Russia’s attack on Ukraine represents a demand for a new world order that, over the long term, will support higher prices for fossil fuels, especially oil. Such an economy would probably be centered on Russia and China. The rest of the world economy, to the extent that it continues to exist, will largely have to get along without fossil fuels, other than the fossil fuels that countries continue to produce for themselves. Population and living standards will fall in most of the world.
If a Russia-and-China-centric economy can be developed, the US dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. Trade will be in the currency of the new Russia-China block. Outside of this block, local currencies will play a dominant role. Most of today’s debt will ultimately be defaulted upon; to the extent that this debt is replaced, it will be replaced with debt in local currencies.
As I see the situation, the underlying problem is the fact that, on a world basis, energy consumption per capita is shrinking. Energy consumption is essential for creating goods and services.
The shrinking amount of energy per person means that, on average, fewer and fewer finished goods and services can be produced for each person. Some countries do better than average; others do worse. With low fossil fuel prices, Russia has been faring worse than average; it wants to remedy the situation with long-term higher energy prices. If Russia can start transferring its energy exports to China, perhaps the new Russia-China economy, with limited support from the rest of the world, can afford to pay Russia the high prices for fossil fuels that Russia requires to maintain its economy.
In this post, I will try to explain what I see is happening.
[1] It appears that Russia now fears that it is near collapse, not too different from the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. Such a collapse would lead to a huge drop in Russia’s living standards, even from today’s relatively low level.
If we look back at the Soviet Union’s energy consumption, we see a strange pattern. The Soviet Union’s energy consumption rose rapidly in the period after World War II. It became a military rival of the US, as its energy consumption grew in the 1965 to 1985 period. Its energy consumption leveled off before the central government collapsed in 1991. In fact, energy consumption has never gotten back to its level in the late 1980s.
[2] The thing that seems to have been behind the 1991 collapse is the same thing that seems to be behind Russia’s current fear of collapse: continued low oil prices.
When we look back at inflation-adjusted oil prices, we see that a long period of low prices preceded this collapse. These low prices were harmful in many ways. They reduced funds for reinvestment, which led to the collapse in oil supply. They reduced the funds available to pay wages. They also reduced the tax revenue that the Soviet Union could collect.
I believe that these chronically low oil prices ultimately brought down the top layer of the government of the Soviet Union. This is because of the physics of the situation. It takes energy to provide the services of the top level of the government. As the total energy that could be purchased by the system fell because of low prices received for exports, it became impossible to support this top level of governmental services. This top layer was less essential than the lower levels of government, so it fell away.
In recent times, there has also been a long period of low prices, since about 2013:
Unless this pattern of low prices can be reversed quickly, Russia as a political entity could collapse. Exports of all of the goods it now produces would likely fall.
[3] While oil prices depend on “supply and demand,” as a practical matter, demand is very dependent on interest rates and debt levels. The higher the debt level and the lower the interest rate, the higher the price of oil can rise.
If we look back at Figure 4, we can see that before the US subprime housing bubble popped in 2008, inflation-adjusted oil prices were able to rise to $157 per barrel, adjusted to the 2020 price level. Once the debt bubble popped, inflation-adjusted oil prices fell to $49 per barrel. It was at this low point (and correspondingly low prices for many other commodities) that the US started its program of Quantitative Easing (QE) to lower interest rates.
After two years of QE, oil prices were back above $140 per barrel, in inflation-adjusted prices, but these soon started sliding down. By the time oil prices dropped to $120 per barrel, oil companies started to complain that prices were falling too low to meet all of their needs, including the need to drill in ever less productive areas. Now we are at a point where interest rates are about as low as they can go. Short-term interest rates are near zero, which is where they were in the late 1930s.
The quantity of funds in people’s checking and savings accounts is at an extraordinarily high level, as well. This is partly because of the availability of debt at these low interest rates.
Thus, even before the Ukrainian invasion, oil prices were raised about as high as they could go, through low interest rates and generous debt availability. With all this stimulus, Brent Spot Oil prices averaged $86.51 in January 2022. Even now, with all the disruption of the attack by Russia against Ukraine, oil prices are below the $120 threshold that producers seem to need. This price issue, plus the corresponding low-price issues for natural gas and coal, is the problem that Russia is concerned about.
Prices for imported coal and natural gas have bounced very high in the last few months, but no one expects these high prices to last. For one thing, they are too high for the European manufacturers that use imported coal or natural gas to stay in business. For example, producers that create urea fertilizer using natural gas find that the price of fertilizer produced in this way is way too high for farmers to afford. For another, the electricity produced by burning the high-priced natural gas or coal tends to be too expensive for European households to afford.
[4] The fundamental problem behind recent low oil prices is the fact that the current mix of consumers cannot afford goods and services produced using the high oil prices that producers, such as Russia, need to operate, pay high enough wages, and do adequate reinvestment.
When the price of oil was very low, back before 1970 (see Figure 3), it was relatively easy for consumers to afford goods and services made with oil. This was the period when the world economy was growing rapidly, and many people could afford to purchase automobiles and buy the oil products needed to operate them.
Once the cost of oil extraction started rising because of depletion, it became more and more difficult to keep prices both:
- High enough for oil producers, such as Russia, and
- Low enough to make affordable goods for consumers, as was possible prior to 1970
To try to hide the increasingly difficult problem of keeping prices both high enough for producers and low enough for consumers, central banks have lowered interest rates and encouraged the use of more debt. The idea is that if a person can buy a fuel-efficient car at a low enough interest rate and over a long enough term, perhaps this will make the vehicle more affordable. Similarly, interest rates on home mortgages have fallen to very low levels. All of this, plus the fact that debt is used to finance new factories and mines, leads to the relationship we saw in Figure 4 between oil prices and debt availability, related to interest rates.
[5] No one knows precisely how much oil, coal and natural gas can be extracted because the quantity that can be extracted depends on the extent of the price rise that can be tolerated without plunging the economy into recession.
If prices of these fossil fuels can rise very high (say, $300 per barrel for oil, and correspondingly high prices for other fossil fuels), a huge amount of fossil fuel can be extracted. Conversely, if energy prices cannot stay above the equivalent of $80 per barrel oil for very long without a serious recession, then we may already be very close to the end of available fossil fuel extraction. Both oil and gas producers and coal producers can be expected to go out of business because prices do not leave a sufficient margin for the required investment in new fields to offset the depletion of existing fields. Renewables will falter, as well, because both building and maintaining renewables requires fossil fuels.
The amount of resources of any kind (fossil fuels and minerals such as lithium, uranium, copper and zinc) that can be extracted depends upon the extent of depletion that the economy can tolerate. Depletion of any kind of resource means that a bigger effort (more workers, more machinery, more energy products) is required to extract a given quantity of each resource. It is clear that the entire economy cannot be transferred to the extraction of fossil fuels and mineral resources. For example, some workers and resources are needed for growing and transporting food. This puts a limit on how much depletion can be tolerated.
What Russia (as well as every other oil producer) would like is a way to get the tolerable oil price up significantly higher, for example, to $150 per barrel, so that more oil can be extracted. The hope is that a Russia-and-China-centric economy might be able to do this. Ideally, the tolerable maximum price for coal and natural gas would rise, as well.
[6] Europe, in particular, cannot afford high oil prices. If interest rates are increased soon, this will make the problem even worse. China seems to have definite advantages as an economic partner.
Europe is already having difficulty tolerating very high prices of imported natural gas and coal. Rising oil prices will add even more stress. Central banks are planning to raise interest rates. These higher interest rates will make loan payments more expensive. These higher interest rates will tend to push Europe’s economy further toward recession.
Given the problems with Europe as an energy importer, China would seem to have the possibility of being a better customer that can perhaps tolerate higher prices. For one thing, China is more efficient in its use of energy products than Europe. For example, many homes in the southern half of China are not heated in winter. People instead dress warmly inside their homes in winter. Also, homes and businesses in northern China are sometimes heated with waste heat from nearby coal-fired electricity plants. This is a very efficient approach to heating.
China also uses more coal in its energy mix than Europe. Historically, coal has been much less expensive than oil. What is needed is a low average price of energy. A small amount of high-priced oil can be tolerated in an economy that uses mostly coal in its energy mix. When all costs are counted, wind and solar are very high-priced energy sources, which contributes to Europe’s problems.
In recent years, China’s consumption of energy products has been growing very rapidly. Perhaps, in the view of Russia, China can use high-priced fossil fuel better than other parts of the world.
[7] Russia realized that the rest of the world is utterly dependent upon its fossil fuel exports. Because of this dependency, as well as the physics-based connection between the burning of fossil fuels and the making of finished goods and services, Russia holds huge power over the world economy.
The world economy should have known about the importance of fossil fuels and the likelihood that the world economy would face depletion issues in the first half of the 21st century, ever since a speech by Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover in 1957. In this speech, Rickover said,
We live in what historians may someday call the Fossil Fuel Age. . .With high energy consumption goes a high standard of living. . . A reduction of per capita energy consumption has always in the past led to a decline in civilization and a reversion to a more primitive way of life.
Current estimates of fossil fuel reserves vary to an astonishing degree. In part this is because the results differ greatly if cost of extraction is disregarded or if in calculating how long reserves will last, population growth is not taken into consideration; or, equally important, not enough weight is given to increased fuel consumption required to process inferior or substitute metals. We are rapidly approaching the time when exhaustion of better grade metals will force us to turn to poorer grades requiring in most cases greater expenditure of energy per unit of metal.
. . . it is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost are likely to run out at sometime between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.
I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants – those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America’s youngsters the best possible education [including the energy problem of a world with finite resources].
Many people today would conclude that world leaders have done their best to ignore this advice. The likely problem with fossil fuels has been hidden behind an imaginative, but false, narrative that our biggest problem is climate change caused primarily by fossil fuel extraction that can be expected to extend until at least 2100, unless positive steps are made to hold back this extraction.
In this false narrative, all the world needs to do is to move to wind and solar for its energy needs. As I discussed in my most recent post, titled Limits to Green Energy Are Becoming Much Clearer, this narrative of success is completely false. Instead, we seem to be hitting energy limits in the near term because of chronically low prices. Wind and solar are doing very little to help because they cannot be depended upon when needed. Furthermore, the quantity of wind and solar available is far too low to replace fossil fuels.
Few people in America and Europe realize that the world economy is entirely dependent upon Russia’s exports of oil, coal and natural gas. This dependency can be seen in many ways. For example, in 2020, 41% of world natural gas exports came from Russia. Natural gas is especially important for balancing electricity from wind and solar.
North America has historically played only a very small role in natural gas exports; it is questionable whether North America can ramp up its total natural gas production in the future, given the depletion problems being experienced with respect to the extraction of oil and the associated natural gas from shale formations. Continuously high oil prices are necessary to justify ramping up production outside of sweet spots. If drillers consider long-term prospects for oil prices to be too low, the associated natural gas will not be collected.
Europe is especially dependent upon natural gas imports (Figure 9). Its imports of natural gas exceed the exports of Russia and its affiliated countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, referred to as Russia+ in Figures 8 and 9.
Without the natural gas exports of Russia and its close affiliates, there is no possibility of supplying adequate natural gas exports to the rest of the world.
Diesel fuel, created by refining oil, is another energy product that is in critically short supply, especially in Europe. Diesel fuel is used to power trucks and farm tractors, as well as many European automobiles. An Argus Media report indicates that Russian supplies account for 50% to 60% of Europe’s seaborne imports of diesel and other gasoil, amounting to 4 to 6 million tons of fuel per month. It likely would be impossible to replace these imports, using supplies from elsewhere, without bidding the price of these imported fuels up to a much higher price level than today. Even then, countries outside Europe would be left with inadequate diesel supplies.
[8] Russia’s attack on Ukraine seems to have been made for many reasons.
Russia was clearly frustrated with the current situation, with NATO becoming increasingly assertive within Ukraine itself, even though Ukraine is not itself a NATO member. Russia is also aware that in some sense, it has far more power over the world economy than most people realize because the world economy is utterly dependent on Russia’s fossil fuel exports (Section 7). Sanctions against Russia will likely hurt the countries making the sanctions as much or more than they hurt Russia.
There were also several concerns that were specifically Ukrainian giving rise to the attack on Ukraine. There had been long standing conflicts about natural gas pipelines. Was Ukraine taking too much natural gas out as a transit fee? Was it paying the correct fee for the natural gas it used? Ukraine also seems to have mistreated quite a few Russian-speaking Ukrainians over the years.
Russia has become increasingly frustrated with the small share of the world’s output of goods and services that it receives. The way the economic system works today, those who provide “services” seem to receive a disproportionate share of the world’s output of goods and services. Russia, with its extraction of minerals of many kinds, including fossil fuels, has not been well compensated for the great wealth that it brings to the world as a whole.
Over the years, Russia’s great strength has been its military. Perhaps Ukraine would not be too large a country to do battle over. Russia might be able to eliminate some of its irritations with Ukraine. At the same time, it might be able to make changes that would help to raise what have become chronically low fossil fuel prices. The sanctions that other countries would make would tend to push the required changes along more quickly.
If the sanctions really did push Russia down, the result would tend to push the whole world economy toward collapse, because the rest of the world is extremely dependent upon Russia’s fossil fuel exports. In Figure 1, the laws of physics say that there is a proportional response to the quantity of energy “dissipated”; if a greater output of goods and services is desired, more energy input is required. Efficiency changes can somewhat help, but efficiency savings tend to be offset by the higher energetic needs of the more complex system required to achieve these savings.
If energy prices do not rise high enough, we will somehow need to get along with very little or no fossil fuels. It is doubtful that renewables will last very long either because they depend upon fossil fuels for their maintenance and repair.
[9] If higher energy prices cannot be achieved, there is a significant chance that the change in the world order will be in the direction of pushing the world economy toward collapse.
We are living in a world today with shrinking energy resources per capita. We should be aware that we are reaching the limits of fossil fuels and other minerals that we can extract, unless we can somehow figure out a way to get the economy to tolerate higher prices.
The danger that we are approaching is that the top levels of governments, everywhere in the world, will either collapse or be overthrown by their unhappy citizens. The reduced amounts of energy available will push governments in this way. At the same time, programs such as government-funded pension plans and unemployment plans will disappear. Electricity is likely to become intermittent and then fail completely. International trade will shrink back; economies will become much more local.
We were warned that we would be reaching a time period with serious energy problems about now. The first time came in the 1957 Rickover speech discussed in Section 7. The second warning came from the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and others, which documented a computer modeling approach to the problem of limits of a finite world. The Ukraine invasion may be a push in the direction of more serious energy problems, emerging primarily from the fact that other countries will want to punish Russia. Few people will realize that punishing Russia is a dangerous path; a serious concern is that today’s economy cannot continue in its current form without Russia’s fossil fuel exports.
Worthy of a Borat episode https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/33730
Question is if it’s possible to boot the biatch out if she happens to be a psycho? I’m giving it a 9 /10 probability of this coming true. Worse than Russian roulette, however equally mentally devastating.
When do we get leftover asylums for loonies that can’t resist primal desires?
Right, that’s the function of government.
It’s all good.
Yah putin is doing this so you can marry Ukrainian women. Where are your quite beautiful women? How about Taiwan women none of those for you? As long as we are dreamin ill take one of each Iranian, Taiwan, Israeli, western Ukrainian and eastern Ukrainian. A peace keeping mission. (ok im delusional) Not a woman in the joint. Im sorry thats just wrong a room stuffed full of hetero men dancing without one gal. Even Nome isnt that bad. Well maybe it is but at least their drunk. A new low for the persia borats.
https://t.me/VigilantFox/3370 hahahahha this might get traction when starvation hits
Actually there exist some people that claim that “we” are nothing more like “catte”.
A cattle farmer actually feeds his “life stock” even when he knows from the beginning that he wii kill all of it later.
The cattle farmer feeds his lifes stock, Some people from now on will have to starve.
So we are not even cattle farm life stock.
Ok, what book should I read now, Schopenhauer or Nietzsche? I dunno!
Book readig is unfortunately no longer an option. Buy arms,
A lot!
Defend yourself ?
for what ?
…or just leave it to the Kings of the Teletubbies.
In fact it is common practice among cattle farmers in poor countries to slaughter cattle to sell them in a hurry, or even let them rot in the fields, when some calamity makes it impossible to feed them.
The name of human’s calamity is overgrowth in a finite world (OFW).
wow
https://t.me/DowdEdward/129
“telegram” is a tool of disinformation.
“My street” is not a tool of disinformation.
According to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan
some people are able to smell something to destroy half way around the globe.
Destruction is in evolutionry terms much more efficient than creation.
The destructors have eliminated thousands of generations of peace lovers.
So the worst war mongers are left over by evolution of the fittest.
If I were a simulation observer (@CTG) I knew that for more than 100 Trillion years ago. or even 10 to the 100 trillion years ago. The evils will always prevail.
Just forget about your ideas about “love will save us”
No, Guns will save us! and a lot of!
I said it before: the only solution in a farer future for a distinct “tribe” will be to elimininate
WITHOUT QUESTION WHATSOEVER
EVERY
foreign intruder.
Quite a good Idea derived from “evolution on this planet”. Yes yes. either you die or you succeed.
Have a nice time!
That is what Jane Goodall observed.
Really, what did she say? Did she leave a writing on the subject?
If there aren’t enough resources to go around, things have to go in the direction of keeping out new immigrants. This is related to no longer exporting food that is in short supply.
The British State still projects BAU for the foreseeable. The Tories are relieved, as Brits are having fewer kids and dying younger, and more immigrant workers are coming in (about 600,000 per year, 300,000 ‘net’ per year) than they previously estimated, which will lower public spending in the future.
Schooling and pensions are pricey for the capitalist state, and ‘ready to work’ entrants balance the budget a lot better. The capitalist state does not seem to be able to conceive or foresee anything but BAU. This is the FT last month.
> Population changes provide UK with unexpected boost to public finances
UK ministers will be under far less pressure to raise taxes in the coming years to pay for the costs of the country’s ageing population because of falling birth rates, declining life expectancy and rising immigration.
Although the UK population is ageing, making it more expensive for taxpayers to provide public services, fewer children and pensioners than previously expected and more immigrants will all ease the pressures on the public finances, according to Financial Times analysis of the latest official predictions on demographic trends.
It means the government will have to find just £13bn in extra taxation to fund public services each year by the end of the decade, or 0.4 per cent of national income, instead of the £69bn implied by previous estimates for population changes by the UK statistical agency.
But while the demographic trends provide a better than expected outlook for the public finances if ministers want to run a balanced current budget, they also highlight looming policy challenges. These include a need for school closures as pupil numbers fall and a possible undermining of the plan to raise the state pension age.
The FT’s calculations are based on the latest population projections from the Office for National Statistics and the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimates of the differences in taxes paid and public expenditure received by people at each stage of their lives.
…. In its 2016 population forecasts, the ONS thought there would be a net 165,000 immigrants a year settling in the UK, but even with a sharp decline in EU nationals coming to Britain after the Brexit referendum, the numbers stayed high until the coronavirus pandemic.
The latest ONS assumption is that net migration will be 205,000 a year — far above Cameron’s target of reducing it to the tens of thousands.
Madeleine Sumption, director of Oxford university’s migration observatory, said the ONS figure looked “broadly sensible”. “This is close to the medium-term trend,” she added, although she cautioned the figure was subject to a lot of uncertainty.
Jonathan Portes, professor at King’s College London, agreed the ONS number looked about right.
“The end of [EU] free movement [of people], a relatively liberal new migration regime and relaxed controls on Hong Kong migrants, would suggest net migration would be in a range of between 100,000 and 300,000 a year,” he said.
Higher immigration will help to pay for the UK’s ageing population, but the boost to the public finances will begin to wane later this century as those coming to Britain from overseas get older and the lower level of births result in fewer working age people to pay for pensions.
Webb, partner at consultants Lane Clark & Peacock, said the FT’s calculations still highlighted additional costs of the ageing population, but there was more breathing space for policymakers to respond gradually.
“Given the volatility of these long-term spending estimates, public policy needs to be calm and strategic rather than making knee-jerk responses to overblown fears of a ‘demographic time-bomb’,” he added.
https://www.ft.com/content/70020670-9f45-451b-8612-0a785ac16a5e
Yes, indeed, people everywhere assume business as usual will continue indefinitely. Actuaries who put together funding estimates implicitly assume that the world economy will continue as in the past. If this doesn’t happen, US actuaries have said, “We will just have to cut back benefits for retirees to match funding availability,” or something like that.
They have no conception how much things could change, or how quickly things could change.
They only understand the law of exponentials when they go in one direction. The don’t understand when the saw of exponentials go backwards.
Thank you
Mirror
Ibid:
> Genghis Khan was also portrayed positively by early Renaissance sources out of respect for the great spread of culture, technology and ideas under the Mongol Empire.[14]
…. Genghis Khan is credited with bringing the Silk Road under one cohesive political environment. This allowed increased communication and trade between the West, Middle East and Asia, thus expanding the horizons of all three cultural areas.
creative destruction that is.
Just as Klausi says.
Destroy them all and we will build a new world.
based on extractivism and earth dectruction.
Ownership rewritten-
The primary driver of all “the current resource issues” is to extract more of them abd have more growth,
“Russian Gas, Russian oil, Russsian metals” “The Chinese need this or that to build more ghost towns”
Yes, dig it up! Take it out, delete it from your very base! More growth, more fun.
PAU
Plunder as ussual.
Make this planet a desert. I think from there on we will finally go to the stars! Of course all civilisations we encounter will jiust have to submerge to:
“Wherever we go, we encounter void”
As was stated in the papal bull of 1492.
Everthing there is is
VOID
You mean Inter Cetera?
I am not sure that Alex VI said that.
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/alex06/alex06inter.htm
I don’t agree with many of the assumptions and propositions of this paper, but it has some good insights, specially above. As the pandemic slowly grows, and new Omicron derived lineages come to dominate, we will see new, actual, recombinant viruses.
Given the poor level of neutralization and the insistence of governments to use useless treatments, one could deduce a pathogenic variant is a matter of time, not a matter of if, and it will most likely affect the vaccinated, because all variants are immune evasive, antibody resistant, and I firmly believe are causing some level of atypical ADE. Lacking the N protein protection is a problem, injecting a vaccine derived N problem is a bigger. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.
I shared this paper, merely to put recombination on your radar, for you to be aware, and I already superficially covered it before, this will be an emergency trend this year. I personally suspect maybe Hong Kong is experiencing the growth of an under traced recombinant variant.
https://worldedge.substack.com/p/sars-cov2-first-signs-of-recombination/comments
Actually the SARS corona Virus will turm all “existing” corona virii into a SARS. The SARS has a man made horizontal gene transfer positive on evolution.
Whatever in the SARS COVID-19 thing is different from previous Corona Viruses it is that it has an
—
infinte capability on earth evolution
because it simply is not an agent of earth evolution.
—
Hat Tip to the Sirotkins!
The author of world edge.substack.com concludes:
“The higher the antibodies, the worse the symptoms in almost a third of this small study, bear the question I raised, that the non-neutralizing antibodies are driving atypical ADE, and worsening specific markers of inflammation, and I would bet shifting the immune response, among many other variables (micro clots, sCD40L, etc).”
Thus, it sounds like the antibodies [from the vaccine, I would assume] aren’t really doing their job. Instead, they are making the illness worse for at least some people.
Adding Up The Deaths of MOREONS
Today, I have published a new paper at an open access platform (OSF) which I have written together with a mathematician who is an expert on excess mortality. I think this could be of interest for you.
In that paper, we compare for the years 2020 and 2021 the number of observed all-cause deaths with the number of expected all-cause deaths in Germany, taking into account the demographic development and the increasing life expectancy.
The results show that whereas almost no excess mortality was observed in 2020 – the pandemic year without vaccinations – a relative strong increase in excess mortality is observed in 2021 – the pandemic year with vaccinations.
https://metatron.substack.com/p/excess-mortality-in-germany-2020
https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F78c29025-6ac6-4806-aa0b-3680597e732e_1002x664.png
If you have been watching the news, you will no doubt have figured out:
1. The US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by one-quarter point, and signaled that it expects six more raises by the end of the year.
2. Biden is sending an $800 million package of armaments to Ukraine, including switchblade drones.
3. The US stock markets are up on this news. WTI oil price is down to $95.37.
Well, #3 consistent with period before WWII and death of money; regarding #1, probably too little too late. #2, a great deal of equipment, etc. was left behind in Afghanistan, one wonders how much is left after this latest shipment.
WTI down, well when it was in the sixties, anyone here think it was going to near $100. Trick was to be long at the bottom and sell at the top, it fluctuates. It could be there isn’t enough oil to keep much of civilization going and shedding the load will be volatile.
There was a picture(who knows if was real or not) of a Ukrainian ammo dumb going up, if so, your tax dollars at work as a target.
Per Zero Hedge a significant part of the US population does not seem to oppose a nuclear exchange. Me, I would prefer to sit that one out and perhaps those who are encouraging such nonsense could send their zip codes to the targeting parties; I will gladly move before those damn things are thrown around.
Oops comes to mind.
Dennis L.
Buck makers make bucks.
“The Index” of whatsoever at least for the last three years does not say if food is on the table.
Liquidity is not a commodity and Net Energy is not negotiable.
But yeah, keep on blaming it on whoever you like.
Most Americans have no idea what a nuclear war is.
Does anyone?
I think that during collapse we will all have to learn that what we “should” do is a small subset of what we “can” do. In other words, collapse will cause many problems about which we have little ability to solve. I hope most can intuit this lesson, instead of having it imparted the hard way.
There will be military, humanitarian and natural problems. Our ability to respond to any of them, let alone all of them, will be limited. We’d better choose our battles wisely, least our ability to accomplish anything be reduced.
Yes, we had the internet that in principle allowed us do accomplish anything, But in principle we accomplished just more imprisonment.
The basic rule of evolution is that the killer wins And if he is questiuoned he just has to lie,
Destruction and Lies are the basic drivers of evolution and there simply is no need for truth because truth wil just be killed.
“Where is Zed?”
“Zed is dead baby, Zed is dead”
Death is the final success of human evolution!
I think tht this is quite a good outcome.
Very good point.
When high prices are caused by too little resources to go around, we have a real problem. Raising interest rates by enough to starve out a significant share of the population is, in theory, a solution to the resource/population mismatch, but not one anyone would suggest trying.
We are reaching a point when “solutions” aren’t really very good solutions.
Although we are on the edge of a nuclear war, I dont’ think that at the moment Russians will reply with direct weapons attack to US, but I think that Russians and their new allys will find a way to hurt americans in other ways.
In that sense I think that Biden’s administration strategy to give weapons to Ukranians is a suicide one or certainly self-harm one.
If I were an American person I would be angry with current US administration as I’m with mine here.
In a period of clear collapse to give weapons for increasing a war on the other side of the planet is like dropping bombs on a erupting volcano which can obscure the sky of the whole planet.
Boof!
Saudi told Boris to ‘go do one’.
Saudi has declined to increase oil production in order to protect the West from blowback from the sanctions that it imposed on Russia. The position of OPEC+ is that there is no problem with the level of oil production, and that if NATO/ EU wants to impose sanctions on Russia, and to refuse Russian fossil fuels, then that is really up to them.
Boris has shown that he is willing to ‘pal up’ with any dictator, ‘human rights’ abuser, warmonger, and mass killer – because he just ‘cares so much’ about that stuff. Saudi enacted public executions today while Boris was having tea with MbS. The USA-Saudi war in Yemen also continued to rage across the border, with hundreds of thousands dead.
> Boris Johnson fails to secure promise of more Saudi oil in visit overshadowed by executions
Boris Johnson has failed to secure commitments from Saudi Arabia to step up oil production to ease cost-of-living pressures, on a visit that was overshadowed by the announcement of three further executions in the desert kingdom.
Asked whether he had secured assurances that the oil-rich Gulf state would turn on the taps, he could say only that it was a decision for them.
Mr Johnson faced criticism for meeting crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) on a one-day trip – also taking in the United Arab Emirates – just days after Saudi Arabia announced the mass execution of 81 people on Saturday.
And the furore was heightened when the state-run Saudi Press Agency said three more individuals had been executed while he was there.
Maya Foa, the director of human rights advocacy group Reprieve, said: “By travelling to meet Mohammed bin Salman so soon after a mass execution, Boris Johnson clearly signalled that in return for oil, the UK will tolerate even the gravest human rights abuses.” (The Independent)
It is a mystery why Boris Johnson thought that this trip would be worthwhile. I suppose he can tell voters that he tried.
Saudi, too, is openly making moves toward the fall of the dollar – everyone is getting in on it, now.
Biden sent his UK ‘poodle’, Boris, to try it on with MbS, but Saudi is not much interested in USA any more. The ‘poodle’ came back all covered in muck, and with his ‘moralistic’ pretences, about Russia, looking about as convincing as ‘Rule Britannia’ at the BBC Proms.
China now imports far more oil than USA from Saudi, and China is investing very heavily in Saudi projects. And USA is no longer seen as a reliable security partner, after Afghanistan and Ukraine, and Saudi can do better with China, anyway.
Biden knew what would happen, but the UK ‘poodle gotta poodle’ in the muck when told to do so by USA, if it wants a ‘treat’. Boris came back looking thoroughly humiliated and defeated, a wretched sight before a humbled country.
> Saudi Arabia Considers Ditching The Dollar For Chinese Oil Sales
The status of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world is largely based on its importance in energy and commodity markets…. Those days are coming to an end.
One day after we reported that the “UK is asking Saudis for more oil even as MBS invites Xi Jinping to Riyadh to strengthen ties”, the WSJ is out with a blockbuster report, noting that “Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan,” a move that could cripple not only the petrodollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market – something which Zoltan Pozsar predicted in his last note – and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia, but also a move aimed squarely at the heart of the US financial system which has taken advantage of the dollar’s reserve status by printing as many dollars as needed to fund government spending for the past decade.
…. China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports, and if priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency, and set the Chinese currency on a path to becoming a global petroyuan reserve currency.
As even the WSJ admits, a shift to a (petro)yuan system, “would be a profound shift for Saudi Arabia to price even some of its roughly 6.2 million barrels of day of crude exports in anything other than dollars” as the majority of global oil sales—around 80%—are done in dollars, and the Saudis have traded oil exclusively in dollars since 1974, in a deal with the Nixon administration that included security guarantees for the kingdom. It appears that the Saudis no longer care much about US “security guarantees” and instead are switching their allegiance to China.
…. Today’s historic transition is not exactly a surprise: China has been stepping up its courtship of the Saudi kingdom in recent years, helping Saudi Arabia build its own ballistic missiles, consulting on a nuclear program, and investing in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s pet projects, such as Neom, a futuristic new city.
Meanwhile, the Saudi relationship with the U.S. has deteriorated under President Biden, who said in his 2020 campaign that the kingdom should be a “pariah” for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Prince Mohammed, who U.S. intelligence authorities say ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, refused to sit in on a call between Mr. Biden and the Saudi ruler, King Salman, last month.
It also comes as the U.S. economic relationship with the Saudis is diminishing: the U.S. is now among the top oil producers in the world, a stark reversal from the 1980s when it imported 2 million barrels of Saudi crude a day, but those numbers have fallen to less than 500,000 barrels a day in December 2021. By contrast, China’s oil imports have swelled over the last three decades, in line with its expanding economy. Saudi Arabia was China’s top crude supplier in 2021, selling at 1.76 million barrels a day, followed by Russia at 1.6 million barrels a day, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs.
“The dynamics have dramatically changed. The U.S. relationship with the Saudis has changed, China is the world’s biggest crude importer and they are offering many lucrative incentives to the kingdom,” said a Saudi official familiar with the talks.
“China has been offering everything you could possibly imagine to the kingdom,” the official said.
In retrospect, we now know the reason why MBS wasn’t taking Biden’s phone calls.
…. And so the pieces of the endgame are falling into place: Russia starving the western world of much-needed resources, sending commodity prices ever higher, while its silent partner China quietly picks up the monetary pieces and takes advantage of the Western scramble to secure resources at all costs, and approach all those other “non-western” former petrodollar clients – who are also rich in other resources – to offer them a new product, the yuan, which Beijing is now actively and aggressively pushing to dethrone the dollar as a global reserve currency. (Oil Price/ ZH)
“As I stated since the morning that the story about Saudi Arabia considering switching to Yuan in its oil trade with China is incorrect, but look at it this way: what is the impact of switching $55 billion to yuan on the global financial system and on world trade?
“if you believe it has an impact, especially if other countries follow suit, then the Saudis will lose: the Riyal is pegged to US dollar and oil is priced in US dollar. Why do it?
“If it has no impact, then why is the rage?”
https://twitter.com/anasalhajji/status/1503901715610972161
The Yuan still has a long way to go before dethroning the dollar as global reserve currency:
Share of global central bank reserves by currency in Q3 2021 (in $US billions):
US: $7081.39
Euro: $2452.10
Yen: $697.35
GBP: $572.76
Yuan: $318.99
https://data.imf.org/?sk=E6A5F467-C14B-4AA8-9F6D-5A09EC4E62A4
I suppose signing that Ukrainian “peace deal” with the russkies, admitting defeat (gasp!) and cutting the losses would patch together this ‘tour de force’ of folly in a hurry.
Imagine the self entitled bourgeoise hypocrites crawling before Putin, Slavic Beelzebub himself.
What a sight to behold.
🤣👍👍
Saudi already turned down a direct plea from Biden, so Boris was perhaps optimistic there.
They did up their production by 90,000 bpd in Feb to help OPEC meet its quotas for the first time in months but one wonders how much spare capacity they actually have to offer.
Some Saudis probably have villas in London and they perfectly understand that these are no longer “Assets”.
They have money in Switzerland and that is also in question. Switzerland joined the sanctiond!
Piracy is not about law.
“The law” will be something shreddered in history as it was already proven in the c9/11 and in Canada.
You own it ? I own it!
You may go to your local court! Actually this is “legal”
Thiis tactic of “lawful stealing of property” is pretty much rolled out all over eastern Europe already. Also in the Krim region (sorry my Putin overs) it is known that “Your property” from one day to the next is just “void”.
!!!
This is what “Agenda 2030” and “ESG” is all about : your property rights will be void.
!!!
When stealing is made legal we are in for a interesting ride!
Whoohhooo Yeah !
The tragedy of the Canadian Truckers was that even after 2 years of rule-by-decree, they hadn’t grasped that the rule of law is effectively over, whenever the old laws clash with what the rulers want to impose.
And they still clung to the belief in honest, decent police officers who would not abuse and beat them for pay.
All the theft and worse which is coming will be entirely legal, based on new interpretations of old laws, or new laws expressly brought in by puppet legislatures.
The situation is analagous to conquest by an invader, completely annulling the old regime.
The “end of the world” in these scenarios means the end of modern life as we know it: the collapse of industrialized societies, large-scale agricultural production, supply chains, stable climates, nation states…. Since the late sixties, an elite society of wealthy industrialists and scientists known as the Club of Rome (a frequent player in many conspiracy theories) has foreseen these disasters in the early 21st century. One of the sources of their vision is a computer program developed at MIT by computing pioneer and systems theorist Jay Forrester, whose model of global sustainability, one of the first of its kind, predicted civilizational collapse in 2040. “What the computer envisioned in the 1970s has by and large been coming true,” claims Paul Ratner at Big Think.
Those predictions include population growth and pollution levels, “worsening quality of life,” and “dwindling natural resources.” In the video at the top, see Australia’s ABC explain the computer’s calculations, “an electronic guided tour of our global behavior since 1900, and where that behavior will lead us,” says the presenter. The graph spans the years 1900 to 2060. “Quality of life” begins to sharply decline after 1940, and by 2020, the model predicts, the metric contracts to turn-of-the-century levels, meeting the sharp increase of the “Zed Curve” that charts pollution levels. (ABC revisited this reporting in 1999 with Club of Rome member Keith Suter.)
You can probably guess the rest—or you can read all about it in the 1972 Club of Rome-published report Limits to Growth, which drew wide popular attention to Jay Forrester’s books Urban Dynamics (1969) and World Dynamics (1971). Forrester, a figure of Newtonian stature in the worlds of computer science and management and systems theory—though not, like Newton, a Biblical prophecy enthusiast—more or less endorsed his conclusions to the end of his life in 2016. In one of his last interviews, at the age of 98, he told the MIT Technology Review, “I think the books stand all right.” But he also cautioned against acting without systematic thinking in the face of the globally interrelated issues the Club of Rome ominously calls “the problematic”:
https://www.openculture.com/2022/03/m-i-t-computer-program-predicts-in-1973-that-civilization-will-end-by-2040.html
The work of Jay Forrester seems to have played a very significant role in the modeling at MIT that led up to the publication of the book The Limits to Growth in 1972. Jay Forrester was involved in this type of analysis, long before Dennis and Donella Meadows got involved.
It is my understanding that heading up the Limits to Growth modeling project at MIT was Dennis Meadow’s first job, after getting his Ph. D. Prior to working on this assignment, Dennis Meadows and his wife Donella had taken a year off and toured around Europe. (bicycle?)
Donella was the lead author of the book “The Limits to Growth.” She may also have been the brains behind precisely how the model worked. She passed away in 2001 at the age of 59.
He was a bit too optimistic
Skimming that video — Club of Rome people are MOREONS… did I not see Meadows crying in a video because we had done nothing to stop the destruction of the planet… I suppose he thinks we should have built more solar panels, windmills and EVs… Moreon
Well at least we can say we banned plastic straws hahahahahahahaaha
This does not matter:
LTG was published in 1972 and now we are in 2022.
In principle you could say that The Club of Rome was the “working class side” of the problem and that the “eugenicists” was the banker’s side of the problerm.
Them are still fighting about a lost cause.
Do something bout it ? Why, should I if I can make more bucks?
Buck makers make Bucks!
We need a new market on “IoB” Go for it!
We need a new market on “green new deal” Go for it!
We need a new market on GMO” Go for it
Them extractivists will just extract every single bit out of you and this planet.
We are actually in for an ultra commodities supercycle because more extractivism will do it!
Extractivism is the basic driver of our econonomy.
If the planet is a desert we wll have the Metaverse and watch butterflis created by a japanese Butterfly artist.
The one thing that the materialists can not comprehbend is the void but that is exactly where they are going.
India is very interested in the prospect of de-dollarisation. India has vital economic and strategic ties with Russia, and it needs to be able to trade freely without USA interference.
Biden has shown that the dollar is a geopolitical weapon, with the freezing of Russian dollars, that no one wants to risk; and it undermines the interests of countries, like India, that depend on trade with Russia.
Also, NATO has shown itself to be a worthless defence partner, first in the Afghanistan debacle, and now in the Ukraine debacle; and India also feels humiliated within the ‘Aukus’ defence pact.
Ukraine could well be the occasion of the dollar’s fall. The Eurasian Economic Union and China are about to set up a new currency, and a new system for financial transfers, and India and others may very well choose to opt it.
> India’s foreign and economic policies are looking like China’s
New Delhi wants its own rupee-rouble trade, just like that between Russia and China using their own currencies. Despite being a member of the Quad, India may have as much incentive to see the dethroning of the dollar dominance in international trade and its weaponisation.
…. So much for geoeconomics. In the longer term, both China and India in fact share a similar geopolitical outlook when it comes to so-called de-dollarisation. Both countries want to see the erosion of the dollar dominance in the international trade system and its weaponisation by Washington when it comes to the use of sanctions. But for India, there is the added factor of America’s unreliability as a security partner.
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is reportedly having second thoughts about its pro-American tilt. After the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar openly questioned the value of American security guarantees. Nor is New Delhi especially impressed that the US has been pushing Ukraine to fight while refusing to commit its own military or Nato.
But the bigger picture is what may be called the Aukus betrayal. India had assumed the Quad, of the US, Australia, India, and Japan, would be the principal counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific. But now, it looks like when push comes to shove, the English-speaking Britain, the US and Australia prefer its own kind in the nuclear-armed alliance of Aukus.
The Modi government may not want to bet the ranch on US beneficence and prefer a more balanced approach with Moscow, despite the Ukraine crisis. This is very different from the song that the Biden White House has been singing since India abstained from the UN vote.
…. Voices coming out of India sound rather different. An opinion piece from last week’s The Northlines, an Indian web news site, makes for interesting reading. Titled “Crisis as an opportunity: Rupee-Rouble trade should become template to break US hegemony”, it could just have been an op-ed from a Chinese state-owned newspaper.
It argues: “A crisis too can play a catalytic role in ending dithering and full-scale adoption of a system – Rupee-Rouble trade – hitherto embraced half-heartedly and sporadically.”
…. Americans may think they are “the indispensable nation”, especially in the Indo-Pacific. But by creating the most economically dynamic region in the world today, Asians have proved they can take better care of their own peace, stability and prosperity.
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3170419/indias-foreign-and-economic-policies-are-looking-chinas
We may very well see trade between India and Russia in Rupees. (Or perhaps in Yuan). Cutting Russia out of SWIFT seems to be a good way to move other countries to trade directly with Russia, or find a new way to trade not using US$.
If the R word isn’t front and center
If reduced travel isn’t showing up yet in big-level data, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
Almost half (45%) of drivers said they were shortening driving lengths to cope with rising gas prices, according to a recent Autoinsurance.com poll of 1,520 people from European countries, the U.K. and U.S. (Just over 500 survey participants were American.)
Reyes said he and he wife like to enjoy the views and walks at a New York State park roughly 40 miles north. That’s not happening for now, he said. “Now when we are going to places, we calculate if it’s worth it or not,” he said.
In Pensacola, James and her husband like to travel when they can, to sightsee and enjoy restaurants. Something like a recent three-hour ride to Birmingham, Ala. would be off the table now, she said.
The real hurt comes from the skipped trips to see her grandchildren. It’s a special pang for a woman who wants to be there as much as she can for her daughter and son-in-law, as well as her 4- and 8-year-old grandsons, both with special needs. Her 8-year-old grandson is homeschooled and James has also — until recently — been able to occasionally bring him to her place to help with schoolwork and put some variety in his week.
The good news is her daughter and son-in-law are planning to move much closer to her in the spring, James said. Rising gas prices helped their moving decision, James said.
But that’s then and James has to stick with her budget now. “As a grandparent, it really makes you feel you are not adequate enough. … It’s kind of depressing I can’t do that now.”
Good thing Gail is visiting with her family and grandchild now in Boston….might not be able to afford to later.
Now what about the Vaxc Jab and Ukraine?
I was concerned that flights to Boston might be less available later. Airlines will have a terrible time with high prices.
Everyone will be dead soon … visit while you can
I predict everyone alive today will be dead sooner or later…
Yogi the Bear
Ukraine’s security service, with the support of the West, is preparing a provocation with the use of poisonous substances against civilians, said the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov.
“The purpose of the provocation is to accuse Russia of using chemical weapons against the Ukrainian population,” he said.
https://ria.ru/20220316/provokatsiya-1778540023.html
Good grief! The world doesn’t need this kind of thing.
Nothing new here https://www.databreaches.net/a-look-into-the-britam-defence-data-leak-files/
Google Britam leaked emails — the actual emails discussing the request to provide a chemical weapon to carry out the false flag attack are all there — including mentioning ‘huge sums of money’…
I called Britam and spoke to Goulding – he claimed they were fake and that they were prosecuting those who faked this … of course he would… he was supposed to get back to me when they determined who faked this ….of course he didn’t
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Jxd5gON0aN8/UheDD1AbqLI/AAAAAAABpuE/JL3Xn5JWhAM/s1600/mail-britam-34012.jpg
At the time there was an article in the MSM about this – that was pulled down rather quickly — and replaced with https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/article-2311199/Britam-Defence-David-Goulding-Philip-Doughty.html
https://21stcenturywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/1-Britam-Leaks-Daily-Mail.jpg
Wanna bet this was part of the coverup… https://pressgazette.co.uk/daily-mail-in-110k-libel-payout-over-syrian-chemical-weapons-story/
We just need more DRIVE on evolution. It simply is too slow!
We are destined to shoot up for the stars.
We simply are the masters of creation
Nobody can stop us because we are even better than gods.
The science has proved that the gods do not exist!
Actuallly I am in direct competition with Fast Eddy because I am god and Fast is not.
Looks like I willl have to send in some paratroopers at Fast’s home to
make sure that I willl be ruling for ever on them Teletubbies.
Well then… why not skip the CW and go directly to the nukes?
The ongoing USA-Saudi war in Yemen has directly killed 100,000, and approaching another 100,000 through famine. 10s of 1000s of kids have been killed.
But Boris is off to tea with Saudi – because Boris just ‘cares so much’ about ‘wars’, ‘dictators’, ‘human rights’, and ‘sovereignty’. /s
> How many people have died in Yemen as Boris Johnson begs Saudi Arabia for oil?
As the bloody conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues, Boris Johnson is meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to beg for an increase in Saudi oil production.
What’s happening in Yemen?
This comes as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis continues to unfold in Yemen, seven years into the US-backed, Saudi-led war, which began in 2015
The UN children’s fund also revealed that at least 47 children were “killed or maimed” in Yemen’s civil war just in January and February after a surge in violence.
In fact, children have been the “first and most to suffer” throughout the conflict, UNICEF has said.
How many people have died in Yemen?
More than 100,000 people have been killed in Yemen, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). An estimated 85,000 have also died to due to the ongoing famine caused by the war.
Philippe Duamelle, UNICEF’s representative to Yemen, also revealed: “Since the conflict escalated in Yemen nearly seven years ago, the UN verified that more than 10,200 children have been killed or injured. The actual number is likely much higher.”
The conflict has also caused several basic services such as healthcare and education to collapse, with millions of people displaced and 80% of the population depending on aid to survive. (Daily Mirror)
Thank you Mirror for remembering.
I guess Boris will add the 200,000 to the 13,000 shelled in Donbass over the last ten years.
This is a prescient duo of articles written about Yemen in 2010 from a peak oil and limits to growth perspective (Yemen’s oil production peaked in 2001):
“Yemen has high military expenditures and is fighting against Al-Qaeda in the east, separatists in the south and, especially, (possibly Iranian-backed) rebel clans in the north. The rebels in the north threaten to draw Saudi Arabia into an armed conflict…
“For strategic and geopolitical reasons, the United States are also being drawn into Yemen, which may become “the next Afghanistan“…
“It is difficult to see how even very generous loans and assistance could keep an increasing societal disintegration at bay even during the next few years. Likely effects of a societal disintegration are migration, famine, growing lawlessness and more.”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-03-22/yemens-big-concern/
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-03-30/yemens-insoluble-problems/
Nope .. nopitty nope! Not yet dollar is still killing it 😂… but keep trying one day you will be right…
I had coffee with the economic attache for the region out of the Canadian embassy in Saudi while in Yemen in 2011… he summarized the situation as follows:
– Yemen is out of oil
– Yemen is does not have enough fresh water
– they cannot afford to desalinate and pump to Sanaa (high elevation)
– Yemen is ‘F789ed’ and is soon going to tear itself apart
He warned me not to go to the interior — how much did you pay the guide – $600 — you can’t trust them – they will sell you out for a few hundred more – then you’ll be held hostage for $$$… a British couple were taken and held in a village — the villagers wanted the water pump promised by the government – when it arrived they were released – they were treated well…. but there are also more brutal desperate elements in the country… and American forces… you do not want to be mistaken for an American…
Before we left for the interior I came down with a bout of brutal food poisoning that put me on the toilet after 15 minutes that resulted in a cancellation the trip … probably fortuitous.
If anyone does not think governments know exactly what is going on in oil producing countries think again – they have gone through with a fine tooth comb and they understand completely the risks… and they act accordingly.
‘Fill us up with some of that ethical Saudi oil – make it unheaded.’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2022/mar/15/ben-jennings-on-boris-johnsons-visit-to-saudi-arabia-cartoon#img-1
Next cartoon:
“We got the lead; you’ve got the unheaded”
Picture a car with Boris as führer, empty tank, with a trailer full of cartridges, stingers and javelins.
‘Oorah!
Boris is off to Saudi today, to visit his professed ‘mate’ who likes to cut off people’s heads in public, including Shia just for having a different religion – because Boris is such a ‘moral’ guy who reckons that Putin is ‘like a drug dealer’ selling his gas to Europe.
Boris’ ‘morality’ is simply a geopolitical ‘will to power’. So, a mass murdering dictator is his ‘mate’, while Russia needs to be cut out of the global system for defending itself from the expansion of NATO onto its borders. ‘Evil Putin!’
And the British State expects, and demands, us all to ‘believe’ that moralistic nonsense. Like our brains have evolved just to assimilate whatever ridiculous narrative the state chooses to come out with next. ‘Slaves ought to believe what they are told!’
And then they have the cheek to talk about ‘human rights’ and ‘human dignity’, like there is anything dignified or ‘free’ about being propagandised and coerced into state narratives.
Those ‘moral’ concepts of ‘human rights’ and ‘human dignity’ are also just geopolitical weapons to be used as a pretext for geopolitical aggression when useful.
‘Hey Boris, did you have tea with a serial killer today? Ian Brady was a great bloke, too, right?’
> Boris Johnson going ‘from dictator to dictator’ for oil
Keir Starmer has accused Boris Johnson of “going cap in hand from dictator to dictator,” as the prime minister prepares to fly to Saudi Arabia to seek alternatives to Russian oil supplies.
Johnson has a personal relationship with the Saudi leader, Mohammed bin Salman, and government sources suggest he could help persuade the Saudis to increase oil production. The prime minister defended the trip on Tuesday, saying he had to build a coalition of countries to help the west reduce its dependence on Vladimir Putin, likening the Russian leader to a drug dealer who had got the west hooked on his hydrocarbons
But concern in Britain and elsewhere about the Saudis’ record on human rights has intensified after Riyadh executed 81 men last weekend. Prince Mohammed is believed by US intelligence to have ordered the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. (The Guardian)
In case you had not noticed there are no rules … no ethics… and hypocrisy is completely acceptable…. there cannot be — because your competitor is not following any rules… and he’ll stick a knife in your back if you try to follow rules …
Does a lion apologize when it tears the throat out of a gazelle?
Did Maradona admit to a hand goal in the world cup vs England?
We need to get over this ‘rules’ thing.. it’s not the way the Big Picture works
I incline toward that perspective.
I thought that you felt that it was ‘disgusting’ or something, and that it would be better that humans, or even the world, should cease to exist than that anyone should ‘sin’ and that there should be suffering in the world – or some nonsense, ‘CEP’ or something.
I am glad that you are stiffening up a bit.
Oh no … I still feel that extermination is a good thing.
All humans must be eradicated. Every last one.
The stench of humans must be removed from the planet – permanently
Do start – with yourself!
Why is it that people always say ‘kill yourself’ when you point out that humans are a cancer on the planet?
Do you guys take a course in how to respond?
Oh I see — you agree with me – otherwise you would try to argue with me — so what you are saying is — yes I agree – we all need to be exterminated but I want you to go first.
But I won’t go first – cuz I want to enjoy the extermination — I want to watch the MOREONS squirm and squeal and shriek as the supply chain collapses… and they are left stewing in a sea of deadly mutations compounded by starvation ..
And how can I enjoy the Big Show if I self exterminate now?
hahahahahahaha… the great thing is .. it does not matter what you think — cuz it’s baked into the cake — 8B MOREONS — and peak everything… only a f789ing re tard would predict this ends well.
https://geography-revision.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/world-population-by-world-regions-1024×723.png
I do not agree with you.
You equivocated in the first place, when you said that hypocrisy is ‘acceptable’. Did you mean that it is ‘acceptable’ or ‘considered to be acceptable’, or perhaps that it is ‘acceptable because it is considered to be acceptable’?
If you truly meant that hypocrisy is acceptable, then why are you whining about it? Why would you have an extreme reaction to it, that everyone should be exterminated, if you find it acceptable? There is no logic in that.
If you meant that it is considered to be acceptable, then what of that, in the context of the thread? It certainly would not excuse any of the actions of the British state.
Of the third, we may say the first.
And what of this bit?
‘Does a lion apologize when it tears the throat out of a gazelle?’
So, the entire planet works through everything devouring everything else. Are we to conclude that the entire planet is ‘disgusting’ and that it ‘should’ cease to exist?
But humans are just doing the same thing as the rest of the planet, because they are a part of it. They are not ‘supposed’ to be doing anything different, and it is impossible that they should. Everything lives by devouring other things.
So, it is simply your own ill-adjustment to life that you are endlessly going on about, how you ‘feel’ about it, as if that has any relevance to, or is in any way informative about, the reality.
You are holding up your own judgemental feelings as the measure of reality, and condemning reality.
So yes, the ‘problem’ lies entirely with yourself, and not with the reality at all.
Humans do not ‘deserve’ to be exterminated, and indeed ‘deserve’ is entirely imaginary.
The real ‘problem’ is that you have come onto a website on which you have assimilated your own crude interpretation of ‘pessimism’, and you are unable to perspectivise it in any intelligent way, and to develop it in any direction. You are stuck on a degraded loop of stuff that was said on here 10 years ago, like your brain is frozen in a state of shock. Other people have taken the argument further, reconciled themselves with reality. and adjusted to it.
But you are stuck on a loop saying, ‘it is disgusting, everyone should die’, which is really sad. It is like you cannot see yourself, and how damaged and hopeless that is. I almost wish that I had never told you anything in the first place.
You entirely misunderstand the import of ‘moreons’. I coined that within the context of that ‘something needed to be done’. It is just a husk of a phrase out of that context. It was never intended as a mere easy insult to be applied to the human condition. It now seems clear to me that nothing can be done, and that history has to take its course, but I would not have coined the term in that context. Instead, I talk about the ‘affirmation of all things’, and of how history moves forward even without successful interventions.
There is always the risk that someone is going to get the wrong end of the stick, or to get really damaged by philosophy, and that just happened to be you. So, we just have to do ‘care in the community’ now. It is not really working, and you are getting no better. In the real world, we might consider a professional intervention, and perhaps a spell in a hospital, but this is not the real world, and none of us are in a position to arrange that for you. So, it is what it is. Sorry if I played my part in you getting so damaged; although I suspect that you were really damaged anyway, which is why you were affected so. Civilisation cannot really end because of that sort of thing, like the ‘trigger warning’ universities where the world is turned into protective cushioned walls in case someone gets damaged by the discussion. That is what cells are for.
as with all species, human beings exist in order to prolong their existence. We consume to give ourselves the strength to procreate—we procreate in order to give ourselves the means to consume.
as with all species, in order to do that we must acquire ‘resources’ from another species. Nothing complicated involved.
everything else is window dressing. We over-complicate things by looking for ‘meanings’ and adding philosophical argument.
We are able to lounge around and argue only because we have full bellies. People who don’t are out looking for sustenance.
we draw our strength from a grain of wheat or the flesh of another animal, or both. That worked fine for millennia, we couldnt consume more than the planet grew on its surface.
Then someone lit a fire under a boiler, and began to extract energy from steam.
The energy in steam allowed us to extract energy from fossilised plants and animals.
The point of all this?
Humankind has a survival-brain that is 10000 years behind our technical progress.
So we will consume because that is what we are programmed to do.
we will go on doing that until we reach the stage where we can’t. We will not stop voluntarily. We will be stopped by forces outside our control.
Or as you say, history will take its course and the planet will adjust to a different future, probably without us.
Hi Norman, I appreciate your posts.
thanks Ed, I try to offer reason where i can.
There are a few questions you are neglecting norm … can you help out?
You forgot to add the sarc tag.
Ever hear of a pity f789 hahahaha…
Why is it that people always say ‘kill yourself’ when you point out that humans are a cancer on the planet?
It’s just a suggestion to help keep this forum tidy, Eddy. Nothing personal.
The “kill yourself” mental gymnastics is ridiculous since “life” will take care of that for us no matter what.
It is not possible to devise a philosophy that isn’t colored by the machinations of the primate psyche. Ultimately it is hope and cope, from Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche to Schopenhauer, left, right and middle ground. All retch and no vomit.
In the core of it all is mindless process – it has to be, otherwise “it” will get stuck/lost in imaginary conjecture.
The trick is to embed some aspects of fantasy/tactic/strategy to get “it” perpetuating in a quasi-freely chosen direction.
To avoid eternal recurrence (ultimate boredom) the fabric of spacetime itself accommodates for ever increasing expressions of complexity. There are simple measures for complexity in all sciences, algorithms, game theory, economics, etc.
A different attitude of the Russian protestant pastor towards the war, in comparison to the Russian Orthodox leaders
Head of Russian Evangelical Alliance: “I mourn what my country has done in its invasion of Ukraine”
https://evangelicalfocus.com/europe/15880/head-of-russian-evangelical-alliance-apologises-to-those-who-have-suffered-for-the-military-conflict
Russian Protestantism is like Slovak Protestantism, a religion practiced by those who are slightly off in the head.
Some people would say something similar about readers of OurFiniteWorld.com.
To be called normal… is an insult…
norm … is your middle name Al?
Do you see what I did there?
And they may very well be right, Gail!
But what sent us that way?
Anyway, you make a excellent Director of this institution, keeping us from standing on street corners yelling ‘The End is Nigh!’, and we enjoy our little squabbles on the wards…..
We see a certain move towards the Pentecostal Protestantism or Catholicism, be it Brazil or Slovakia. The lack of time favours Protestantism with practising religion from time to time.
To put it more precisely: practising the religious meetings less often. On the other hand, the privately practised religion is on the rise, as e.g. also during the pandemic the meetings are limited.
Putin should find him and hang him
Wondering if China will ally with Russia as long as Russia is capable of growing, mining and delivering raw materials to China. This of course requires a certain amount of a functioning financial system and infrastructure in Russia. The minute Russia is unable to harvest these resources, then I wonder if China in desperation would resort to invading Russia to to take over to ensure “delivery”of the necessary raw materials. So how much trust does Putin really have with Xi? For show to ward off the western encroachment/ takeover? It’s like the antelope that is caught at the riverbank Does he go on land and risk being eaten by the waiting lion pride or does he stay in the water and face the merciless crocs?
And as far as currency, the internet has enabled massive rapid transfers of “money” which have been integral in the wealth extraction and concentration by the oligarchs. However the same Internet theoretically would allow almost instantaneous collapse of the value of a currency, far quicker than most people would assume from the traditional dissemination or Cantillon trickle down effect of currency requiring time to be distributed into the economy before it really lost its value. It could collapse faster than the Reichsmark In other words we may face the possibility of instant death of a currency, bypassing a inflation or hyper inflationary phase. The currency just explodes into a supernova of nothingness. Then the question becomes how quickly can the world economy scramble to find a replacement currency? Otherwise the economies, commerce, trade, etc. are all shut down almost immediately. Credit is shut down. This is almost as quick as a functional global EMP grid down event.
I am sure China has run for the money/oil/gas/coal plans in case Russia goes down. The interesting question is how far east will the EU/US Zone extend before becoming the China zone of the former Russia.
My guess 60 degree east longitude
“It’s like the antelope that is caught at the riverbank Does he go on land and risk being eaten by the waiting lion pride or does he stay in the water and face the merciless crocs?”
Except the antelope is armed with arguably the most advanced nuclear weapons systems in the world. Other than that, a perfect analogy /s.
Any takeover would need to be economic. You can’t overrun a country that is willing to press the big red button Samson option.
“Japan’s long-term joblessness spikes to post-Lehman high.
“The coronavirus pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to Japan’s labor market, with people without a job for at least a year surging to the highest levels since the global financial crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers more than a decade ago.”
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Japan-s-long-term-joblessness-spikes-to-post-Lehman-high
“Japan’s Import Surge Points to Fallout for Households…
“The fallout felt by Japan via imports is particularly acute thanks to it being almost entirely reliant on shipments from abroad for its energy consumption.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-03-16/supply-chain-latest-japan-s-import-surge-points-to-fallout-for-households
“Japan pushes UAE to stabilise international oil supply amid Russian cut…
“In a phone call, Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, told Abu Dhabi Crown Prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, that the UAE must make “proactive contributions” as a major oil producer…”
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220315-japan-pushes-uae-to-stabilise-international-oil-supply-amid-russian-cut/
“Japan PM Kishida signals new spending to soften fuel cost blow…
“With an upper house election looming later this year, Kishida is under pressure from politicians to ramp up spending to ease the pain for households and retailers still suffering from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-economy-stimulus-int-idUSKCN2LD08M
“Toyota forced to make deeper production cuts due to chip shortage.
“Toyota will cut domestic output again as the semiconductor shortage continues to hamper production plans.”
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/toyota-forced-make-deeper-production-cuts-due-chip-shortage
“Japan protests after six Russian Navy vessels pass through Soya Strait…
“The Japanese government conveyed to Moscow that it is closely monitoring the Russian military’s growing activities in areas around Japan amid the Ukraine crisis, while expressing grave concern over the moves, Matsuno said.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/03/15/national/russia-navy-ships-hokkaido/
“Japan to Revoke ‘Most-Favored Nation’ Trade Status for Russia…
“Russia’s aggression is “an inhumane act that should be engraved in history,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a news conference Wednesday.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-16/japan-to-remove-russia-from-most-favored-nation-trade-status
“Japan protests after six Russian Navy vessels pass through Soya Strait…”
Strange. The Soya Strait is the section of sea between Sakhalin Island (Russia) and Hokkaido (Japan).
From wickedpedia:
The strait is 42 km (26 mi) long and 40 to 140 m (131 to 459 ft) deep…
Japan’s territorial waters extend to three nautical miles into La Pérouse Strait [Soya Strait] instead of the usual twelve, reportedly to allow nuclear-armed United States Navy warships and submarines to transit the strait without violating Japan’s prohibition against nuclear weapons in its territory.
“Japanese and U.S. Marines had their first airborne landing and combat training together on Tuesday near Mt. Fuji as the two allies strengthen military cooperation amid growing maritime activity by China and Russia in the regional seas.”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/japan-us-marine-combat-drills-held-amid-china-83453034
They need to hurry before the Ides of March expires… let’s have a nuclear strike
Latest hot topic among the ‘dedicated, brave, front-line’, future-scoping, pro-active. medics in our little Basque province of Navarra, according to the local MSM?
‘Sudden-death among young athletes’.
Such a surprise!
And the official cause: ‘For those under 35-40, invariably caused by an unsuspected genetic predisposition’.
Can’t possibly be the vaxxes then, can it?
But why no action until now, when they estimate it kills 200 young men a year? Hmm….
And no mention at all of the incidence of myocarditis in young males. Oh, but that’s just ‘mild and rare’ anyway, why bother?
Integrity seems to have been eliminated everywhere.
There are probably many whores and pimps more honest and straightforward than many ‘trusted medical professionals’.
The rise in autism, at one point, seemed to be blamed on “genetic predisposition.” Why would this suddenly change. Of course, mothers of autistic children were questioning other things, including vaccinations and food additives.
Indeed, Gail: they seem just to wheel out the same tired old lies to cover their tracks.
In every region, too – a clear indication of co-ordinated propaganda.
‘It was there all the time, you just didn’t notice! No plausible novel causative factors, how could you imagine that?!’
It would be enough to compare the same class of people in poor african or south american Countries and surely nothing has changed before or after the pandemic.
They are crazy and pathetic to declare those things.
I agree, Student.
The special sports team declares: ‘Our mission is to save lives!’.
If so, they should just shut down the vaxx clinics in Pamplona.
They have already identified two 15 yr old boys with the ‘hidden genetic’ heart damage. Everyday medical heroes, saving lives…..
it’s like blaming Pfizer heart on anxiety… when the anxiety started a few hours after the injection …
Duh…
But hey .. most of the MOREONS believe it… they don’t want to acknowledge that they’ve f789ed themselves hahahaha…
I wonder how many MOREONS are out there with vax damage who are not seeking treatment cuz they don’t wanna know…. suffer diseased MOREONS..suffer in silence
“Trafigura seeks funding as commodity surge triggers margin calls.
“Global commodities trader Trafigura Group has been holding talks with private equity groups to secure additional financing as soaring prices trigger margin calls across the commodities industry.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/trafigura-seeks-funding-commodity-surge-triggers-margin-calls-bloomberg-news-2022-03-15/
Margin calls are something we are going to hear more about.
More businesses are likely to fail.
“Too-Big-to-Fail Risk Looms Over Commodities… so-called variation margin calls have run into several billions of dollars per company in recent days, according to industry executives…
“If commodity prices were to spike further, central banks may very well have to step in, making sure the flow of dollars continues, in a similar fashion to emergency liquidity injections the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank performed in 2008-09 during the global financial crisis.
“In public, all commodity traders, small and large, say everything is fine. Talk to executives in private, however, and the anxiety is plain — that their industry is one accident away from trouble.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/too-big-to-fail-risk-looms-over-commodities
“One accident away from trouble” – doesn’t sound good.
Civilian people testify after russian liberation of ‘russian speaking’ territories.
Ukranians soldiers used us as human shields inside hospitals in order to shoot without having back fire.
‘For two weeks they sat in the damp basement of the hospital, and at that moment militants from the Azov battalion were firing from the building upstairs. They were using them as human shields.’
https://voxnews.info/2022/03/16/ucraina-civili-evacuati-in-russia-raccontano-nazisti-ci-usavano-come-scudi-umani-in-ospedale/
The question whether this was the regular army or Azov (or Pravy) is significant. Though things are murky, because these organizations will have one or a few guys in each batallion, making sure their bidding is done.
Covid-19. The situation in Italy is concerning about so called ‘vaccines’ and Covid-19 in hospitals.
‘We have more hospitalized among people with third and fourth jab than the others…’
https://twitter.com/fratotolo2/status/1503997024571740161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1503997024571740161%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fvoxnews.info%2F2022%2F03%2F16%2Fboom-di-ricoverati-con-terze-e-quarte-dosi%2F
Perhaps the vaccines don’t really work.
Bingo!! The vaccine is merely a steroid that ramps your system up into hyper drive
Ramps is up for 60 days and then it ramps it down. Rinse and repeat.
They work exactly as they were intended to… they encourage mutations.
Perhaps a fifth jab formulated for DeltaCron™ will work?
The obvious solution to a MOREON is – another injection – cuz it would be much worse if they didn’t already have 4 (even though the unjabbed are not seeing the hospital much … but that is irrelevant to a f789ing MOREON)
The World Bank is admitting we are in for a rough ride. They are warning people not to horde food and gas as they will be in short supply. They say there will be enough to go around but if that’s the case why post the warning? Perhaps it’s to put a happy face on the problem.
https://www.reuters.com/world/world-banks-malpass-warns-against-hoarding-food-or-gasoline-2022-03-14/?utm_source=reddit.com
fraid that always happens
don’t hoard
so everybody starts hoarding as a result
What if the need is less for new technology than for maintaining what now exists? Don’t go forward necessarily; just don’t slip back.
Most “technology” efforts is in the realm of software these days. Intangible stuff can always be improved without much energetic inputs, except for electricity to keep the bits and bytes churning.
Let us ponder upon what a CNC machine/industrial robot consists of:
1. A cast steel/iron frame that is machined to tolerance by other CNC machines.
2. Electric motors, which is wound copper and rare earth materials
3. Electronics, power mosfets and a few of processors/FPGA’s
4. Position and temp sensors.
5. Software
Of which 5. is the largest effort by far in building the machine. Why you might wonder?
1. All text based programming languages suck
2. All programmers suck
1+2 is a plight of any corporation with ambitions
I am afraid that businesses cannot comprehend the idea of staying the same, without slipping backward. How can a business justify a price increase if the product stays the same? The business needs to grow, to satisfy owners and to keep overhead from becoming too high relative to revenue.
Kiss middle management good bye and in rolls A(G)I “managers” in their place.
“I am afraid that businesses cannot comprehend the idea of staying the same, without slipping backward. How can a business justify a price increase if the product stays the same? The business needs to grow, to satisfy owners and to keep overhead from becoming too high relative to revenue.”
Not being a historian, I can’t offer an opinion as to how quickly a society can change. I remember hearing that Tibetans has a warlike culture before suddenly changing to a monklike one.
But my working hypothesis is that our core societies–the world that I know a little about–is headed for extinction. And that it is undergoing a whole cluster of systems failures simultaneously. It has also run out of vision, and must return to malign, technocratic ones. Yes, they’ll run out of energy before those can go all the way, but they are causing permanent harm that is not inevitable. I’m in no way trying for drama or sensation. Like you, perhaps, I waver between not quite believing this is occurring while truly not seeing any alternative trajectory.
On the not-quite-believing it side, I’m all for stability of the system I’m in while, in my case, seeing a need and potential for deep change of the world I know. It’s as though our collective arm got caught up in a sleeping IC alligator’s open jaw. We have to help each other get this collective arm, unharmed, out of the alligator’s mouth. Theories of how the alligator wants and needs the arm to chew on are based on pushing in the arm deeper, not on taking it out.
If we don’t remove ourselves *gently* from IC, we die. If we keep nourishing and prolonging IC, we die. That business (and WHO is business, exactly?) “…cannot comprehend the idea of staying the same…,” is of relatively small importance when trying to move the collective ‘arm’ from its technocratic mouth. “How can a business justify a price increase if the product stays the same?” Price increases come in like the Tibetan warrior memes that it felt were no longer needed; there will no longer be price increases. I do a lot of work for no money, much less for promised price increases. I don’t make my living from art, but an art piece sold today would garner MUCH less than the same piece would have 50 years ago. What keeps me going is social security that brings in much less than $700/mo. If I loved running a large business (which I don’t) the same financial arrangement would suit me. The business would not need to grow.
The system that calibrates cost-of-living-increases (COLI) with cost of goods has worked well for me till now. Nothing else has been tried on a large scale, so I can’t say how or whether a different system could work. Since I don’t survive on selling art, the fact that MY prices are irregular and not growing does not bother me. I’ve tried REDUCING my art prices, and that seemed to work somewhat better than matching them to COLI.
This leads to innovation, and innovation can cause growth of a more sustainable kind. There could be more than way to look at growth.
A networked global economic system that has to grow along the usual lines seems to have a built-in fatal flaw. It cannot grow forever along the familiar lines. But it also depends on what you call growth. It can’t keep growing along the familiar path for very long. Innovation is a sort of energy for growth in a different direction.
What is more useful than endless talk is endless action. Just to say that a self-organizing system might choose its own direction and outcomes is not entirely true. The Universe rewards effort, and if humans fail to make an effort, we will fail to receive the correlating reward. You could probably say that the self-organizing system rewards, in similar fashion, a similar output of effort–just that the self-organizing system gets down into a closer level of detail, I would imagine.
With apologies for the scattered flow of thoughts, I’ll share a vision for OFW: why can’t it become a business that doesn’t run on familiar lines, that experiments and analyzes how to decentralize and otherwise remodel business practice?
I think you are right about “Innovation is a sort of energy for growth in a different direction.” The catch is that innovation requires energy and resources, as well. We are facing an endless war against depletion and rising population. We need innovation to offset the depletion and rising population, but the higher complexity that accompanies innovation leads to an increasing share of the wealth going to the very rich and most people being starved out. That is where it is now.
I agree that businesses and governments must now become more local and less hierarchical. It is difficult for current leaders to understand this. They got their status and power from where they are in the hierarchy. Innovation of the current kind isn’t rewarded as much. A lot of built infrastructure (office buildings in downtown areas and shopping malls, for example) will lose value. It is not clear the world can support nearly as much population in a world economy that is coming apart. It is difficult to even imagine any semipermanent new structure in such a circumstance.
“The Central Bank of Argentina has ceased minting new coins, according to media reports. Rising metals prices have made the coins too costly to produce.
“The commodities shock, combined with Argentina’s double-digit inflation, have made the coins’ constituent metals more valuable than the coin’s face value.”
https://www.centralbanking.com/central-banks/currency/coins/7938831/argentina-suspends-minting-of-coins
“Top Soy Shipper Argentina Halts Meal, Oil Cargoes as Prices Jump.
“Argentina has blocked agriculture traders from registering cargoes of soybean meal and oil for export, a move it usually makes before hiking taxes on shipments, amid expectations that the government will seek to tap the global rally in crops.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-14/top-soy-shipper-argentina-halts-meal-oil-cargoes-as-prices-jump
The government won’t let the higher prices get back to the soybean producers; it wants the higher revenue for itself.
“ have made the coins’ constituent metals more valuable than the coin’s face value”
And is when the physical plane meets the monetary plane. Let’s call it ‘In your face value’ from now on 😁
‘When the law of averages meets the law of gravity’
“Algerian president bans food exports amid worries of shortages due to Ukraine war.
“Algeria has banned exporting foods it imports, such as sugar, vegetable oil, pasta, semolina and wheat derivatives… All imported frozen meat products will also be banned, as authorities urged merchants to only sell locally produced meat.”
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/ukraine-algeria-bans-food-exports-amid-worries-shortages
“Morocco to Reduce Tomato Exports as Inflation Stokes Local Protests…
“Morocco’s sends about 430,000 tons of tomatoes to the European Union each year, making it the bloc’s largest outside supplier.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/morocco-squeezes-tomato-exports-as-inflation-fans-local-anger
I have to question this move, as tomatoes have little calories. Brazil will not ban coffee exports either…
Perhaps offer Moroccan citizens tomatoes at a more affordable price, even if not much else is available.
It could be a psychological thing, like garlic in China. There, garlic is so valued that it is used informally as a metric for food inflation, and can lead to unrest if it increases in price too much. The same is true for pork, but of course pork is highly caloric
“Thailand faces perfect storm as it seeks more LNG supply.
“A global energy crunch is sending liquefied natural gas prices skywards, but Thailand needs to ramp up its purchases to offset a steep production fall at its largest gas field and as sanctions threaten supplies from Myanmar.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/thailand-faces-perfect-storm-it-seeks-more-lng-supply-2022-03-16/
“Pakistan Struggling to Buy Enough Diesel Due to Global Crunch.
“Pakistan’s difficulties come amid a global shortage of the industrial and transport fuel that’s been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s putting more pressure on government finances…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/pakistan-struggling-to-buy-enough-diesel-due-to-global-crunch
“Protests flare in crisis-hit Sri Lanka as govt readies for IMF talks.
“Opposition leaders led a march of hundreds of protesters through Sri Lanka’s main city of Colombo on Tuesday as anger grows over a worsening economic crisis that has brought fuel shortages and spiralling food prices.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sri-lanka-begin-official-talks-with-imf-next-month-protests-grow-2022-03-15/
Giving Sri Lanka more debt will allow the country to help bid up world food and fuel prices. But this won’t really contribute to a way to eventually pay back this debt.
The US seems to be using “sanctions” as its way of dealing with whatever problems the US deems to exist around the world. At some point, these sanctions bite the US back.
Sanctions are perfect: they sound extremely moral, and it avoids US body-bags from hot conflict.
However, if people in the sanctioned countries perish from poverty or lack of medicines, etc, it’s completely invisible to US voters and the MSM.
Remember the observation that the deaths of a great many Iraqi children from sanctions ‘were worth it’?
There’s an historical parallel in the way the Popes of the Middle Ages used the temporary excommunication of rulers and states to punish and manipulate.
“China Home Price Declines Deepen as Slump Shows No End in Sight. New home prices fell for a sixth straight month in February. Easing measures have failed to arrest a drop in sales…
“Local governments have recently pivoted to stimulating demand, such as by cutting mortgage rates and down payments. The measures have done little to revive home sales…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-16/china-home-price-declines-deepen-as-slump-shows-no-end-in-sight
“Time Running Out for China Developers to Come Clean on Debt.
“China’s listed property firms have just over two weeks left to agree with auditors on how much debt they are liable for and whether there’s sufficient cash to pay for it… Transparency and governance concerns have plagued investors in Chinese property firms in the run-up to earnings season.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-14/time-is-running-out-for-china-s-developers-to-come-clean-on-debt
“Guangzhou R&F sells London’s Vauxhall Square at 42 per cent discount to valuation, posting an ‘unheard of’ loss in desperate move to pare debt
“The Vauxhall Square parcel in Vauxhall has been sold for £95.7 million (US$124.8 million), at a discount of about 42 per cent to market valuation, R&F said. R&F will incur a £68.8-million loss from its Vauxhall Square disposal.”
https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3170521/guangzhou-rf-sells-londons-vauxhall-square-42-discount-valuation-posting
Not bad considering it will soon be worth 0
It sounds like April 1 is the date by which statements need to be filed. If many companies are clearly in financial trouble, this becomes a problem for the Chinese financial system.
“Runaway Inflation Flashes Recession Warning on Euro Zone’s Edge.
“Consumer prices are surging so quickly on the euro area’s eastern fringe that Estonia is predicting a recession — a cautionary tale for the European Central Bank as it struggles to wrest control of record inflation amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/runaway-inflation-flashes-recession-warning-on-euro-zone-s-edge
“A brewing economic storm in eastern Europe…
“The proximity of central and eastern Europe to the conflict has spooked investors and prompted significant pressure on national currencies. Action is required now to help prevent this volatility from mutating into something altogether more serious.”
https://www.ft.com/content/58f95007-a462-4869-b539-bd1c414ea6b0
Europe, and especially Eastern Europe, are likely in terrible difficulty. Banks had big exposures in Russia, for example. If natural gas supplies are inadequate or are very high priced, this is a problem as well.
https://i0.wp.com/dailyexpose.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-195.png
Need to know percentage in each category.
All you need to know is that we were told get jabbed and your chance of hospitalization/death reduced 95%
https://i0.wp.com/dailyexpose.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-193.png
hahahahahahahaha MOREONS Keep Boosting hahahaha
While you were focused on Russia’s invasion, the UK Government published a new report confirming the Fully Vaccinated now account for 92% of Covid-19 Deaths in England
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/16/england-fully-vaccinated-92-percent-covid-deaths/
nooooorrrmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Watch Utopia here:
https://archive.org/details/bensutopia
Utopia Update — we don’t need a real pandemic to convince people to take the vaccine — we just need to create fear of a pandemic by causing deaths in specific locations.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm…. and to create fear you’d cause these deaths in high profile places — by sticking infected people into old ages homes (see New York)… treating with Remdesivir… blaming cancer and other deaths on Covid — then filling the news with horror stories and photos…
Hmmmm…..
Glad you’re enjoying Utopia again. It seems quite prescient.
In the show the first attempt fails but they try again – only to fail due to internal interactions.
THird time a charm.
They actually succeed… the last scene is of the pirate character unveiling 5 cannisters containing the virus.
“Europe’s market for new bonds has suffered the sharpest collapse in first-quarter sales on record as credit markets fall out of favor…
““The prospect of interest rates hikes and the war in Ukraine clearly has been reducing risk appetite,” said Barry Donlon, UBS Investment Bank’s head of EMEA debt capital markets.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/europe-s-credit-sales-suffer-march-misery-with-record-collapse
“New debt crises may hit Europe following monetary policy shifts…
“Forced by high inflation to announce the imminent end of its aggressive government bond buying program, the ECB has all too likely paved the way for another round of European sovereign debt crises.”
https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-european-central-bank-is-executing-a-risky-u-turn-51647361223
Sovereign debt crises sounds terrible. Will European Union survive?
Not to mention the horribly high fuel prices in Europe that will make profitable operation a real challenge.
“‘Spring of discontent’: wave of strikes looms for [UK’s] Covid-hit railways.
“A “spring of discontent” is looming for the railways as unions and senior rail officials prepare for widespread industrial action in response to curbs in government emergency funding that spell job cuts, pay freezes and closures.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/15/spring-of-discontent-wave-of-strikes-loom-for-covid-hit-railways
“German airline strikes: Air traffic across Europe disrupted due to mass walkouts.
“Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights to and from German airports on Monday as security workers across the country went on strike amid a wage dispute… The walkouts are part of a wage dispute between ver.di and the Federal Association of Aviation Security Companies.”
https://www.euronews.com/travel/2022/03/15/german-airline-strikes-air-traffic-across-europe-disrupted-due-to-mass-walkouts
“Police shoot Madrid striker as Spanish trucking strike mounts.
“Truck drivers were on an indefinite nationwide strike for a second day yesterday, blocking major ports, highways and distribution centers across Spain. An estimated 75,000 truckers are joining the strike…”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/16/spai-m16.html
Unlike in Canada and the US where they go on parade… this is the real deal… so easy to shut the country down … if they want to walk the walk… mass strikes are powerful tools
Shoot them? Order them to drive at gun point? Could see that backfiring
Workers strike when they are unhappy!
https://murciatoday.com/murcia_filling_stations_begin_to_run_out_of_fuel_due_to_transport_strike_1749784-a.html
Seems odd that the govt wants to save money on the UK rail system, but insists on going ahead with the £100 billion+ HS2 project – the new rail line between London and Birmingham. Gazillions into the pockets of the already-rich.
This is the way the system seems to work. The already rich come out ahead; everyone else comes out behind.
Railroads can no longer afford to pay their workers a reasonable wage.
nations are stitched together by their transport systems
when that stitching comes apart
so do nations
Utopia — featured strikes across many industries as inflation destroyed the spending power of workers…
Utopia — Billions of people loving billions of people – all that love will turn to dust when our resources die — I’ve seen what people are capable of —- lead scientist Janus Project
Yep – murder – rape – torture – cannibalism — 8B without food = carnage
CEP.
It’s not a TV series — it’s a message
One to cheer you up, FE: on the Mark Felton YT history channel: the little-known topic of……… cannibal Japs in WW2.
Right up your street,I’d say.
Interestingly, from being an excellent channel, Felton has moved into full propaganda mode, with videos on how ghastly the Russians are and how dangerous Putin is. Rather sad, but clearly he’s been paid.
World Economy Braces For Supply Chain Chaos As COVID Closes China
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/world-economy-braces-supply-chain-chaos-covid-closes-china
Many comments are saying this is deliberate.
example :
Covid?
Sure it is…./sark.
What better way to sanction the US without officially sanctioning the US.
Let the US suffer in a way they were prepared to allow Russia to suffer.
It’s a brilliant, masterful move on China’s part and why should the US not feast on the same bread they have served to countless other countries?
We don’t know what China’s problems are. It may be that shutting down production is a good move, because of inadequate resources of various kinds, and COVID Is being used as a cover so this problem does not need to be explained. We don’t know.
hahaha – and the MOREONS will not connect this to the injection and they will keep on boosting hahaha
https://www.golfdigest.com/story/nelly-korda-blood-clot
F789 all MOREONS – Suffer and Die
Putin has Ukraine in his teeth. The memories of the former Slovak PM from 2005 meeting with Putin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kxVo-Tnw1g
When mentioning Ukraine, Putin exploded.
3:30
Unfortunately in Slovak only
How Russian diplomat recruits a spy (ENGLISH CAPTIONS)
Some nice Russian…
Ya they look pretty good but they wouldn’t stand a chance against this in the plough olympics
https://comfyfat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/IMG_6136-1456×971.jpg
We have to be in a simulation https://www.rt.com/news/552023-elon-musk-putin-fight/
When you have technology, you do not need muscles. More females needed when there is not enough males…
During the harvest here, one morning at sunrise, I was pleasantly surprised to see the most lovely little blonde perched at the wheel of one of the trucks.
No doubt Eastern European.
I doubt she’d be quite as impressed with me on my rusty old bike….
Quite so. Although I don’t believe in the “not enough males” concept eiter, for what are enough males? We either have a system that allows females to do what males can do, or we die.
So we can put it more preciselly “Not enough male like humans”, i. e. a lot of muscles, big bodies + the muscle people work elswhere than before.
This winter, I could see on daily basis a muscle woman operating the heavy hoses of the fecal vehicle, while the driver was a thin male.
Do you mind getting her contact info … and a photo.. we might recruit her for Team NZ
We are always on the lookout for Big Hog Talent
get one of my inflatables eddy
if you maintain the right setting, they are very compliant
but that setting is very very critical and has to be fine tuned–otherwise there’s trouble.
Slavic broads…
Driving the tractor and getting ‘er done is how it should be.
I’m waiting for “Tractor Tinder” – Cuties ‘n Combines:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Woman_driving_a_combine_harvester_%2837431310404%29.jpg
How about “Engineer Tinder” – Babes ‘n Bots:
https://www.crushpixel.com/big-static10/preview4/portrait-female-engineer-operating-cnc-587429.jpg
“Military Tinder” – Broads ‘n Bombs:
https://i.imgur.com/xexvNyN.jpeg
The mind boggles.
😍👍👍
I am going to put Utopia and Planet of the Humans into the same box…
The Elders are hinting at what they have in store for us … and with Planet they are exposing that the renewable story is a heap of garbage… they do this because they know that most people are MOREONS and will not connect dots. And because they have a sense of humour and enjoy mocking MOREONS
The same dynamic is at play re FE >>> norm dunc mike
https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE
Hey Fast – when you get a moment, put “mock” in the search bar
http://ancient-spooks.de/search.html
“In any case this pun is likely the origin of the Italian cornuto gesture: It’s used to express scorn towards people who’ve been cuckolded or “horned”, i.e. “humiliated”, made a “mockery” by unfaithful spouses. In the Romance languages, there is a heavy overlap of grammatical forms for “horning”, “de-horning”, “humiliating” and “scorning”.
A “horning ritual” in upstate NY along the PA border:
Surround the house of the newlyweds on the night of the wedding. Point headlights of farm truck or mud-fested jalopy towards the love nest, turn on the lights and start honking on the horn. Reminds me of the honking trucks from the convoy in Ottawa. Turn the tables.
Sure I will take your dollars and give you Russian Roubles and Chinese yuan… dollar is still king… China is in major fake Covid lock down… that’s great for an economy!!!
I don’t like it either but it’s just how it is.
Question is, how long will China take US Dollars for computer chips, phone tech, most tech using rare earths, plastic whatsits etc etc. My guess is they will trend towards barter; a container full of wheat for a bowl of silicon chips on the side.
Dollars be used as a measuring stick, not an exchanged item. Now gold, well that would be real money and real deals would then take place.
The “better” computer chips comes mostly from Taiwan and the US itself. Assembling and packaging electronics isn’t exactly a tour de force in microtechnology.
The best gear for manufacturing stuff is still “western”. Say the ASML’s lithography machines, Okuma’s CNC machines and KUKA industrial robots.
However, I suppose that gear still need some of the natural resources found in China and Russia to be manufactured. After all; a drawing is nothing if a piece of stock can’t be loaded into the CNC machine. And secondly; if those gimmicks and gizmos of (western) IC can’t be operated due to a lack of energy.
My guess is that right now China is furiously and finally selling US treasury bonds (perhaps along back channels at a discount) and giving dollars to russia in exchange for rubles.
Good point …
China imports so much food and raw materials… this latest lockdown shows how much trouble they are in. Is it that they are over vax? Or is it that they are over paranoid about Covid? Either way not a good sign. I don’t think there loyalty to Russia will last if it means a little more time for them
The ‘writing is on the wall’ for the dollar and the USA?
Der Spiegel:
> Dollar – a world currency on demand?
The dollar is still the world’s monetary anchor. This is another reason why the West was able to impose tough, global financial sanctions on Russia because of the Ukraine invasion.
However, there are now some signs that the dollar’s dominance may be coming to an end. There are three main factors that raise doubts:
– Inflation can do lasting damage to international confidence in the value of the dollar. Consumer prices in the USA are currently rising at a rate of eight percent – and the trend is increasing. America overheats. What matters now is how decisively the US Federal Reserve takes action against it. (Watch out for Wednesday’s Fed meeting.)
– The sharpest weapon in the arsenal of sanctions against Russia is the freezing of Moscow’s currency reserves at other central banks, a step that has never been taken in this form before. Should fears then spread that Washington could have currency assets confiscated at any time, this could cause massive damage to the dollar.
– The economic power tectonics are shifting rapidly as a result of the Russian aggression – away from US-inspired global institutions towards a new bloc formation with fragmented financial markets. It would not be surprising if this change were reflected in the currency market.
Descent of a super money
…. But then the turmoil became more violent: the global financial crisis of 2008 had its origins in the US financial system. In 2011, the rating agencies downgraded the creditworthiness of the USA: At that time, Washington lost the top rating of AAA, which Germany, for example, still enjoys. Political polarization increasingly paralyzed Washington, so that the government repeatedly reached the statutory debt ceilings and many federal agencies had to temporarily stop their work (“government shutdowns”).
…. Slow settling movements
In any case, the freeze on Russia’s central bank balances has the potential to jeopardize confidence in the dollar as a reserve currency. What’s more, this would also damage the other international functions of the dollar. As a trading currency, it has already lost a great deal of its popularity; other currency areas (EU, China) now handle larger trading volumes than the USA, increasingly in euros and other currencies. For years, many central banks have been trying to spread their reserves more widely. Gold also plays a role, although it is quite difficult to sell as the market is not particularly liquid, at least not compared to US Treasuries. This slow move away from the dollar could be accelerated by central bank sanctions.
Certainly, there were already discussions as to whether using the dollar as a weapon would harm its status as a reserve currency in the course of Trump ‘s measures against Iran . However, the scale and scope of the Russia sanctions are unprecedented. Accordingly, for countries with large currency reserves, the question arises as to whether their balances with the Fed (and other western central banks that are now participating in the sanctions) are still safe. Since these are – to put it mildly – not all flawless democracies, the concerns are justified. The country with by far the largest foreign exchange reserves is China. The Saudis and the other Gulf emirates also have substantial dollar reserves.
…. Soviet Union as a role model?
In addition, there is the looming disintegration of the world into blocks. It looks like China is on the way to establishing its own hemisphere. If distrust in the dollar becomes too great, Beijing can develop alternative payment methods. After all, even the Soviets once managed to establish their own pseudo-currency in their sphere of influence in order to offset deliveries within the »Council for Mutual Economic Aid«.
And then there is rising inflation. No one wants to hold a reserve currency for bad times unless it’s reasonably stable in value. The Fed must therefore hurry to get the price dynamics under control.
Ultimately, the financing of the entire US economy depends on the status of the dollar. The United States is able to run current account and budget deficits in the long term – and that means living structurally beyond its means – because half the world is willing to lend America money at very low interest rates. France’s then Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing complained in the 1960s that this country enjoyed an “extraordinary privilege”. Various crises and wars later, little has changed.
But that doesn’t mean it stays that way forever.
https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/russland-krieg-und-die-folgen-dollar-eine-weltwaehrung-auf-abruf-a-c420fdef-d250-4b7a-ad1c-d63cd2fcead0
“In addition, there is the looming disintegration of the world into blocks. It looks like China is on the way to establishing its own hemisphere.”
If China can do this without too much breakrage, then hooraY?
These behemoth geopolitical ‘alliances’ seem a bit brittle when push comes to shove.
In every catastrophe there is opportunity to be seized if you’re prepared to cut the losses without drama. Or perhaps fein a bit of drama.
Say signing a few deals under the Russian table and lying through the teeth with regards to the ‘official stance’.
You know; it’s certainly already in full swing.
”First to grind may grind”
🤣👍👍
I love the two-face “under the table” stuff! We can’t pearls before swine.
Back in the good old days when a dollar was a dollar, you lived just like a millionaire.
I am afraid a near-term change is ahead.
Russia needs high prices for oil. All the easy oil is gone just like everywhere else Russia it’s just as much trouble as anywhere else. This war will hurt Russia…. Economies are going into recession oil prices will fall and oil will be shut in. Gail is right .. there will be no reset … Many leaders will lose their heads.. not their fault just what happens
did you see the story where Russian missiles send off small decoys mid-air to fake out ground defense systems?
Russians are absolute freakin’ geniuses! 😉
hahahahohohohahahaha were you triggered there?
but YES Russia is indeed in trouble. (the ruble is in trouble, literally, ruble>trouble, see what I did there?)
the bigger trouble is in the Periphery countries that depend on Russian exports.
the bigger question is if/when Europe heads off to the Periphery.
because of the Great Russian Reset, baby.
not to mention the 16% inflation in the USA.
we be in a heap o’ trouble.
but at least the Ides of March was a big dud.
beware the Ides of April, which is April 13th.
it’s all good.
You are right about Russia needing high prices for oil.
Utopia Update – opening scene final episode — says it all:
https://youtu.be/rcx-nf3kH_M
mike? norm? dunc’s ghost? anna is bananas in the nuthouse.
90% of Wairarapa Māori fully vaccinated; 21,015 community cases; 773 in hospital; 16 in ICU; 1 death
https://www.health.govt.nz/news-media/news-items/90-wairarapa-maori-fully-vaccinated-21015-community-cases-773-hospital-16-icu-1-death
Cannon Fodder for the MSM to take pretty pictures? hahaha https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/33710
Why not kill some MOREONS to make it look good hahahahaha
And to ensure nobody else gets hurt… don’t even give the MOREONS weapons!!!!
hahahahaaha
SARS-Cov-2/COVID-19 spike protein damages hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells
And is Omicron really mild ?
https://worldedge.substack.com/p/sars-cov-2covid-19-spike-protein
A virus that damages the body; who’d have thought? I guess that is the very reason for having an immune system. No?
It is supposed to kill and if some protoplasm is badly infected. Well, that’s collateral damage.
Don’t act like catching Covid is a blessing. It isn’t. All these perpetual diseases circulating is just a sign the world is overpopulated. What a breeding ground and evolutionary bottleneck for pathogens.
Perhaps these variants are just as or even more deadly than Delta … it’s just that they are not stuffing infected people into old aged homes to ensure a high death rate to frighten people?
When the goal is DC you want people to believe its mild so they are not too frightened and the prance around like MOREONS ensuring rapid wide spread …