily interchangeable with other currencies as today’s currencies are. International trade will dramatically fall. The standard of living of most people will fall precipitously.
I doubt that the new currencies will be electronic currencies. Keeping the electricity on is a difficult task in economies that increasingly need to rely solely on local resources. Electricity may be out for months at a time after an equipment failure or a storm. Having a currency that depends on electricity alone would be a poor idea.
7th update on Adverse Reactions to Covid Vaccines released by UK Government
But fast-forward to the 7th update which covers data inputted to the MHRA Yellow Card Scheme up to the 7th March 2020 and we can see that the number of people now blind thanks to the Pfizer jab has more than tripled standing at a total of 16, the number of people with impaired vision has more than doubled standing at a total of 74, and the total number of eye disorders has increased by 134.85% to a total of 1489.
Imagine being confined to the same four walls for over a year and not being able to see family or friends. Then getting excited because you naively think an experimental “vaccine” is going to give you your life back and allow you to see them once more. But then leaving without the ability to ever see anything ever again.
But how has the AstraZeneca jab fared in the eye disorder department?
Well in the Government’s 2nd update which covered data inputted to the MHRA Yellow Card Scheme up to the 31st January 2021, we saw that a total of 8 people were left blind, 15 left visually impaired, and a grand total of 456 eye disorders had occurred as a result of the AstraZeneca jab being administered
But fast forward 6 weeks and we can see that the number of people left blind as a result of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine has almost quadrupled to a total of 30, the number of people with impaired vision has increased by 573.33% to a total of 101, and the total number of eye disorders resulting from the Oxford jab has increased by 448% to a grand total of 2499.
Now you may be wondering what could possibly cause people to be going blind, well blood is essential to vision, and a blockage in the retina’s blood vessels can permanently affect vision and lead to blindness. This of course has nothing to do with the reasoning behind several European countries suspending the use of the AstraZeneca jab due to blood clot concerns does it? Maybe we should just take a look at what the data shows us…
A cerebrovascular accident is the sudden death of some brain cells due to lack of oxygen when the blood flow to the brain is impaired by blockage or rupture of an artery to the brain. What causes a blockage? Well we’re glad you asked, the answer is blood clots.
When the Government released the 2nd report of adverse reactions to the AstraZeneca jab using data inputted to the MHRA Yellow Card Scheme up to the 31st January 2021, we saw that there had been a total of 11 cerebrovascular accidents reported as adverse reactions, with 4 of these sadly resulting in death. There had also been 1 brain stem stroke, 1 haemorrhagic stroke and 1 ischaemic stroke.
https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/03/20/frightening-7th-update-on-adverse-reactions-to-covid-vaccine-released-by-uk-government/
Three health care workers in Norway died this week from blood clots. They had all fallen ill and became hospitalized within a week or two after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. They were all younger than 50 years old.
I took the first jab (I work as a RN) in February and got flu like symptoms for a couple of days and felt fine after a week. Next jab scheduled for the first week of May…
https://www.maravipost.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Russian_roulette.jpg
GILAD ATZMON DISCUSSES ISRAEL: A GUINEA PIG NATION
https://www.bitchute.com/video/g4RTLmWjV8vw/
Sigh. Yatter, yatter, yatter. Why do people make videos (or “podcasts”) rather than just writing it down? Reading is far faster than listening, and if you have a problem with the text, you can simply go back and read it again. Our modern communications technology is taking us back five thousand years, to the age when shamans in masks spouted religious poetry by the light of the full moon.
You’re in luck, Robert. Gilad has written down a lot about Israel’s current vaccination situation, creating hours and hours of substantial reading for anyone who cares to read it.
However, some people prefer to listen. Even Gail is giving visitors that option now. Check out the Spotify button at the top of this post.
https://www.unz.com/author/gilad-atzmon/
It’s not Gail on Spotify. It’s a robot impersonating her. How do I get to date that robot?
I don’t know. I had three choices with the “free” Spotify services: (1) Man’s voice, (2) Woman’s voice, or (3) My own voice. I chose “Woman’s voice.” I only listened to a minute or so of it. It sounded better than what I could do.
I think you would be better off dating “Cyborg She”. Time travelling robot. Also young, cute, and Japanese. No offence implied to Gail, who remains one of my heroines and mentors.
beedeebeedeebeedee Buck!
(or)
Please don’t do this to me, Dave.
Robots are, I hear, rather picky about dating, Malcopian: you’d have to offer total submission, and all your privacy, just for starters……
A Facebook friend had this to say:
“It´s a 4 corner box trap with normalcy as the bait, with the spring trigger as the vaccine, the clamp is the injected nano-robots, the Roof, the roof is 40K low orbit satellites (Skynet) and the 5G (AI and internet of everything), 4 sides are the ID2020 and base is a digital currency. They must of course use MSM to censor and discredit any attempt to connect any of the components of the trap.”
A Reply: Quite a remarkable analysis. But they might lack the energy to pull it off completely.
Interesting image from your friend, Artleads!
One problem -perhaps fatal – for the Great Re-set conspirators is perhaps that they had to wait for the technology to be in place, or capable of scaling up very rapidly, and also spend a great deal of time and effort in lining up all their key actors in various governments and institutions.
I suspect that this has made them far too late in launching their coup, that the energy problem will be insurmountable, and the immense complexity that their digital prison requires will be unsustainable.
Hence their current haste, although they also seek to keep us off-balance by moving rapidly, with no time to think, as they hustle us into the Ghetto, then the cattle trucks, and finally to the ovens…..
I agree with you Robert. I really don’t like the videos myself; I would rather see a written report.
MANY DYING IN ISRAEL FOLLOWING THE EXPERIMENTAL PFIZER COVID MRNA INJECTIONS
This short video centers around is a litany of some of dozens of people who have died in Israel soon after taking the experimental Pfizer mRNA injectable including their names and ages.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/3oW081ain3aO/
Hint:
BitChute
BitChute is a video hosting service known for accommodating far-right individuals and conspiracy theorists, and for hosting hateful content.[a][b] The platform was created in 2017 to allow video uploaders to avoid content rules enforcement on YouTube,[14] and some creators who have been banned from YouTube or had their channels barred from receiving advertising revenue (“demonetised”) have migrated to BitChute.
Stop playing this game Duncan.
Please.
Yea, can’t allow anyone on the right to be able to share their opinion and information. Call the thought police!
Counter hint:
Youtube, Twitter and the like remove everything that contests the narrative. Why this is, no body knows. Bitchute, Rumble and others don’t mess with free speech as much.
This is exactly true: anyone who departs from the approved propaganda narrative on Covid is moving to other platforms or backing up on them, due to heavy YT censorship.
This does not invariably mean that they are ‘right-wing’, although again the propagandists like to characterize them as such, and similar intended character assassination is also carried out on Wikipedia.
To be censored on FB, Twitter and YT is becoming something of a badge of honour – as I wrote to Ugo Bardo when he encountered this – and an indication that someone might well be worth listening to.
“BitChute is a video hosting service known for accommodating far-right individuals and conspiracy theorists …”
In other words, it hosts people who are not afraid to tell the truth. As George Orwell said: in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
In all fairness, I had some nice conversations with students a little while ago, they mostly hang out in the gaming chat/voice service discord. They seemed quite “black” pilled. On the far right, regarding immigrants.
Ah, the clutches reaches deep, the polarization is real. It is nice to have some other guys to place the blame on.
For the most part unskilled immigration is just another vehicle (with debt) to drive consumption and hike up property values.
But hey, gotta continue fake it until the breaking point. Then all that prestige and “wealth” evaporate faster than you can say economic death spiral into chaos. All those burning Potemkin facades. It just makes me…
🍿🥳🍿
Long for the EotW party!!!
Johnny jo; I saw it on bitchute
sally sue; fact check says thats a hotbed of hate
Johnny jo; hey im no hater
Sally sue; haters threaten people
Johny jo; Im a gentle human.
Sally sue; Best watch your step
Johnny jo; Say what?
Sally sue; Bad things happen to haters.
Johnny jo; Huh?
Sally sue; Just saying.
That’s funny — I thought Bitchute was where you could find videos that were banned on YT and Vimeo because they revealed the truth.
What do you make of the ‘variant’s Duncan? They are coming for you …. ooooh ahhhhhh…
Have you come to grips with the fact that you have introduced a lethal substance that has by now spread through every cell in your body prepping you for Nightmare Covid?
And there is no antidote.
Jeez… it’s the stuff of horrible nightmares!!! You’ve allowed yourself to be injected with ‘the Devil’.
If the results are as bad as these reports make it sound like, it seems like Israel’s overall mortality rate would be rising.
I would like to see corroborating reports of other types.
Other reports show that Israel’s COVID-19 cases are way down, and its deaths are way down too. Something seems to be working well.
Source? Of course it’s easy to reduce infection rates… just stop running so many cycles on the PCR tests….
This guy says otherwise re Israel. https://www.bitchute.com/video/g4RTLmWjV8vw/
Also, many deaths needn’t add up to a major shift in the overall mortality rate.
Israel usually has about 50,000 deaths per year and since the start of the pandemic they’ve had 6,000 COVID deaths, which pushed up the death rate for 2020.
If COVID is now on the wane as happens with this kind of pandemic (whether or not vaccination is the main reason), then the death rate for 2021 should be lower than in 2020, and even if the vaccine killed a thousand or two thousand people (many deaths IMHO), the overall death rate in Israel might still be declining as the cold winter season of excess deaths gets behind us and we head into the sunny uplands of summer.
I agree that debt is what has been keeping us from sinking for quite a number of years now, decades. Now mega-debt. Back in 2003 when I first found out about peak oil, I was pretty sure that things would start getting really bad after 2010 (the article on the dieoff website suggested the peak year would be 2010), and collapse no later than 2015. And here we are, still going in 2021. Now The Great Reset has added a new twist to how all this can turn out.
Yesterday it was in the news that now half of all adults in the UK have had their first jab. And there was another warning form the UK govt that there was a good chance no-one from here would be travelling abroad for a holiday this year. In other words, we will remain in some sort of lockdown all this year. Not surprising given that we have furlough until the end of September, then we will be into next winter’s flu season. All part of the plan.
Covid: Minister refuses to rule out holiday ban extension
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56475666
‘…It comes after a scientist on a government advisory body said summer holidays overseas are “extremely unlikely” because of the risk of travellers bringing variants to the UK.’
The new bogey man – ‘variants’.
Coincidentally I also got my marching orders to get my first jab through the mail yesterday. So much information and telephone numbers on two A4-sized sheets of paper. But for all the advice not getting the jab was not a listed option. I binned it. Expecting a follow-up letter from my local surgery next. Then the brown shirts, or whatever colour of shirts they wear, at the front door.
When the vaccination efforts zooms through ~60-70% of pop only then the next step could be easily unleashed, i.e. tying these “passports” not only to ad hoc mass venues such as football stadiums but to virtually everywhere and everything (money, transport, food-ration distribution etc). Even nowadays as of Q1 2021 many jobs make it mandatory precondition already..
Frankly, the speed of unfolding events is rather puzzling (favoring-validating that CAN leak timelines for ~Q3 2021), so the scenario (mine preference) of worsening civil liberties delayed ~2025-30 seems invalid (and naive) at this point. Most of the irreversible tyrannical agenda will be likely set in stone by ~2023-25 at least for the places marked for the largest frivolous consumption de-growth.
Naturally, there could be some unplanned intervening vectors ahead arousing the pop, e.g. recent US govs fast legitimacy mishaps (Bi-Xiden on the stairs, humiliation via Chinese or Russian diplomacy, .. or even perhaps large-ish incoming migration wave, ..) leading to some further balkanization process within the NA..
I’m a climate change sceptic (even if it’s true, we’re collectively incapable of a coherent response), but here in rural Aus the weather has gone weird in recent years. About 15 months ago we had huge fires up to our back fence and now we’re in the middle of a 1 in a 100 year flood.
The point is how utterly dependent recovery efforts are on diesel. After the fires when our dams were empty we took the chance to get them scraped out. Now >600mm of rain in 3 days has brought half the mountain down into our top dam and overnight it’s lost half its capacity. Can’t do anything about it in either case without a diesel powered machine.
Aus has 3 working refineries left, but it’s likely they’ll all be shutdown by mid 2022, although the Gov is making a belated effort to keep one open. Even so I don’t think any can produce diesel. We also have close to zero strategic oil reserves.
The grid has been up and down during this storm. Miles and miles of transmission lines tracking through remote forests to maintain, poles to replace etc all supported by diesel trucks. I’m amazed at how reliable the grid is considering our remoteness, but I’m expecting our connection to go away in future, as they triage to protect the core.
We came here to be self-sufficient, but it’s way more difficult than it looks. It’s strange to live with all the benefits of IC, whilst planning for it to go away and knowing everything will be 10x harder when it does.
Still it’s a nice spot to watch the world go batshit.
Fred said: “I’m a climate change sceptic (even if it’s true, we’re collectively incapable of a coherent response),”
I wouldn’t call that sceptic, just accepting that humans have limitations, both in what. we can know and especially in what we can do.
I think a big component of climate change is human caused but I also know that the people in power use it as a way to enrich themselves (under the principle “never let a crisis go to waste”).
As far as I can tell, the northern hemisphere had a colder than usual winter. While some think that is proof that we enter a new ice age, I think it could be related to the reduction in air travel last year (contrails).
I expect the next summer to be hot and full of billion dollar weather events.
February very cold in places, thanks, I think, more to La Nina than loss of contrails. Overall the Northern Hemisphere winter was the eighth warmest winter in the last 142.
Your government are fools if they shut down your
refineries.
The refineries need subsidies, because of the low oil prices and the cutback on airline fuel out of Australia. New Zealand is losing its last refinery. The question is whether Australia, in its depleted condition, can subsidize one or more refineries enough.
The subsidy being offered is 1 cent|litre refined
I believe the Kwinana refinery is taking it up
Good point on a currency dependent on electricity not being such a good idea. A few years ago I heard an interview about the rapid decline in writing ability in schoolchildren due to the use of computers. Someone said it was not clever to be so dependent on technology that we lose fundamental skills and asked what happens when the electricity supply goes out? a proponent for the use of tech said : “we would still have the cloud”
Alan, a true story. A few years ago, I “audited” a short course at the National University of Singapore taught by a colleague. (In order to write an independent report about it, which was favourable.) After one of the presentations, we were set a simple mathematical problem, to be solved in class.
A generational divide at once exposed itself. The younger generation pulled out their cellphones, and launched a calculator app. The middle generation, having been warned in the joining instructions, pulled out their calculators. I, of the oldest generation, picked up a pencil.
And as you might expect, I had the answer three times faster than anyone else, because (a) the advantage of the Mark I Brain is that you don’t waste time pushing buttons, and (b) my mother had taught me mental arithmetic from the age of 3, and (c) having read the Rhind Papyrus, I could perform the calculation using rational arithmetic, ie fractions. Far faster than using decimals, and giving the exact answer.
Yes, our modern education system serves to dumb down brains, not enhance them.
We did fraction calculations in primary school, age about 6, but frankly I cannot recall ever needing it once. I should have been out playing in the fields and woods instead of being forced to sit there doing all that day in, day out. Frankly one is not amused in retrospect. The only ‘philosophy’ that we ever did in primary school was formal logic, which cannot be taught anyway, one is either good at it or one is not.
Arguably the main purpose of 20 c. schooling is to prepare humans for a life of obedience and boredom at work. Hardly any education is needed for nearly all jobs, certainly in UK. And they like to get them young – full time education at age 4 is abuse.
> I attempt an economic justification of virtue. – The task is to make man as useful as possible and to approximate him, as far as possible, to an infallible machine: to this end he must be equipped with the virtues of the machine….
The first stumbling block is the boredom, the monotony, that all mechanical activity brings with it. To learn to endure this and not only endure it – to learn to see boredom enveloped in a higher charm: this has hitherto been the task of all higher schooling. To learn something that is of no concern to us, and to find one’s “duty” precisely in this “objective” activity; to learn to value pleasure and duty as altogether separate things – that is the invaluable task and achievement of higher schooling….
That one should like to do disagreeable things – that is the object of ideals. – Nietzsche, TWTP
Best ever notebook/laptop that could be purchased is the one made from paper. Best ever input device is the pencil. Never runs out of battery and is as fast as you can move your hands. Second best is the black/white board. Quite impermeable to “hack” as well.
Be wary of people with portable computers and slick PowerPoint slide decks, usually accompanied with flappy cookie holes and vigorous arm waving. However, it is good for explaining simple things to simpletons. For the sufficiently advanced sentient, three sentences is usually enough. With real smart asses, three words. For masters – A single word.
Said at the office:
A: “We got noise and bad resolution”
B: “Oversample”
30 minutes later..
A: “Still noisy”
B: “Median filter”
Re: bad signal processing pipeline workarounds…
Real engineers got fast workstations and paper notebooks. Wanna use your computer? Type down that specification text/document, code or make a drawing.
There’s too much incoherent wank floating around in the corporate/guvmint heap of documents. I honestly feel sorry for the solarwinds/exchange hackers. Imagine the pile of contradiction garbage they must have downloaded. 99% pure jank.
The thought of checking out Nancy and Joes calendars… Only hairdresser and geriatrics appointments plus the usual terse emails, with plenty of redundant one-liners, badly punctuated saying nothing at all.
🥱
There should be a law against abusing computers at work.
“a proponent for the use of tech said : “we would still have the cloud”
No, that can’t be true, you are kidding us. I know journalists an TV experts are really dumb when it’s about science and tech, but this is too much.
The clouds would surely be there. Those radioactive ones.
“Someone said it was not clever to be so dependent on technology that we lose fundamental skills and asked what happens when the electricity supply goes out?”
again, when the electricity supply goes out, loss of fundamental skills like writing ability will be the least of our worries. getting something to eat may be more important.
‘Right Now’ Special – Gareth Icke Talks To Israeli Journalist And Podcaster Gal Shalev About The Medical Apartheid In Israel, & Save Our Rights UK Founder Louise Creffield, About The New UK Policing Bill & It’s Impact On Freedoms
https://davidicke.com/2021/03/19/right-now-special-gareth-icke-talks-to-journalist-and-podcaster-gal-shalev-about-the-medical-apartheid-in-israel/
FE, please, please, do not post pointers to sites that cannot play what you point to. Or that demand money, violate your privacy, or otherwise try to exploit you for profit. Thank you for listening.
It plays fine for me in the US.
Ah, the EU strikes again. My apologies for the misunderstanding.
If David Icke is involved, I expect it has something to do with Lizard People.
“for the most part to the lumpenproletariat… a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the crumbs of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans feu et sans aveu, varying according to the degree of civilisation of the nation to which they belong, but never renouncing their lazzaroni character.”
No lizards in the video. Only a journalist from Tel-Aviv warning the world of what’s coming next to other countries.
Is there a paywell? I am able to access the video for free (but then I am special…)
Try it again – this is an incredible interview — it’s your future you are looking at:
https://davidicke.com/2021/03/19/right-now-special-gareth-icke-talks-to-journalist-and-podcaster-gal-shalev-about-the-medical-apartheid-in-israel/
This is what frightened people seem to want. It is a strange phenomenon. Vaccine is our “savior.”
https://davidicke.com/2021/03/19/right-now-special-gareth-icke-talks-to-journalist-and-podcaster-gal-shalev-about-the-medical-apartheid-in-israel/
“From locusts to fires, agriculture faces growing threats: UN… The increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters ranging from massive fires to locust invasions is putting food production systems at risk, the UN warned Thursday.
““The annual occurrences of extreme events has tripled since the 1970s and “their economic impact is relentlessly increasing”, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report.”
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-locusts-agriculture-threats.html
“Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises: toxic chemicals threaten humanity… The chemicals to blame for our reproductive crisis are found everywhere and in everything…
“The end of humankind? It may be coming sooner than we think, thanks to hormone-disrupting chemicals that are decimating fertility at an alarming rate around the globe.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/toxic-chemicals-health-humanity-erin-brokovich
I was in the pool! I WAS IN THE POOL!
I am sure some medical based fertility groups would consider this good news. There will be more demand for their services.
Harry, the above are not natural disasters. The massive fires are caused by greenies preventing sustainable logging, and “woke” firefighters putting out the natural small fires that would thin out the underbrush. And the locust swarms are increasing because big business is trying to grow far more crops than the land can naturally support.
Push down too hard on one side of the Balance of Nature, and do not be surprised when Nature pushes just as hard on the other side. Only connect …
Quite so.
They know this perfectly well, I suspect they are just preparing the ground to justify ‘Climate Lock-downs’, which are clearly in the works.
It is all so transparent.
Robert, part of the issue with these recent, huge locust swarms in Africa, the Middle East and India is an increase in severe cyclones in the Arabian Sea, the precipitation from which has been increasing vegetation in desert areas, allowing for increased breeding.
Thank you, Harry, and I agree. That is probably the cause of the locusts, but the causes of the swarm are in my view to be found in the destination rather than the source. But I accept that we can legitimately hold different views on this matter.
“The global middle class shrank for the first time in decades last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, with almost two-thirds of households in developing economies reporting they suffered a loss in income, according to two new estimates based on World Bank data…
“… the number of people who went into the crisis as members of the global middle class and fell out actually topped 150 million last year.“
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/pandemic-shrank-global-middle-class-for-first-time-since-1990s
“… over the past year, women around the world have had to stay at home with their potential abusers, unable to seek help in some cases, in what the U.N. has described as a “shadow pandemic” of domestic violence.”
https://abcnews.go.com/International/shadow-pandemic-domestic-abuse-reports-soar-europes-coronavirus/story?id=76325386
“Data from Home Office statistical bulletins and the British Crime Survey show that men made up about 40% of domestic violence victims each year between 2004-05 and 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available.”
This matters to me because I was one such victim. But the conventional wisdom says otherwise: when a man hits a woman he is a monster; when a woman hits a man, he must have provoked her. And Erin Prizzey faced death threats from feminists when she opened Britain’s only shelter for battered men.
Very sorry to hear that, Robert. Hope your scars are healing.
Thank you, Harry. The scars were healed, many years ago, by One greater than I. The memories remain, but they no longer hurt.
People often preen themselves on being middle class,for some reason, but most of them are soon to find out that there are the Fat Controllers of the BIS (could anyone be more grotesque than that awful man out of the paintings of Georg Grosz?) and the rest.
Just as important, the number of very poor grew, and is expected to grow even more.
“The world’s largest airlines have built up a mountain of more than $300bn in net debt, a sign the pandemic will hamper recovery for years as carriers face paying back huge bills from rescue financing and state support.”
https://www.ft.com/content/0a334f3e-3bb3-4ff3-96ed-39a5b3fe821b
“The fifth oldest airline in the world, Czech Airlines, has been declared bankrupt in Prague last week. The airline is in debt to 266 creditors, mostly suppliers, and 230,000 passengers who are awaiting refunds for canceled flights. The total debts equal $82 million.”
https://simpleflying.com/czech-airlines-bankrupt/
What’s the problem? Just send ’em all bouncing checks. Boom! Boom!
On a more serious note, I can’t imagine there will be a single solvent passenger air carrier within two or three years if this goes on. Whether Richard Branson can pull off another Houdini act and walk away from this mess will be interesting to see.
Airlines? Are they still around? I still remember by first airline flight, on a Boeing Stratocruiser in 1957. A schoolboy, but an honoured guest. And also my last flight on Bloody British Airways, treated like dirt, as were all the other passengers.
So now we can all go back to hitching rides on cattle cars; a major improvement. (An excellent scene, by the way, in “Kiki’s Delivery Service” 魔女の宅急便)
May I recommend the anime “Your Name”?
https://youtu.be/aZiHVkZ9Yps
👍
Thank you, I’ve seen it and second the recommendation. The original title, by the way, is 君の名は.
Another good anime about people whose lives are mysteriously linked together is Kannazuki no Miko, 神無月の巫女.
Usually I feel revulsion when life isn’t open ended, rather governed by unfathomable destiny.
Life should be one big mystery with no strings attached apart from the universe itself. Being (mis)guided by higher powers and causes doesn’t appeal to me.
I want the sentients to be real and a bit shit occasionally. Like most other sentients that roam in the universe.
Shit happens, and then it hits you. It wasn’t really simple shit at all, rather dumb ass tragicomedy.
🤔->💡->💩->🤢->🤮-> 🤦♂️->😬->🤣👍
It seems like great folly to expect airline carriers to pay back what they owe.
Central banks’ contest with the markets: Investors are betting that loose monetary policy cannot last… the policy dilemma of markets front-running the economy is sharpening. Other central banks are facing it too.”
https://www.ft.com/content/a9041dd8-9e5e-40e7-9949-0376877c15a1
“Bank of Japan Drops Stock-Buying Target After Market’s Rise… The central bank has become the single largest shareholder in the Tokyo market…
“Some critics including former BOJ officials have said the outsize presence of the central bank is interfering with the independence of the stock market.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bank-of-japan-drops-stock-buying-target-after-markets-rise-11616128225
Ah yes: the 200 lb gorillas who control the stock market for their own profit are complaining about the arrival of a 400 lb gorilla. I hope it rips their heads off.
“Demonstrators took to the streets in several European cities on Saturday to protest Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, with clashes between demonstrators and police erupting in the German city of Kassel while in London, police arrested dozens of people for breaching pandemic restrictions.
“Protests also erupted in Austria, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, Finland, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland as European authorities confront a third coronavirus wave.”
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210321-anti-lockdown-protests-erupt-across-europe-as-tempers-fray-over-tightening-restrictions
“Almost one in 10 Londoners are set to be unemployed by the end of the year as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the economy, grim new figures have revealed.”
https://www.cityam.com/almost-one-in-10-londoners-to-be-unemployed-by-the-end-of-the-year/
“Sweden has powered through the COVID-19 crisis with an economy set to regain its pre-pandemic size by late-2021, but a surge in unemployment among its foreign-born citizens risks exacerbating social divisions for years to come.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sweden-unemployment-pandemic-idUSKBN2B91MO
I can see the immigrant program is not working well.
I expect that the dark skinned immigrants have higher COVID rates as well, as they do elsewhere. Not enough vitamin D.
“The Chinese economy has a domestic-demand-shaped hole in it that is hindering its own bounce back from the coronavirus crisis and the global recovery…
“China’s own sluggish recovery in domestic consumption is a weight on the global resurgence both in terms of the country’s growth and demand for the products of exporting countries, experts say. That contradicts the narrative that China — considered the growth engine for the global economy this century — is leading the world’s recovery…”
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/weak-chinese-consumption-holds-back-global-economic-recovery/
“Chinese economy: Beijing’s war on the credit boom… A campaign led by vice-premier Liu He to reduce the danger of uncontrolled lending could strangle the private sector…”
https://www.ft.com/content/b99e2348-8e20-4635-b649-fffc22a9874c
“Record Defaults Hit Weak Chinese Firms as Liquidity Tightens… Beijing is walking a tightrope of allowing struggling companies to default while trying to avoid stress spilling over into the broader credit market.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/record-defaults-hit-china-s-weakest-firms-as-liquidity-tightens
China is by far the largest manufacturing economy in the world. If Beijing is holding back on lending, this could indirectly slow the rest of the world. I would imagine it could cause a spike in Chinese debt defaults.
“The world’s seven largest advanced economies have agreed to support the first expansion of the International Monetary Fund’s reserves since 2009, a step meant to help developing countries cope with the coronavirus pandemic, Britain said on Friday.”
[The size of the reserves has not so far been the problem though, but rather the seemingly unnecessary stringency of the strings attached, which makes nations unwilling to leery of dealing with the IMF].
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g7-economy/g7-makes-progress-on-pandemic-relief-for-poorer-nations-uk-idUSKBN2BB1OH?il=0
“It will… not come as a surprise if other countries follow Zambia suit and default before the end of the year…
“…development finance institutions working in collaboration with countries at risk, must carefully plan out the road ahead to prevent a default domino effect toppling the economy of the African continent.”
https://globalriskinsights.com/2021/03/could-zambias-debt-default-signal-a-domino-effect-on-the-african-continent/
I see that to save money, Zambia is cutting back on its medical expenditures. It still has the pandemic to deal with, however.
“Cubans are embarking on treacherous sea journeys as the economic crisis worsens… a worsening economic climate could push more Cubans to make the desperate voyage, despite having lost their preferential status.
“In 2020, the economy shrank by 11%, according to Cuban government figures, as the island’s tourism industry was almost entirely shut down by the pandemic.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/19/americas/cubans-dangerous-journey-latam-intl/index.html
“The Biden administration is reportedly considering sending migrants to states near the Canadian border for processing amid a rush of attempted crossings at the southern border.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/administration/544094-biden-team-considering-sending-migrants-to-canadian-border-for%3famp
Strange! It sounds like quite a few of the immigrants are unaccompanied minors. I understand that most of these are teenage boys. What will they do up in an area they are not accustomed to?
I have saved enough cash to buy a modest home. If the economy is to collapse should I wait one year to buy or will inflation kill savings sooner? Should I really be investing in my partners home and buying solar panels etc?
There are a lot of things we don’t know. Do you know where you want to live, a few years from now? How much taxes will you have to pay on the house? Will the government effectively give you permanent use of a home, even if you are only renting it?
Yeah I was wondering what kind of crisis measures would make us secure. If I stay with my partner we don’t have many options for making ourselves warm and secure without paying for energy. In Serbia they put washing machine drums in a river to generate electricity. I suppose we could do that. We are close to a large river. Buying a bit of land and putting renewable tech on it with a hand made dwelling is appealing but then you don’t have the protection of being in a city.
If you want / need the home, and have the means, I would go for it. The house is likely to hold its value at least as well as cash.
Isn’t there some sort of saying from theology, to the effect that one should be prepared for the world to end tomorrow, but go about our lives normally, as if it will go on forever? That seems wise.
Thanks bei that’s good to hear. Houses seem over valued in the uk and could lose much of their value but at least I would have something rather than potentially being robbed indirectly by inflation of the money supply or directly by a government trying to bail itself out.
That’s a tough one. Every housing market is different. Over here some people think we’re in a housing bubble, but other people think no, it really is worth this much. Anyway, what really matters is whether it is “worth this much” to *you*. Hope you can get a good (or decent enough) deal!
“Prices are surging across the Arab world as food and fuel costs rapidly erode purchasing power.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1826926/business-economy
“Turkey has sharply increased its main interest rate in a move aimed at halting a slide in the lira that has threatened to pour fuel on inflation that is already running well above the central bank’s target.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f1ec0b3d-00c0-4959-a9e2-addb736e6e3f
“The National Bank of Georgia raised its policy rate by 50 basis points on March 17, citing rising inflation, despite the country’s severe economic contraction.”
https://www.centralbanking.com/central-banks/monetary-policy/monetary-policy-decisions/7812426/georgia-central-bank-raises-policy-rate-despite-recession
“Russia’s central bank raised its key interest rate to 4.5% on Friday, embarking on a monetary tightening cycle triggered by a weaker rouble that pushed inflation higher and geopolitical risks that stirred market turmoil.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-economy-rates-idUSKBN2BB125
“Inflation fears prompt Brazil to lift rates for first time in 6 years…
“Brazil’s central bank has raised its key interest rate from an all-time low and signalled another increase is likely against a backdrop of concerns about rising prices in an economy hit by a new wave of Covid-19.”
https://www.ft.com/content/464c3868-417a-4b52-aaf7-6e5d95ff932e
Monetary tightening in Russia (besides China and several other countries listed here) doesn’t should good, from the point of view of restarting the world economy.
Surging food prices led to the Arab Spring, not too many year ago. This doesn’t sound good.
“Brawls in shops as Lebanon’s financial meltdown hits supply of food: The collapse of Lebanon’s currency has forced many grocery shops to temporarily shut within the last 24 hours, raising fears that a country reliant on imports could soon face shortages of food…
“Social media users have been sharing videos of supermarket brawls, such as a fight between a man and a woman trying to buy powdered milk. Prices of many consumer goods such as diapers or cereals have nearly tripled during the crisis.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-crisis-economy-idUSKBN2B929I
“As Lebanese economic crisis worsens, Syrian refugees left with few options: The Lebanese government wants the refugees to go back to Syria, and thousands have.
“But NGOs have serious concerns over the conditions they’ll find there. Some return to find they no longer have houses, their former villages decimated. Others report arbitrary arrests by the state, or forced military conscription.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-lebanese-economic-crisis-worsens-syrian-refugees-left-with-few-options
Put 10 hungry dogs in a cage with 50 pieces of meat …. then starve them for a few days and throw them back in with one piece of meat.
Now try it with humans – video: https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2021/03/04/Lebanon-crisis-Grocery-shoppers-fight-over-basic-commodities-as-Lebanon-stares-into-the-abyss
CEP = good.
The Lebanon situation is going to spiral downhill shortly. Lebanon is running out of cash to provide the subsidies for food, fuel and medicine that people expect.
We have *got* to figure out how to decouple economic growth from energy consumption, because we literally cannot keep growing our energy consumption without soon cooking the planet: [a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years!!](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/)
Anne said: “We have *got* to figure out…”
No, we don’t.
Try to remember that we are just a bunch of monkeys with delusions of grandeur. We don’t have the free will to do anything else other than consume more, following the maximum power principle.
Lucky for us, there are not enough fossil fuels to burn the earth – but there are enough to trigger the largest extinction since the end of the Permian.
Will that extinction take homo sapiens too? I think so, and quite fast in geological times (thousands of years).
Why would we have to square the circle around the golden calf?
Because PI is irrational.
🤣👍
That’s what PI said about humans – who to believe?
Unfortunately, the problems of humans began as hunter-gatherers. We started using burned biomass to cook part of our food over 1 million years ago. Using cooking, the calories of food were more accessible. This gave humans an advantage over other species. Our population could grow and grow, but we needed more and more fuel to keep the system operating. We had to move up from burned biomass (which was badly leading to deforestation) to fossil fuels. Now, fossil fuels are expensive to extract. It is hard to get the prices high enough for the producers to make a profit. The whole system is in danger of collapse.
The system has its own brakes. These brakes are being applied, I am afraid. The reaction of the economy to COVID is part of the brakes to the economy.
See my post Humans Left Sustainability Behind as Hunter-Gatherers.
Dear Gail – I’ve been reading your blog for sometime now, and I think that it is high time that you write a book!
Personally, I would like to see a book, that I could give to my teenage son who is presently studying ‘Economics’, and who I believe is currently being misled by his studies.
Moreover, a book will help me to have all the nuggets, organised and comprehensively in one place or tome, rather than having to search for, refer and re-read the various pages in your blog.
For your kind consideration!
In the meantime, stay vigilant, stay safe and stay blessed!
many thanks and best regards,
Anistemi
I get hung up on a lot of different things. One big obstacle is all of the images I use. These start out in color. Most publishers want black and white, in very high resolution, for print books. Books in color are truly outrageous in price.
Another obstacle is that this is a fairly difficult subject that is typically addressed by academic text books, which are outrageously expensive. One company that has written to me recently suggesting that I publish with them is Cambridge Scholars. They are in England. It looks like it would be a lot of work, and the prices for the finished books would be quite high. Somehow there would need to be a way to publicize to universities around the world to use the book. Cambridge Scholars basically ask how the book should be publicized.
I have talked to Springer in the past. They have better ties to US universities, I expect. They have tended to like a happily ever after story line.
You could do an ebook. People pay you to download it.
Right. Then the question is how fancy does one make it. A collection of blogposts is theoretically possible, but there would be duplications. I probably would need to give it away, rather than sell it, which is OK with me.
Books will need a degree of fanciness if they are to be used by universities. I would need help “jumping through all of the hoops.” Either a publisher would need paid staff to help, or I would need paid staff to help. In today’s world, publishers do very, very little. There are a whole lot of technical details, like “permissions” for each image. In today’s world, if you use anything by anyone else, and sell what you use, you often need to pay the original author for the use of the material you use. There are also a lot of details regarding links, indexes, and quality and placement of images, and other things.
The biggest hurdle is distribution of the book. Academic publishers sell a very small number of high priced books each year. They would like a book that can be expected to sell for many years. This is part of the reason for the need for a happily ever after ending.
A better publication approach might be a publisher for the general market. Their books need to be easy to read and have only a few images in them. But that would require a huge change from what I am writing as blog posts.
Collaborative writing perhaps. I’m sure you could slap down a few head lines and summaries in a google doc, then edit/clarify the contributions.
We could all be your editors,
Assign sections that you want written with the skeleton of what concepts you wish to include, many talented knowledge folk at OFW. Fast Eddy can add the humour
Ronavax Roulette: Lipid Nanoparticles — PEG And The Protein-Corona (Part Three)
Things that make you go ‘Hmm…’
As described in Part 2 of this article, various impurities, such as ‘lipid-RNA species’, have been found in both of the mRNA vaccines. Some of the ones in the Pfizer vax have apparently been translated into proteins, so they’ve been asked by the EMA to see if any of them have parts that are similar to human proteins, due to concerns about molecular mimicry that could cause an autoimmune disorder. But what about the potential for molecular mimicry with other components in the vaccines? What about the lipids, the dsRNA, and the spike protein itself? Some researchers have looked for similarities between parts of the rona, and parts of human proteins, to see if molecular mimicry might occur. Lots of similarities have been found, such as these three peptides: HVNNS, GIGVT, NESLI (the letters indicate an amino acid). These peptides are all found in the spike of the rona, as well as in a human protein involved in lipid metabolism and ApoE receptor binding. (The NESLI peptide is also found in Pneumocystis carinii.) The mRNA vaccines both contain a modified version of the genetic sequence for the spike protein that was published by China on the 17th of January, 2020. The potential for molecular mimicry comes from peptides that enter the body, either as a result of an infection, or from a vaccine.
Another thing to make you go ‘Hmm’ is the question of the role of ApoE. Is it also possible, for instance, that people could be at risk in terms of their genetic make-up? For example, people who’ve got the Apolipoprotein E4 allele can be genetically susceptible to Alzheimer’s Disease. And what might happen if a LNP reached the brain? ApoE actively transports cholesterol between neurons, e.g., to help with cell repair, so could LNPs cause other neurological effects in connection with this?
Why haven’t Moderna, or any of the other companies, shared data from previous trials? Is there something to hide? And why didn’t the EMA mention the unnatural sequences the vaccines contain? Strictly speaking, it’s not just ‘mRNA’ they contain, but modified mRNA, and is part of a ‘pick and mix’ approach to genetics that could threaten the human race.
https://www.activistpost.com/2021/03/ronavax-roulette-lipid-nanoparticles-peg-and-the-protein-corona-part-three.html
Too many things can go wrong!
I see major problems in cold countries like Canada than in warm countries when energy becomes more of an issue. With falling oil production, you can’t operate natural gas furnaces or operate snow throwers. You can grow year round food in warm areas.
I agree. I have made the point that warm countries have a definite advantage, if we no longer have fossil fuels.
More “Covid Suicides” than Covid Deaths in Kids
Before Covid, an American youth died by suicide every six hours. Suicide is a major public health threat and a leading cause of death for those aged under 25 — one far bigger than Covid. And it is something that we have only made worse as we, led by politicians and ‘the science,’ deprived our youngest members of society — who constitute one-third of the US population — of educational, emotional and social development without their permission or consent for over a year.
And why? For what?
We were scared. We were scared for our lives and those of people we love. And, like your average German-on-the-street in the 1930s and 40s, we believed that doing what we were told and supporting the national cause would save us and our families.
The reality is we sacrificed others without a second thought. We have sacrificed our youths’ lives and future livelihoods in a desperate attempt to save a slim minority of the elderly population who have surpassed the average US life expectancy of 78.8 years and those who were already on their way out.
https://www.aier.org/article/more-covid-suicides-than-covid-deaths-in-kids/
And a society that sacrifices the present and future (there would be no future anyway, but they don’t know that) of its children to prolong their parents’ lives for a few months is by definition an insane and suicidal society, a society infected by lethal levels of cultural toxicity.
I can’t help but be amazed that my friends and relatives with young children, a year after the start of this pandemic show, still haven’t understood something that would be self-evident for any canid or primate. Rational animal my a$s! 🙂
Sigh. The US has been systematically looting the young to subsidise the old ever since the Townsend Plan. Social Security was created to derail that plan, but ended up doing even worse. The elite have finally run out of poor young people to loot for money, so now they are looting their lives.
Dear Gail,
Thank you for this new wonderful article.
I have personally experienced another limit we’re likely hitting along with too many others, i.e., effective functioning of market economy.
That’s the case for best therapies aimed at prevention and healing from Covid-19 that, at a time luckily and unluckily, are based on natural compounds and related molecules, such as hesperidin – a citrus flavonoid – and quercetin – another natural flavonoid. This, based on very advanced computer simulations (molecular docking) performed in many parts of the world.
Due to non-patentability of such natural molecules, virtually no big player in pharma industry was happy to invest in clinical trials, let alone in pharmacological research. Our clinical trial project with hesperidin, worth of just few hundred thousand US$ and using existing low-cost food supplements, was rejected last summer based on “insufficient economic sustainability”.
Meanwhile, even the very big Cardiological Center of Montreal University, Quebec, experienced great difficulties in retrieving the comparatively small funds needed to start a very similar clinical trial, for the same reasons – see https://www.today24.news/en/2021/03/hesperidin-a-natural-shield-to-block-the-main-symptoms-of-covid-19.html
Of course, should such clinical trials succeed, it will be easy and discomforting to guess the huge amount of resources (plus human suffering and deaths) could have been saved.
Market economy allows investments only with direct and comparatively much higher paybacks that, in the case of drugs, requires patentable molecules/compounds and/or highly complex / high-tech / high-cost solutions – that’s the case of (so-called) vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and the like. Politics has completely failed in the management of the pandemics, mostly due to its faith in market economy. The problem, now, is that the alleged solutions appear to be very much over-sized in comparison to much wiser and cheaper solutions,adding a big problem in the way to decline and collpase.
To me, it appears that market economy per se has hit its fundamental limit and no other feasible economic model is on the sight.
I think you are right.
Part of the problem is the need for career paths that lead to high salaries in the medical/pharmaceutical industries. If all that is needed is a few simple supplements that don’t even need a prescription, then there is no need for all of these vaccines or for physicians to prescribe all of the fancy treatments. There is no need for many years of education after college.
If COVID-19 isn’t really a problem that needs all of these high cost solutions, then what is the benefit of all of these years of schooling? Of course, most people cannot really afford these high-cost solutions. But the “science” says we should have the highest-cost solutions available.
They can earn a lot: but that also tends to make them conformists – indebted with huge mortgages and student loans, they are unwilling to rock the boat or question official policy.
This can easily lead to the utter intellectual and moral corruption of the medical profession; as I would suggest we are witnessing now, with some noble and honourable exceptions.
If there is any good in what we are experiencing, it is the demonstration of the utter ugliness of lies and cowardice, and the beauty of Truth, integrity, and courage.
What would we know about the truth of the pandemic without the courage of those who have stepped out of line and defended real scientific method and reason?
In Israel… if you refuse the vaccine you are fired from your job.
That pretty much seals the deal for huge numbers of people… we’ll see nearly everyone vaxxed in the next 3-6 months… then there will be a mopping up of the recalcitrants.
And then — mark my words — Nightmare Covid (mix Devil Covid with a variant and throw in a little Trump DNA) — will be unleashed on us,
And we’ll all be so horrifically ill that nobody will even think to eat their neigbhour’s children…
I will at this point marry my predictions on the end game… lockdowns condition the cattle to accept control — do as you are told!!! — as we can see the vast majority are ok with this — we had ‘mass global protests’ over the weekend…. a few thousand here and there hardly = a revolution…
As the Israeli guy says in the video — most people in Israel are not only accepting the rules — they WANT them…. so there will be no Covid revoluation…
As the variants give rise to Nightmare Covid (which actually will be a nightmare to the vaxxed because they have f%^&*ed up their immune system with these jabs)…. there will be mass deaths…
And that will frighten people even more .. even the sceptics will be frightened… and willing to accept extreme lockdowns… and be vaccinated (even though the V1 obviously not protected them hahahaha… oh but the Boosters will!! — f6789ing CovIDIOTS hahahaha)…
Amusingly nobody will realize that the reason everyone is dying is BECAUSE OF THE VAXX!!!!
So what we will have is a combination of people locked down dying by the hundreds of millions with just about everyone else very sick and no medical assistance… grocery stores will empty … food will not be delivered…
Mass sickness + starvation = CEP…
Yes I know it’s not ideal… but if you think about the alternative — 8B people ripping faces off…. the CEP is DEFINITELY the better option.
I’ve suggested to the Elders that they consider adding Oxycontin to the mix…. just relable the bottles as Aspirin or some new drug that can alleviate the sickness… and give them to everyone (technically they would not even have to lie — because a couple of these extra strength suckers will alleviate everything!!!).
We see the same sort of behavior with lemmings, sheep, bison, even walruses. But for getting in line following one’s fellows off a cliff, humans take the cake.
If this great cull comes to pass as well it might, and if the spent fuel ponds don’t prove to be as deadly as you fear, and if there are a few survivors who refused to join in and managed to avoid taking the Kool Aid, then we would have an evolutionary event in the making. conditions might well be brutal. But the genes for sheepishness would be greatly reduced while those for stubborn independence would be strengthened, making the surviving people a lot harder to herd or corral. All the best slave material would have been thrown out with the bathwater.
Concerned my work is going to require it and it’s going to be tough to say no. My IQ isn’t a 1000 like yours but I do have no debts, a paid off home, and enough savings to survive 10 years without working. Would it make sense to let them fire me and ‘retire’ early? Enjoy the last sputtering years of industrial civilization while still youngish? Would hate to submit only to lose my employment due to collapse a short while later when I could party it up care free for a few years.
I’d take the Lethal Injection.
Unless it’s your ambition to make a last stand and go out with guns blazing as the bad guys come for you. Even if you win… you lose… who wants to live in a world without electricity, petrol, and food?
While you wait for the invisible plumes of toxicity to finish you off.
I answer to no man … so currently I am thinking I will not take the injection … because I want to around to observe the misery as the most vile ‘thing’ on the planet… expires … tee hee…
Then I ram into the rock cut — or the Elders see the light and provide me with Oxy Extra Strength.
https://youtu.be/9Jn8K8EA7-Q
Thought provoking – thank you. I wonder how much the type of investments funded by debt also influence the dollars of additional US debt required to add $1 of additional US GDP. My understanding is that much of the money is going to bail out state governments and endangered pension funds. Not clear how those investments would improve the GDP. I think those programs are similar to your point that the true value of renewable wind and solar is lower than the cost of production
I am afraid I haven’t studied this new legislation enough to see where the dollars go.
Historically, even dollars that are intended to go to low income people somehow end up inflating asset prices instead. This makes the stock market go up. Recently, it has made home prices go up as well. Quite a few people (likely voters, anyhow) happy with the outcome.
Hi Gail,
Happy Bday !
“Within a few months to a year, the worldwide debt bubble will start to collapse, bringing oil prices down by more than 50%.”
Hmmm, so looks like the next 12 months are going to be … interesting ….
I read somewhere else that Italy debt is due to collapse in the next 12 months also (like another Greek situation), which is probably why they named Draghi to head the ship…
Great article. Thanks!
It would be more accurate and useful to represent GDP growth in constant dollars. Percentages, especially when representing compound growth, are utterly misleading.
For example, as a percentage, China’s GDP will grow only half as fast as it did in 2007. In constant dollars, however, it will grow twice as fast.
To see what this looks like in practice, check out this growth projection 2020-2030:
https://i.imgur.com/TehbSZg.png
The catch is that the numbers all of us usually see are in “Dollars of the Day.” Somebody, somewhere, needs to “back out” the inflation component. In recent years, this seems to be done with as “light a hand” as possible.
For example, the automobiles we buy have many more features than cars did years ago: bodies that don’t rust, air bags, antilock breaks, window whose functioning is controlled by electric, catalytic converters, entertainment systems, air conditioning, fuel-efficient engines, and so on. Is all this stuff things that everyone volunteered to buy? How much of the cost change is inflation, and how much is true value?
I did try to back out what the effect of inflation was, using the relationship between published “Real GDP” and “GDP.” The difference between these two is determined by the GDP deflator. I believe that this assumes less inflation than the CPI urban, since not all elements of GDP are assumed to be as much affected by inflation as consumer goods.
@Gail, about the cars and inflation.
I know for sure that the way the gov counts inflation is insane.
According to the US gov the inflation in autos in the last 30 years has been ~1% overall, not per year.
I compared my 30 year old car with the current model and they have the same MPG. Yes the current model is bigger and heavier and full of chips. Will it last as long as my old car? I doubt it.
The real price for the basic model is 3X for this year’s model. I don’t want all the crap they put in – I just want to get from point A to point B. But no one will offer me that choice.
So what is the real inflation rate? 1% or 300%? For me it is the latter.
Small correction above – the real inflation rate would be 200%, not 300%. Obviously still a far cry from 1%
Thank you for the new post Gail. Much appreciated. As always.
Catherine Fitts has some interesting ideas about where the “money” went. They spent it. We own the tab. Whether thats just convenient blame game I dont know. It is a finite world after all. It would seem some austerity might be in order considering circumstances, with basic necessities prioritized. FE will be along shortly to condemn me for advocating it. Others here seem to feel that its best to spend it on one final splurge of technological indulgence.
“It would seem some austerity might be in order considering circumstances, with basic necessities prioritized.”
yes, but it’s less likely to be the ECB/IMF sort of imposed austerity.
more likely a continuing spread of the austere conditions which we are already seeing in many smaller weaker countries.
austerity will be the short stage before outright dire poverty.
Within a 60 giga HZ EMF O2 (oxygen) absorbs omost all the energy of that field. Lower and higher frequencies and O2 absorbs many multiples less energy. That is not disputed. Alt sources have hypothesized that this changes the outer shell electrons of O2 leading to it not being keyed to the bloods hemoglobin. MSM reply is that this energy being dropped on the O2 is simply converted to heat and that the power is so small as to be insignificant.
Giga HZ frequencies have characteristics different from more common electrical energy forms. The video shows high frequency energy being used to create plasma a 5th state of matter. The energy in the chamber is electrical energy but it is no longer moving at the speed of light like common AC and DC forms of energy. Where the truth lies in this matter would seem to be worthy of much more research. We have over 2000 scientists across the world on record as apposed to 5G rollout.
Where has 60Ghz been rolled out and where will it be rolled out?
Greetings,
The actual predicament:
a) The known, extractable oil reserves won’t cover the current needs for much longer (unfortunately – but perhaps wisely – nobody who knows dares to tell how long until it hits “empty”)
b) There are no technical means to locate/extract the Earth’s remaining oil.
c) There are no known alternative, medium to long-term reliable energy sources.
d) The above doesn’t have any relation with economic/financial constraints: it’s just a matter of geology, physics, human creativity and human courage – in short, it’s just a matter of limits to human knowledge.
If b) and/or c) aren’t sorted out before a) reaches its natural limits it really is game over for the current civilizational arrangements, perhaps even game over for the whole race – time to make peace with your Maker?
Happy birthday, Mrs. Tverberg – thank you for trying to keep it real.
Best regards.
Spot on! If you can work this out – the Elders can work this out.
And good on them for dreaming up the CEP.
@Fast Eddy, can you remind me what CEP stands for? I understand it is related to the Great Reset.
Despite the fact that I hate the oligarchs, I have to agree with you. IF it is true what you say, they have found a way to let civilization collapse without the horrors of wars and famine.
I wish there was another way but I have seen enough of human nature to know that the evil “Elders” (as you call them) are right.
Even the simple fact that the sheep continue to follow them prove them right – people are instinct driven, destructive monkeys.
Who would have thought that they could panic the herd with the freaking flu?
As the cheap resources deplete, so will the cheap protoplasm. The brutality of evolution makes that certainty.
Anyone who is inclined to complain about the spoils of IC, of which they have indulged, simply feel free to kick off the life as a subsistence farmer.
Nothing wrong with that, evidently it “worked” for millennia. Most of our ancestors didn’t have access to cheap FF’s and made it through anyway.
Personally, I’m going down with this ship. Got no stakes, no vested interests. Extinction of my “lineage” is about as certain as it gets. Actually, extinction of all species on earth is guaranteed, humans are no exception.
So what’s the struggle for?
🤔
https://youtu.be/tH2w6Oxx0kQ
Compassionate Extinction Plan.
It never hurts to remember again the best series ever made, and whose find I owe you (thanks again!).
I had guessed it meant Civilization End Party.
Gail,
Note is made of the need for electricity to make electronic transactions. This may not require an entire grid, only parts of it. A working cell tower and solar to recharge cell phones would work and does indeed work in much of the world. Cell phones give much information for very minimal electrical requirements. Per Claud Shannon, information is only something which changes ideas, the remainder is noise(rough translation). Much activity may actually be true “waste.” If there is less “Facebook,” probably this does not affect economic activity for much of the population.
Something else which may bear watching are cryptocurrencies and the technology thereof. This seems to give both privacy and honesty to a large group of people; the latter, honesty, may be most important, everyone can see truth through a distributed system, very difficult to lie.
Lex Fridman has a pod case on this by Silvio Micali, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNdhgOk4-fE&t=5240s
This pod cast is close to two hours long. Lex has deep thinkers and these pod casts are a view into how some influential people are thinking, or at least trying to tell us what they want to have us think they think. Silvio is a. cryptocurrency, Turing award winner at MIT.
Silvio mentions game theory, a challenging way to approach “truth.”
Understanding our world or hoping to understand our world is becoming a challenge, it is not easy to find the real rules and how things will work.
Our world is reorganizing, it will probably be okay.
Dennis L.
Dennis, when, not if we get to the point that the grids are no longer reliable, maintaining the value of cryptocurrencies will be one of the least of our worries. I give an analogy of a brief exchange with my oldest son, now a Chemistry Ph.D. student at Colombia U.
We are in my lab. I point out to my son that the printed version of the CRC handbook of chemical physical constants, etc. on hand will still be a valuable reference if the electricity goes down. My son replies: “if the electricity goes down, we’ll have far more important problems to deal with than not having access to the digital CRC handbook”.
Right! When electricity goes down. My hi-fi stereo won’t function. What is a life without music?
learn guitar.
A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, 1687
John Dryden
From harmony, from Heav’nly harmony
This universal frame began.
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arise ye more than dead.
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And music’s pow’r obey.
From harmony, from Heav’nly harmony
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.
What passion cannot music raise and quell!
When Jubal struck the corded shell,
His list’ning brethren stood around
And wond’ring, on their faces fell
To worship that celestial sound:
Less than a god they thought there could not dwell
Within the hollow of that shell
That spoke so sweetly and so well.
What passion cannot music raise and quell!
….
But oh! what art can teach
What human voice can reach
The sacred organ’s praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,
Notes that wing their Heav’nly ways
To mend the choirs above.
Orpheus could lead the savage race;
And trees unrooted left their place;
Sequacious of the lyre:
But bright Cecilia rais’d the wonder high’r;
When to her organ, vocal breath was giv’n,
An angel heard, and straight appear’d
Mistaking earth for Heav’n.
As from the pow’r of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator’s praise
To all the bless’d above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And music shall untune the sky.
The year 1687 also saw the publication of Isaac Newton’s ‘Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica’. Synchronicity, again. And music will always be with us.
Presenting the Cali Columbia Ivermectin trial alone is disingenuous.
A trial that mixed up its placebo and the ivermectin.
Ivermectin shown to have great value when looked at clinical trials across the board.
Ivermectin shows even greater promise in inhaled form but little or no funding for that.
https://ivmmeta.com/
You mean the “ivermectin doesn’t work” study published in JAMA?
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2777389
Excerpts:
– Patients with mild disease and symptoms for 7 days or fewer were enrolled.
– The median age of patients was 37 years.
– 79% did not have any known comorbidities at baseline.
– The incidence of clinical deterioration was below 3%.
– Study sponsored by Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, and Janssen. Outside the work personal fees from Merck Sharp & Dohme and Gilead.
In other words, young, healthy people with flu symptoms were given ivermectin and it did not make them younger or healthier. Show payed by vax industry.
Yep, this is the ultimate scientific proof of uselessness of ivermectin. 😂
There seems to occur an interesting paradox:
The economy is down but shipping is in a bonanza
Steel and polymers and Chips are in decline but commodities are in a supercycle (gold mines…)
Polymers are difficult to come by
Car manufacturers have to halt assembly lines.
This all adds up to more storage for intermittant supply (some sort of pulling the future forward).
Storage increases the costs but not the value.
So affordability even goes down more (not yet)
Seneca cliff ?
The reason why storage increases costs but not value of intermittent electricity output is because the current system of valuation is totally wrong. It greatly overvalues intermittent electricity. The rest of the electrical system needs to provide a huge (and growing) subsidy to the system using intermittent electricity, and this is not accounted for.
Repo market is in trouble again. Seems like it could be caused by a lack of treasuries. Despite this, Yellen is not financing most of the 1,9 trillion by selling treasuries, according to Gammon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fttA-rNRYG4
Controlled demolition or just a lack of alternative reasonable options?
Treasuries in demand but only to short them. Its like buying a horse thats in ill health because someone payed to much for it and you want to bet its going to die.luv gammon and appreciate hpwhe explaibns things but i see some flaws. First of all what is clear. Trasuries are junk dollars are junk. They are not prime assets accept by the feds definition. So you have two junk assets and people who understand the game want to bet on which is more junk. Rigtht now the bet is dpllars are more junk as deminstated in negative interest rates. This is exactly where the fed wants things. People spending for fear its more expensive tomorow.. This controlled dollar destruction is what our financial systenm is comprised of.
Gammon speculates that the “stimulus” might stop leading tolack of treasuries. Hows that going to happen with a D cong and senate? Gammon brings up the possibility of a short squeeze in treasuries if that happens. And a shortage of treasuries means no collateral for dollar liquidity. DXY through the roof.
So fundamentally everyone openly acknowledges that the value of both treasuries and the dollar will decline against real things because of the “stimulus”. Gammon speculates that they will become more valuble in a treasurie short squeeze. If it happens its only because of the arbitrary designation of treasuries as prime assets. It can only happen if congress stops stimulus. So baisically eveyone is betting against treasuries and the dollar.. Everyone expects more stimulus and dollar destruction. And the fed is taking even more treasuries off the market on to their books to create treasurie demand. Everyone is setting up for the ultimate dollar destruction. Is Gammons scenario possible? Only if congress stops spending. Yes then those bets against against the dollar and treasuries become liabilityes. Then the world gets starved for dollars. But only because of te definition by the fed as treasuries as prime assets. Could it happen? Yes. It means congress would have to stop stimulus, choose financial crisis. i think its more likely that what we will see is what every single wall street wolf is betting on includinfg the fed by creating artificial demand. Continued and accelerating dollar and treasury destruction.
My main wonder is why Yellen choosed to fund the stimulus from the Treasuries general account instead of issuing more Treasuries? It looks like this decision could cause some problems. Maybe there would have been different problems caused from even more treasuries as the system looks like it is approaching a breaking point, we may really lack good alternatives…
Of course, she may intentionally have initiated some kind of reset sequencing by inducing problems in the market.
Her choice of funding method does seem strange.
This is really an excellent video you provided a link to by George Gammon called, “Repo Market Rates Turn Negative!! Is it signaling the next financial crisis?”
This is the link again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fttA-rNRYG4
Some of my notes:
There are negative rates in the Repo market because banks believe there will be higher interest rates ahead, so they are shorting the market. If it really turns out there are lower interest rates, rather than higher interest rates, ahead there could be a short squeeze, as with Gamestop recently.
Part of the problem is that there aren’t enough Treasuries in the marketplace because of all of the buying under QE. If Biden cannot borrow a whole lot more in the future, the situation could get a whole lot worse. Yellen could spend in a way that doesn’t lead to more Treasury issuance, making the situation worse. Without enough Treasuries, international trade could slow down under Great Financial Crisis #2.
I am guessing that some smaller version of this could happen shortly, and the problem might be somehow worked around. Later, a similar thing could happen with a major cutoff in international trade.
Happy Birthday Gail and thanks for the new post. I don’t know where in this post your birthday was mentioned, but best wishes for a great day, anyway.
The fact that it is my birthday is not mentioned in the post. It is up somewhere on Facebook.
Happy Birthday and thanks for your great work!
As a side note, the flat, scientific delivery of your conclusions makes them even scarier to contemplate.
Thanks for the new article
Gail, the section numbers are jumbled. 3 is misnamed 4, and 4 misnamed 5, then giving two section 5s.
I will go back and fix that as well. I am glad someone is looking at some of these details.
You can see I was trying to get the post up before I had completely figured out some details.
Happy Birthday, Gail. And many thanks once again for a thought provoking essay.
The pandemic lockdowns are unlawful in many ways. For example the Austrian highcourt has declared the measures unconstitutional in 32 cases. Debts increase as do consumer restrictions to avoid inflation. A “promise for future goods”, state default or the criminal code only matter if you are bound to pay. It is possible that some people know they will never.
All readers of this blog know that there is no way out of the current energy situation, since the financiers have withdrawn from fracking as it has not paid in the end. Peakoil is now. All effects described could be effects of peakoil the same and might occur without pandemic or lockdowns.
All readers of this blog know the major danger of an economic crash is famine, as large parts of our economy have been created to maintain, improve, storage and distribute food. The French 2CV was constructed to carry two farmers, a hundredweight of potatoes, eggs and a barrel of whine over windy roads. With anchient technology not based on fossiles we might be able to support two million men on earth but not eight or eleven.
In the past governments have been teached about peakoil several times. They all have stated that there is no reason to be worried. Maybe powerful people have drawn precautions?
Looking back in history there have been times of man made mass extinction: Mao, Stalin, Hitler, the conquer of the Americas, the Osman wars, the fall of the Roman Reich, to name a few. They all might have occured anyway but they were clearly initiated to keep control.
I think we have to consider the possibility what we experience is not about a virus (and less about the respective Great Reset) but about peakoil.
A virus generally has two options: To be deadly and not widespread as the infected person is dead and cannot infect. Or to be harmless and jump to everybody. To combine both we have learned the narrative of the asymptomatic spreaders. Everybody can find out in the neighbourhood if this narrative is true. In this pandemic we need a test to tell us who is ill. The real potential of disease will come with famine, of course.
Looking back in history the success to keep control was extremely various. The modern way is obviously based on semiconductors and electricity. If this can be maintained in times of decline readers might answer themselves.
The most dangerous inheritage to our grandchildren though would be a rotten DNA and nuclear waste with no technical possibilities to bury it or even detect it’s radiation.
Regarding, “I think we have to consider the possibility what we experience is not about a virus (and less about the respective Great Reset) but about peakoil.”
I agree, but I might call it Limits to Growth rather than peak oil. We are reaching energy limits right now, and those limits are leading to situations where governments behave very strangely in response to a virus that doesn’t kill many people. The medical community is looking for expensive solutions rather than inexpensive solutions. It is also trying to keep the epidemic around as long as possible.
The medical community brass is working with the Elders PR team to convince people to take a vaccine for the purpose of unleashing Devil Covid which will exterminate our species.
The picture has become much clearer today thanks to this https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous
It’s the proverbial smoking gun
from wikipedia
“Hydroelectric power accounts for 11% of the total primary energy usage in New Zealand with imported oil and oil products making up 70% of the primary energy.[8] Hydroelectric power accounts for 57% of the total electricity generation in New Zealand.[9]
Over the decade from 1997 hydroelectric power as a percentage of total net electricity generated went from 66% down to 55%.[10] An increase in coal and gas for electricity generation accounted for the reduction in hydroelectric power as a percentage of the total.”
Looks like NZ can support about 0.5 million out of 5 million using hydroelectric. Maybe a lottery??? Eddy?
Ed, a good calculation, but I see a problem. Would a New Zealand with only 500,000 people have enough labour to maintain that hydroelectric power? As well as grow food, make inferior wine, molest sheep, or whatever else they do down there.
It’s quite difficult to catch a sheep….
not if you have a pet Border Collie.
Ah your relocation purpose becomes clear. 🙂
No it is not. I have a flock, and they get loose sometimes, but are easy to get back into the paddock.
Are you shearing that sheep?
I’m not shearing it with anybody!
(new Zealand accent needed)
Lol, steady on mate, we grow logs and milk cows toooo!
Away Down Here, Down under, Down under,
We’re very good at exporting raw material and primary produce. Then importing expensive finished goods and services.
We’re especially good at exploiting cheep ( not sheep) imported Labour to produce ‘ world class’ average wine.
We’re very good at winning old mugs and unaffordable housing crisis
We’re real do it (to) yourself, seafaring Easter Islanders archipelagons.
The electricity thing isn’t a big problem though, we’ll just cut ‘poll three’ between North and South islands and keep all the power in The south where it belongs anyway, (poll 1 and 2 broke a whiles ago) I think I can hear Freddy out there cutting it now.
Jacinto will be most displeased.
The wine is overrated, but I like the place.
About the same size of the UK in area (a bit larger), but the UK has 66.65 million (2019).
NZ has 5 million.
Plus, much better trout fishing.
Haven’t been for a few years.
It is hard to grow food with only electricity. How any can live without food?
@Gail, can you clarify?
As far as I know even modern industrial agriculture uses diesel not electricity. Maybe you are referring to storage?
Countries with lower population density and good conditions (soil, rain etc) need only human labor to grow enough food.
There are still families in Eastern Europe for example that feed themselves and sell surplus from a small homestead. And no, they don’t use tractors or electrical tools.
It might be worth mentioning that NZ is an oil exporter AND importer. The one refinery here produces diesel and petrol for the local market from imported oil. The oil extracted here is exported as it is not the correct type for the refinery. If NZ was to refine its own oil the refinery’s efficiency would drop by 30 to 40 percent versus imported oil.
The problem is that this refinery wants to close for lack of profitability, as I understand it. The owners want to just import fuels of the desired time.
This is the most recent article I could find:
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/030421-refinery-news-roundup-more-closures-likely-in-asia-pacific
So by June 30, perhaps we will know better what is happening.
Gail, thanks for the new article. I was going into OFW withdrawals. 🙂
I see the pandemic is not going away but it kills so few it is little harm. It is the politicians that are causing the harm. Here in New York State we have removed the governors emergency powers, are rolling back his law by dictatorial decree, and both senators are calling for his resignation. Time for all legislature to remove the fake law givers/dictators.
If possible to visualize figure #6 as a standard distribution model, or bell curve, we are finished.
It does look that way. Interest rates were pretty much zero in the Depression of the 1930s. We are heading that way again. Interest rates are very low when times are bad. The economy is shrinking, rather than growing. Prices are low, rather than high.
Gail, I would like to see a quantitative analysis like yours applied to the US stock market bubble, so much of share price appreciation is achieved by companies borrowing money to buy back their own stock and then cancel it…this was illegal for a long time and should be illegal
Modern Monetary Monetary Theory (MMT)…… MMT will be implemented as a main part of Comrade Schwab’s “Great Reset” Woke Expedition. There will no longer be a DEBT CAN to kick down the road. By using MMT, the World’s Government DEBIT will be ignored going forward.
Here is a quick course on MMT for you Deplorables staring Stephanie Kelton, one of the brain childs behind the MMT movement. She also worked on Bernie’s campaign team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28atgck_1lA
Under MMT, government debt doesn’t matter. It’s all about World Governments spending enough to reach full employment and also issuing lots of stimulus checks directly using Fed digital currency. After full employment is achieved, the government can use taxation and less Government spending to slow the economy down and avoid inflation. Bretton Woods 2.0 means a new set of control levers to work the Global Financial System. Under MMT, no one will have to worry about that pesky Government debt any longer, it will be a non-issue. The IMF will back endless spending of the Central Banks. Hmmm… let’s see, what could go wrong here? Peter Schiff’s head just exploded.
BTW… the G20, IMF, WEF, UN, Davos Elites, US Liberals (Socialists), etc. are all onboard. It’s a lot worse than you might think!
Don’t worry, there is a happy ending…. the Davos Crowd will be credited for a “hat trick”… saving the Global Financial System, saving the World’s Useless Eaters from Climate Change and COVID, and finally righting all sorts of social injustices. Who could ask for more?
Orwell….. “The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”
the real base of the economy is energy.
FF energy leverages human labor and produces more goods and services.
the net (surplus) energy from FF is now in an irreversible decline, so the production of goods and services will decline in proportion.
throwing MMT at this irreversible energy situation will do nothing to produce more goods and services.
indeed “The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”
@Rob, agreed.
One nitpick though – calling anybody in US politics or supported by oligarchs a “socialist” is just stupid. It’s no better than calling someone that disagrees with Biden a “fascist” – they are just swear words.
For me, I wish the “Great Reset” would include some socialism (like sharing in the benefits of their own work) but from the look of it, it’s just a scheme to impoverish everybody while the rich own every physical asset. All done in the name of wokism, or antiracism or climate change.
Didn’t the rich already own all property of importance? I don’t see the change here? Inevitably the indebted useless eaters living beyond their means will have less, so what?
It would be nice to get MMT to work, but I am afraid it doesn’t. It really doesn’t result in more goods to trade. Relativities among currencies are likely to change.
I think you are right in quoting Orwell:
Orwell….. “The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”
Thankn you very much and Happy birthday
You are welcome. I am afraid that this will not be a very good day for me to offer many comments. I need to go and make some frosting for the cake my husband made for me, for one thing. I will mostly have to wait a day or two to provide comments.
Happy Birthday Gail, virtual hugs.
Happy Birthday!
Have a wonderful screen free, family and friend abundant day 🙂
Sounds wonderful! Enjoy and congratulations!
Happy Birthday Gail.
Happy Birthday indeed, Gail: a candle on that cake from each of your appreciative readers would I suspect result in a fire storm. One more damned Crisis to add to the pile ……
May you live 100 years!
Happppy Birthdaaay!!!
Wow! I wonder if the same group that “reads” my post puts together videos with your choice of name.
Don’t even try it! I’ll sue and everybody will be ruined, me, you and the “reading” group!
🙃
A belated Happy Birthday, Gail. Hope you had a good one. Wishing you a safe and healthy year.
“A $1.9 billion stimulus package was recently signed into law in the United States.”
Gail, billion or trillion?
Good point! I will fix it. It goes through spell checker.
What’s amazing is how far the day of reckoning can be extended through money printing.
The more I look at this, the more it looks like we needed to start extending the day of reckoning once the price of oil left $20 per barrel. Adding a whole lot of very cheap to produce coal from China helped as well. We set our goal for energy alternatives way too low. What researchers came up is too expensive and really doesn’t work. It also cannot be ramped up as much as is required.
We have known from the beginning we need an alternative. In 1895 when John Astor said oil will run out. To the technologist movement in the US in the 30s, to Admiral Rickover for nuclear, to Jimmy Carter who at least tried. Not sure if any of the Green New Deal folks are serious or just grifters.
So, maybe we should just take stock of existing installed hydroelectric and ask how many humans can we support with this power.
Dear Mr. Tverberg …HOW ANOUT CAPITAL SHORTAGE …
MATHEMATICAL JUSTIFICATION OF CAPITALlessISM : a macro-model for a virtual capital based economy http://www.capitallessism.com published in 2015 http://capitallessism.com/
IT IS A MATHEMATICAL EVIDENCE THAT THERE IS SIMPLY NOT ENOUGH CAPITAL RESERVE AND NOT ENOUGH CAPITAL IN CONTINUOUS CIRCULATION AVAILABLE IN THE WORLD to cover the HYPER EXPONENTIALLY growing capital needs of THE EXPONENTIALLY growing world population. CAPITALlessISM, i.e. a virtual e-capital based capitalist economy seems to be the ultimate peaceful solution, based on science and mathematics. Capital concept has evolved from POSSESSION asset capital to POTENTIAL asset based E-capital, as a numeric E-capital.
and yet the world seems to have plenty of CAPITAL LETTERS. 😉
I was wondering what his thesis looked like! But no, he’s an MD.
But perhaps we are approaching PEAK CAPITALS? And then poor Dr Horvath Anthony will have to learn how to write the Queen’s English.
Why address Gail’s husband??
Actually, my husband uses a different last name.
The name Gail (sometimes spelled “Gale”) can be a man’s name as well. It is hard to tell from my name whether I am male or female.
I’m not a doctor as you are. Also, if you’d accuse me of not studying your work, you wouldn’t be wrong. That being said:
1. The population is not growing exponentially. For at least half a century, it’s been growing linearly.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/doug-boucher/world-population-growth-exponential
2. Virtual numeric fiat out-of-thin-air e-capital tokens are already manufactured at the following address:
Federal Reserve System
20th St. and Constitution Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20551
The head of the Bank for International Settlements, often called the central bank for central banks, declares he wants “complete control” over money via banning cash in favor of Central Bank Digital Currencies… an openly stated “very important” goal.
https://twitter.com/SwanBitcoin/status/1372859090943246340
I can see why they are worried about today’s currencies.
Home electricity generation and a large food store seem like essential backup, even though most won’t be able to afford to rent, buy or keep their house
We might all be living in tents like nomads soon
@Bobby. I agree it will keep your family more comfortable than those without it, but long term, we’re in bigger trouble.
I am doing my inefficient best to build a prototype “tent.” Just for the urban/rural planning good of it.
You would have to have some sort of structure to kick people out of houses etc…when it gets to that stage I’m afraid there will be some sort of destabilization of the system the bank that owns your mortgage will be destroyed . Some group will become scapegoats maybe the rich, or immigrants etc….think of Germany 1934 that is where the U.S is right now…or maybe think of the Bolshevik revolution both are what happens when resources run low..in a very similar way.
Eurdora,
It is interesting how wealthy families during war remain so after war. It was so after WWI and also WWII, not so much “common” folk.
https://time.com/5268155/flick-german-billionaires-nazi-past/
This is a family that had maybe $3.5B immediately after WWII, not sure what that is today, $20B maybe?
Thyieson after WWII:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Thyssen-family
One needs steel to go to war.
Reimann family, BMW – one need aircraft engines to run bombers, etc. Wealth after WWII, petty good.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2019/04/02/more-than-a-dozen-of-europes-wealthiest-billionaires-and-their-families-had-nazi-ties/?sh=7666f5a26015
It may be there are always two sets of laws, one for us and one for them.
Much easier to rebuild one’s life after a major war with a few billion than with nothing, always compound interest.
A guess is even a gifted politician needs those with organizational skills to build an industry and provide jobs, maintain political stability and of course tax revenues to pay said politician’s wages.
This may be a consequence of more advanced, complex societies. When Rome fell, technology was local, difficult to export, with more knowledge comes greater wealth, more to share, tough to share a Colosseum, doesn’t physically decline much, needs a source of lions, etc.
Dennis L.
Dennis I am sure you are aware if you follow this site that it is not going to be exactly the same as before. History doesn’t repeat it rhymes … Without massive amounts of cheap energy the system will not be able to rebuild in favor of the rich….I believe that they are not to blame for the problems but I am already hearing the grumbling about the rich going on. When you have such a disparate separation of the wealth at the top of the collapse the wealthy become the scapegoat.
I believe they will be once again and on a much larger scale than we have seen before. In the Bolshevik revolution it did not matter how much funny money you had and neither will it this time…
On another note!
This comment section tends to be an echo chamber of constant b*tch about COVID being blown out of proportion. I don’t care
I just want to be able to ride the wave as long as possible. Sorry old people I know you are cranky but can you just shut up about Covid already…..
“I just want to be able to ride the wave as long as possible.”
I echo that thought.
2022 and beyond.
echo echo echo chamber echo chamber chamber COVID chamber COVID COVID blown COVID blown blown out of blown out of proportion out of proportion proportion…..
No, we will not shut up already…. Will you wise up or shall I tell them to put your name on a body bag?
We old fogies didn’t invent COVID and thrust it in front of people’s faces 24/7/365 and force them to social distance and wear masks and close down their businesses and tell them that had to take an mRNA injectable and try to literally scare the NORMOS (that’s a cute anagram I’ve just coined to refer to normal people by the way; can you guess what it’s an anagram of?)….
We are merely reactionary old farts and so we are doing what we do best—reacting. It’s one of the few benefits we get out of this entire fiasco—the opportunity to be cranky about it.
Nobody is crankier than Jim Fetzer, and yet he reports that five of his relatives including his own brother have taken the depopulation jab!
This is an interview with investigative journalist Sarah Westall, who talks about the criteria that guide the proper use of vaccines, which include that there are no cheaper, available and effective alternatives; that the costs of the vaccine (harm done thereby) do not overwhelm the benefits (disease prevention); and that the threat from the disease is serous enough to warrant vaccines. None of these, it turns out, is satisfied in the COVID case, where the harms inflicted appear to include infertility, cancer and (even) the production of prions.
In the second half of this interview, Sarah goes on to talk about how the US Military has been weaponizing propaganda since they lost the Vietnam War due to the Vietnamese and the Soviets having Jane Fonda on their side. Now TPTB have it down to a fine art and they have the NORMOS funning around frantically like young kittens following red laser beam around the room.
“What’s happened in 40 years? Now they are so sophisticated, they’re so good at it now, and that’s what we’re up against. How do we break through that. And the average person, and the average mind, are they able to break through it? It’s much like occult brainwashing. Because if you give somebody something in a fearful environment—if there’s a fear-based situation which COVID is—and then you tell them lies over and over in a fear-based environment, if later you tell them the truth, they won’t believe it. No matter what, they just will not believe it. It’s something about the human condition that they cling to that lie.”
https://www.bitchute.com/video/YLKortqflpAH/
The rich ARE the Bolsheviks of today – the Techno-Bolshevik’s, and we are experiencing their attempted revolution against us – to be followed by the Digital Gulag which is being constructed, and in fact has been in preparation a long while.
Are our discussions causing you cognitive dissonance? How horrible! The pain must be unspeakable! Hey we are all riding the wave. Everyone has their own style of surfing. Would you really just have us conform to yours?
“This is a family that had maybe $3.5B immediately after WWII, not sure what that is today, $20B maybe?”
Immediately after WWII, that $3.5 billion was worth 100 million troy ounces of gold. Today, $20 billion is worth about 10 million ounces. A very big drop, and in just one lifetime (mine, for instance).
People forget how fast fiat money is debased. And the above is what happened to the supposed “world reserve currency”. Thank you, John Maynard Keynes.
I think what’s ahead is Klaus Schwab’s great reset or as Fast Eddy likes to say “controlled demolition.