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.
Boris forgot his ‘mask’ in this address. We have a PM who openly boasts that it is fundamentally ‘greed’, and ‘big pharma’, that gets things done, like vaxes. TP is more and more brazen. If we are going to have a society based on ‘greed’ then maybe we should get rid of all of the laws that stand in the way of it, like bourgeois property laws. What Boris really means is the greed of the rich and corporations protected by the bourgeois state. No wonder more Scots want out of the UK every time f/t Boris opens his mouth.
Boris Johnson risks fresh vaccine row over UK’s ‘greedy’ jabs firms
BORIS Johnson risked inflaming the EU vaccines war tonight by saying “it was greed my friends” which helped Britain get the jab first.
The PM made the incendiary comments in a private address to Tory MPs over Zoom earlier this evening.
He also hailed the efforts of “big pharma” in manufacturing the life-saving jab in lightning-quick time.
He told MPs at the 1922 Committee: “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends.”
“It was giant corporations that wanted to give good returns to shareholders. It was driven by big pharma.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/14434076/boris-johnson-vaccine-row-greed/
On a parallel theme, Oroboros posted this, which I thought was promising as well as astute, at The Automatic Earth:
The Covid lockdowns will Never change until valid Legal challenges make it to some court with some gravitas.
Like the bitch’n’moanin about the stolen election, if a court doesn’t rule one way or another, it’s just a tree falling in the woods. Sound and fury signifying nothing.
Like the ‘cancel culture’ SJW Cretins, nothing will change until the guilty parties are sucessfully sued in court until they ‘bleed from their ears and their ass’.
Those lawsuits are slowly crystallizing. Dr Pam Popper of Ohio was explaining how trial lawyers don’t always frame novel class action lawsuits correctly first time out of the gate and need several runs at the goalie to score. An example is the years it took to finally peel the bark off the tobacco scum companies for promoting ‘death sticks’ for decades.
Read up on how tobacco lawyer scum used tiny obscure parts of ‘The Law’ (cough-cough) to derail challenges to their Death Cult of Smoke. It took decades.
The Medical Mafia and their running dog lackeys in the Uni-Party need to be eviscerated in court until they feel like their collective derrieres have been seriously violated by the Flying Monkeys from the Wizard of OZ.
Of course, eviscerating them physically would be another kind of justice, but it’s amazing how often the guilty go free while the innocent get chopped up when that sort of thing is allowed to get momentum.
Or as the great poet Luis de Camões has put it:
Ever in this world saw I
Good men suffer grave torments,
But even more— enough to terrify—
Men who live out evil lives
Reveling in pleasure and in content.
(translation by Henry Hersch Hart)
In portuguese it sounds a miilion times better of course and has an humorous coda:
Os bons vi sempre passar
No mundo graves tormentos;
E para mais me espantar,
Os maus vi sempre nadar
Em mar de contentamentos.
Cuidando alcançar assim
O bem tão mal ordenado,
Fui mau, mas fui castigado:
Assim que, só para mim,
Anda o Mundo concertado.
That German lawyer has been at it for a few months now… seems to be getting nowhere…
Mike Yeadon also is trying to stop the vax roll out in the courts… don’t hear anything about that…
These legal actions are futile — and that’s how it should be — these guys haven’t the slightest clue that the oil is burned up and the CEP is in their interests…
Doesn’t matter – what the Elders want the Elders get — and no court in any land will oppose them
>>Doesn’t matter – what the Elders want the Elders get — and no court in any land will oppose them
Unfortunately, it does kind of look that way in Scotland (the farcical Alex Salmond and Craig Murray cases) and the UK (the beyond farcical Julian Assange saga). Judges know what is good for them at the end of the day, and will do as they are told. There are exceptions, but not many. The outcome is rarely good for them when they go against the elite.
Nor are the judiciary – even if they resist political and financial pressure – exempt from participating in mass delusion, and they have, like us, been subjected to intense and unrelenting propaganda for the last year.
The Portuguese case last year, which demolished the notion that the inaccurate tests could be used as the basis for confinement changed nothing in Europe as far as one can see.
This is now the age of the death of reason and logic, and the triumph of the manipulators and liars – we are caught in their alternative reality.
I am still buying green bananas… but I had to touch up some spots on the outside of the house … I got the first coat on last week… but I just can’t get motivated to finish up with another coat — it will take me all of 15 minutes to do it…
Now I am just waiting for the Devil Covid…
“Canadian real estate prices are once again the focus of an international agency. An IMF annual staff audit cites home prices as one of the biggest threats to the country’s economy…
“They… recommend mitigating leverage build up, and taxing speculators…”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/betterdwelling.com/imf-recommends-canada-implement-anti-speculation-taxes-cites-real-estate-as-risk/amp/
“New Zealand on Tuesday (March 23) introduced a raft of measures to cool its red-hot housing market, slugging investors with new taxes and promising to boost supply after housing affordability fell to its lowest ever.”
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/property/new-zealand-slaps-taxes-on-investors-to-cool-housing-market
“Weakened real estate market in smaller Chinese cities is weighing on people’s ability to spend, impeding government’s goal of driving economic growth.”
https://amp.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3126220/chinas-property-price-declines-lower-tier-cities-take-heavy
This sounds like a worry. Even in lower tiered cities, home prices have been high relative to incomes. People bought extra homes as a place to hide their savings since there is (at least in the past) no property tax in China.
Sounds like problems related to too easy money.
Too easy money and belief that real estate prices can only go up.
I wonder who’s responsible for these two…
If you tax investors you will get less investment. If you have less investment there will be fewer new houses. If you have fewer new houses affordability will fall.
But when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. A scenario that perfectly fits the absurd and incompetent government of New Zealand.
Another well written, plausible, intelligent and very credible article Gail. Still hope you’re wrong though! ‘-)
It’s a shame that in the past year massive stimulus has only really benefited billionaires and the stock marker. How ibis it that the richest person in the world was created by printed money in 2020 – Elon Musk?
People are looking for a miracle. Elon Musk claims to be promising a miracle. In fact, what little profits he gets are only possible through government subsidy programs. It is the “growth potential” that people and businesses with a little extra funds are looking for. The bizarre claims of Elon Musk feed into this.
Gail,
Has it ever been different? When railroads were going west, every other mile they received a section of land on one side or other of the right of way, land purchased from the Amerindians at I am sure a fair price. Tough to negotiate if one has to chase a train with a horse.
There is nothing much left here, it is do or (die?)
Money for fracking almost certainly in one way or another came from a central bank, what were the options? It made things work for a few more years, something is better than nothing.
Dennis L.
I completely agree with you. I’m certainly interested in a Mars for scientific reasons, but the idea of a base on Mars, on an energy and economic basis, is just absurd! Totally crazy, stimulus checks appear to be why his company is worth more than the entire top 10 automakers combined.
CGI is amazing …
https://youtu.be/ej3ioOneTy8
https://youtu.be/1Ll-VHYxWXU
I completely agree with you. I’m certainly interested in a Mars for scientific reasons, but the idea of a base on Mars, on an energy and economic basis, is just absurd! Totally crazy, stimulus checks appear to be why his company is worth more than the entire top 10 automakers combined.
Bread and circuses. The less bread, the more circuses.
I’m not suggesting that Enron isn’t rich, but let’s see what happens with his paper wealth if he starts selling his shares in large amounts.
Australia floods see swarming spiders and wet wallabies as animals seek refuge
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-australia-56489807
22 March 2021 Australia
First fires, now floods – it’s been a terrible year for Australia’s wildlife and livestock that are now trying to survive the rainfall pummelling New South Wales.
Reports of spiders swarming by residents’ homes to reach higher ground have spread on social media but animals are struggling across eastern Australia.
In the worst flooding in decades, close to a metre of rain has fallen in some parts of New South Wales and more is forecast to come, forcing thousands of people to evacuate.
From a farm in Kinchela Creek, one man posted an image of hundreds of spiders running across a muddy field.
“All the brown you can see is spiders trying to beat the flood water,” Matt Lovenfosse wrote on Facebook, adding that he expected them to soon be inside his house.
An expert told ABC that, like people and animals, the insects were trying to seek safety on higher ground.
“What happens with the floods is all these animals that spend their lives cryptically on the ground can’t live there anymore,” explained Professor Dieter Hochuli from Sydney University
…..
Livestock in farms or pasture have been trapped as rivers burst their banks or fields saturated with rainwater turned to mud.
“There were cows that were up to their head in the water,” one farmer close to Port Macquarie told the Guardian newspaper.
Gavin Saul lost 85 cows in the floodwater, explaining: “They wouldn’t swim and were heading for these trees and got all tangled in the vines.”
Sounds like a terrible time down under
This is the way the system is intended to operate. There is a whole lot of variability in rain supply. Excesses of the system can be eliminated in this way. Evolution takes place constantly. There is a huge overproduction of offspring to allow for survival of the best adapted.
We have adapted ourselves to thinking that every plant and animal (and every human) should live out its maximum life span. That is not nature’s approach, even if we would like it that way. It defeats evolution.
Thank you for the clarification. Others feel otherwise, however
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rfoYGT6UytY
We shall see. We shall see
Sixth-Extinction or Bust it is then.
I was back-tracking on Tim Watkins articles and had just finished What the Pandemic Really Taught Us About Climate Science when I hopped over here to read comments. In the last paragraph he notes:
“Because when all is said and done, what the end of the lockdown demonstrated was that all of us – young and old, left and right, blue and red – can only tolerate a change in our lifestyles for a short time. There is simply no way that more than an inconsequential minority will ever put up with the level of disruption needed even to slow climate change; still less reverse it.”
The climate change story is really a cover for the real story: Lives will have to change because we can no longer extract as much oil, coal, and natural gas.
Good quote from the recent Michael Moore documentary FE linked:
“It’s not CO2, it’s us, and EVERYTHING we do.”
And we’ve barely slowed the burn rate hahaha….
Of course this has nothing to do with GW (let’s not call it CChange… that’s just the term the PR people came up with to deal with the fact that in a lot of places its getting colder… then they trotted out some flunkies to explain to the MORE ons – who will believe anything — that the world is actually getting colder because it’s getting warmer in the Arctic…. yep – and 1+1 = 5678…. gawd the stooopidity is epic… please take the jab… pleased… we need to end this joke)…..
And everything to do with reducing oil consumption to prevent the engine from running red hot and causing $500 oil…..
We cannot have that … so we shut down what we can including a lot of air travel… to give the Elders time to executive the CEP.
Proof of the Vaccination Rush?
https://www.aol.com/finance/doordash-deliver-home-covid-19-121801688.html
I think what is being offered are more or less, mail-in tests to tell if a person has COVID-19, unless Door Dash has made arrangements with a local lab.
It seems to me that the only reason why this might work now is because the incidence of COVID-19 is down, so that the labs that do the tests are not so overwhelmed that they have a chance of being able to do the tests on a timely basis.
I know that COSTCO has been offering the saliva based test, for quite a while. When I checked, it was a very slow process. You first had to call or email a central distribution center. They would mail you the saliva test, taking a couple of days. You would mail it back, taking another couple of days. Processing could take several days as well, because labs were backed up. I presume a person would get the results emailed.
It is hard for me to believe that a swab based test would be very accurate. Most people would not jam it down the way that they seem to do it in clinical settings. There would likely be a lot of false negatives.
Thanks! wERE IT NOT EVEN 100% THE CASE, it is so sobering as to make the difference between some kind of realism and wild overreaction!
“President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package in 2021.” FIFY
The earliest version of this post was wrong, but I fixed it long ago on OurFiniteWorld.com.
This is an easy thing even for reviewers to overlook. It sounds right, but if you stop and think about it, it is absurdly wrong.
Late but well-meaning!
“The global chip shortage is continuing to pummel global business, with Samsung, Honda and Volkswagen among the latest major companies to warn of sustained disruption.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/17/tech/samsung-honda-vw-semiconductor-shortage-intl-hnk/index.html
“Detroit automakers are struggling to keep production and shipments of highly profitable pickup trucks going as interruptions in manufacturing across the world have led to a global semiconductor chip shortage that’s hitting the automotive industry.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/22/chip-shortage-has-detroit-automakers-struggling-to-maintain-truck-production-and-meet-orders.html
“Volvo Group declined after the truckmaker said it’ll have to suspend production across its operations because of the shortage of semiconductors that’s disrupted the car industry for months.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-23/volvo-group-slumps-after-warning-chip-shortage-will-idle-plants
Just a reminder that this was the situation in 2019:
“Automakers such as GM, Ford and Mercedes-Benz cut thousands of jobs and restructured operations globally to save billions in 2019… amid slowing vehicle sales and fears of an economic slowdown heading into the 2020s.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/automakers-cut-jobs-close-factories-to-save-billions-in-2019.html
Good point! It is convenient to have a semiconductor shortage to blame a slowdown on. Also, the number of vehicles that can be build may already be lower.
Harry,
Not sure if this is true or false, one poster from Canada noted their company was used to paying vendors 120 or so days after purchase, no interest.
Companies have played this game for years, now everything runs lean and when something goes wrong they cry. This is basically the same as electrical rates in Texas, minimize cashflow, play games. First company to write a check, establish a good relationship with a chip maker will do just fine, chips will fall where they may so to speak.
How do you think the 1% got all the cash? It is the squeeze.
Dennis L.
Dennis, when working in the public sector I became familiar with that game. It is usually played by the middleman against both sides. For example, I needed to order some reference books to prepare a new course at a certain university (which shall remain nameless).
Standard process: order through the university library, who will deal with the publisher. “And how long does that take?” I naively asked. “Four to six weeks.”
I had the books from Amazon 48 hours later, at over 30% off the price quoted by the university. Of course, I had to pay for them myself, but thought the tradeoff of money for time a good bargain.
Here in Malta, I have had about EUR4000 of improvements done to my home. Always under the same terms: payment in full, in cash, immediately upon completion of the work. You might be amazed at the quality of service one gets with that arrangement.
“The entire US economy is about $22 trillion a year. The amount of money, as measured by M1, in the economy has …gone from $4 trillion to $16 trillion in the last year and is still rising fast…
“Is The Entire U.S. Dollar Global Economic System At Risk Of Collapse? …Yes, as always and maybe more imminently than most people think… I hate to quote Lenin, but…
““There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.””
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4415419-is-entire-us-dollar-global-economic-system-risk-of-collapse
“With low interest rates for most of the past decade, it was clear from the start of the COVID-19 crisis that central banks had little room for maneuver with conventional policy tools. They would have to lean even more heavily on unconventional measures, including initiating or extending corporate asset-purchase programs…
“…the longer their market support continues, the riskier the search for yield may become. Monetary policymakers and credit investors alike are facing an unenviable dilemma.”
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/central-banks-credit-markets-catch22-by-patrick-drury-byrne-and-sylvain-broyer-2021-03
A chart of M1 money supply is simply astounding. The amount goes “straight up” at the end. It is possible to print money, but not goods and services. Will this really work? We will find out. Something, somewhere will go very wrong. It may very badly affect international trade.
It is mind-boggling. I was also struck by this tidbit of info in the SA article”
“The numbers have gotten so out of control in the M1 data that the Fed says they’re not going to publish this data set anymore.”
“The pandemic recession has pushed 9.8 million more Americans into food insecurity…
“Our latest projection shows that the overall food insecurity rates rose sharply, from 10.9% in 2019 to 13.9% in 2020. In terms of people, that means a rise from 35.2 million food insecure Americans in 2019 to 45 million in 2020.”
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-pandemic-recession-million-americans-food.html
“The financial fallout of Covid-19 has pushed child hunger to record levels. The need has been dire since the pandemic began and highlights the gaps in the nation’s safety net.
“While every US county has seen hunger rates rise, the steepest jumps have been in some of the wealthiest counties…”
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/23/health/wealthy-counties-child-hunger-khn-partner-wellness/index.html
At least counties with a lot of food insecure children already have programs in place to try to feed them. Around here, schools have free breakfast and free lunch programs. There are also programs for delivering lunches when school is not in session. There are also a lot of food pantries. Also, whenever I go to the grocery store, the checkout clerk asks whether I want to give money to make a food donation. The amount I donate will be matched by the store. It is usually groups that have been started by religious organizations that play a big role in the food distribution.
Based on what I see around here, all those organizations trying to feed children is a big mistake.
They buy the cheapest industrial grade food (all corn syrup and such) and sicken the poor children.
If instead there was no help, MAYBE some parents would wake up and start growing a veg garden next to their apartment or at least they would stop eating at McD and cook at home.
Yes, the children suffer but poisoning them and perpetuating the fast-food stupidity cycle will only make them suffer more later.
There are some orgs (for example in Detroit) that grow gardens with volunteers and donate them to poor families. If you want to support something, support them.
My husband and I helped with a local food give away program, up until the pandemic. Then we received an e-mail saying that our services were no longer needed; they were no longer using workers over age 60, given the potential exposure to the virus. So I don’t know what has happened recently.
When we helped before the pandemic, the donations of food seemed to come from restaurants, caterers, and grocery stores. They also had some fresh food, some of it from gardens planted for the purpose of giving locally grown food to the poor. A church provided the place to store things until they were distributed, including some refrigeration capacity.
The food tended to follow the pattern of what these stores and restaurants sold, but probably not much “bake from scratch” food as one would like. They tended to distribute a lot of meat (from restaurants?) perhaps reaching its “use by” date. I saw leftover cakes, decorated for Valentine’s Day, right after Valentine’s Day, and boxes of a “blue” color of cake mix that I expect did not sell well in stores. But there was a general mix of canned fruits and vegetables (no frozen food), some milk, and various products sold in grocery stores, including some snack foods. I don’t remember much cheese, eggs, nuts or fish being given out. There was some produce, but not a huge amount, relative to the other foods being given away.
I know that since COVID hit, there have been a lot of things in short supply in grocery stores (signs saying, don’t take more than two, for example), such as beans, lentils, rice, spaghetti sauce, boxes of macaroni and cheese mix. I would expect that these things might be in short supply to give out to those in need of food as well.
“While every US county has seen (child) hunger rates rise, the steepest jumps have been in some of the wealthiest counties…”
Another data point relevant to an earlier post: the old (and rich) are now looting the young of their lives.
This is what they have planned for all along. They will adapt this technology into as many jabs as possible.
A safe and highly efficacious measles virus-based vaccine expressing SARS-CoV-2 stabilized prefusion spike
Measles virus (MeV) vaccine is one of the safest and most efficient vaccines with a track record in children. Here, we generated a panel of rMeV-based vaccines with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) S antigens inserted near 3′ of the MeV genome. The rMeV expressing a soluble stabilized, prefusion spike (preS) is much more potent in triggering SARS-CoV-2–specific neutralizing antibody than rMeV-based full-length S vaccine candidate. A single dose of rMeV-preS is sufficient to induce high levels of SARS-CoV-2 antibody in animals. Furthermore, rMeV-preS induces high levels of Th1-biased immunity. Hamsters immunized with rMeV-preS were completely protected against SARS-CoV-2 challenge. Our results demonstrate rMeV-preS is a safe and highly efficacious bivalent vaccine candidate for SARS-CoV-2 and MeV.
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/12/e2026153118
The way I read this, the “bivalent” vaccine would protect against COVID-19 and measles.
“President Joe Biden will be briefed by advisers this week on infrastructure, climate and jobs proposals being considered by the White House that could collectively cost as much as $4 trillion, according to people familiar with discussions.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-spending/biden-infrastructure-jobs-spending-push-could-hit-4-trillion-source-idUSKBN2BE2QR
“The stock market is assuming that the damage the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve are beginning to inflict on the recovering economy will be limited… that happy assumption will explode.
“The Fed is underestimating the massive amount of money printing it will have to do to finance the largest peacetime spending the U.S. has ever engaged in.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2021/03/23/stock-market-bubble-will-burst-and-inflation-will-follow/amp/
“Inflation Fears Continue To Mount… One reason behind rising interest rate fears is that import prices continue to rise.
“Overall, import prices have risen 3% in the past 12 months, so inflationary pressures continue to build.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4415529-inflation-fears
I am afraid Steve Forbes is right. He is also worried about the possibility of massive tax hikes. These seem unlikely to me.
Gail,
Just want to say thank you for another great article.
I see many problems of our times being very interconnected.
But it’s always good to focus on just certain aspects of our predicament.
This time debt.
If our monetary system would not depend on steady growth it would seem natural that negative interest rates come into play as soon as the underlying (easily obtainable) energy supply is shrinking. Probably it had to match the percentage of yearly shrinkage in energy supply.
That is not happening. So even without inflation our money becomes pretty much worthless over time.
I would pretty much agree with you, if the results of shrinkage were uniform. It doesn’t work that way, however. The results vary a whole lot, with some coming out better than others. In not too long, it looks as if the whole system tends to collapse. There may very well be a small number of survivors from the collapsing system. The simply model you suggest operates in the right direction, but doesn’t do enough.
Let’s think about what happens. When the energy supply is shrinking, businesses everywhere become unprofitable. They start laying off workers. Some of these workers are able to find jobs elsewhere, but quite a few cannot find jobs, or can only find jobs that pay much less. These people probably eat less well. They are likely to succumb to epidemics or drug overdoses.
Governments find it difficult to collect enough taxes. They add a whole lot more debt, to try to even out what is happening, providing benefits to everyone. But this doesn’t really work right either. There are physical shortages of desired goods, such as semiconductor chips, new appliances and easy-to-store foods. The cost of shipping rises because storage containers are in the wrong places. Refineries start getting closed down because too many are operating at a low percentage of capacity, leaving places like New Zealand, Australia and Europe to increasingly rely on imported finished products, if they are available.
Parts of the system increasing collapse, with the “periphery” collapsing before the core.
Hi Gail,
I think your comment with containers at the wrong place is really interesting. I think this relates to another statement you use often regarding Europe to China containers being empty due to China no longer recycling. Do you happen to know any book that would explain how the shipping economy works?
No. I just this morning noticed a chart on “Daily Shot” (of charts) showing that the problem is too many containers leaving China and not enough coming back. Europe is especially bad, with not enough to send back. The US has some of this problem as well. Getting rid of recycling is part of the problem, but not sending as much other goods is an issue as well.
I should add, the US export problem seems to be a West Coast problem. It is not as much an issue with Houston or the East Coast. The US exports a lot of grain and soybeans. These may very well be exported by taking them by barge down the Mississippi. Overland travel to the West Coast is an expensive method of transport. The West Coast doesn’t have a whole lot to export right now, I don’t think. At one point, we were sending some coal to China, but China has been refusing coal imports, trying to drive its internal price of coal up, so that coal production can be profitable in China.
Gail said: “. The West Coast doesn’t have a whole lot to export right now,”
I don’t know the quantities but there are grain terminals connected by train to the hinterlands.
Remember that west coast is a thin strip of maritime climate. On the other side of the mountains they grow a lot of wheat. This is less than a 1000 miles by train.
I wonder where to find data about this.
I am not sure, except using Google. I have been following the unfolding crisis for a while.
I have read that there are a lot of connections that need to be made, in order for shipments to actually take place. There need to be workers to help unload and truckers to pull the containers where they need to go. There are no doubt other things that need to happen, if the trip is part truck and part rail.
One article I ready talked about the need for empty containers, to go back to China to ship high valued goods was so high that some boats returned empty, rather than wait a bit for the proper connection to be made to bring relatively low-valued food supplies back with them.
I read that some of the disruption on the West Coast was due to COVID and fear of COVID, too. The California governor has put in place lockdowns that many other states would have failed to put in place. This article gives a timeline.
It starts already:
Care home staff to face compulsory covid vaccination
Coming to an occupation near you soon!
The treatment if these people is disgraceful: although in theory they able to leave the sector and seek employment which does not require (for the time being) being injected, they probably have no other option, it is effectively compulsory participation in a mass drug trial, and thus a crime against humanity.
Those who inject them are, quite simply, criminals.
No doubt regulators would seek to punish care providers who did not force the injections on their staff,as they would term it ‘best practice’?
We are descending into the abyss with great rapidity: anyone know of any spells or incantations to ward off Evil? They will be needed……
I think I am correct in thinking that you are self employed? In that case, you should be able to hold out for as long as cash still exists as a medium of exchange. For me, it’s only a matter of time before Taxi Licensing make vaccination a requirement of licence renewal. At least I have two years before my own licence needs renewing. However, given I keep advising passengers not to get vaccinated, it’s only a matter of time before I am called in to explain myself. At the weekend, one of my passengers was a student nurse who told me how happy she was to have been vaccinated. I ought to have shut up at that point, but I didn’t, and I ended up getting reported for refusing to wear a mask. The accusation wasn’t even true and I would have put one on if she had asked; she was just trying to get me in trouble for having a different opinion.
An appalling story, Yorkichan – what a horrible creature that fascistic nurse must be to turn you in!
On the other hand, she is just another victim of institutional brainwashing and a deficient educational system. The NHS is increasingly sinister and lacking in integrity.
Yes, self-semi-employed, and very thankful not to have to face any vaccination ultimatum from an ignorant and conformist employer.
Xabier, one benefit(!) of this creepy crisis is that I finally understand how it was possible for the Nazis to convert a whole country to mass murderers.
You probably know the story of the nazi nurses and how they were convinced step by step to go from caring for people to killing “undesirables”.
BTW, I know understanding their mentality should help me emapthize with them but in my case, it just makes me despise them even more (both the nazis and especially today’s would be murderers).
I’d agree, and what we are seeing now gives one far too many ‘historical flashbacks’ for comfort!
There are Himmlers, Speers and Mengeles among us, waiting to step forward, and all their little helpers at the ready.
There’s an excellent video on YT about the Nazi nurses, ‘Caring Corrupted’ or something like that.
It is perhaps no accident that Klaus Schwab was raised in the Nazi ethos, his father having run a factory in Germany, using slave labour as they all did. These people never repented, and only ever regretted having lost.
I’m all in favour of infanticide, geronticide, etc, but in a tribal context when it is the established custom, and really the only appropriate response to very limited resources and probably the need to remain mobile as a group, with everyone able-bodied. Therefore in context, it is merciful and not a crime.
But secret and hypocritical killing, which is what in effect it appears we are seeing now in many places, is abhorrent.
I don’t enquire into whether an acquaintance has been vaccinated (especially those I care about). The divisive and fractured nature of society today precludes advice or comfort after the fact. My conclusion is that a wicked society on its last legs has done this to them. (As the dragon dies, its tail remains deadly.) And my posture is that, to the best of my ability, I’ll merely endeavor to help them should the vaccinations bring them down. And I wear a mask for a variety of reasons. It’s too easy a ‘fix’ to warrant getting into trouble over.
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Not sure who writes this guy’s stuff… but damn… I am envious!!!
https://off-guardian.org/2021/03/21/media-pseudo-debates-and-the-silence-of-leftist-critics/
@Fast Eddy, I read that article and it made me sad.
“But for a core group of prominent left/liberal critics, these two subjects have been avoided like they are of no importance. No debates, no discussions, no analyses – simply silence, as if they didn’t happen and there was nothing to discuss. Cases closed: the government has spoken. Let us move on to more important matters.”
This applies to so many people that I respect and used to read constantly. They just pretend nothing happened last year and continue to criticize a ghost.
John Michael Greer, JH Kunstler, Derek Jensen, Christopher Ryan etc…
This last one even yelled on his podcast: “Just wear the damn mask!”.
To see a supporter of hunter-gatherers become overnight an authoritarian is just depressing.
Others (like Kunstler or JMG) keep talking about the next elections like they matter in any meaningful way.
All these so-called critics have become a niche business, catering to retired middle class dreaming of times past – and they will lose their income once those retirees lose their pensions.
John Michael Greer and James Kunstler assume that collapse will be prolonged and go down in several stages.
They assume there will not be anything near a total collapse of civilization in these upcoming decades, but it goes down stepwise.
In light of this assumption it makes sense to wonder about the next elections, because governments at times have the option of shifting resources, ie taking home troops for example and invest the remaining wealth away from the global military into the national existing economy.
Or the other way around, burning one’s left resource on futile skirmishes and diplomatic battles with the rest of the world.
But we’ll see.
We really don’t know. Avalanches seem to occur with a few small slips, before a big chunk falls down. GDP could work that way as well. There probably can be substitutes for our current financial system on a local basis, but it is not clear how much can be produced locally. It is perhaps best that we don’t know. There may be different solutions in different parts of the world. Africa may go forward with some very local agriculture of root vegetables that they never really left.
i have to agree with you Gail the bubble is about to burst but the elders are getting ready for the final solution which will probably be an authoritarian world communist system under the guise of the great reset so their is nothing to worry about you just need to adapt to the coming changes here is a snippet 70 % inheritance taxes a reduced world population and in klaus schwabs words ‘ Business leaders now have an incredible opportunity. By giving stakeholder capitalism concrete meaning, they can move beyond their legal obligations and uphold their duty to society. They can bring the world closer to achieving shared goals, such as those outlined in the Paris climate agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. If they really want to leave their mark on the world, there is no alternative’.
Share
It is hard to believe that something like what the World Economic Forum is asking for might actually be enacted. Of course, with a failing world financial system, something would need to take its place (or perhaps several different things, in different parts of the world). There is a lot we don’t know for certain.
Covid mRNA Jab Allows Remote Neural Monitoring
https://www.bitchute.com/video/c8MEOxJP2ru9/
I don’t know about this. Perhaps it is just as well that the world is hitting energy limits.
This is probably an idea planted by the CEP PR Team to make a mockery of any non-MSM theory regarding the true purpose of the vaccines. It is a common tactic
Israeli court upholds school’s barring of COVID refusenik teacher
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – An Israeli court on Sunday upheld a school’s decision to bar a teaching assistant who had refused to show proof she had been vaccinated or tested for COVID-19, in what could be a test case as the country reopens after its vaccine drive.
A court spokeswoman said she believed it was Israel’s first ruling on COVID-19 policy in the workplace, though it could still be overturned on appeal.
Some Israeli schools, in reopening, have required that their staff show proof either of vaccination or negative once-weekly COVID-19 tests.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-israel-vaccine/israeli-court-upholds-schools-barring-of-covid-refusenik-teacher-idUSKBN2BD0I4
So an Israeli court has just repudiated the First Principle of the Nuremberg Code. Dr Josef Mengele would have been proud of them. Anne Frank, rather less so. Coming soon to a concentration camp near you.
You know things are serious when Jewish people are willing to violate:
Nuremberg Medical Code
The ten points became known as the “Nuremberg Code”, which includes such principles as informed consent and absence of coercion; properly formulated scientific experimentation; and beneficence towards experiment participants.
Benjamin Goodman: 32-year-old New York stagehand dead 24 hours after Johnson & Johnson viral vector shot
Mr. Benjamin Goodman went to a Walgreens pop-up COVID-19 “vaccine” clinic in Chelsea, New York on Saturday, March 13. He received the experimental Johnson & Johnson viral vector shot, according to his stepmother Pamela Goodman. Benjamin texted his father, Jeff Goodman, and told him he received the shot. The family was not happy to hear the news. Soon thereafter, Benjamin had a severe headache and started feeling ill. He fell asleep, hoping the symptoms would pass after some rest.
Mr. Goodman woke up at 1 a.m. with a high fever and chills. His fiancée, Lindsay Janisse, was awakened to Mr. Goodman having seizures at 4 a.m.. Ms. Janisse called 911 as Mr. Goodman went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics tried, unsuccessfully, to revive him on the scene. Mr. Goodman was rushed to a nearby Mount Sinai Hospital. But he was pronounced dead at 6:05 a.m. Sunday morning, March 14.
https://thecovidblog.com/2021/03/21/benjamin-goodman-32-year-old-new-york-stagehand-dead-24-hours-after-johnson-johnson-viral-vector-shot/
Desirée Penrod: 25-year-old Connecticut educator dead one week after Johnson & Johnson viral vector shot
DANIELSON, CONNECTICUT — The Johnson & Johnson experimental viral vector shot has claimed another young victim with a promising future.
Ms. Desirée Penrod said on Facebook that she received the “Janssen dose” on or around March 9. Janssen Pharmaceuticals is the drug division of Johnson & Johnson, and developed the JNJ-78436735 viral vector shot. It is marketed as the one-dose vaccine. The 25-year-old educator said she felt no adverse effects the first day of the shot. But she said the “vaccine is killing me today” on March 10.
The next day she said she was feeling better “for the most part.” That was the last comment she made on Facebook. Ms. Penrod died on Wednesday, March 17, becoming the youngest victim this blog has covered for all of the experimental shots.
https://thecovidblog.com/2021/03/22/desiree-penrod-25-year-old-connecticut-educator-dead-one-week-after-johnson-johnson-viral-vector-shot/
Thanks for sharing these stories, Michael, tragic and depressing though they are. When we are surrounded by such deceitful and persuasive propaganda in the effort to stampede us all into accepting the injections, these reports help to keep us in touch with what’s real.
Every time I read about the Covid-vax spike protein induced prion disease (Neurodegeneration, wasting, insomnia, motor impairment, memory loss) I remember that the CDC has millions of taxpayer dollars dedicated to a zombie preparedness program.
https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/zombie/index.htm
So, with billions of spikes floating around, what are the chances of an accellerated CJD progression?
(I mean it takes 2-5 years incubation when you ingest some ‘mad cow’ beef, right? Not many prions there; and most stay in the gut?)
The S1 protein of SARS-CoV-2 crosses the blood–brain barrier in mice
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-00771-8
SARS-CoV-2 Prion-Like Domains in Spike Proteins Enable Higher Affinity to ACE2
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202003.0422/v1
Was he injected with the spike last fall?
How Did One of The World’s Top Cancer Researchers Succumb To a Rare Brain Infection?
https://www.survivornet.com/articles/tragic-medical-mystery-how-did-one-of-the-worlds-top-cancer-researchers-succumb-to-a-rare-brain-infection/
But you’d think that most people would be unaffected by this — because their brains are already mush?????
My mother was a medical technologist before I was born, working as an assistant to a medical researcher. She had a good friend who was also a medical technologist. That friend continued to work in medical research. She died, I think in her 50’s, from catching the illness she was investigating, if I remember correctly. Lab accidents do happen. (My mother quit early.)
Norway: Died from blood clots after AstraZeneca vaccine, 54 years old:
https://www.tv2.no/nyheter/13902806/
Many thanks, Gail, for your brilliant and crucial observations and insights!
You say here:
“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.”
Would you please give me a reference for that last sentence. Sorry, I haven’t been following your work recently since it stopped appearing in the Resilience newsletters. I found this posting via Zero Hedge.
Wind and solar produce intermittent electricity. A big issue is that hardly anyone has figured out how to properly value intermittent electricity.
One way of looking at the situation is to figure out that you really need the full fossil fuel system to operate the grid, including all of the workers year around. All the wind and solar do is substitute for a little bit of the fuel required to operate the coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear powering the system. In addition, you also need a much bigger grid system, because wind and solar tend to be at a significant distance from where they are used. Also, the transmission lines need to be sized for the maximum quantity of intermittent electricity to be used. These power lines need to be maintained, or they cause a lot of fires.
With this approach, before we deduct for the transmission line problem, wind and solar are “worth” about 2 cents a kilowatt hour, given the price of natural gas and coal. If we have to deduct for the transmission line problem, wind and solar are “worth” even less, probably less than 1 cents per kilowatt hour.
The one place where operating wind and solar to substitute wind and solar for part of the fuel is in remote locations, such as small islands, where oil is often the only other generation available. If fuel costs are outrageously high, then it can make economic sense to add wind and solar.
The usual approach of mandating renewables and giving wind and solar the ability to go first tends to drive out the needed backup power. Paid for nuclear plants particularly are hurt by the bizarre pricing scheme that is used. Also, the grid tends to be neglected because the total funds collected are too low. You can see what happens with California’s grid problems and many fires, and the big electrical outage in Texas recently. In Europe, there seem to be separate charges for the grid and the electricity. The countries with the largest share of intermittent electricity have the highest electrical costs to the consumer, because the full cost is so expensive.
As far as I can see, there is no “net energy” that truly goes back to the system. If there were, it would be very profitable to add wind and solar, without giving them the benefit of going first. They would need large amounts of battery backup, so that they can truly participate in the operation of the electric grid. If it were truly profitable, it would be possible to tax the electricity generated by them and generate revenue to give to the rest of society. The fact that wind and solar require subsidies (especially the subsidy of going first), year after year, makes it clear that they are a problem, not a solution.
I have written any number of articles about the problem. One article from 2016 is EROEI Calculations for Solar PV are Misleading. Another very recent article that deals with the issue is Why Collapse Occurs; Why It May Not Be Far Away“. I don’t get to this issue until the very end of the article. It is the fact that wind and solar require an incredibly complex system to support them that doesn’t get taken into account in the EROEI calculation anywhere.
Resilience is, of course, operated by the Post Carbon Institute. They desperately need “solutions” to offer, so they are not too willing to look at the problems involved, as far as I can see. I was never told why they stopped running my posts. Perhaps if I offered some of my posts to them they would run them on Resilience.
Or as this explains
https://www.bitchute.com/video/jA3cGLirW9Qp/
Thanks for (again) posting a link to this documentary.
Finally I’ve found time to watch it. W/o being completely surprised because I am already aware of many of the topics shown there.
What was really new to me were the plain facts about how certain/many envrionmental organisations (playing a big political role as they promote a lot of things) are financed/paid by big money.
The citation at the end is really a good summary — or was back then in the 60s:
“Humankind is challenged, as it never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery — not of nature, but of itself.”
— Rachel Carson 1962
Somehow a citation, a parable from “The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams” comes into mind. (I’ve read the German edition.)
Let him state it himself (part of a recording (probably from 2001):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8mJr4c66bs
(Douglas Adams: The Sentient Puddle)
[30,328 views • Apr 22, 2012, 4Boxxy]
The majority of humans have an optimism bias. That’s why someone like Dr Mark Jacobson is so popular. He serenely states that by 2031 we can not only replace our electric grid with solar wind and hydro but also all our other energy requirements and keep BAU.I’ve been told that when scientists questioned his assumptions rather than responding with studies and data he sued them. Question the “green” narrative at your own risk.It’s more political than scientific.
Paul, let me tentatively offer what I hope is an explanation. And please allow me to begin with EROEI.
This is a very useful metric, within its limits of applicability; outside those limits, it is a spinner of delusion. You are an oil company. You have the wells drilled, the technologies for extraction, purification and refining all mature and in place, and you have access to the pipelines, railway cars, or trucks that will deliver the oil products to the many, many sites where they can be burned to perform useful work.
If your company consumes one gallon of oil as part of its ongoing business, how many gallons can it extract and process? That is EROEI, and it is pleasingly high.
In money terms, that is a “going concern” calculation: your company earns, month by month, more in revenue than it spends to generate that revenue, and that calculation works for oil as well as for money. But all is not well.
The honest calculation is “life cycle cost”, which includes all the capital, and of course all the oil, that was needed to create that huge infrastructure. Plus the reserves of both money and oil that will be needed to decommission it and restore the empty wells and closed factories to their pristine state. And that is never fully costed.
The key fallacy behind Keynesian economics, and hence behind Modern Monetary Theory, is the decoupling of “going concern” from “life cycle” costing, and this is what is destroying our monetary economy. There are many companies that seem to turn a profit month by month, but behind the scenes they are zombie companies, because they are carrying a burden of debt that cannot be repaid.
This will end in the way it has always ended: with default. Which is easy enough if the zombies are few and small; but when, as now, the economy is full of zombies, it can be ruinous. As one domino falls, it will take down the slightly larger domino, and then the next larger, until it takes down governments, countries, and the currencies that underpin world trade. Which is where we are now.
But this will not work for energy, because we cannot borrow energy from the future with a fraudulent promise to repay. Energy consumed today must be extracted today, so the only useful calculation is indeed life cycle cost. And when you do that calculation for wind, you find that the cost of mining the raw materials, fabricating the windmills, building the infrastructure to erect them, to access them for maintenance, and to connect them to the grid … this takes more energy than the windmill will generate. It is an energy sink, and one parasitic on an existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Again, it is a delusion.
That is the basis of our predicament, because an energy deficit cannot be solved by default; it can be solved only by collapse. Thank you for listening.
Thanks Gail and Robert for your detailed responses! I will chew over these for a while! And I will watch the video Eddy recommended. I am much obliged.
Might I add that the governments (and the Elders) are aware that wind and solar are a sink… but they allocate a pittance of energy generated from fossil fuels to subsidize those projects because they are generating hope.
Hope in that the cattle (someone gave me grief the other day for calling people sheeple .. so I said ok … let’s go with the Elders term – goyim… or cattle… we could use pigs or chickens as well… any barnyard animal will do)….. who understand oil is finite…. need to be made to believe that we have something to transition to before oil becomes a problem.
Happy cattle give the best milk and meat…. therefore they must be made to believe that the fields of grass are limitless.
Robert
Hundreds of books on Economics, each with hundreds of pages are published each year and yet you are able to sum up our wicked problem in 9 paragraphs. If I may say so very well done.
Krispy Kreme will give a free doughnut a day to anyone with a COVID-19 vaccination card
Krispy Kreme will give away a free glazed doughnut to anyone who comes in with a COVID-19 vaccination card through the end of 2021, the company announced Monday.
“Whatever little things brands can do to help make it past the pandemic are good things,” Chief Marketing Office Dave Skena told Insider in a phone call. There are no limits on the free donuts, so a vaccinated person could potentially go every day.
The chain will also give employees up to four hours of paid time off to get both vaccine doses. “I hope that other brands will see and choose to do something similar,” Skena said.
While employees have the time to get vaccinated, Krispy Kreme will not require vaccinations. Getting vaccinated is a “personal choice,” Skena says that they “want to encourage and make sure nothing is standing in the way.”
Krispy Kreme isn’t the only company offering accommodations to help employees get vaccinated. Target and Dollar General are two of many offering vacation time for vaccine appointments. Kroger, Petco, and Publix are all offering cash or gift cards to employees who show proof of vaccinations.
Krispy Kreme says it will also support workers and volunteers at vaccination sites with free doughnuts at certain centers across the country in the next few weeks.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/krispy-kreme-free-donut-day-040100032.html
Okay, so thats the US done. Canada might still stand a chance, but Tim Horton’s …. that can go either way at this point.
If Porsche offers me a 2021 911 Turbo I’ll get the vaccine.
But a doughnut? They want me to play Russian Roulette – for a doughnut????
How horrible would it be to get the jab — the free doughnut – they go blind… or die… and miss out on all the hoopla that is coming!!!
HOOP-la!!!
Porsche got bastardized with the VW lately (design, parts, ..) getting ugly and non premium, so you should up your price niveau then. Lets say getting the jab in exchange for a yacht or helicopter etc..
Nah, too cheap a sale. I would only accept that jab for true wealth: Health. As this doesn’t seem really possible, f*ck the yacht.
‘No Wealth but Life!’ (John Ruskin)
Obviously discussed on FE’s terms only, I’m not much into big item vanity stuff and bucket listing..
Yachts and carz are re-known maintenance sinks especially NOW with the looming resource strain to repair potholes, ports and all infrastructure at proper pace y/y ..
This is the end game.
If the vaccine doesn’t kill you, a doughnut a day will finish the job.
Be careful. The type 2 diabetes associated with such a rubbish diet will make you more likely to suffer a disastrous case of Covid.
Uncle Joe Santa Claus Biden acts like a noble Roman Leader and burns the debt records on Capital Hill…What a Guy!…from Forbes.com
5. Biden cancels $1 billion of student loans, but taxpayers will pay
A final group of people on social media say that this student loan cancellation is an unfair wealth transfer that sticks taxpayers with the bill. They say that student loan cancellation isn’t free; it’s funded by taxpayers. Some social media users question why taxpayers must bail out student loan borrowers who made bad decisions to attend for profit colleges, for example. (One retort from several social media users: Congress has bailed out large corporations. Why not forgive student loans for individual borrowers in financial need?). Others ask why there should be wide-scale student loan forgiveness for some borrowers when millions of other borrowers duly paid off their student loans by making financial sacrifices and, in some cases, working multiple jobs. They say there are several reasons why student loans shouldn’t be cancelled and they don’t want taxpayers paying for student loan forgiveness when the vast majority of Americans either don’t have student loans or didn’t attend college.
Biden student loan forgiveness: what’s next?
This may not be the only student loan forgiveness that will happen during the Biden administration. Congress and the president are both considering wide-scale student loan forgiveness. Importantly, this $1 billion of student loan cancellation is different than the wide-scale student loan cancellation that potentially could impact millions of student loan borrowers. The borrowers impacted through this major student loan announcement are a select group of people who got partial student loan forgiveness, but Biden wants to make these borrowers whole through borrower defense to repayment and cancel the remainder of their federal student loans too. The debate to cancel student loans for more student loan borrowers will continue. Therefore, don’t expect wide-scale student loan cancellation now. However, don’t expect all 45 million borrowers to get student loan forgiveness or get all their student loans forgiven. It’s more likely that Congress will limit who qualifies, how much student loan forgiveness there will be, and when the student loan cancellation might come. If Congress, rather than the president, cancels student loans, progressives in Congress will need to deliver a student loan bill that moderate Democrats can support.
Why pretend any longer…debt repaid?….come now….just move it to another file ledger….
Maybe a paltry billion does not matter to the state coffers (‘tax payers’) when the government is already 23 trillion in debt? Maybe this is another billion to be spent by consumers to boost the economy? In any case, it is a paltry figure these days.
It does look a bit like vote buying, though. ‘Uncle Joe sorted out my student debt, I will vote for him next time!’ If so then it was a prudent move by the DP – cheap at twice the price. DP and RP spent 14 billion campaigning in the 2020 election for swing votes.
Would I sell my vote to TP/LP for £40,000, the average student debt in UK? Let the bidding start! : ) This ‘democracy’ is a joke anyway, it could not really lose any more credibility, so why not? TP/LP often offer tax cuts/ benefits to appeal to voters, which is practically the same thing.
Apparently a majority of Scots would vote for independence if they were given £500.
Boris, give every Scot 500 pounds tomorrow. They are currently costing about 2000 a year in subsidies from England, so this must be the deal of the century.
Apparently half of NI still thinks that we really, really want them to be a part of our ‘country’.
Which half would that be? Those who still believe in the IRA nonsense about British imperialism, twenty years after the IRA gave up when the number of police spies in the organization exceeded the number of true zealots?
I’d say nearer 1% of the population than 50%.
Scots nationalists offer other people’s tax cuts and benefits to voters, their largesse depending on Boris.
No Scot is going to vote themselves into poverty.
neil, you may well be right, but they might be convinced by the SNPs promise of renewed prosperity when an independent Scotland rejoins the EU. A false promise, because the EU will impose on them ruinous terms, just as they did on Greece. And perhaps they might remember the EU’s promise there would be no hard border in Ireland; a promise they broke a few weeks ago with no consultation whatever with the affected parties.
So, on balance, I still hope it is we English who will vote the Scots into poverty, and good riddance. But that is one referendum the Powers That Be will never allow us to hold.
I think the absurd idea of independence followed by a rapid reversion to EU membership is already old hat.
What we’re hearing now is how the snp was quite happy to accept loss of EU membership had they won the referendum.
A prominent voice of reason in Scotland is now strangely George Galloway
VIDEO – EcoHealth/DTRA – Project 1742 – Bat blood study
Project 1742 (EcoHealth/DTRA) Risks of bat-borne zoonotic diseases in Western Asia (Duration: 24/10/2018-23 /10/2019) Funding: $71,500
The Covid police state: 68,000 Britons have now been fined for lockdown breaches including a young man dragged out of bed by cops and an 82-year-old questioned for having tea in a garden
Cameron Meechan and his girlfriend Danielle McHugh were lying peacefully in bed when the reality of Covid-19 lockdown law came crashing into their lives.
A dozen police officers kicked their bedroom door off its hinges and dragged Cameron out of bed while Danielle screamed in horror, wondering what crime could have merited such levels of violence.
Cameron, a 26-year-old chef, was thrown to the floor in his pyjamas and handcuffed, while Danielle’s bewildered flatmate, Ashley Pollock, 28, who’d been in her own bedroom, used her phone to film the mayhem unfolding in their Glasgow home.
But she, too, was cuffed, her phone confiscated and she was manhandled into the back of a police van.
You may suspect this was a raid designed to break up a drugs ring or people-trafficking operation, or to apprehend a dangerous killer, but you would be wrong. Cameron, Ashley and 27-year-old Danielle were wrongly thought to have been throwing a party.
Such has Covid-19 lockdown law come to epitomise a diminution of basic rights that some police officers now consider it proportionate to burst into someone’s home and carry them away, even when it is blindingly obvious that they are not breaking the law.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9382143/68-000-Britons-fined-lockdown-breaches.html
Glad I don’t live in the UK.
Based on what we have seen last year, UK is the test bed for the rest of the (anglophone) world.
Remember that UK is the US colony with the most pliant politicians.
Given the facts that you documented UK is in a full blown economic collapse and as such it is the perfect test subject for all the new plans – from lockdowns to vaccine passports to martial law.
I myself don’t think it’s possible to implement the same draconian measures here in US but who knows? Last year shattered whatever illusions I had about human nature and societies.
Karma for messing Europe for hundreds of years.
England has a lot to apologize to Louix XIV, Napoleon, the Kaiser and others.
Sorry, it will never be allowed to mess up Europe again. Never
Gail, so am I, and I was an Englishman born and bred. The country I grew up in, and loved, and fought for, no longer exists. So here I am, in what is perhaps the last truly Christian country in Western Europe, and in a village where everyone knows everyone else, and a simple handshake can seal a bargain worth over EUR 3000.
“The new world still is all less fair
Than the old world it mocks.”
Christian? Soon a Hindu will be the Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak took his oath on Bhagavad Gita
Is that really so terrible?
Not only was it the Bhagavad Gita, but the Bhagavad Gita As It Is (i.e. the translation by Hare Krishna founder A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada)”
https://iskconnews.org/history-made-in-british-parliament-with-bhagavad-gita-as-it-is,7203/
I suppose this is because Parliament provides the texts, and they found this the easiest to come by-not because the MPs preferred this translation.
Another Hindu MP was criticized for *not* using the Bhagavad Gita:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/uk-mp-under-fire-for-not-taking-oath-on-gita/articleshow/73039203.cms
Bap re!
I read some of that “translation”. It is rubbish. Read the “Complete Translation” by Jayaram V. Or the rather easier one by Annie Besant (yes, a Theosophist, but an honest one).
I don’t like the Prabhupada translation either, but Besant didn’t even know Sanskrit!
Bei Dawei, Besant’s knowledge of Sanskrit was indeed limited, but the co workers she gathered around her at the ‘Central Hindu School for Girls’ were some of the best in the world. And they ably assisted her in preparing the translation of 1805.
She also became an early supporter of “Swaraj”, Indian Home Rile, and had the British government done in 1918 what both prudence and honour required, and raised India to Dominion status with full self government, much tragedy might have been averted, including the rise of mass murderer Jawaharlal Nehru.
Kulm, Robert is describing Malta, where he lives, as “perhaps the last truly Christian country in Western Europe”; not the UK, where he was born and bred.
As long as hypersonic and ICBMs are not flying, or human caravans approaching dozens of millions of people crossing the borders, yes some low-er pop parts of the US are very good place to stay put indeed.
Israel became one of the first nations in the world to mandate COVID-19 vaccines, and to introduce a COVID passport system that would only allow individuals to participate in society – including commerce – after they received the vaccine and were approved to join the system.
Now, a group of Israeli Jews are suing the Netanyahu administration in international court, making the case that Israel is violating the Nuremberg Code by essentially making Israelis subject to a medical experiment using the controversial vaccines.
https://nationalfile.com/israeli-jews-petition-international-criminal-court-say-israels-mandatory-covid-vaccines-violate-nuremberg-code/
Good luck with that approach!
I wonder if it would have helped to sue Hitler?
Force majure suckers…
🤣👍
Ha ha ha. So the Zionists, who from the Transfer Agreement of 1933 through the destruction of the Hungarian Jews in 1943 to 1944 proved themselves the most active and effective of “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”, are now seeking the protection of the victors? Have they forgotten their founding motto: “Through blood we shall obtain the Land”? It seems the Land is taking them at their word, and has a longer memory than they do. 骑虎难下 .
Similar to Brexit… as in nothing will happen till it’s too late and doesn’t matter.
Oh hang on … all Israelis will be Lethally Injected in the next few months… it’s already too late!!!
Hahahahahahahahaha….
The Elders engaging in nepotism… how dare they put down their tribe first before getting to us!
but FE, i thought the plan was to put down the palestinianas and their arabic and muslim neighbors, first?
According to Gilad Atzmon, the death rate among unvaccinated Arabs is now lower that that among vaccinated Israelis. As usual, Fate, or Moira, or Tyche, or whomever, has the last word:
‘Tekel’: Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
Upsetting a delicate balance
The response to the pandemic by governments around the world will serve to mask this peak in oil extraction. This is because demand for oil products of all kinds has fallen precipitously in the course of the last twelve months. Air and sea travel for leisure has all but ended. Train travel has been curtailed. And road vehicle sales have collapsed. Far more people are working from home than ever before; and those who aren’t, are engaged in enforced idleness; either through furlough or unemployment. As a result, commuting is at a bare minimum. Loss of demand, together with prolonged lockdowns, has dramatically lowered the need for goods and services around the world; with the result that ships are being scrapped and shipping costs have doubled. If only it were possible to remain in this economic stasis for the remainder of the decade, declining oil extraction need not become an issue.
The less obvious flaw in the narrative, however, concerns the meaning of the word “demand.” Demand is not the same as desire. You might, for example, desire a sports car or a house in the country. But that desire only translates into economic demand if you can afford it. Lack of spending power in the economy following the various lockdowns and restrictions suggests that demand for a host of goods and services – including petrol – will be down for years to come. But household and business income is only one side of the equation. Price is also an issue. And faced with falling demand in the economy, oil companies will most likely cut the price of petrol to a point where demand picks up again.
In a growing economy some new balancing of prices might be arrived at; with essential products rising in price as non-essentials fall, so that the overall price of all the products combined remains the same. Unfortunately, we have passed the point where this was possible. The problem now is that the inevitable increase in the price of diesel and other essential fuels as governments ban the use of smaller petrol vehicles, will force the economy to contract.
Even before the pandemic, the oil industry was unable to raise oil prices to a level that would allow further growth. Nevertheless, even at prices far too low for the industry to remain profitable in the long-term, they were too high for consumers:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/03/22/upsetting-a-delicate-balance/
It sounds like Tim has been reading what I keep writing.
Looking back, the article says,
“If only it were possible to remain in this economic stasis for the remainder of the decade, declining oil extraction need not become an issue.”
This economic stasis is really a problem, however. Oil prices are way too low for producers. The broken supply lines are a big problem too.
Gail, there is an obvious solution to the oil conundrum. I think that this solution has already been implemented in US. It’s a covert nationalization of the oil industry. Look at the amount of money invested in shale oil (1 trillion?) and the profit (negative 300B? please correct me if I am wrong).
It looks to me like the govts can find ways to maintain SOME oil production while the oil price is very low.
Of course this cannot last forever but if shale oil lasted 10 years, I think the world oil production might last another 10.
Of course once the “production plateau” ends, the crash will be fast (Seneca cliff).
That’s plausible scenario, it seems we are now locked down to production plateau with onset of de-growth (limiting previously achieved consumption patterns). Not sure how this expected ~5-15yrs window of some availability of oil will be exactly used but from zoomed out perspective there are chiefly the following options: last minute energy surplus / technology breakthrough, war (be it conquering resources or denying-blocking resources away), disorderly collapse or some mix-combination (among world zones) thereof.
The US government has not been doing a whole lot for the shale oil industry, apart from keeping interest rates low.
Now drilling rigs are way down. Art Berman keeps writing about this.
A year ago, weekly US total crude oil supply estimates were 13.0 or 13.1 million barrels per day; now they are barely 10.9 million barrels per day. (This is everything, not just shale).
Looking at monthly supply estimate shows a similar pattern. Oil production seems to have been highest at the end of 2019 (about 12.8 million barrels of oil per day) and almost at the same level during the first quarter of 2020. Since then, it has been lower and bouncing around. Perhaps, 10.7 million barrels per day on average. So oil production is already down by perhaps 16%. We are already off the production plateau, I am afraid.
@Gail, if we are off the production plateau that would explain a lot about Covid…
What do you think about other shale oil areas in the world. Do you think there will be a demented drive to extract as much as possible (supported by US dollars)?
what other areas?
I remember info that suggests that the geology of the USA contains most of the (barely) viable shale oil areas in the world.
if big oil plays weren’t found by the end of the $100+ era, more probably ain’t gonna be found now.
To me, the lower production levels point to higher oil prices. How can it be otherwise? Demand is bigger than supply, right now, and demand will grow exponentially once we are all vaccinated and able to move about again. At any rate, the current time affords an excellent opportunity to invest in energy stocks. So much energy needed to build out the new green energy future many of our politicians are funding…
“How can it be otherwise?”
you need a more systems thinking approach.
because the NET (surplus) ENERGY in the world is now in an irreversible decline, it follows that the production of goods and services will decline in proportion.
therefore, even though the average person may desire more stuff, there will not be an “economic demand” for more stuff due to the above issues.
in the future, there will be less FF production, but also there will be less affordability for the economy to use FF.
it’s then a race between dropping supply and dropping demand.
sure, prices could rise for short periods, but overall it is imminent irreversible economic decline from now on, and so the probable outcome is that FF prices will continue to decline.
in 2020 dollars, oil was in the $120 range from 2011 to 2014.
oil is a little up. Are we there yet?
If the government nationalizes oil production to maintain essential petroleum products and move toward electric vehicles, what on earth would they do with all the gasoline (which subsidizes the overall price)? In Venezuela I think for a time they basically give free gasoline away to citizens. If policy reduces gasoline consumption yet diesel and plastics are still needed at similar levels there is a huge problem with this plan.
Support for Scottish independence and SNP remains ahead with 6 weeks to go until the May 6 elections. The Sturgeon-Salmond spat has lost SNP a few percentage points in the polls but it will be interesting to see if it bounces back on the day.
The draft bill for Indyref2 is published today and pro-independence parties are still almost certain to win a majority in May to pursue it. A referendum will then be held within the next five years. We may as well enjoy some democratic entertainment before IC collapses. : )
> New poll on Scottish independence records majority for Yes
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19177523.new-poll-scottish-independence-records-majority-yes/
Woooooooooo! Nicola is cleared! Celebration time!
Her brow is like the snowdrift
Her neck it’s like the swan
Her face, it is the fairest
That e’er the sun shone on
That e’er the sun shone on
And dark blue is her e’e
And for bonnie Nicola Sturgeon
I will vote the SNP!
I think Nicola tells fibs. Nicola is a Boris. And Boris is a Nicola.
Nicola is running her own junta. She is the head politician of the SNP and Scottish govt, and her husband is the chief executive of the SNP. And between them, they are running a dictatorship. For all my adult life, at election time it used to be anyone but the Tories. Now anyone but the SNP. The SNP have lost a lot of their membership over the last few months with their shenanigans, or rather, with Nicola’s shenanigans.
I am not holding my breath, but the SNP losing seats at the upcoming election will be an excellent result.
“The SNP have lost a lot of their membership over the last few months with their shenanigans, or rather, with Nicola’s shenanigans.”
Do you have a source for that claim or do you just make everything up as you go along? The news reported today is that SNP gained 12,500 members over the past three weeks. No bad going?
Nicola was officially cleared of any wrongdoing and the Scottish parliament accepted that today.
If the worst that you say about Nicola is that she is really popular, lots of Scots vote for her, and her husband is popular too, then you do not really have much on her. She is the most popular politician in England too – how appalling of her?
> Maree Todd welcomes ‘fantastic’ rise in SNP membership
23 March 2021
SNP candidate Maree Todd says Nicola Sturgeon’s handling of the pandemic and frustration over Brexit are among the reasons for a rise in the party’s membership in the far north.
Ms Todd, who is contesting the Caithness, Sutherland and Ross seat at the Holyrood elections in May, said the six SNP branches in the constituency have welcomed a total of 230 new members since the beginning of March, with nearly 60 per cent being women.
Nationally, the SNP says it has gained more than 12,500 new members in that same period.
“It has been fantastic to welcome so many new members to the SNP,” Ms Todd said.
“I think there are many reasons behind this spike in new members. A dominating factor I’m sure will be Nicola Sturgeon’s strong and decisive leadership throughout the pandemic.”
She pointed out that polls continue to show the First Minister as the most popular leader in Scotland and across the UK.
https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/maree-todd-welcomes-fantastic-rise-in-snp-membership-232415/
>>Do you have a source for that claim or do you just make everything up as you go along?
I follow Craig Murray’s blog. He is possibly the most pro-independence minded person I know, but he is public enemy number one as far as the SNP Junta is concerned. Almost every blog over the last year or so that has anything to do with Scottish politics / the Alex Salmond fix up has comments saying something like: “I was a member of the SNP for years. Resigned today.”
The SNP membership may well have gone up, but nonetheless they have lost a lot of members who have got sick and tired of their crookery. Check out the comments here, blogs from the last 2 days:
The World Darkens a Little More: I May Have to Spend Some Time as a Political Prisoner
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/03/the-world-darkens-a-little-more-i-may-have-to-spend-some-time-as-a-political-prisoner/
A Small Story of Scottish [In]Justice
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/03/a-small-story-of-scottish-justice/#tc-comment-title
>>Nicola was officially cleared of any wrongdoing and the Scottish parliament accepted that today.
Cleared by her cronies. Funnily enough, totalitarian leaders are usually able to pull off such chicanery.
Are you getting vaccinated? According to official advice everywhere, it is good for you. The Scottish parliament agrees, especially Nicola.
You seem to hang with a swarm of propagandist liars. Too many mugs in UK who fall for that sort of thing. It will not stop SNP.
propagandist liars? Ouch.
I guess ‘Wings Over Scotland’ are propagandist liars as well?
https://wingsoverscotland.com/three-choices/
“For James Hamilton, armed with far more evidence, to conclude not merely that the misleading [by Nicola Sturgeon to the Scottish Parliament – “Woooooooooo! Nicola is cleared! Celebration time!”] had been accidental but that it didn’t happen at all, is a lie so barefaced as to be breathtaking, and so farcical as to defy any possibility of honest belief.”
For plenty more coverage of SNP shenanigans, see the WoS main page:
https://wingsoverscotland.com/
Although why anyone outside of Scotland would be interested is a mystery.
The first such result in a long series of polls which have all shown independence is not going to happen. Why not forward the results of the last ten or a dozen polls?
Independence is a nonsense and is not going to happen.
Cleared? No, far from it. Investigated by one of her own appointees. Does that count?
Sliding into a very odd form of democracy there.
And in those opinion polls we see those familiar figures again: 52-48. 52% for independence versus 48% against. Just the same as in the Brexit referendum: 52% for Brexit, 48% against.
Everywhere we see this split-down-the-middle-ness. It’s a feature of the times we live in. According to Neil howe and his Fourth Turning theory, though, we should all have found a new consensus by the year 2030.
If 52% is good enough for English nationalists then it is good enough for Scots.
YES gained 15% during the Indy1 campaign, so it may not be that close.
Gasp, that is the second poll in the past week and the 25th in the past year to show a lead for yes.
Only the referendum itself will decide whether it happens, so, short of crystal balls, we will have to wait for that. I am cool to wait and let Scots decide when the time comes. : )
Why is self-determination appropriate for the Scots but not for the Falkland Islanders or the Gibraltarians or the Shetlanders or the Orkadians, or even for the Gaelic Highlanders, who have ample reason to wish to assert their independence from the Anglo Saxon with a dash of Viking Lowlanderst?
I really really really want to know the logic behind your championing of the religion of Scottish Nationalism and of Our Lady of the Assumption that the Scots Need Independence, especially when they specifically rejected it at a democratic referendum just a few short years ago.
Scotland is an historical country with a voluntary union, which is why the constitution foresees referenda on independence. I am happy to let the Scots decide their own future. A minority of English care whether they stay or leave and do not let those who do stress me out. I do not really care what they think. It is funny how we all care about different things. I suppose that is because we are not all the same person.
Unfortunately, Scotland is not a country; it is two countries: the Lowlanders on the one hand and the Highlanders and Islanders on the other. It was the latter who fought so bravely at the battle of Waterloo, and who have always been loyal to the Union of Crowns.
Independence will put them right back where they were over 300 years ago: serfs subject to the rapacious laws enacted by the grandees of Edinburgh, to be systematically robbed of their estates, their rights, and their lives.
‘Scotland is not a country and Scots would be serfs without the English, they properly die for the British Empire like good little boys.’
Nice line of rhetoric, that should swing a few more to the independence cause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq14cPI0LW8
Anti-conscription/ enlistment lament for many an old Scots woman who was deprived of her loved young man and knew their family life together only in the contemplation and loss, the ‘dream in the night’ of what would have been. Scots lives lost for the British Empire, and families that never were.
Oh where, tell me where, has your Highland laddie gone?
He’s gone wi’ streaming banners where noble deeds are
done / And it’s all in my head
That I wish him safe at hame.
Mirroronthewall, that is not what I said, as anyone who reads this group can see for themselves. Your “quote” is a fabrication, and I cry shame. Shame on you. If you have any argument other than lies, please present it. And as for your slander of the Scots Greys, whom even the French described as the “noblest cavalry in Europe”, let it stand forever to your discredit.
And learn a little history before you next presume to criticise better and nobler men.
“I suppose that is because we are not all the same person.”
Sometimes I feel that my (Swedish) countrymen aren’t the same species as compared with some sublime fellow engineers from the Middle East and CEE.
I wonder if reproductive compatibility is a good measure of who belongs where in the tree of life.
Something is clearly wrong with this simplistic picture.
🤔
Robert, are you sure that she was entirely to blame?
LOL
K, maybe you would find things less confusing back in Lapland?
Mirror,
There’s a reason why I am not living there anymore, just sayin’. In all fairness, it isn’t that bad. Just a tad bit too close to my relatives. I don’t appreciate the whiff from my own genetics. The petty-mindedness. 🤢🤮
What I need is some platonic love in my back yard from another sentient that can blow my mind (figuratively) with some lucid otherworldly thoughts.
Primate shenanigans is a bit dullard wank. Self entitled princesses of IC running amok with the obnoxiousness, delusions and hopiums of something that only exist as a hallucination behind their myopic eyes.
But you have read me harp on about this for way too long.
🤗
Nothing that humans want is ‘rational’, and ‘consistency’ has never been a condition of desire. Humans are bundles of biases and preferences, which is the only reason why you are ‘loyal’ to UK in the first place. Bias is a precondition of survival. I make no pretence of being ‘consistent’, which is a ridiculous demand and pretence. I am much freer being ‘inconsistent’ whenever its suits me – in that I aim for consistency.
The arguments that states use to claim countries are frankly laughable and entirely made up. ‘We had it first, we had it last, it is closer to us, position does not matter, we did more with it, we did less with it, what matters is what the people want – or not, what matters is what I want and the silly arguments that I make up to suit me.’ Human existence is not ‘rational’ in the first place and the pretence of ‘rationality’ is supernaive and laughable.
I think it is called ‘compartmentalization’ to avoid cognitive dissonance. Consider the two following statements:
1. People should lead a fulfilling life and live until ripe old age.
2. The world is overpopulated and the natural resource base is depleting rapidly.
Most ‘rational’ humans agree on both statements, yet they are inconsistent. An Escher painting on the fabric of earthly humanoid shenanigans.
In reality, however, 1. rarely seem to be the case. Most people are miserable due to absurd choices of the ego. The self isn’t quite ‘there’ observing and critiquing the ego, thus 2. is inevitable.
If 1. is achieved, 2. will never occur. If 2. occur, 1 will generally never follow.
But choices have been made which are out of our control and now we clearly can observe plenty of 2. and not much of 1.
Let it burn. 🔥
I’m too old for this shit.
K, could things have gone differently? The Western capitalist powers imposed their model of globalised liberal capitalism on the world after WWII. It would have taken a very, very different political and socio-economic order to have produced different outcomes, at least for time. What is done is done and the situation is what it is. It will ‘burn’ out in its own time, it really is not worth stressing about. It is better to laugh at the whole thing.
Mirror, right.
It’s a predicament of tragicomedy. As you say, it is what it is.
Any altruistic intentions will most likely turn out for the worse, because not all consequences of actions taken could be accounted for in a semi-chaotic system.
Perhaps the “best” cause of action could be to just lay it bare, the ugly truth of IC. A steaming turd of bad decisions from the past, resource depletion and overpopulation.
And just to live the remaining years of opulent IC without the perpetual narrative peddling and herding silliness. That which works on the small scale of human civilizations, clearly doesn’t work in a large setting. Then the individual need to identify rather with the biosphere and other sentients, whatever those might be. Biological or synthetics.
Just blow the stinker out of the rectal orifice and be done with it. Float free away into an open-ended future. Whatever it takes.
>>especially when they specifically rejected it at a democratic referendum just a few short years ago
It was very close. But more to the point, there was one hell of a propaganda push among all the main UK politicians, MSM, royal family, TV and sports personalities, actors, etc who were all singing from the same hymn sheet – independence will be apocalyptic for Scotland. Enough softies were persuaded to vote No but it was no big rejection as you suggest. And now people seem to regret not voting Yes. That’s what happens when the UK votes for a Tory plonker as the Prime Minister. And leaving Europe.
I have never been strongly pro-independence but did vote Yes last time. Now I see what has happened to the SNP – the people at the top are a bunch of totalitarian crooks. This is what is going to happen here whoever runs the country, if we get independence. But that is happening everywhere now.
Thanks for your answers guys. My personal preference is for a United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland, and all the associated islands from the Shetlands and Fair Isle in the North to the Falklands and South Georgia in the South, and Union Jacks fluttering everywhere in between. But that’s just nostalgic dreaming on my part. And I would never vote either way as I’ve no intention of ever living in the UK again. As far as I’m concerned it might as well be Avalon ruled from Camelot.
The political map of Europe of the ages has changed so often and frequently that it seems self-evident that the entire continent is a political earthquake zone. The UK bit is fractured and seems on the verge of fracturing some more. That will please a lot of people, from ethno-nationalists and global corporations to continentals like Kulm who would rather we didn’t make Britain Great again. But whatever happens, in my crystal ball I see the bulk of the natives of the islands are going to be poorer, much less free, and even more dissatisfied and angry than ever on account of what they’ve lost.
By the way, all my Scottish expat friends were and are against Scottish independence. Objection number one is the hassle of having to change their passport. I don’t know whether it’s a valid grumble as whether the UK was inside or outside of the EU, I still needed to apply for a new one every ten years.
Craig Murray (and some of his blog followers) is convinced that Nicola Sturgeon is bought and paid for by the UK establishment, and therefore as long as she is at the top, independence will remain a pipedream. Hopefully.
I view every secession and break-up as sad now – not out of any patriotic impulse, but because in this era they are unlikely to confer much advantage on any of the protagonists and indeed represent significant marker stones on the road to a broader socio-economic collapse.
How can the fruits of declining net energy be anything other than disappointing, especially when they are preceded by a wave of jingoistic optimism? Tomorrow an independent Scotland, the day after a society, if one survives at all, so localised it makes the days of clan warfare look cosmopolitan.
The changing situation is definitely as worry.
“Nicola Sturgeon is bought and paid for by the UK establishment”
Most likely British State Plc does not even need to pay you to post your lies and nonsense. You have internalised subjugation.
>> to post your lies and nonsense.
More coming
Harry, I think this is just natural, though, and our modern anti-parochialism is itself a fruit of surplus energy.
We rented temporarily in Italy and were moving to the next town where we had purchased a house. When we went to register our change of address, the post-office director spat out, “Nothing good comes from Sarteano, not even the WIND!”
It sounded crazy to me at the time, but I actually have come to envy this “campanilismo” (rallying ’round the bell tower), and come to regard it as fairly healthy. Back in the US we have become so atomized as to not even have a bell-tower around which to rally, whether we wanted to, or not.
Tory Party paid a firm a million pound to fake poll results on independence last month. The Sunday Times then led with the fake story, which was intended to reinforce the fake story about Nicola breaking the rules – after numerous TP ministers have been forced to resign over the past few years. TP is showing its utter contempt for democracy and decency – which will only reinforce the desire for independence.
> SUPPORT for Scottish independence was the majority position in two polls conducted across February and March, despite reporting to the contrary.
A report in the Sunday Times said that Yes had lost a twelve-point lead after Nicola Sturgeon gave evidence to the Holyrood Harassment Complaints Committee on March 3. This report was based on polling conducted by Hanbury Strategy, the firm handed £1 million of taxpayer money in the summer of 2020 to research the future of the Union.
The first poll, which asked 3946 voters between February 12 and March 1, found 56% of Scots supported their country becoming independent, with Don’t Knows excluded. The second poll, conducted between March 5 and 9 and involving 1500 voters, found 53% of Scots would vote Yes, with Don’t Knows excluded.
However, this second poll was originally misreported as returning a 50/50 split between the Yes and No camps. As such, the 12-point drop headlined in the Sunday Times was actually just half that. Polling analyst and blogger James Kelly said the drop of 3%, compared to the originally reported drop of 6%, was the difference between “sign of real changes on the ground [and] random sampling variation”.
The corrected figures were officially released today by the think tank Onward, which said they represented “the most comprehensive survey of attitudes towards the Union since 2014”.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19182022.scottish-independence-poll-yes-53-not-50-50-reported-split/
WISeKey Launches Digital Vaccination Certificates Platform VaccineTrusts.com, to be Used as a Proof of Evidence for Those Who Have Received Coronavirus Vaccine
ZUG, Switzerland – March 15, 2021 – WISeKey International Holding (“WISeKey”, SIX: WIHN, NASDAQ: WKEY), a leading cybersecurity IoT company, today announced that it has released the VaccineTrusts platform based on its PKI Digital Certification technology.
The VaccineTrusts integrates Digital Vaccination Certificates (DVC) issued by different third trusted parties and is to be used as a proof of evidence for those who have received the coronavirus vaccines. WISeKey will be announcing in the near future countries joining its VaccineTrusts platform. Vaccine passports, also known as vaccine certificates, have been recently and important vaccine verification solution as countries worldwide roll out their mass vaccination programs. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has called for a “global standard to securely record digital proof of vaccination.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wisekey-launches-digital-vaccination-certificates-170000778.html
Two 13-year-old brothers are participating in Moderna’s vaccine trial for kids. They’re ‘pretty chill’ about it.
The Preston brothers were on board with the trial right away
Children can be difficult to include in trials, since ethical questions arise if they don’t fully understand what they’re signing up for, and scientists are cautious of any research that could stunt a child’s development. Many parents are not comfortable signing their kids up to participate for the same reasons.
But the Preston brothers are no strangers to clinical trials. For the past few years, they’ve participated in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the US. The study recruits healthy children ages 9 to 10 and observes their brain growth through early adulthood.
So when the Preston boys’ mother, Katie, approached them about getting the Moderna vaccine, they didn’t think twice about it, they said.
“My mom brought it up and I was like, ‘Ooh, that sounds interesting,'” Emmett said.
Katie said she learned of the trial through a friend who posted about it on Facebook. She emailed her doctor’s office in Charleston to express interest, then heard back a few weeks later.
“We had to go through a little screening process and they said the boys were good, so we went for it,” Katie said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/teen-brothers-moderna-vaccine-trial-kids-2021-3
“I understand debt to be an indirect promise for future goods and services.”
This can be simplified further.
What word do we commonly use as a synonym for “goods & services”?
How about “productivity”.
I define debt very simply as, “Debt is just a substitute for productivity, today”.
So, if we see an explosion in debt, I take it to mean simply that it must be due to a corresponding collapse in current productivity.
This effectively strips away the nonsense surrounding the doctored GDP numbers.
If one wants a clear picture of what is happening with real GDP, one needs to look no further than at the debt numbers.
Figure #3 is interesting.
It shows a very large pike in debt for 2019 that corresponds exactly with a sharp decline in energy consumption.
I think we have a well established historical link between energy consumption and productivity.
The inexorably growing debt is simply measuring the inexorable decline in energy inputs to our economy (productivity).
There certainly is a close connection.
Rising energy consumption acts to leverage human consumption; falling energy consumption leads to closing businesses and the laying off workers. There is more overhead, relative to workers, and productivity falls.
I think of the limit we are reaching being “too low a return on human labor.” What happens is too much wage disparity. To the extent that there is a return on investment in complexity, the return goes to managers, rather than the workers.
Steve Keen has some work on incorporating energy into the economic “productivity function.” I imagine there may be a way to relate this to debt increase as energy entered diminishing returns.
“So, if we see an explosion in debt, I take it to mean simply that it must be due to a corresponding collapse in current productivity.”
Not necessarily. For example, during war, debt typically grows but the amount of goods and services produced does not have to fall. Or, if people start to speculate on real estate, their debt rises but building productivity even increases.
Ed Mazza·Overnight Editor, HuffPost
Mon, March 22, 2021, 4:21 AM
Parts of Australia are battling a “plague” of rodents.
Large rural portions of inland New South Wales and Queensland are being overrun by millions of mice, which have taken over farmland, homes, stores, hospitals and cars. They’re also eating everything in sight.
Reuters reported that the region’s bumper grain crop led to the surge in rodents.
“You can imagine that every time you open a cupboard, every time you go to your pantry, there are mice present,” rodent expert Steve Henry told the wire service. “And they’re eating into your food containers, they’re fouling your clean linen in your linen cupboard, they’re running across your bed at night.”
……
reports said the mouse population continues to grow and efforts to poison the rodents had started to backfire as dead critters were turning up in water tanks. One homeowner in Elong Elong investigating a water blockage encountered a “revolting” smell, according to Australia’s ABC News.
“We always filter the water going into our house from the tanks so for us, personally, we feel we’ve covered our precautions so we didn’t notice anything with the taste,” Louise Hennessy told the news agency. “But the smell of the mice at the top of the tank was so disgusting.”
Public health authorities are now warning of the potential for bacteria in the water if dead mice remain in the tanks.
Authorities said a drop in temperature or a heavy rainfall could wipe out most of the mice at any time.
YesSir, always expect the unexpected
Good post, Gail, Gregory Mannarino on YouTube literally is screaming about the debt bubble .
Pretty obvious…Seems Dr?Michael Burry of the Big Short Movie fame received a visit from the SEC about his warning of hyperinflation and now he has been silenced …won’t comment any longer, you have been warned…
Is there a link please Herbie
I found this link:
https://www.ecowatch.com/australia-mice-invasion-farms-2651145074.html
Brazil stares into the abyss as Covid intensive care units fill up everywhere
Paschoalick, who works at a public hospital in the city of Dourados, said he had seen his team members shed tears of exhaustion and despair as they battled to cope with the cascade of patients. On Tuesday his 20-bed unit had one free bed – and requests to admit 22 critically ill Covid patients.
“It’s terrifying,” the doctor said, pointing to an even more dramatic situation in Ponta Porã, a town 75 miles down the road on the Paraguayan border, where a hospital with 30 Covid ICU beds was intubating an average of 10 patients a day.
In the state capital, Campo Grande, things were worse still. “I was told yesterday that there’s a health clinic there with 20 ambulances parked outside. The patients are arriving from small towns in the interior and there’s nowhere to put them – so they just keep them in the ambulances,” Paschoalick said. One private hospital had closed its doors because even its casualty department was packed with Covid patients on ventilators.
Danilo Maksud, a cardiologist from São Paulo, said Brazil’s richest and most populous state – where ICUs were 89% full with more than 11,000 Covid patients – was in similarly dire straits. “It’s not chaos – we’re well beyond chaos,” admitted the 39-year-old physician who said all 20 of his ICU beds were occupied after a month-long surge in admissions.
Maksud suggested a “complete lockdown” was probably the only way to stop the virus’s rampage, although Bolsonaro has resisted that idea, apparently fearful of the impact it might have on the economy and his hopes of re-election next year. With 212 million citizens, Brazil is home to 2.7% of the world’s population but has suffered more than 10% of its Covid deaths.
“I don’t know if I ever imagined we’d face a moment like this,” Maksud reflected on Wednesday after São Paulo suffered a record 679 deaths in one day. “It’s like we’re trapped in a hole and the walls are closing in on us.”
A thousand miles away, in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, where ICUs were 96% full, the story was the same, with Covid pounding virtually the whole country simultaneously.
“People are going around saying Brazil is going to collapse,” critical care doctor Pedro Carvalho said on Thursday morning as he began another 12-hour shift at a university hospital in the riverside town of Petrolina.
“But we’ve collapsed already – completely collapsed,” claimed Carvalho, 41, whose hospital added 10 new ICU beds on Monday morning and had filled them all by sundown.
The doctor rubbished claims from Bolsonaro’s ally that Brazilian hospitals were feeling comfortable. “Calling it fake news would be too kind. It’s just an utter lie. They know full well how bad things are,” Carvalho complained.
He added: “I’d like to invite these denialists to come and cover some shifts in our ICU – not actually treating the patients, of course, but helping us inform families that their loved ones have died. Perhaps then they might stop lying.”
Gut-wrenching stories of lives suddenly and needlessly ended emerged from each of the ICUs. Paschoalick said most of those in his care were over 60 but the young were dying too. “Right now, I’ve got three people on ventilators including a 22-year-old woman and another who is 25. Both were pregnant when they arrived. One lost the baby, the other managed to give birth. Both are intubated and in a really bad state,” he said.
André Machado, a Covid doctor from Rio Grande do Sul state, where critical care units are 100% full, said his hospital was so overburdened he was having to choose who would be given the chance of survival in intensive care. “Today, 49 patients are in the A&E waiting for a bed in ICU,” he said on Thursday morning. There was only space for four.
Maksud, who works at São Paulo’s Santa Casa de Misericórdia hospital, said he was not yet being forced to play God but had friends elsewhere taking such calls and suspected “rock bottom” would soon arrive for him too.
“I feel afraid, afraid of what might happen next,” he said, as his country stared into the abyss.
Topics
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/19/brazil-coronavirus-intensive-care-unit-capacity
I think our problem is unreasonable expectations. The world economy is not rich enough for ICU beds for everyone. Even our current level of hospital beds is awfully high. The cost of the health care system is unreasonable in the US, and very high most everywhere else.
When past epidemics have hit (especially the ones 100+ years ago), patients were mostly treated at home. If it didn’t work out, that was unfortunate. But there was no problem with overfilling the hospitals and ICUs.
We now have unreasonable expectations. If we had started in the direction of finding cheap treatments to strengthen immune systems (which could be used at home), the epidemic might be gone now, or within the next year. We are trying to do what is essentially impossible.
YES! Unreasonable expectations.
Unfortunately those unreasonable expectations are considered “rights” by some. What is lacking is the understanding in between rights that consume no physical resources and rights that in effect consume whats left of a finite planet. No matter how austere your lifestyle you are considered “ist” (add prefix of choice) if you acknowledge a finite world.
In fact if you choose to deal with the virus the best you can without medical facilities that is considered taboo. It is thought crime. One it violates political ideas about resource entitlement. Two it violates the demand for absolute subservience to the medical establishment. In fact many of my friends have done so. Some twice. They report the second go around not near as bad as the first None have died. Working for a living keeps you fit. Being poor keeps you fit.
The simile of a debt bubble is not accurate. A bubble is a real thing in a real physical world. The laws of physics that govern it are inmallable and they are what cause a bubble to collapse.
Money as we know it is not real. It is created artificially. There are not enough trees in the world to create even a fraction of the money they have created in physical one dollar bills. If their is a debt collapse it is because that path is chosen. You can argue that that path will be chosen due to money becoming worthless if it is not but that is different than unmallable laws making debt collapse certain.
Debt aside collapse is a very distinct possibility now. The policies implemented almost guarantee it in a short time frame.
It doesnt matter which fiscal path is chosen. While the amount of debt based on whim is certainly representative of the time frame in which the failed state might occur it is only one of many delusions. A failed state might be being actively sought by those in control but on their time frame. They are winding it up to be as spectacular as possible. THe climax at the moment of greatest potential. They are delaying it only to the extent that they can exert preload in both political and monetary policies and other areas in which they exert influence. It is their final masterpiece their intent now to not have any one piece of BAU fail prematurely but to have them all fail at once hoping for a world record on the chaos meter. Even they themselves do not know how high they will score. They have no interest in preserving themselves or their offspring. The spent fuel ponds prove that and many other things. Those are just more points on the chaos score. THe more the better! Higher score. Rome burning was childs play. The twin towers a mere appetizer. Hypersonic proliferation so many chaos calories! In the mean time BAU must be preserved so only the maestros control decide when it is time. Why? If they do not the finite planet will do so anyway. That is unthinkable. If those calling the shots were sane we would have not gone into exponential overshoot to this extent. Bau would have ended prior to our births. Our births would probably not have occurred.
While overshoot is indeed a natural phenomena it is not in the degree we are witnessing. We are not by nature a stupid delusional species. For those reasons I believe there are two distinct possibilities. THe wind up to collapse is intentional and deliberate. The land cruiser into the rock wall with as much score as possible.
Countering this possibility is that a path toward continuance is being pursued via the blending of cultures and a attempt to insert cloud uplink downlink via the crude genetic manipulation prototypes techniques being demonstrated. This serves combined purposes. Radical population control and data for continued experimentation on the human species.
Does anyone really think that covid just happened? Does anyone really think the genetic manipulation agents were created in just the last year because trump said make it so?
Time to see what has good results. Adeno or MRNA. They will have a good sample population that is a certainty. That they certainly have, A abundant sample population.
Time to put the shock collar on fido and get him spade.
Not much of a existence compared to the beauty of our lives if you ask me but perhaps Im biased having never worn a shock collar. If true we are indeed the last generation of our species for the addition of cloud integration would most certainly qualify for a categorization other than homo sapiens.
These possibilities are not mutually exclusive
THe idea that we control our destinies is very appealing. The fact is we do not. Our job is to value truth compassion and beauty even knowing what is occurring. This is our legacy. It can not be stolen from us. We chose not to live in delusion. In that there is power. It is the only power we have. It wont change our destinies one bit but at least we chose to love, to live in beauty, and to exhibit compassion. To celebrate our species qualities. To exhibit those qualities in the face of what is a very sad situation is IMO the mark of a warrior.
>>Brazil stares into the abyss
How many people require an ICU? The above text does not say, but I presume less than 0.1% of the population (0.1% = 213M / 1000 = 213,000), less? How is this staring into the abyss? It is not good, but it is not apocalyptical either, not yet anyway. Just the Guardian fear mongering, as if the BBC is not doing a good enough job. 99.9 % of the population do not require an ICU just does not send out the right signal.
This ties in nicely with the news in the UK this weekend that we will not be travelling abroad for holidays any time this year, due to new variants like they have in Brazil. That could be us ‘staring into the abyss’.
I tried to keep calm, so read it slowly, and as expected at least half of the quotes are manipulated conjecture language (..virtually.. / ..I was told by someone..). It’s the weasel Guardian after-all, well known psy-op racket for decades masquerading as leftie msm outlet but truly just globalist rag of very abysmal reputation and record on key historical events and thresholds..
Living in Brazil I can’t see that abyss … for good data (including young deaths) see here = http://transparencia.registrocivil.org.br!!!! By the way, Brazil is in 25o place (deaths per million hab)… of course almost 300k year in terrible but consider the “normal” 1,4million deaths/year we have for decades… including 70k due to crimes!!!
“I feel afraid, afraid of what might happen next,” he said, as his country stared into the abyss.
Heard that one before hahaha…
Ethiopia allowed loads of China flights including from Wuhan into the country … and was supposed to implode… likewise Bali… still waiting for a country to collapse under the weight of covid…
Waiting… and waiting…. and… waiting
Sweden – no lockdown no masks — not in the top 20 in deaths per capita… wow https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
Let’s think about this https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
Sweden not in the top 20.
How is it possible for someone to believe lockdowns are a good idea — if they are aware of this fact?
This is the power of the MSM….
1 + 1 +2 … right?
But if CNN BBC NYT RT etc… says 1 + 1 = 7. It’s 7.
Humans are so f67543ing stooopid.
What’s this harping on about Sweden? How many lockdowns and curfews did Taiwan have?
Well, I so happen to have the answer:
0
Yes indeed.
ZERO
How about deaths in Taiwan you might ponder?:
8
That’s how this sucker is exterminated.
Second wave? Third wave hitting Taiwan?
Laughable..
🤣👍
“The prevalences of vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency were 28.16% (95% CI: 23.90, 32.40) and 45.26% (95% CI: 35.82, 54.71), respectively, for the Brazilian population.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29420062/
So 73% Brazilians have too low level of vitamin D.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Yep, similarly for the recent spike around CEE (PL, CZ, SK)..
plus the stress factor and ~junk food overeating after living through partial collapse – colonial status since 1990s etc..
Before believing this story, consider the source. I suspect this is more fake news panic spreading from the nadir of gutter journalism.
I do not believe this for a second.
But most people will…..
Jacinda was supposed to announce the trans tasman bubble dates the other day … instead she announced that she would announce this on April 6. Wanna bet a flare up arrives in one or both countries in the next two weeks…
She also mentioned that if they do open the bubble and you get caught in Australia when a flare up occurs… you will need to quarantine when you return… recall what happened with the UK / France bubble… lots of folks were given 24 hours or less to return when a flare up happened… otherwise quarantine 2 weeks…. so this might be another option for Ardern … open for a short period.. flare up (just use more PRC cycles to fake that)… and people just give up on traveling due to uncertainties and hassles.
Supply Chain Shortages
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExFVmfhXAAAL_m0?format=jpg&name=medium
Interesting list!
I noticed a new related problem today. According to the WSJ,
Renesas Chip-Plant Fire Spreads Concerns About Global Auto Production
Shares of Toyota, Nissan and Honda fell Monday
We don’t have any slack in the system for the fires and other disruptions that come from time to time.
Global investors seek freeze on China chip champion’s foreign assets
Tsinghua Unigroup’s debt woes hit Xi Jinping’s push for semiconductor self-reliance
International bondholders owed tens of millions of dollars by a Beijing-backed semiconductor group are seeking to freeze its overseas assets, as corporate debt problems complicate President Xi Jinping’s attempts to unshackle China from foreign-made chips.
Tsinghua Unigroup, a national chip champion backed by China’s most prestigious engineering school, in November defaulted on a domestically issued bond, triggering concerns over cross-defaults of offshore notes worth about $2.4bn.
The state-backed company sits at the heart of Xi’s efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductor production. The US has restricted Chinese companies from accessing foreign-built chips amid broader tensions between Washington and Beijing. But now Tsinghua’s problems threaten to embroil a clutch of China’s most important computer chip companies, which it either owns or has stakes in.
https://amp.ft.com/content/21d70ba3-f3c7-4f2a-b311-c5850d0d1af6?__twitter_impression=true
We certainly don’t need to have other semiconductor chip makers involved in these problems.
We have a chip shortage.
Auto plants have closed because of no chips:
https://www.todaysmotorvehicles.com/article/global-chip-shortage-leads-to-auto-plant-shutdowns/
It would be nice to see some data table brakeout which segmens are being most affected (ICE, EVs, hybrids)..? But given all contemporary combustion engine machines need complex fuel-emission control (microchips + sensors) it’s perhaps not that big difference anyway.
Well, isn’t it obvious that the (soon to be irrelevant) useless eaters wanted to sacrifice the US/EU/East Asian tech omnipotence to perpetrate BAU a little while longer by gifting high-tech to the Commie muppets?
Clearly it must have pissed off the wrong dudes and dudettes.
They can keep going cranking out chips with big fat margins as long as the BAU is shifting away from frivolous consumption of tangibles into intangibles.
Cheap ass microcontrollers for shitty cars, give me a break. I mean, we’re talking about jank with labysmal margins compared with churning out Apple, Nvidia, Intel and AMD silicon to the tilt, used in game consoles, PC’s and supercompute.
🤔
Risky oil companies snap up $20bn in junk bond record
Lowly rated US energy companies that struggled for survival last year are finding renewed optimism among investors after a surge in oil prices, helping them raise a record amount of debt to fend off bankruptcy.
Energy and power companies tracked by Refinitiv have raised more than $20bn in the high-yield bond market so far this year, an all-time record for data going back to 1996.
A four-month-long rally in crude prices stalled last week, but Brent, the international benchmark, remains above $60 a barrel, up over 60 per cent since the start of November. This rally, fuelled by vaccine rollouts and record Opec oil production cuts, has prompted a change in sentiment among debt investors who had shunned many energy companies last year.
“At these levels a lot of companies can hedge future production and survive,” said John Dixon, a high-yield bond trader at Dinosaur Financial Group. “It’s the oil-linked names in high yield that have been among the best performers recently.”
https://amp.ft.com/content/03173caa-2622-4e68-bbaf-b6e56d856042?__twitter_impression=true
A bit higher price helps oil companies survive a little longer, but not necessarily prosper.
” … helping them raise a record amount of debt to fend off bankruptcy.” Anyone who believes taking on more debt will fend off bankruptcy is living in cloud cuckoo land. Or should I say MMT land.
Federal Reserve’s Digital Dollar Momentum Worries Wall Street
(Bloomberg) — The financial services industry, braced for what could be its biggest disruption in decades, is about to get an early glimpse at the Federal Reserve’s work on a new digital currency.
Wall Street is not thrilled.
Banks, credit card companies and digital payments processors are nervously watching the push to create an electronic alternative to the paper bills Americans carry in their wallets, or what some call a digital dollar and others call a Fedcoin.
As soon as July, officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which have been developing prototypes for a digital dollar platform, plan to unveil their research, said James Cunha, who leads the project for the Boston Fed.
A digital currency could fundamentally change the way Americans use money, leading some financial firms to lobby the Fed and Congress to slow its creation — or at least ensure they’re not cut out.
Seeing the threat to their profits, the banks’ main trade group has told Congress a digital dollar isn’t needed, while payment companies like Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. are trying to work with central banks to make sure the new currencies can be used on their networks.
“Everyone is afraid that you could disrupt all the incumbent players with a whole new form of payment,” said Michael Del Grosso, an analyst for Compass Point Research & Trading LLC.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/federal-digital-dollar-momentum-worries-060000433.html
I can see financial services companies would be unhappy with government competition.
I’m afraid that such ~opposing/early skeptical voice is just for a show of providing venue for expertly debate with the goal of eventually smoothing the implementation of said “fedcoin” down the road (near-mid term) anyway..
Otherwise we would have to believe such fin service companies are not in some systemic aggregate position inside reserve system banks already – which seems as very naive (bogus) narrative to begin with.
Or perhaps it concerns only some of the quasi independent small fish in that industry so why bother..
BIS: Cross-border CBDCs: three conceptual approaches
1. mCBDC arrangements based on compatible CBDC systems
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExFUHV-XAAA5PrJ?format=jpg&name=900×900
2. mCBDC arrangements based on linking multiple CBDC systems
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExFUHsUW8AEw-G-?format=jpg&name=medium
3. mCBDC arrangements based on single multi-currency system
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExFUH8PWgAIfPbT?format=jpg&name=medium
CBDC=Central Bank Digital System
So what happens if some countries are not credit worthy?
China Uncensored had an update on the Chinese fishing fleet over the weekend:
Chinese Fishermen VS US Coast Guard?! | China’s Maritime Militia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4IYw8iwgnU
Last year one video I watched suggested that there are about 100,000 boats in the Chinese fishing fleet. This one claims that there are estimated to be about 14,000 deep sea fishing vessels. They already have a reputation for stripping the seas of everything they catch in their nets. They have no concept of too small or not required – all that gets caught is taken. Most recently from around the Galapagos Islands.
This video says that the fishing fleet is part of the Chinese military navy, and they are regularly used for geopolitical reasons. At 6m 52s this appears:
“The [USA] Coast Guard is investing more than $19 billion in at least eight national-security cutters, 25 offshore-patrol cutters, and 58 fast-response cutters.”
The suggestion in the video is that at least some of these cutters will be posted around the South China sea.
It seems like China has had a reputation for overfishing for a long time.
So we’ve been hearing about depleting oil resources since the 1970’s. It seems that the oil companies have had a big hand in this, as they benefit from perceived scarcity through higher prices. Here is some back-of-the-envelope calculations. According to oilprice.com, the world has used some 1.1 to 1.5 trilion barrels of oil since the consumption of oil has really started.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-Much-Crude-Oil-Has-The-World-Really-Consumed.html
Let’s use the high end of the estimates 1.5 trillion barrels of oil. This equals 2,385^14 liters of oil, which is 238,5 cubic kilometers, which sounds really impressive, until you consider the vastness of planet earth. The total surface area of Saudi-Arabia, which is practically floating on oil, is 2.15 million square kilometers. If you were to pour all the oil consumed in the world since the beginning equally over this surface area, you would be ankle deep in oil, about 11 cm. If you take into consideration the total surface area of planet earth (509,6 million square km) and you were to pour it out equally, this would amount to a depth of 0.5mm!
Considering that oil is won at a depth of 1-2 km or more, the total space where we could find oil (if we stick to 1km) is a mindboggling 510 million cubic kilometers, of which 238.5 cubic kilometers is a tiny percentage (0,0000468%). Although it is clear that not oil can be found everywhere, it is also in the interest of certain parties (like say, oil companies or climate change cultists) to give us the impression that oil is a scarce resource. After all, we pretty much depend on the geologists employed by oil companies to inform us about this state of affairs…
Nevertheless, I would also very much prefer the practically free energy discovered by mr Tesla,
but put out of business by the rich oil families….Just my 2 cents
Sorry, it doesn’t work this way. The problem is that the cost of extraction starts rising. The world economy cannot really afford the rising cost. They system tends to collapse because of the higher cost, which cannot be adequately translated into a higher price to consumers.
Hint:
Global oil peaked in November of 2018 (C+C).
We someday may exceed that (unlikely), but I would not hold your breath.
What are your sources that oil can not be extracted economically anymore?
A big part of the problem is that the governments of oil exporting countries are on the edge of collapsing because they are not getting enough tax revenue.
Another part of the problem is collapsing oil and gas extraction companies that don’t possibly have enough money to pay the cost of capping oil and gas wells that are basically exhausted. This leaves a big environmental cost.
Part of the problem is not having enough money to invest in new wells as old ones deplete.
Steve Kopits, an analyst who looks at oil company financial results and communicates with oil insiders gave a talk in early 2014, saying that financial results were already too low in 2012 and 2013. They were being forced to cut back on new production. I wrote up his talk in a post on OurFiniteWorld.com. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/02/25/beginning-of-the-end-oil-companies-cut-back-on-spending/
Based on the amounts and timing, it seems to me that oil companies need at least $120 per barrel. The current WTI price is $61.47. The Brent oil price is $64.34. This is way too low.
Broke and incompetent governments are one thing; broke oil companies quite another. If things were really as dire as you depict, the oil companies would have gone broke by now. Over the least three decades they made a stunning 2 triilion USD in profits, that should have given them some flesh on their bones;
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/12/revealed-big-oil-profits-since-1990-total-nearly-2tn-bp-shell-chevron-exxon
Share prices are also recovering nicely;
https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/equity/sp-global-oil-index/#overview
Ok, so what do you make of the discovery by Russian scientists that oil is not biogenic (basically dinosaur poop & rotten trees) but abiogenic, and therefore constantly replenished from the earth’s core;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhP4wrnAWFM
William Engdahl’s book “Myths, lies and oil wars” explains it all, with a detailed list of published articles.
Now there’s something that doesn’t get discussed much, esp. by oil companies….
Oil company “profits” have to cover a whole lot of things, including paying taxes to governments, expenses involved with preparing new drilling sites to replace the ones that are rapidly depleted, paying dividends to stockholders for the privilege of using their money, and paying interest to bondholders and banks for the privilege of using their money. They also need to pay for the expense of capping wells that are depleted. In this way, oil (natural gas and coal) company profits are different from profits of most companies. Fossil fuel companies have traditionally paid very high taxes to governments. I think of this as a way of transferring the “net energy” that they produce to governments, and ultimately to the rest of the economy.
(Wind and solar, on the other hand, are always taking money, rather than providing tax revenue . Quite a bit of this money is indirectly from fossil fuel companies, through having to compete with subsidized wind and solar using an absurd pricing scheme that does not produce nearly enough money in total. In theory, it may produce huge amounts of money in times of shortages to offset the constant losses at other times, but homeowners and businesses cannot afford the high costs at these times.)
One thing that has helped fossil fuel companies is the belief that shortages are ahead, and these shortages will lead to high prices. So future prices will be better. Yes, shortages are ahead, but it doesn’t follow that high prices (very high, for very long) are ahead. Instead, job loss tends to result. The economy tends to collapse.
What has happened in the past, especially with the small companies that drilled in shale formations, is that they found land and leased (or bought it) it at relatively high prices. They then went bankrupt. But what happened was that pensions of workers were defaulted on. A new company came in, and bought them out, at a much lower cost of land and other materials that they already had available. Production continued, even after the bankruptcy. But with the drop in prices related to the pandemic, US oil production dropped off very rapidly after March 2020. So US oil production is indeed down. You can see this on Figure 7. From Figure 7, it looks like shale was less affected than other types of production because shale had a lot of “drilled but uncompleted” wells. These could be completed, without spending a lot of money, and temporarily keep the companies from collapsing from the low prices. Debt owners were getting tired of supporting money-losing propositions.
Whether or not oil is constantly being replenished from the earth’s core (and I can’t image that it is), the issue is that the quantity that oil companies can extract cheaply is not rising. In fact, companies need to extract the oil so cheaply that it can be sold profitably, including money for taxes, shareholders, bond holders and everyone else, at less than $20 per barrel. This hasn’t happened since about 1970.
“If things were really as dire as you depict, the oil companies would have gone broke by now.”
What in fact has been happening is that the major oil firms have been turning more and more to trading to maintain profits, mirroring the financialisation of the wider economy, whilst pulling back from actual oil production by selling off assets, reducing investment etc.
https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/265786/bp-lifts-veil-of-secrecy-on-big-oil-trading-profits/
“Shell’s oil trading operations, known internally as Trading & Supply, accounted for 43% of the Oil Products division’s total earnings of $5.995 billion in 2020.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-shell-trading-idUSKBN2B41AG
Gail – you this thread’s topics are touched upon in the first 32 minutes of Chad A. Haag’s latest Q&A
https://youtu.be/j0kjBC6ecaU
Peak Oil, Abiotic Oil, and the system’s need for a double standard caste system as we move into degrowth and collapse, which the Global Warming and Pandemic Lockdown narratives provide cover stories for.
Chad is one of the greatest living thinkers in my opinion. Much of his work is very relevant for OFWers, but he takles it from deeply philosophical subterrain and emergent systems angles.
Thank you for your great work Gail, and several posters here whom I learn much from. Spasibo.
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“The pandemic has skewed economic statistics around the world, leaving governments and economists struggling to determine policy and performance at a crucial point in the crisis.
“Just when policymakers have to make some of the most important decisions on the economic effects of Covid-19 vaccines, and on lifting restrictions and stimulus to fuel recovery, official and unofficial data are giving inconsistent and potentially misleading signals.
“Problems in data collection, the effects of coronavirus support policies themselves and a breakdown in previously cast-iron relationships between data and business performance are making accurate assessments elusive.”
https://www.ft.com/content/3e0a81a9-85b3-47a6-a480-445407024899
I expect part of the problem is that the momentum is going the wrong way. The trend is toward contraction. Also, an awfully lot of the debt cannot possibly be repaid. For example, most people whose rent or mortgage payments have been deferred cannot possibly repay what has been, in effect, a loan.
Some sectors are profiting from the quantitative easing of central banks: stockmarket, the financial sector, housing. Growth in these sectors may obscure the shrinking of the physical productive sectors. Overall the economy may appear to be growing, but that growth is only the reshuffling papers and stocks.
“Outlook darkens for Europe’s virus-stricken economy…
“Economists are cutting growth forecasts for the eurozone economy as a third wave of Covid-19 infections and vaccination delays spur tighter restrictions in several countries including France, Italy and Germany.”
https://www.ft.com/content/e818cea3-998f-4eef-ac0f-8f11894ac9af
“European Banks Urged to Recognize Loan Losses Following Covid… EBA’s Campa expects ‘significant’ increase in bad loan ratios…
“Campa’s position and recent warnings from the European Central Bank show that European authorities are preparing for the full effect of the pandemic to reverberate across the economy once temporary relief measures expire. The EBA is also resuming stress tests of banks this year.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-22/european-banks-urged-to-recognize-loan-losses-following-covid
“The ECB’s Financial Self-Destruction… At a time of emerging lockdowns in the rest of the world, the EU is badly behind in its vaccination programme and is unlikely to fully emerge from its lockdowns before next winter, and possibly beyond…
“The only thing that holds the Commission together is the magic money tree that is the ECB… It really is a horror show in the making.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4415251-the-ecbs-financial-self-destruction
Europe has huge energy problems. This is part of their problem, as well. It can’t really afford the vaccine program, which is part of the reason it can’t keep up with what it hoped to do. Shutdowns help hide other problems.
542,818 deaths –US (Hopkins total- probably a undercount)
Europe in not even close to that.
Our capitalist just in time economy is a disaster when it comes to pandemics.
It is not Cuba.
(Cuban life expectancies of 79.5 years and infant mortality rates of 4.3 per 1000 live births (2015) compare well with rich nations like the USA (78.7 years and 5.7 per 1, 000 live births)
Sounds awesome…. can you ask a Cuban if he wants to swap spots with Fast Eddy.
I am so eager to get my Cuban passport!!!
Apparently lab rats living close to starvation live much longer than normally.
For any reasonable comparison of longevity, normalize lifespan with GDP/capita.
Having no access to McDonalds…has its upside.
A quick thought…
My dog loves to be outside… she chases rabbits… (seldom catching them)… she basks in the sun… she will only scratch at the door asking to be let in if it is cold or raining….
But sometimes I want her to come into the house…. and that takes bribery… a small treat will overcome her resistance.. she just cannot resist the bribe.
People ask — how can it be possible for the Elders to control the world?
Easy — offer them treats… everyone loves treats… otherwise known as MONEY!!! Think of what you’d be willing to overlook if you were offered a $500k per year job…. particularly when what you are paid to do is legal….
And the Elders have plenty of money …
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/789/428/a01.gif
Right, that’s how they deal with potential alphas challenging them. Make them compete like mad for nothing – vanity, prestige and status in the herd.
The Pavlovian experiment of the alpha males.
As for the betas; make them serve the female consumption and reproductive instincts plus the vanity, and you got the shebang rolling.
Of course money means nothing if you sit on the printing press and information advantage.
As I have said; it’s all about energy and information. Fiat, gold, crypto. So what when the press, mining equipment and compute is one button press away.
John ioannidis from Stanford stated that one must distinguish deaths from covid vs deaths with covid which will lead to over-
counting.
I’ve been a few places… but the worst was cuba…
It kinda puts one off of the concepts of communism and totalitarianism…
So why does it seem to be so quiet on Cuba? Is it due to heavy policing?
Well maybe, but there is a much more important reason. The Cubans know all to well that change, if it were to come about, would be all for the worse. USA, in its infinite wisdom, has put up a glorious showcase in the Caribbean: Haiti.
Twice between the 1991 and 2001 the moderate reformer Aristide was ousted as president by the US, with generous help from the French. All hope of a better life for the Haitians effectively crushed, the economy cemented as a sweatshop, living conditions mired in squalor and utter hopelessness.
Something for the Cubans to strive for indeed, and of which they are very well aware.
Yep—
Castro died of old age.
Was it the 4 room house he lived in?
I am always amused by the fact that beatings and dungeons are required to convince people that they should embrace utopia.
The Cuban variant of communism exercised power more through persuasion (propaganda) than through beatings and dungeons (although there was also enough of this, of course). For Cuban peasants of Batista’s time, Fidel meant hope, and hope for the future (just like hope in afterlife) is a great pacifier, enough to stabilize a society over a couple of generations, even if material conditions are poor and shabby. In many ways, the Cuban dictatorship was more like Mussolini or Salazar’s soft fascism than Adolf, Staline, Mao or Polpot’s hard totalitarianism.
And then, when you have sun, hot rain and beautiful women all year round, maybe the lack of money or freedom of speech doesn’t seem so pressing. 🙂
You are in NZ–aside from the bad food, and very marginal wine (no Cuban would put up with it), it is not a bad place.
Your female leader has handled the covid crisis very well, and your freedom has been restricted minimally.
Plus, it is the trout fishing that brings me back—
It has been a while.
Cubans can afford wine?
This applies only in wider context, the primary acute reason for the EU area slacking on vaccination is that UK and US simply kept already “promised-ordered” batches for themselves..
Obviously in that wider context the situation just reveals the incompetence vs Asians or the US (at least) in terms of readiness to action as centralized power aka loosing place in the pecking order..
“[Europe] can’t really afford the vaccine program, which is part of the reason it can’t keep up with what it hoped to do.”
Europe can and would print all the funny money it needs, but vaccine producers cannot deliver the amounts required. (Or some blood clot affair comes along.)
Of course, I mean the politically correct producers. Saving lives is one thing but no one is so desperate to save lives by jabbing people with geopolitical weapons of Putin’s hybrid warfare.
“Amid the rash of Covid-19 anniversaries, it was easy to miss that the pandemic’s scariest financial moment just turned one. On March 19 last year… the market looked to have broken down. For some reason there had been massive selling of Treasuries at a time of extreme high risk, which would normally be exactly when investors would be expected to buy.
“Getting to the bottom of that accident is proving maddeningly difficult.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-22/bond-market-s-weird-and-scary-2020-breakdown-is-still-a-mystery
It’s quite amazing really, try to find the “market” for all the manipulations,primary dealers, QE, repo whatever. . . . So hard to figure out why the market might act be acting “weird and scary”.
I’ll bet George Gammon could figure it out.
“Unvaccinated sailors risk deepening global supply chain crisis…
“Of the world’s 1.7m seafarers, 900,000 are from developing nations, where vaccines might not be available for all until 2024, according to the International Chamber of Shipping, a trade association.”
https://www.ft.com/content/72feaabd-5f94-40ad-9073-0178db969b23
“A shortage of semiconductor chips has turned the global automotive industry upside down over the last several months.
“The latest automakers to announce production cuts due to supply chain issues are Honda Motor Co. Ltd and Toyota Motor Corp.”
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/borderlands-supply-chain-woes-halt-more-automakers
“Renesas Electronics, one of the world’s largest makers of chips for the automotive industry, has warned that a fire at one of its factories could have “a massive impact” on global semiconductor supplies and halt production for at least a month.
“The timing of Friday’s fire at the advanced chip facility in Japan could not be worse for carmakers, which were already wrestling with widespread disruption to supply chains caused by the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the US cold snap that led to mass blackouts in Texas [and the drought in Taiwan].”
https://www.ft.com/content/51762983-00bc-4017-aeab-12be802c3cc5
recall the Dodge and Plymouth K-car? older models had the distinction of becoming a total loss if the single circuit board in them died. replacement boards were more expensive than the blue book price of the car. my in-laws had their K-car towed away.
Even if vaccines are supposed to be available in 2024 for these sailors, will the sailors really be able to afford them? Will the system ever get to these sailors?
“Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil exporter, is no longer the world’s most profitable company.
“After a pandemic year that slashed fossil fuel prices—and drove up demand for consumer technology—that distinction now falls to Apple.”
https://qz.com/1987007/saudi-aramco-is-no-longer-the-worlds-most-profitable-company/
“Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi of Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman hope to use new cities to transform their countries…
“If two of the Middle East’s many autocrats have their way, it won’t be long before the region has two megacities arising out of sand and rock. One is Neom, Saudi Crown Price’s Muhammad Bin Salman’s $500 billion plan to build a metropolis of one million people in the kingdom’s empty northwest desert….
“Neom is the crown prince’s pet project and the symbol of all that he personally hopes to accomplish in transforming Saudi Arabia. Even before there’s a city, there is reportedly already a royal palace or two on the site.”
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-egypt-s-and-saudi-arabia-s-shiny-new-cities-are-just-a-facade-1.9639998
$500 billion for a city of one million? That’s $500,000 per inhabitant. Somebody buy this prince a calculator.
Vanitas vanitatum, dixit Ecclesiastes; vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas.
Nobody tell the Houthis!
“In 1937 the Nazis, in support of Franco in Spain, bombed the defenseless northern Spanish town of Guernica, massacring hundreds of civilians gathered in the town on market day. Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica, a shriek of protest against the slaughter, is one of the world’s best known anti-war works of art. Yemen has had more than 2000 days of Guernicas at the hands of the US and Saudis, but no Picasso.”
“Turkey’s currency has tumbled as much as 14% after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sacked the country’s central bank governor over the weekend.
“Naci Agbal had been credited as a key force in pulling the lira back from historic lows… Erdogan replaced him in a surprise move on Saturday, the third central bank governor exit in under two years.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56479702
“Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Istanbul on Saturday after Turkey pulled out of an international agreement designed to protect women from domestic violence. The move has sparked outrage both in Turkey and around the world.”
https://www.euronews.com/2021/03/21/protests-over-turkey-s-withdrawal-from-women-s-treaty
“Emerging markets may be about to enter a fresh period of volatility as central banks struggle to hold inflation in check while keeping the growth fires burning.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-21/emerging-markets-caught-in-flux-as-central-banks-walk-tightrope
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