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Most people have a preconceived notion that there will be a clear winner and loser from any war. In their view, the world economy will go on, much as before, after the war is “won” by one side or the other. In my view, we are basically dealing with a no-win situation. No matter what the outcome, the world economy will be worse off after the fighting stops.
The problem the world economy is up against is the depletion of many kinds of resources simultaneously. This depletion is made worse by rising population, meaning that the resources available need to provide an adequate living for an increasing number of world inhabitants. Because of depletion, the world economy is reaching a point where it can no longer grow in the way it has in the past. Inflation, food shortages and rolling blackouts are likely to become increasing problems in many parts of the world. Eventually, the population is likely to fall.
We are living in a world that is beginning to behave like the players scrambling for seats in a game of musical chairs. In each round of a musical chairs game, one chair is removed from the circle. The players in the game must walk around the outside of the circle. When the music stops, all the players scramble for the remaining chairs. Someone gets left out.
In this post, I will try to explain some of the issues.
[1] In a world with inadequate resources relative to population, conflicts are likely to become increasingly common.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is one example of a resource-associated conflict. The allies underlying the NATO organization have chosen to escalate the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in part, because the existence of the conflict helps to hide resource shortages and accompanying high prices that are already taking place. No matter how the war is stopped, the underlying resource shortage issue will continue to exist. Therefore, the conflict cannot end well.
If sanctions lead to less trade with Russia (or even worse, less trade with Russia and China), the world economy will have an even greater problem with inadequate resources after the war is over. In fact, many parts of the current economic system are in danger of failing, primarily because depletion is leading to too little energy and other resources per capita. For example, the US dollar may lose its reserve currency status, the world debt bubble may pop, and globalization may take a major step backward.
[2] There is a huge resource depletion issue that authorities in many countries have known about for a very long time. The issue is so frightening that authorities have chosen not to explain it to the general population.
Mainstream media (MSM) practically never mentions that there is a major issue with resource depletion. Instead, MSM tells a narrative about “transitioning to a lower carbon economy,” without mentioning that this transition is out of necessity: The world is up against extraction limits for many kinds of resources. Besides oil, coal and natural gas, resources with limits include many other minerals, such as copper, lithium, and nickel. Other resources, including fresh water and minerals used for fertilizer are also only available in limited supply. MSM fails to tell us that there is no evidence that a transition to a low carbon economy can actually be made.
[3] The big depletion issue is affordability of end products made with high priced resources. The cost of extraction rises, but the ability of the world’s citizens to pay for end products made using these high-cost resources doesn’t rise. Commodity prices do not rise enough to cover the rising cost of extraction. When this affordability limit is hit, it is the resource extracting countries, such as Russia, that find themselves in a terrible situation with respect to the financial well-being of their populations.
The big issue that hits because of depletion is a price conflict. Businesses extracting resources need high prices so that they can reinvest in new mines, in ever more costly locations, but consumers cannot afford these high prices.
In a sense, the higher cost is because of “inefficiency.” As a result of depletion, it takes more hours of labor, more machine time, and a greater use of energy products to extract the same quantity of a given resource that was previously extracted elsewhere. Growing efficiency tends to help wages, but growing inefficiency tends to work the opposite way: Wages don’t rise, certainly not as rapidly as prices of end products.
As a result, commodity exporters, such as Russia, are caught in a bind: They cannot raise prices enough to make new investments profitable. The problem is that the world’s consumers cannot afford the resulting high prices of essentials such as food, electricity and transportation. Russia reports very high reserve amounts, especially for natural gas and coal. It is doubtful, however, that these reserves can actually be extracted. Over the long term, selling prices cannot be maintained at a sufficiently high level to cover the huge cost of extracting, transporting and refining these resources.
The success of a country’s economy can, in some sense, be measured by the country’s per capita GDP. Russia’s GDP per capita has tended to lag far behind that of the US (Figure 2).
Russia’s inflation-adjusted GDP per capita fell after the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was able to grow again, once oil prices began to rise in the early 2000s. Since 2013, Russia’s GDP per capita growth has again fallen behind that of the US, as increases in oil and other commodity prices again lagged the rising cost of production. Given these difficulties with depletion, Russia is becoming increasingly unwilling to ignore poor treatment it receives from Ukraine.
There may be another factor, as well, leading especially to the escalation of the conflict. The US seems to covet Russia’s resources. Some powers behind the throne seem to believe that Western forces supporting Ukraine can quickly win in this conflict. If such an early win occurs, the aim is for Western forces to step in and inexpensively ramp up Russian resource extraction, allowing the world a new source of cheap-to-produce fossil fuels and other minerals.
In this context, Russia launched an attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Ukraine has presented Russia with problems for many years. One issue has been transit fees for natural gas passing through the country; is Ukraine taking too much gas out? Another problem area has been the rise of the far-right Azov regiment. Russia has also expressed concern that NATO has been training soldiers within Ukraine, even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Russia doesn’t want military, trained by NATO, at its doorstep.
[4] World economic growth very much depends on growing energy consumption.
There are two ways of measuring world GDP. The standard one is with the production of each country measured in inflation-adjusted US$, with the changing relative value to the US$ considered. The other approach uses “Purchasing Power Parity” GDP. The latter is supposedly not affected by the changing level of the dollar, relative to other currencies. Inflation-Adjusted Purchasing Power Parity GDP is only available for 1990 and subsequent years. Figure 3 shows the high correlation between energy consumption and PPP GDP during the period from 1990 through 2020.
The reason for a strong association between GDP growth with energy consumption growth is a physics-based reason. Producing goods and providing services requires the “dissipation” of energy products because the laws of physics tell us that energy is required to move any object from one place to another, or to heat any object. In the latter case, it is the individual molecules within a substance that move faster and faster as they get hotter. The economy is a “dissipative structure” in physics terms because of the need for energy dissipation to provide the work needed to make the system operate.
Human beings are also dissipative structures. The energy that humans get comes from the dissipation of the energy found in foods of every kind. Food energy is commonly measured in Calories (technically, kilocalories).
[5] World economic growth also seems to depend on factors besides energy consumption.
The fitted equation on Figure 3 (the equation beginning with “y”) implies that GDP is rising much more rapidly than energy consumption, almost twice as rapidly. Over the entire 30-year period, the actual growth rate in energy consumption averages about 1.8% a year. If energy consumption growth had really been 1.8% per year, the fitted equation implies that growth in GDP would have greatly sped up over the period. (In fact, the growth rate in energy consumption was falling over the 30-year period, but GDP grew at closer to a constant rate. In terms of the fitted equation, these two conditions are equivalent.)
How can GDP rise so much more rapidly than energy dissipation? There seem to be several ways such a higher rate of increase can occur, on a temporary basis:
[a] A worldwide trend toward an economy using more services. The production of services tends to require less energy consumption than the production of essential goods, such as food, water, housing and local transportation. As the world economy gets wealthier, it can afford to add more services, such as education, healthcare, and childcare.
[b] A worldwide trend toward more wage and wealth disparity. Such a trend tends to happen with more specialization and more globalization. Strangely enough, a trend to more wage disparity allows the world economy to continue to grow without adding a proportionately greater amount of energy consumption use because of the different spending patterns between low-paid workers and high-paid workers.
Analyzing the situation, the world is filled mostly with low-paid workers. To the extent that the pay of these low-paid workers can be squeezed down, it can prevent these workers from buying goods that tend to use relatively high amounts of energy products, such as automobiles, motorcycles and modern homes. At the same time, growing wage disparity allows the higher-paid workers to be paid more. These higher-paid workers tend to spend a disproportionate share of their income on services, such as education and healthcare, which tend to consume less energy.
Thus, greater wage disparity tends to shift spending away from goods and toward services. The main beneficiaries are the top 1% of workers (who buy mostly services, requiring little energy consumption), rather than the remaining 99% (who would really like goods such as a car and their own home, which require much more energy consumption).
[c] Improvements in technology. Improvements in technology are helpful in raising GDP because technological improvements tend to make finished goods and services more affordable. With greater affordability, more people can afford goods and services. This effect is favorable for allowing the economy, as measured by GDP, to grow more quickly than energy consumption.
There is a catch associated with using improved technology to make goods and services more affordable. Improved technology tends to increase wage disparity because it nearly always leads to owners and a few highly educated workers being paid more, while workers doing the more routine parts of processes are paid less. Thus, it tends to lead to the problem discussed above: [b] A trend toward wage and wealth disparity.
Also, with improved technology, available resources tend to be depleted more quickly than without improved technology. This happens because finished goods are less expensive, so more people can afford them. Once resources start getting exhausted, improved technology can’t fix the situation because resource extraction costs are likely to rise more rapidly than can be offset with the impact of new technology.
[d] A worldwide trend toward more debt at ever-lower interest rates.
We all know that the monthly payment required to purchase a car or home is lower if the interest rate on the debt used to finance the purchase is lower. Thus, falling interest rates can make paychecks go further. Both businesses and citizens can afford to purchase more goods and services using credit, so the overall level of debt tends to rise with falling interest rates.
If we are only considering the period from 1990 to the present, the trend is clearly toward lower interest rates. These lower interest rates are part of what is making the GDP growth higher than what would be expected if interest rates and debt levels remained constant.
[6] The world economy now seems to be reaching limits with respect to many of the variables allowing world economic growth to continue as it has in the past, as discussed in Sections [4] and [5], above.
Figure 6 shows that there have been two major step-downs in world inflation-adjusted per capita PPP GDP. The first one occurred in the 2008-2009 period; the second one occurred in 2020. Figure 7 shows the sharp dips in energy consumption occurring in the same time periods.
In 2021, energy prices started to rise rapidly when the world economy tried to reopen. This rapid rise in prices strongly suggests that energy extraction limits are being reached.
Another clue that energy production limits are being reached comes from the fact that the group of oil exporters, OPEC+, found that they couldn’t actually ramp up their oil production as quickly as they promised. Once oil production is cut back because of inadequate prices, it is hard to get production to rise again, even if prices temporarily rise because the many pieces of the chain supporting this extraction are broken. For example, trained workers leave and find jobs elsewhere, and contractors go out of business because of inadequate profits.
If we think about it, Items [5a], [5b], [5c] and [5d] are all reaching limits as well. Item [5d] is probably clearest: Interest rates can no longer be lowered. In fact, nearly everyone says that interest rates should now be raised because of the high inflation rates. If interest rates are raised, commodity prices, including prices for fossil fuels, will fall.
With lower fossil fuel prices, there will be pressure for oil, gas and coal producers to reduce their production, even from today’s lower levels. Because of the tight connection between energy and GDP, lower energy production will tend to push economies further toward contraction. Of course, this will make resource exporters, such as Russia, worse off.
As the world economy enters recession, we can expect that Item [5a], the shift from goods toward services, to turn around. People with barely enough money for necessities will reduce their use of services such as haircuts and music lessons. Item [5b], globalization and related wage disparity, is already under pressure. Countries are finding that with broken supply chains, more local production is needed. In the US, recent wage gains have tended to go to the lowest-paid workers. Item [5c], technology growth, cannot ramp up as resources needed from around the world are increasingly unavailable, due to broken supply chains and depletion.
[7] We are likely facing a collapsing world economy because of the limits being reached. Adding sanctions against Russia will further push the world economy in the direction of collapse.
Many sources report that Russian exports of wheat, aluminum, nickel, and fertilizers will be “temporarily” disrupted. A few sources note that Russia plays an important role in the processing of uranium fuel used in nuclear power plants. According to the Conversation:
Most of the 32 countries that use nuclear power rely on Russia for some part of their nuclear fuel supply chain.
We have become used to efficient air travel, but sanctions against Russia make this less possible, especially for flights to Southeast Asia. A Bloomberg article called Siberian Detour Requires Airlines to Retrace Cold War Era Routes gives the example of direct flights from Finland to Southeast Asia being canceled because they have become too expensive and are too time-consuming with the required detours. It becomes necessary to fly indirect connecting routes if a person wants to travel. Many other routes have similar problems.
US President Joseph Biden is warning that food shortages are likely in many parts of the world as a result of the sanctions placed against Russia.
According to a video shown on Zerohedge,
“It’s going to be real. The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”
If the world economy were doing well, and if Russia were a tiny part of the world economy, perhaps the sanctions could be tolerated by the world economy. As it is, the Russia-Ukraine conflict acts to hide the underlying resource shortage problem. This is possible because, with the conflict, the resource shortages can be described as “temporary” and “necessary” in the context of the terrible things the Russians are doing. The way the West frames the problem provides a scapegoat to deflect anger toward, but it doesn’t fix the problem.
Russia started out being very disadvantaged because commodity prices, in recent years, have not been rising high enough to ensure an adequate living for Russian citizens and high enough tax revenue for the Russian government. Adding sanctions against Russia will simply make Russia’s problems worse.
[8] There is little reason to believe that Russia will “give up” in response to sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries.
The attacks by Russia of Ukrainian sites seems to be occurring for many related reasons. Russia can no longer tolerate being inadequately compensated for the resources it is extracting and selling to Ukraine and the rest of the world. It is tired of being “pushed around” by the rich economies, especially the United States, as NATO adds more countries. It is also tired of NATO training Ukrainian soldiers. Russia seems to have no plan to gain the entire territory of Ukraine; it is more of a temporary police action.
Russia’s underlying problem is that it can no longer produce commodities that the world wants as inexpensively as the world demands. Building all the infrastructure needed to extract and ship more fossil fuel resources would take more capital spending than Russia can afford. The selling price will never rise high enough to justify these investments, including the cost of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Russia has nothing to lose at this point. The current situation is not working; going back to it is no incentive for stopping the current conflict.
Russia is in some ways like a heavily armed, suicidal old man, who can no longer earn an adequate living. The economic system of Russia is no longer working as it should. Russia is incredibly well-armed. The situation reminds a person of the story of Samson, in his old age, taking down the temple of the Philistines and losing his own life at the same time. Russia has no reason to back down in response to sanctions.
[9] Leaders of the world, including Joe Biden, appear to be oblivious to the situation we are facing.
Leaders of the world have created ridiculous narratives that overlook the critical role commodities play. They seem to believe that it is possible to cut off purchases from Russia with, at most, temporary harm to the rest of the world economy.
The history of the world shows that the populations of many civilizations have outgrown their resource bases and have collapsed. Physics points out that this outcome is almost inevitable because of the way the Universe is constructed. Everything is constantly evolving, even economies. The climate is constantly evolving, as are the species inhabiting the Earth.
Elected leaders need a story of everlasting growth that they can tell their citizens. They cannot even consider the physics-based way the world economy operates, and the resulting expected pattern of overshoot and collapse. Modelers of what are intended to be long-lasting structures cannot accept this outcome either.
Limits which are defined based on affordability of end products are incredibly difficult to model, so creative narratives have been developed suggesting that humans can move away from fossil fuels if they so desire. No one stops to think that economies cannot continue to exist using a much lower quantity of energy, any more than an adult human can get along on 500 calories a day. Both are dissipative structures; the ongoing energy requirement is built in. Factories close when electricity, diesel and other energy products are cut off.
[10] The sanctions and the Russia-Ukraine conflict cannot end well.
The world economy is already on the edge of collapse because of the resource limits it is hitting. Intentionally stopping Russia’s output of resources like fertilizer and processed uranium is certain to make the situation worse, not better. Once Russia’s output is stopped, it is likely to be impossible to restart Russia’s production at the same level. Trained workers who lose their jobs will likely find jobs elsewhere, for one thing. The shortfall in output will affect countries around the world.
The United States dollar is now the world’s reserve currency. The sanctions being applied indirectly encourage countries to use other currencies to work around the sanctions. There seems to be a substantial chance that the US economy will lose its role as the center of international trade. If such a change takes place, the US will no longer be able to import far more than it exports, year after year.
A major issue is the huge amount of debt most countries of the world have. With a rapidly slowing world economy, repaying debt with interest will become impossible. Debt defaults will further wreak havoc with the world economic system.
We don’t know the exact timing of how this will play out, but the situation does not look good.
Gail, your map is wrong. There is not a pilot, boat captain, or any other navigator that uses that map. Check out this documentary of some pilots and military personnel pointing you to the correct map.
Perhaps someone can create a summary for me. I don’t have 1.5 hours to watch it.
Ship captains in navigating great distances at sea never need to factor the supposed curvature of the Earth into their calculations. Both Plane Sailing and Great Circle Sailing, the most popular navigation methods, use plane, not spherical trigonometry, making all mathematical calculations on the assumption that the Earth is perfectly flat.
If the Earth were in fact a sphere, such an errant assumption would lead to constant glaring inaccuracies. Plane Sailing has worked perfectly fine in both theory and practice for thousands of years, however, and plane trigonometry has time and again proven more accurate than spherical trigonometry in determining distances across the oceans. If the Earth were truly a globe, then every line of latitude south of the equator would have to measure a gradually smaller and smaller circumference the farther South travelled.
If, however, the Earth is an extended plane, then every line of latitude south of the equator should measure a gradually larger and larger circumference the farther South travelled. The fact that many captains navigating south of the equator assuming the globular theory have found themselves drastically out of reckoning, more so the farther South travelled, testifies to the fact that the Earth is not a ball.
If we were living on a spinning globe airplane’s would constantly have to dip their noses down every few minutes to compensate for the curvature of the earth (with a circumference of 25,000 miles the earth would be constantly curving at the speed of an airplane). In reality however, they never do this! They learn how to fly based on a level flat plane. Also if the earth was spinning the airplane’s going west would get to their destination much faster since the earth is spinning in the opposite direction. If the atmosphere is spinning with the earth then airplane’s flying west would have to fly faster than the earth’s spin to reach its destination. In reality, the earth is flat and airplane’s just fly level and reach their destination easily because the earth is not moving.
The Michelson-Morley and Sagnac experiments attempted to measure the change in speed of light due to Earth’s assumed motion through space. After measuring in every possible different direction in various locations they failed to detect any significant change whatsoever, again proving the stationary geocentric model.
Michelson-Morley Experiment:
http://youtu.be/uMaFB3jM2qs
The experiment known as “Airy’s Failure” proved that the stars move relative to a stationary Earth and not the other way around. By first filling a telescope with water to slow down the speed of light inside, then calculating the tilt necessary to get the starlight directly down the tube, Airy failed to prove the heliocentric theory since the starlight was already coming in the correct angle with no change necessary, and instead proved the geocentric model correct.
Airy’s Failure explained:
https://youtu.be/fBz-GFUsjzA
If Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference as NASA and modern astronomy claim, spherical trigonometry dictates the surface of all standing water must curve downward an easily measurable 8 inches per mile multiplied by the square of the distance. This means along a 6 mile channel of standing water, the Earth would dip 6 feet on either end from the central peak. Every time such experiments have been conducted, however, standing water has proven to be perfectly level.
I can go on and on. Here’s 200 proofs if you need more evidence.
http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2015/08/200-proofs-earth-is-not-spinning-ball.html?fbclid=IwAR2H51iG_NBwRmw5tGesyrVgrnGlsY2-KQNbB3dhSE7qt5aA6ST49oUhe4U
Of course, we know from photographs from space (and other ways) that the earth is a sphere. It must be spinning to have night and day. But perhaps the atmosphere is so firmly attached and the distances so great that we do not perceive it that way.
those so called photos from space are all CGI images and NASA admits this. why do all the images have the continents at different sizes. Seeing how NASA faked the moon landings they have no credibility. how is it that from some places on earth we can see the same stars all year round when 6 months apart we are looking at opposite sides of the universe. there are rare eclipses where both the sun and moon are both seen in the sky, you can’t have a pressurized system next to a vacuum without a physical barrier so how is it we have an atmosphere next to the infinite vacuum of space. not one engineer or surveyor corrects for the earths curvature. I should know because I am one. Long distance photography proves there is no curvature. water always finds its level, that’s why they call it sea level. NASA tells us we are traveling through space at over a million miles a hour in four different directions but there is not one experiment that proves that we are moving. here is a short 5 minute video that leaves no doubt that we live in a stationary geocentric realm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UUf-lNzfu8
if you like i can send you hundreds more proofs and videos but the first one I sent you is all you need to show that we have been lied to. grab some popcorn and a cold drink and enjoy the show.
In the comments of the parallax video Darren Stevens notes that it is easy to prove moon-star parallax by having a team simultaneously photographing the sky from different locations on the earth.
No one wanted to touch that point.
What’s your response?
is the moon flat as well Mudgod?
come to think of it—the sun must be flat too?
Question for the commentators on this blog: Given that the UK is an isolated archipelago which has cut itself off from the Euro system, and that its only economic forte seems to be its London-based financial expertise, and that it can no longer start a world war to wag the American dog to save its “Rule, Britannia!” fantasy, can resourceless Britain survive at all in anything like its current socio-political condition for much longer?
No. IT is going to pay the consequences of killing millions of Europeans for three centuries.
If Britain had folded in one of its many wars we would have achieved singularity.
The late Dr. Firth defended their duty, their bravery and whatnot and I said they f’ed up . And I am being proven correct now.
Get off your soapbox and give us a break, please. And stop trying to make this all about you.
Millions of Europeans would have killed each other regardless of anything the British did.
Let’s take a look at the Thirty Years’ War, “a conflict fought largely within the Holy Roman Empire from 1618 to 1648. Considered one of the most destructive wars in European history, estimates of total deaths caused by the conflict range from 4.5 to 8 million, while some areas of Germany experienced population declines of over 50%. Related conflicts include the Eighty Years’ War, the War of the Mantuan Succession, the Franco-Spanish War, and the Portuguese Restoration War.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
That bloodstained chapter of still recent history shows the level of death and destruction Europeans were capable of inflicting on each other with no help from the English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh.
It’s an overgeneralization but true up to a point that all wars are bankers’ wars. And it’s an interesting fact that almost all British banking lineages have their roots on the continent. Moreover, it is no surprise that when bankers from the continent gained security, power and prestige in England, that they would use that land as a base for banking activities that included financing war, conquest and colonialism.
https://knowyourlondon.wordpress.com/2019/11/18/lombard-street/
Your average Brit has had as much say or influence over this dynamic as the average German, Spaniard, Russian or Ukrainian has over what their governments do in their names.
Europe has recently been through four centuries of grandeur and empire building followed by a century of decline. I strongly suspect there are more centuries of decline to come.
You will not mind the British State being broken up, seeing as it has nothing to do with the peoples of the island.
No, that’s fine by me. I am emotionally detached from it all. Let them get on with it.
And I certainly wouldn’t join up to to fight for the British State’s preservation, nor to fight for its destruction. I’m cool with whatever arrangements are worked out.
I visited UK many times.
When during one visit I took the time to go for a while in Scotland I found a completely different Country and a completely different kind of people.
Sorry to say, but I found them generally more friendly and ready to forgive my English.
I must say that I’ve not visited yet Wales.
Maybe someone can give me more insight on all that. Thanks!
London is another country and the one most associated as being ‘British’.
Go beyond the M25 and the homecounties and things are quite different.
i live 10 miles from wales and 40 miles from welsh-speaking wales
when an englishman walks into a pub there, they immedieatly switch from english to welsh speaking
or maybe its just me
The explanation you are missing is Mackinder’s heartland theory.
I didn’t realize I was missing it. In the interests of our general edification, you are welcome to expand upon the relevance of Mackinder’s theory. Or you can just leaving hanging as a hint.
The British Empire – when it came into existence in the 18th century – merely sought to make sure that when Europeans and others (Turks, Russians, Persians, for instance) had finished fighting, the resulting balance would not be a threat to the Empire and its trade routes.
This was always done with the minimum use of force, until the terrible slaughter of WW1.
There is no need for Brits to plead ‘Guilty!’ in some kind of historical court room, more than the imperialist Frogs, Krauts or even the Dirty Dago Spaniards (and their unexpected Inquisition…..)
UK has been in virtually all European Wars since 1688, and always making it worse
and thanks to it the Asians, whom I compare to mules since they will not reproduce, are driving the world to the edge.
It is only a matter of time.
> Majority of Scots believe UK will be gone in a decade as new poll shows Yes lead
22nd March, 2022
A MAJORITY of Scots believe the UK will not exist in its current form in five years’ time, according to a new poll which also puts backing for independence in the lead.
The latest survey – carried out by Ipsos – found that, with don’t-knows removed, 46% of Scots think the Union will be over by 2027, while only 45% believe it will still be in existence.
Looking ahead 10 years, again with don’t-knows removed, 61% believed the Union will have broken up, while only 25% said they thought it would remain intact.
When respondents were asked if they would prefer to see Scotland vote for independence or to stay in the UK, 50% backed the Yes option, 43% opted for the latter [54% vs. 46%], while 4% said they didn’t mind either way.
Across the UK overall, the proportion predicting the demise of the Union within the next decade has fallen slightly compared with early 2021 – from 56% to 50% in February this year.
Meanwhile, the poll also found the Scottish Government continues to attract more praise than the UK Government for its handling of the pandemic – both north of the Border and across the rest of the UK.
However, it highlighted that people in Scotland are the most pessimistic in the UK about the economic prospects in the coming months.
The Ipsos UK Knowledgepanel surveyed more than 4000 people across the UK at the beginning of February,
“Scots remain more likely than those in England and Wales to say the UK will not exist in its current form for much longer,” the report said.
“As many as 61% of Scots say the UK will not exist in its current form in 10 years’ time, compared with 50% across the UK as a whole. 46% of Scots think it will not exist in 5 years’ time, compared with 33% across the UK as a whole.”
https://www.thenational.scot/news/20012603.support-independence-ahead-poll-showing-majority-believe-union-will-gone-decade/
Aren’t they thinking that they will rejoin the EU?
The EU might be gone by then too.
Yeah the Scottish ‘independence’ movement isn’t exactly William Wallace- approved lol.
Not sure the UK and Scotland will still exist in a decade. As in, not a lot of people left.
Sinn Fein still leads the latest polls in Ireland, north and south:
> LucidTalk opinion poll: Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill nudges closer to top Stormont post as DUP lags behind
Donaldson fails to close electoral gap with election only weeks away
The DUP is failing to narrow the electoral gap with Sinn Fein, although it has strengthened its position within unionism as support for the TUV and UUP falls.
Michelle O’Neill remains on course to secure Stormont’s top job in May with her party up one point to 26%, according to a LucidTalk opinion poll for the Belfast Telegraph.
On 19%, the DUP has risen two points from our last poll in January.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/northern-ireland-assembly-election-2022/lucidtalk-opinion-poll-sinn-feins-michelle-oneill-nudges-closer-to-top-stormont-post-as-dup-lags-behind-41492902.html
> Sinn Féin remains the most popular party in Ireland, according to the poll
Sinn Féin remains the most popular party in Ireland, according to the Red C poll carried out for the Business Post.
The poll puts the party, led by Mary Lou McDonald, at 33% and significantly ahead of Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael and Micheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil.
Support for Fine Gael continues to fall, dropping to 19%, according to the latest poll.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-40837784.html
As long as Boris’s hair
Suits the IMF’s dispair
There’s nothing to worry
But for those who know
Should be in a hurry
To make up their minds
Keeping up the show
Theedrich – you and all the comments after. You all are responding as if TPTB or whatever you want to use as the term for those most in charge give a rats sphencter about their collective countries or the 99% populations there in.
It is all about resources. Less people with money means more resources for those with money……period. Couch it in a dozen different ways but the name of the game from now on is “DEMAND DESTRUCTION”!
no
Thank you for the details of the gas for rubles Michael.
Europe can not function without that gas. There is no alternative. LNG can not provide it. They cant switch to coal in a month. There is not a big pipe coming from Bahrain or USA. Without that gas some degree of functioning ceases and it feed backs. The thing we commonly call collapse.
Russia has established a free market for the rouble. The supply of rubles can only be created by imorting goods into russia. There is radically more need for roubles than actually exist.
So in a magical world the ruble would triple in value. This would make EU goods exceedingly cheap. EU exports would triple. Production of russian domestic consumables would cease and russia would import. The exchange rate would balance perfectly like a physical law and provide enough rubles to sustain the EUs energy needs.
In the real world organisms either get the energy they need or die.
In the real world EU can not create enough productivity needed to pay for their energy consumption when energy is priced via free market.
In the real world USA can not create enough productivity needed to pay for their energy consumption when energy is priced via free market.
The first thing that will happen is that any real roubles – not FX trades_ that exist from prior imports into russia will be rounded up. Let us hope that is a considerable amount.
Secondary effect. Every energy producer in the world says hmm I like this deal. They implement some version of free market pricing of energy. Perhaps even adopting ruble that would be the easiest. USA is not going back into Iraq. NATO is not going back into Libya.
Options;
EU has partial collapse. Industry shuts down. They do the best they can on what energy they can lay hands on and attempt to transition to other energy sources and increase exports to russia. Except all energy is now unaffordable as other energy producers revalue energy. EU and USA decline into third world freezing and starving nations in collapse as free market pricing of energy accelerates. The nukes rust in the launching silos the subs dock. BUT. Energy sits unused as no one can afford it. Everything comes to a stop except energy and products that can continue. Russia and China continue in a grubby dim world that lasts much longer as the energy depletion slows to a trickle.
EU disbands NATO and russia accepts them as a welfare state. dont think thats going to happen.
Russia lends EU rubles. Dont think thats going to happen.
War. Thermonuclear destroys energy costly infrastructure. High probability biological. Then nuclear. Or visa versa. 70 years of black weapons technology development gets used.
This action by russia is far more of a escalation than the military force demonstrated. i disagree that it is well reasoned. It makes no attempt to allow adequate time for transitioning from the status quo of fiat purchases of energy to lower energy consumption and productivity increases to pay even if it was possible. Its inevitable conclusion is war. Thus i believe russia is prepared for war with technology we have not previously seen. They can not be unaware of what they have done they are far smarter than that. I dont understand. They could transition to having it all and the silk road in a few years and still keep europe around but they are acting stupid. And they are not stupid. To some extent avoiding war would require “charity” in energy distribution. Perhaps thats not OK with Russia? Good luck with that moral high ground.
If food goes to a million dollars and i got food my neighbor doesnt and his children are starving Im going to get a shovel upside my head. Thats the real world. That neighbor shouldnt get a free lexus. He shouldnt get a free big screen and rib eye steaks. He shouldnt have to watch his children starve tho. Russia is well prepared for that shovel. I think they are yawning waiting for the shovel to get it over and they think its back to business. So we see who has what. Wont be long.
You never back someone in a corner if you are giving them a chance. They will fight like a creature and may will end you when you give them their out. You keep them rational with real options. Its in everyone’s best interest. You only back someone in a corner if you plan on ending them.
I agree that backing Russia into a corner isn’t a good option, when it has lots of nuclear weapons and perhaps weapons we haven’t seen.
It may very well be inevitable that the current situation ends in war. Everyone starving to death, or many people beating their neighbor to death, sounds like a terrible ending. I don’t know how this all ends.
We cannot afford
A life without growth
Praising the Lord
Too little, too late
Isn’t that the truth
We both hate?
I lived during communism, when we were hungry every day for years, but criminality was less than after communism was overthrown and we were well fed, because of the dictatorship. If anyone was caught stealing the punishment was swift and merciless. Dictatorships are forming everywhere currently. They will make sure that the population gets smaller without a total collapse
The problem is that the US Gov’t has become a “crime syndicate”. They are run by neocons and warhawks. It’s what every failing Empire does. It uses its military might to beat down and conquer its enemies.
The Neocons are behind, insert the latest name. It was Hussein, then Assad, then Gaddafi. Now it’s Putin’s turn and waiting in the wings, Xi is next. The Neocons never met a War they did not like. Meanwhile the global economy is collapsing. It’s almost as if the Neocons just need a diversion such as War to distract the public from whats really happening.
“the Neocons”
With any luck, they are all vaxxinated.
I’m afraid that won’t be enough.
What’s needed is garlic, sunlight, the sign of the cross, and a stake through the heart just to make sure.
I agree
here here!
The USA consists of a huge landmass that can only be administered by cars. The US population refuses to lead a life like their ancestors in self-sufficiency. To maintain the exorbitant spendings of the US-population the USA need a strong military. Biological warfare and “Arabian Spring”-movements are cheaper than military occupations. The use of semi-religious networks are effective tools of organizing people.
If Woodrow WIlson did not listen to the Poles and Czechs who wanted their own countries and let Germany and Central Powers have the territories they won from Russia, we would not have this problem now.
You seem to forget that the only way for an invader to subjugate a people of a different language and culture (and as such naturally susceptible to cohesion and nationalistic impulses) and durably ensure annexation and assimilation, is to populate the territory with your people after exterminating all opposition, present and future, which means killing all males between the ages of say 5 and 65. (If you’re wondering, no, terror and violence alone do not guarantee such definite results because they are too expensive to maintain and the law of diminishing returns is unforgiving)
But then you should remember that in the last 150 years such classical (or should i say biblical?) acts of extermination have become impractical because 1) there are too many people (and mass-murdering though not as expensive as punishment and surveillance, is no bargain), and 2) the very idea of extermination has become frowned upon and gotten too much bad press. As you should know
Your symptomatology clearly suggests a bad case of historicizing delirium. But don’t get sad, since there’s no shortage of medicines for that. For example, try 20 pages of Peter Turchin’s “War, Peace and War” a day for twenty days (I can personally guarantee that it bring good results and has no contraindications).
That’s good advice! According to Ms. Marple, good advice is seldom taken, but that’s not excuse for not giving it.
As Claire Fraser says, ‘give anything enough time, and everything is taken care of.’
The Germans (Angles and Saxons) subjugated England without killing all the males, and so did the Normans. That is why we all speak German with some French mixed in. So, that really is not true.
As I keep telling Kulm, the continentals have caused plenty of trouble down the millennia. It’s a good thing this sceptered isle has a moat to keep most of them out most of the time.
What was the population of the British Isles when the Anglo-Saxons landed there? And how strong was the socio-cultural cohesion of the tribes living in the place? Not much, of course. Otherwise the Anglosaxons wouldn’t have a chance.
Now compare that with the population, linguistic identity and cultural cohesion of a civilized people like the Poles of 20th century. You can conquer them, but you can never assimilate them.
History shows us countless examples of this. A consolidated language and culture will only disappear if it is physically exterminated, like the mayas ot the aztecas. A job that when it comes to millions becomes practically impossible, especially in our era of mass comunication and all. Think of the difficulties poor Adolf had, or the Turks with the Armenians, or the Indonesians with the Timorese. Talking is easy, but getting the job done, not so much.
As Germany was pushed back to Berlin by the Russians in WWII, certain areas that were “German” were declared to be part of Poland.
Poles would arrive to a German farm and tell the German family to leave within a day, or be killed or something. The farm now belonged to them. In this way an entire region went from German to Polish.
No killing off all the males…just eliminate the entire population.
An even larger area of Poland was cleared of Poles and settled by Ukrainians during and after WWII. It was absolutely brutal.
From WIki (’cause it’s convenient):
The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia (Polish: rzeź wołyńska, lit. ’Volhynian slaughter’; Ukrainian: Волинська трагедія, romanized: Volynska trahediia, lit. ’Volyn tragedy’), were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or the UPA, with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region from 1943 to 1945.The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. Most of the victims were women and children. Many of the Polish victims regardless of age or gender were tortured before being killed; some of the methods included rape, dismemberment or immolation, among others. The UPA’s actions resulted in between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia
Reading the history books, one could be forgiven for thinking that Pogrom is the national sport in Ukraine and some other parts of Eastern Europe.
Dislodging a population is only feasible if that population is not too numerous, if it has an exit route and a place to relocate, and if the invader has a surplus population with which to occupy the now vacant territory.
Without these conditions, the best you can achieve is a military occupation, which even if it is ruthless and extended over many generations does not guarantee definitive results. Just remember how the Muslims occupied the Iberian Peninsula for 700 years and not even this ensured that the Iberians of today speak Arabic or are called Abdul or Mohammed. What went wrong? The arabs forgot to exterminate all christian opposition.
Did the ottomans succeded in subjugating and durably anexing greece, Bulgaria and Serbia after 5 centuries of trying? No, they didn’t. In fact they precipitated the biggest cultural revival on the balkans due to their assimilation policies. History is a two edge sword 😉
What do you see as the prospects for Israel/ Palestine going forward? Will it endure as a Jewish ethnic state?
I suspect the Arabs will eventually succeed in pushing the Jews into the sea. It will probably come at the cost of some Israeli nukes being loosed. Not that the Levant will support many people of any creed post industrial civilization. The middle east is about the last place I’d want to be when the shtf.
Another way for rubles to be brought into existence is for Russia to buy gold from everyone in rubles. Therefore taking the EU’s and others gold in exchange for energy and then giving their ruble a gold standard at a later point which stops it being financially attacked and ruined by the west.
EU and US are trying to personalize the conflict talking only about Putin, trying to paint him as a crazy person, a solitary man, now also tallking in a patetic way of a probable cancer (that could also be, but that doesn’t change anything in my view), but EU and US forget that there is an army of people like Peskov, Medvedev, Lavrov, Volodin, Zakharova, various members of the Duma and also probably the majority of Russians who agree on the Russian strategy.
If Putin died tomorrow, Russia would not change its action.
While personalization of the conflict is probably adequate with Zelensky.
Without his figure mounted by us, without all the army and intelligence that EU and US are giving him, Ukranians will probably stop the tragedy tomorrow.
It is the standard operating procedure for the deep state. The one lone gunman, the one crazed dictator. Zero complexity makes it easier to drum the war hate. Remember orange man bad. Putin bad.
This is not correct. The hatred for Russians is new, but it runs very deep already. US could turn its back on Ukraine tomorrow. But Ukrainians from all regions will hold nothing but stomach-turning hatred for Russians for generations. Many stories have not yet seen the light of the media. They will. This is only what I know from family and friends in the country. It is not a small sample.
Ukrainians understand this is only the most recent iteration of an historic purge of Ukraine, it’s people, it’s language. I know the hip counter-narrative relished by many is that Ukraine startled it, is run by extremists and is a western puppet. Russia and Ukraine have known each other a very long time. And this chapter is the one all will know, sing about and fight to their last breath for.
The hatred for Russians is new, but it runs very deep already.
How deep?
As deep as the hatred of some Scots and Irish for the English? And vice versa? Or of some Arabs and Israelites for each other? Or of some Muslims and Hindus for each other? Or of some Koreans and Japanese for each other? Of of some US blacks and whites for each other?
And wow deep will it be once it has had time to mature? That will depend largely on what stories people tell each other and what kind of official government perspective they are exposed to from here on.
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“Global factory activity slowed in March as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine tightened supply chain bottlenecks, dampened demand and whacked confidence, while soaring energy costs drove a broader surge in prices, surveys showed on Friday…
“…the euro zone’s manufacturing industry could slide into a recession this quarter… The slowdown in China bodes ill for Asia, which is host to big manufacturers dependent on consumption in the world’s second-largest economy, analysts say.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/global-economy-asias-factory-activity-slows-ukraine-crisis-inflation-bite-2022-04-01/
Global factory output likely would have fallen, even without the Ukraine invasion. The Ukraine invasion helped hide the terrible shape energy and other resource extraction is in.
Perhaps, without Ukraine, the fall might have started a couple of weeks later, but it was already built into the system with the high energy prices and the failing supply lines because of China’s problems.
Worth recalling, too, that global PMI for manufacturing and new export orders was in contraction for most of 2019 before the pandemic began.
Good point!
I remember that the talk I gave to an actuarial group in Hawaii in December 2019 was on the topic of the terrible shape the world economy was in at that time.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/12/08/recession-ahead-an-overview-of-our-predicament/
Dollar went off gold standard about 2yrs after peak conventional US oil.
USSR collapsed 2yrs after Soviet peak oil.
9/11 was two years after global peak cheap oil.
GFC was 2.5yrs after global peak conventional.
Plandemic was 1.5yrs after peak total liquids.
The future is an endless series of rolling, manufactured crises, until there’s no more manufacturing.
Monetary plane goes down, physical plane goes up, current powers don’t like that. No more promises, just deliver, dear secretary. Oh, and give me the key to your locker, and go ‘straight left’ when you leave the building.
“China’s disastrous zero-Covid strategy is the gravest threat to the global economy…
“As Russia dominates the headlines, China’s collapsing zero-Covid strategy lurks in the background, causing havoc in some of its biggest cities, cracking down on the daily routines of millions of people – and creating disturbances in supply chains that will hit Western consumers in the months ahead.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/04/01/chinas-disastrous-zero-covid-strategy-gravest-threat-global/
“Covid lockdown extended in Shanghai as outbreaks put economy on the skids.
“Shanghai has been plunged into an extended lockdown and some residents face another 10 days of isolation in their homes as China’s strict zero-Covid policy threatens to derail the country’s economy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/01/covid-lockdown-extended-for-parts-of-shanghai-as-city-struggles-to-control-omicron
“China’s farmers face fertiliser crunch as COVID measures hamper deliveries.
China’s COVID-19 curbs are disrupting the supply of fertiliser to the country’s northeastern bread basket just a month away from spring planting, threatening this year’s corn and soybean crops if not resolved soon.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-farmers-face-fertiliser-crunch-covid-measures-hamper-deliveries-2022-04-01/
It seems like authorities would realize that disrupting fertilizer supplies would present a huge problem.
This is always the question when contemplating these counter-intuitive policies that can only seem to do senseless harm.
China, too, now has an awful lot of excess, ageing, population to get rid of, does it not?
Right!
I agree. Not to mention the Russian lockdowns. In Russia’s case, I believe, the idea was mainly to reduce consumption.
And norm.
We are underestimating the problems resulting from lack of fertilizers. We will definitely face food shortages starting summer/fall of 2022. But….2023 will be absolutely deadly…potentially for billions.
Holodomor at the global level.
Holodomor involved mass starvation of Ukrainians in 1932-1932. It was blamed on the bad policies of the Soviets who wanted to collectivize agriculture.
I am wondering if inadequate coal supply for the entire European area was the underlying problem. Peak coal had already had already occurred in UK, at the time of World War I. Peak hard coal occurred in Germany at the time of World War II. Starvation seems to have been a problem in a number of places about the 1930s.
Collectivizing may have looked like a way to make the most of what few supplies were available. Fertilizer and metal tools were likely in short supply. I doubt that many farmers had tractors. Farmers without tractors are very inefficient, and collectivizing may have seemed like a way to make the most of the few tractors available (if there were any).
Without tractors, farmers cannot grow food sufficiently efficiently to keep prices low enough for low-paid workers to afford the food. Low paid farmer workers starve because they cannot afford the food that is being produced.
The harvest of 2022 will be eaten until there is no more. It is reasonable to expect spring 2023 to be the moment of crisis, but probably not before.
Fortunately,most people are totally unaware and will probably enjoy what may well be their last reasonably good summer, in the still fortunate lands of mostly-full supermarket shelves; nor will they notice the distant countries already falling in to the abyss.
It does rather look like it is curtains for Sri Lanka, which for decades was a popular tourist destination for Brits. Not a peep on the BBC website. Can the BBC continue ignoring if Sri Lanka goes into full implosion mode?
Sri Lanka declares state of emergency as protests spread
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa invokes tough laws amid protests over Sri Lanka’s deepening economic crisis.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/1/sri-lanka-declares-state-of-emergency-as-protests-spread
Thar she blows!!! hahahahaha… Let er Rip…
We Burn – You Burn oh ya
https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2022-04-01T080505Z_369777397_RC28ET9DLU1N_RTRMADP_3_SRI-LANKA-CRISIS.jpg
Colombo, Sri Lanka – Police in Sri Lanka have lifted an overnight curfew in the country’s capital after arresting dozens of people and quelling unrest that saw large crowds attempt to storm President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s private residence amid anger over a worsening economic crisis.
At least 54 people were detained in Colombo’s Mirihana district in the early hours of Friday, the police said, branding the protesters as “organised extremists” trying to “create anarchy in the country”.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/31/tear-gas-as-sri-lanka-protesters-try-to-storm-presidents-house
BURN
https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/2022-03-31T194423Z_544702500_RC2TDT90UFCV_RTRMADP_3_SRI-LANKA-CRISIS.jpg
Maybe part of the problem is that China’s energy supplies are really short. Lockdowns help conceal the shortages. This seemed to be the case with COVID lockdowns elsewhere in 2020.
“China vows to bolster energy security as Ukraine war stokes ‘period of turbulence’.
“Zhang Jianhua, chief of the National Energy Administration, says China will boost domestic oil and gas supply, while building international energy partnerships.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3172764/china-vows-bolster-energy-security-ukraine-war-stokes-period
Russia seems to play an important role. According to the article:
This is a problem because it will stimulate the creation of more deadly vaccine worldwide:
– ‘hey, look how serious is Covid for China!
We must do something us too, let’s go on with booster and booster and new vaccines and vaccines foreveeeeer…’
Interesting point. Also, this is another way to make the unvaccinated scapegoats, I suppose.
Mrs Minority did her PhD on the subject of scapegoat-ism in Russia ~1900 – 1995, which I read several times because someone had to do it – review the text before the viva. The Stalin era was particularly fascinating, many people disappeared from the phone books (i.e. were executed, or sent to the Gulag camps and did not return – millions).
The current crooks have so much material and past experiences they can/have learnt from.
You would have thought that it would be obvious by now that a zero-covid policy will not work, unless the intended consequences were fewer people and zero-covid is just an excuse.
Zero-covid is a literary device on Their part. Zero-covid for a zero ‘virus.’ Because it doesn’t exist.
Reante has just said what we all fear to be true…..
Bah we all KNOW it to be true. There is no ontological referent for what a ‘virus’ is purported to be, which is a strand of amino acids in an informational format, encased in proteins in a structural format, encased in lipids in a structural format, maybe with some proteins with an enzymatic function embedded in the lipids, all of which (which is in reality an proteomic intercellular message in service of epigenetics) is supposed to be able to potentially kill the most evolved (most highly adapted) lifeform in the history of the planet. There is no plausible referent for that, so we know it’s horseshit. They can’t DO anything.
‘Viruses’ are exosomes. The intercellular messages. What the regular vaxxxes do is, through exhaustive trial and error, the lab rats figure out which class of exosomes are messaging for which symptoms, and by making synthetic versions of the exosomes and wrapping them up in a toxic package of adjuvants, the intelligent body is lied-to in being forced to associate the synthetic exosomes with harm (from the toxic adjuvants), so the intelligent body remembers and suppresses future production of the exosomes. Since the purpose of these classes of exosomes is to communicate disease so that the body can decide when to heal the disease — causing symptoms — suppressing the communication suppresses healing in that disease pathway. Voila! Vaxxxine successful!
That’s how it works. All allopathic medicine is just symptom suppression. Kicking the can down the road to more systemic effect, and profiteering in the process. Sounds familiar don’t it.
It ain’t magic it’s just a parlor trick. Industrial trial and error is all it is. Cause and effect harnessed by dark arts.
Shutdowns sound like good policy when COVID is accompanied by huge other problems, including falling home prices and failing property developers. People used home purchases like savings accounts–bought an extra home if they had money that they want to store away. Now this value is disappearing
Also, securities issued by these property developers were a way to invest money. I cannot imagine citizens will be happy about this, either. Can the government really step in to fix the problem? COVID restrictions are a convenient distraction.
Restrictions justified by ‘Covid’ distract, repress and suppress, – a policy made in Heaven!
“UK businesses face April ‘cliff edge’ as most pandemic support ends…
“Kate Nicholls, chief executive of trade body UKHospitality, described the VAT rise, tapering of business rates relief, employment costs and the end of both insolvency and rent arrears protections as a “quintuple cliff edge” for the sector.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ad8daea4-9097-41dc-9884-0c558dd41587
“UK’s TUC Calls For Emergency Budget As Energy Price Cap Rises By 51%.
“The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is calling on the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak to deliver an emergency budget to support families through the cost of living crisis. From April 1, the energy price will rise by a record 51%.”
https://www.finance-monthly.com/2022/04/uks-tuc-calls-for-emergency-budget-as-energy-price-cap-rises-by-51/
“‘It’s pure desperation’: First time food bank users face the cost of living crisis…
“On the day energy price hikes took hold, struggling families told The Independent the government “does not know what hardship is” as they feel abandoned in their efforts to make ends meet.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cost-of-living-food-bank-users-crisis-b2048995.html
Food banks were in difficulties even in 2019, I seem to recall.
I see a headline saying Biden-Harris Administration Extends Student Loan Pause through May 1, 2022. So the US hasn’t hit this “bump in the road” yet. A lot of young people are benefitting from this.
Mortgage loan forbearance seems to have a variable end date, depending upon when a person first applied. These plans seem mostly to have ended by December 31, 2021.
There was at one time a COVID renter eviction moratorium, but this was vacated (ended) by the US Supreme Court on August 26, 2021.
Biden is asking for higher taxes now, as well.
I have some queries to the party. Now russian oil is toxic and majority of russian oil is being bought by India and China. How this major restructuring of oil logistics is going to impact the broader oil market and oil moving ifrastructe (the three type of fleets of oil tankers)? What would be the impact on SLOCs which would be underutilized due to the new logistics of russian oil? The repositioning of the tankers fleet itself would bring chaos and havoc to some parts of the world I guess and insurance and shipping costs perhaps will go higher (the slocs from russia to china and inida are loong and the travel time is way more than 40-60 days). My take is that the oil moving business would find itself in situation with insufficient capital to face the restructuring and now that the FED is rising rates and dialing down QE (I am not sure if this can be described as QT) I wonder how they will rise capital.
Interesting points. Most of Russia’s oil has to be shipped from ports in the West and travel around the horn of Africa to get to India and China. That is a very long trip, raising the number of ships needed to carry the oil. It will need to be done with some subset of the ships currently in operation. I know that in the past, there have been quite a few ship used as floating tankers. If these are still available, perhaps they could be pressed into service.
looks like RU has been long term planning that regard
https://anti-empire.com/russia-begins-construction-of-15-icebreaking-lng-tankers/
https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/02/20/russia-seals-its-authority-over-the-arctic-with-a-110-billion-mega-port-on-the-taymyr-peninsula/
They need to do something like prepare an arctic terminal. The problem is that the cost will be awfully high to keep the staff and all the food and other things they need there. It is not clear that the port can be used year around, either. And the time customers will most need the LNG is the winter, when it is most likely to be shut in. Someone will need a lot of storage capacity for it. All of this makes it very expensive LNG.
Arc7 ice-class LNG carriers are designed for the year-round transportation of LNG in the difficult conditions of the ice-bound Arctic sea basin.
These tankers are capable of breaking an ice bulk of up to 2 meters thick (6.5 feet). Since Arc7 tankers use liquefied natural gas as fuel, they are considered to be of advanced environmental safety.
https://anti-empire.com/russia-begins-construction-of-15-icebreaking-lng-tankers/
We already had the Iran-China-deal before the troubles with Ukraine. In my opinion the war is mainly about dominance in the Black Sea as it is the only ice-free port for Russia.
The troubles seem to be planned beforehand.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/A-New-Pipeline-Could-Undo-Americas-Influence-In-Asia.html
https://en.mehrnews.com/news/148223/Iran-ready-to-export-gas-to-China-via-IP-gas-pipeline-Jahangiri
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2020/04/arctic-gas-finds-new-way-yamal-towards-china
The ‘unfriendly’ states have one month to make a decision whether to comply with rubles for gas, as payments are due in late April/ early May, and the indication seems to be that they likely will.
Clearly the Daily Mail was sensationalising fake news with its headline yesterday of ‘Russia threatens to cut off gas TOMORROW’.
Shame on the Daily Mail!
> Gazprom Starts Telling Clients How to Pay for Gas in Rubles
(Bloomberg) — Russia’s Gazprom PJSC has started telling clients how to pay for their gas after President Vladimir Putin said purchases from “unfriendly” nations would need to be settled in rubles.
Notifications about the new payment order are being sent to customers on Friday, the Russian gas giant said in a statement on its official Telegram channel. The Kremlin said on Thursday that European buyers would need to have two accounts, one in euros and one in rubles, and that Gazprombank would be responsible for making the foreign exchange conversion.
European nations are still getting to grips with what the Kremlin is proposing. French Ecology Minister Barbara Pompili said she didn’t see the request as a breach of contract as companies would still to be able to pay in euros, according to information received from Moscow. The German government said it is still pouring over the details before coming to a decision, while Denmark condemned the request.
“Gazprom as a Russian company is unconditionally and fully compliant with Russian law,” which from April 1 stipulates only ruble payments for gas exported to the “unfriendly” states, the company said. “Gazprom is a responsible partner and continues to export gas to clients in a safe manner.”
Russian gas shipments to Europe continued to flow normally on Friday, with Gazprom saying it was meeting all the requests from clients. Supplies won’t be cut off immediately, not even for customers that don’t make the switch to the new payment rules, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. That’s because payments for fuel being delivered now aren’t due until late April or early May….
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/gazprom-starts-telling-clients-pay-104314065.html
Zerohedge claims that natural gas flows into Germany have already started to reverse.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/gas-flows-russian-pipeline-reverse-gazprom-instructs-clients-how-pay-rubles
As Russian President Vladimir Putin ratchets up the pressure on Germany and its EU compatriots to either agree to pay for Russian gas in rubles, or face a devastating shortfall, gas traveling through the Yamal-Europe pipeline has started traveling in reverse, flowing eastward from Germany to Poland.
According to Reuters, physical exit flows at the Mallnow metering point on the German border stood at 2,691,220 kwh/h, according to data from the Gascade pipeline operator. That figure was slightly larger than the 1,451,155 kwh/h on Tuesday, before gas stopped flowing eastward.
The paymantes in roubles are a pretext for stopping the natural gas delivery, says the energy and security analyst Hirman.
Analytik: Požiadavka platieb za plyn v rubľoch je pre Putina zámienkou na jeho vypnutie
https://spravy.rtvs.sk/2022/03/analytik-hirman-platba-ruble-plyn-putin/
kWh/h are simply kW, why complicate matters?
EU state bans ‘V’ and ‘Z’ after honoring SS
Latvia outlaws display of the letters ‘Z’ and ‘V’ OVER Russian “aggression,” days after holding march honoring Nazis
https://www.rt.com/russia/553081-latvia-bans-v-z-russia/
This is a great problem for all the lovers of the wonderful Zorro:
A total of 168 container vessels were waiting outside Shanghai and Ningbo on Wednesday, up from around 120 ships last week, according to data provided by British ship certifier Lloyd’s Register.
Maersk said they closed their warehouse at Shanghai
Shanghai needs to be open, for ships to have a place to unload.
After having discussed with a Russian friend, I’ve figured out how Russia’s new payment scheme will work, at least with European partners.
It appears to be less ambitious than what was announced by Putin.
Authorized credit organizations will open bank accounts of type “K” in rubles and foreign currency for foreign buyers at their request.
Funds in foreign currency under contracts for the supply of natural gas are credited to a type “K” bank account in this currency. For the sale of foreign currency, the funds of a foreign buyer, on his behalf, are debited from his type “K” account in foreign currency.
The conversion takes place and following the results of the conversion, funds in rubles are credited to a bank account of type “K” in rubles. Most noteworthy, the conversion WILL NOT BE AUTOMATIC!
Further, if effectively converted, the payment in rubles is sent to Gazprom and ONLY THEN, the supply contract is considered fulfilled.
The Germans transfer euros to their account at the Gazprombank (GPB) – GPB sells them on the MICEX! Who buys euros for rubles on the MICEX? Importers of European goods in Russia
Thus euros for gas will be absorbed into the accounts of non-sanctioned banks and a bunch of importers. They can only be banned by banning all euro trading with Russia.
Let’s say no one sells anything to Russian importers in euros. They do not need euros, GPB cannot sell them on the stock exchange, the Germans cannot pay for gas, gas supplies are cut off.
In order to still buy gas, the Germans still have to offer something for sale in the Russian Federation. If we do not take an extreme case, then the system puts pressure on Europe, forcing it to be interested in selling goods to the Russian Federation.
This could lead to a partial lift of the current sanctions that have been slapped on Russia, in order to facilitate the sales of European goods into Russia and sustain a certain demand for euros there.
Nowhere in the Decree are there any obligations to provide rubles at the exchange rate. And even more so – there is no “automatic conversion”.
This scheme works absolutely in all banks, anywhere in the world with all reserve currencies.
For example, a company has a dollar account and a yen account. There is nothing on the yen account. And the company wants to buy something from Japan, she instructs the bank to buy yen for dollars on the exchange market.
How Germany will dispose of its rubles is none of Russia’s business. The main thing is that Russia will sell for rubles. The difference is that the EU will finally have a ruble account, which is not the case now.
So in the end, let the EU mine these rubles! They will be counted in euros, and paid in rubles. And it’s a way that doesn’t need to re- negotiate the contracts in rubles, because they have already been concluded.
The main benefits I see in short-term period are :
– Russia can re-build a trade account surplus in rubles that will be immune to any European theft
– it will goad European countries to gradually lift the sanctions in order to sell goods on the Russian market.
Nonetheless, this is far less ambitious than what I had first understood. This could also be a first step that doesn’t preclude further more escalatory steps toward full payment in rubles. It remains to be seen.
In conclusion, I still think that Russia is missing a window of opportunity that there is only once in a century. Given the current structural economic weaknesses of the European Union, Russia could bring the EU to its knees.
As you describe it, it looks like an astute and carefully calibrated, moderate, move.
Europe on its knees is, for the time being, of no use to Russia, only – perhaps – the US.
We live: to be strangled another day…….
‘Every Day of Survival a Victory, Comrades!’
I agree with you Xabier, I was thinking the same.
Europe is already on its knees to the US, and the US and Europe are both on their knees to the globalists. It’s a sad thing to see. I don’t think Russia’s government wants Europe to collapse. And if Europe does collapse, as is looking more likely by the day, it doesn’t want Russia to be blamed for the mess.
More likely, it would like to see an anti-NATO scenario with the Russians IN, the Americans OUT and the British, French and Germans DOWN. But in the absence of that, an economic and political divorce between Russia and the rest of Europe will do nicely. Russia doesn’t want to end up as merely a “gas station” or a natural resource provider for the Europeans.
For anyone who has actually been there, Russia has some fantastic places to visit, and the people are mostly very friendly, just like everywhere else. A shame that European leaders never accepted Russia being part of Europe, not since the revolution anyway.
A patronised, misrepresented and despised ‘gas station’ at that…..
Excellent post by Michael. Let me add that third parties can also enter the fray, with various motives. Iran may need the euros to evade sanctions, and India could buy euros as part of geopolitical agreements with Russia. This will also increase the profile of Russian financial markets, but as Michael says, this is a very peaceful move by Moscow, vis a’ vis Europe. Perhaps they really want a surviving, non-hostile Western neighbor.
Interesting! Even trying to pay for natural gas in rubles will be a challenge for the EU.
“GAS GEOPOLITICS: Day 36 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Lots of talk of Putin shutting down gas flows into Europe.
“The reality? The **highest** flow of Russian gas into Europe **via Ukraine** in 4 months. Multiply that for the price, and lots of $, € or rubles for Putin.”
https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1509811226355941376
One of the comments says:
Michael,
Thank you for the excellent work!
“In conclusion, I still think that Russia is missing a window of opportunity that there is only once in a century. Given the current structural economic weaknesses of the European Union, Russia could bring the EU to its knees.”
This is the globalists beginning to create the framework ahead of time for the ostensibly National Socialist multilateral international trade system that might last for five years or so after this collapse of globalization crisis shakes out with, I’m guessing, a 75pc drop in GDP. This new petroruble parallel system to the dollar is essential to Glide Path Option of controlling the crash because it creates, for starters, the autarkic excuse with which Russia can feather the supply of fossil fuels under its control, and ultimately in service of the global elites’ ongoing non-public Degrowth Agenda.
Feathering Mechanisms are what they have used to negotiate Steve From Virginia’s Triangle of Doom dynamic since peak total liquids in 2018. Trump’s jawboning, Fedspeak, PCR cycle counts, fake variants…
I looked up “feathering mechanism.” Google gave this answer:
“Feathering propellers have a mechanism to change the pitch to an angle of approximately 90 degrees. Usually, a propeller is feathered when the engine fails to produce the power needed to turn the propeller. By angling the propeller parallel to the direction of flight, the drag on the aircraft reduces.”
That is a good description of what is happening with all of the strange narratives we have been hearing recently. The situation is being described in terms that sound familiar, and something that we want and can control.
The catch is that the Ruble will probably ascend in value and Russia will set the exchange rate….it will not be automatic and it will NOT be manipulated by outside finance houses. Russia has already restricted outside entities from participating in speculating on the Ruble. This minimizes outside meddling with the exchange rate.
Wouldn’t it be something if one day the Ruble is the most valuable currency on the planet.
And….if Russia ends up one day being the wealthiest country…..
I told anyone who was willing to listen already in summer 2020 (long before I discovered this blog), that by 2030 Russia would have the highest living standards on the planet. But never I would have imagined things would progress this quickly.
Amazing! Deagel (the organization that does forecasting for US military purposes) seems to agree with you for 2025 per capita PPP GDP. In 2019, it seems to have forecasted that Russia would be on top on this basis.
The links below are what Deagel was forecasting back in 2019, for 2025, for the top economies, before the website forecast was removed. The top economies seem to be ranked based on total PPP GDP in 2025. Thus, high population countries (China and India) are on top in that ranking. Russia comes out number 3 for total PPP GDP.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Deagel-2019-forecasts-for-2025-top-three-countries.png
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Deagel-2019-Forecasts-for-2025-countries-4-through-10.png-.png
The last column seems to be 2025 per capita PPP GDP divided population, so is more or less a “per capita income” type column. On this basis, of the 10 countries shown, Russia comes out on top with per capita PPP GDP of $43,557.
The 2019 amounts for a long list of countries seem to be up on the Deagel site.
https://www.deagel.com/country
A video showing some of the figures before they were taken down can be found at this site:
https://seemorerocks.is/deagel-com-just-removed-2025-forecast/
I made my slides from screen shots of the video.
Russia isn’t able to set the exchange rate. As a petroruble parallel to the petrodollar, it’s value is by definition pegged to oil and therefore to the dollar.
This petroruble framework also confirms what we already knew which is that the ruble is nowhere close to being able to be backed by gold. Gold backed currencies won’t come back til industrial civilization is dead, because oil is a hard good and gold is ultimately but a fetish and a proxy. Proxies are for growth phases, in order to facilitate whatever level of financialization that can be had from the elite racketeering that is the skimming of surpluses off the top.
Wow, sounds like you control the financial levers.Perhaps Putin would like to hire you.
There is a new saying. “He who controls the gas…makes the rules.”
Gas, Oil, Commodities and food will be the new gold.
Russia controls/will generate in excess of 40% of this in the new multi-polar world order.
No I just can feel my way into the situation. Feel free to refute my argument directly.
If Russia produces, say, 10pc of marketable production, do you really think that Russia can set prices? You feeling lucky today or something?
JJ, to a degree we are talking at cross-purposes because structurally we see the future differently.
I don’t pretend to understand the financialization of the currency markets. I make any statements regarding the exchange rate based on the fact that Russian just disallowed outsiders from participating in the ruble trading and stock market trading inside Russia. That essentially means that they set the exchange rate inside Russia ….to a degree.
I’ll leave the international finance effects of that to you..
The exchange of euros to roubles is best done with the chinese companies. They need euros for their investments in Europe and have roubles from their trade with the russians.
“European gas buyers navigate Russian rouble order as supply threat eases… The Kremlin said it would not turn off gas exports to Europe from Friday as payments on deliveries due after April 1 come in the second half of this month and May…
“Analysts said the plan, which puts state-controlled oil and gas company Gazprom at the heart of Russian gas trade, was more about shielding it from future sanctions than depriving Europe.
“”It is of course a game to dodge sanctions, adding to uncertainty, propping up gas prices and filling Putin’s pockets,” a European gas trader said.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gas-still-flows-russia-europe-buyers-navigate-putins-rouble-order-2022-04-01/
There is one strange paragraph in this Reuters’ article:
Germany gets 40% of its natural gas from Russia. Gazprom is the seller of this gas. Friday is presumably “today.” This doesn’t sound good for Germany’s natural gas supply.
Germany is weighing the prospect of expropriating or nationalizing local subsidiaries of Russian energy majors Gazprom and Rosneft due to concerns over energy security amid anti-Russia sanctions and Moscow’s demand for gas payments in rubles.
This was reported on Thursday by German business daily Handelsblatt, which stated that discussions on the matter have been held between senior Economy Ministry officials and Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Both companies are vital for the German energy market. Gazprom Germania operates a number of gas storage facilities and Rosneft Deutschland is among the key players on Germany’s petrol, diesel, and kerosene refinery markets.
Russia says the move would be illegal.
Gazprom offices searched in Germany – mediaREAD MORE: Gazprom offices searched in Germany – media
“The nationalization in Germany of the subsidiaries of Gazprom and Rosneft would seriously violate international law… it will violate all imaginable and unimaginable laws,” Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters on Friday. He added that Moscow considers even raising this issue “unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, Gazprom announced on Friday that it is ending its participation in its Gazprom Germania subsidiary, and divesting of all its assets in the company.
https://www.rt.com/business/553105-germany-mulls-nationalizing-gazprom-rosneft/
If Germany just steals all of Russia’s assets in Germany, at best I imagine they will never get access to its oil/gas regardless of what currency they pay in. Which sounds like either utter stupidity on behalf of German decision-makers, or a plan to find reasons to start a war.
I would agree with you:
“If Germany just steals all of Russia’s assets in Germany, at best I imagine they will never get access to its oil/gas regardless of what currency they pay in. Which sounds like either utter stupidity on behalf of German decision-makers, or a plan to find reasons to start a war.”
The situation sounds terrible.
Musical chairs. A world full of stranded assets to claim. A lot of these nationalized stranded foreign industrial assets will get stranded again due to Steve From Virginia’s First Law: the cost of the asset will exceed the worth of the asset.
Good way of putting the problem.
Stole it from you 🙂
“Strains in $23tn US government debt market intensify as Fed tightens monetary policy.
“Investors’ ability to trade US government debt has deteriorated to its lowest point since the ructions of March 2020, deepening worries about the world’s most important bond market as the Federal Reserve tightens monetary policy.”
https://www.ft.com/content/3494abc9-0b87-4206-8ad3-9e09b5e11730
“Is it time to worry about an emerging markets crisis? … the external environment facing low-income developing countries is deteriorating fast. US monetary tightening will certainly erode investors’ risk appetite…
“Meanwhile, global trade growth started to decline sharply in the latter part of 2021… This is all taking place against a background in which some important metrics of developing countries’ creditworthiness have deteriorated to worrying levels.”
https://www.ft.com/content/20377e61-a584-4206-8a12-a12b3b435c01
To be honest I expect the Japanese bond market to break first. Not anymore though
Monetary tightening may not work if buyers cannot be found for US debt at reasonable interest rates.
“This is a new age of chaos, famine and disorder. The inflationary tsunami will have consequences even more pernicious than the cost-of-living squeeze…
“Almost inevitably, economic turning points tend to be more obvious with the benefit of hindsight than they are at the time, but even the blindest of observers couldn’t fail to notice that we are in the midst of just such an earthquake right now…
“In the end, there is no getting away from it; the imported nature of today’s inflation, given wings by the easy money policies of the last 20 years, is going to make us all poorer.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/04/01/new-age-chaos-famine-disorder/
“Russia war ends era of globalization that kept inflation low.
“For decades, the free flow of trade across much of the world allowed the richest nations to enjoy easy access to low-priced goods and supplies. It meant solid economies and stable markets. And for households and businesses, especially in the United States and Europe, it meant an entire generation of ultra-low inflation…
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/russia-war-ends-era-globalization-inflation-low-83761180
Or maybe, rising energy prices marked end of era of globalization.
And Russia war acts to hide the underlying problem of not enough resources per capita.
“The current inflation still looks to be a transitory phenomenon” ?
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=49480
“Transitory doesn’t mean short-term necessarily. It means as long as the extraordinary events are driving the show,” says the article.
At a certain point, too much demand destruction from these higher prices and bursting debt bubbles bubbles seem likely to push us in a broadly deflationary direction. I can see us swinging from shortages to gluts.
Gluts are related to too low demand, usually because occurring because too many poor people cannot afford the end product. I suppose they could also occur if businesses cannot get financing to maintain or increase their operations.
There was a story in the WSJ today about hospitals that were losing money in 2019 engaging in “sale and leaseback” arrangements, in which they sold the physical hospital and leased it back, to get better cash flow in 2020. Now the hospitals are losing even more money, but the funds from the sale and lease back arrangements are gone. So the hospital are at the risk of closure. The hospital discussed in the article served a poor Latino population in California. It is poor, rural hospitals that are most at risk with this kind of problem. As these hospitals close, less healthcare will be available to these populations, and thus less demand for all kinds of things.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospital-deal-gone-bust-puts-real-estate-firm-in-spotlight-11648734104
“In Afghanistan, ‘people selling babies, young girls to survive’.
“When the family are able to eat, it’s often only bread, and sometimes with vegetables, accompanied by watered-down green tea. Sometimes there is sugar to put in the tea, which is a rare luxury these days, as they struggle to survive…”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/31/afghanistan-faces-hunger-crisis-of-unparalleled-proportions
“Sri Lanka: 50 injured as protesters try to storm president’s house amid economic crisis.
“Nearly 50 people were injured after authorities used teargas and water cannon to drive back a crowd that stormed the home of Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, amid anger over the government’s handling of the nation’s deepening economic crisis.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/01/sri-lanka-protesters-try-to-storm-presidents-house-as-economic-crisis-deepens
Afghanistan was doing poorly before all of the current problems started.
“Pakistan: Nationwide blackouts begin as power crisis intensifies.
“The power crisis across Pakistan has intensified as the overall electricity shortfall reached 5000 megawatts, local media reported on Thursday. The unannounced load-shedding has begun across the country as the electricity shortfall has reached 5,000MW, ARY News reported citing sources.”
https://www.khaleejtimes.com/asia/pakistan-nationwide-blackouts-begin-as-power-crisis-intensifies
Pakistan population – millions
1950: 37.5 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Pakistan)
Now: 228.7 (https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/pakistan-population/)
2050: 338.0 (https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/pakistan-population/)
I would have thought it is near its peak now.
Incredbile increase!
Wow! No wonder there is not enough electricity/energy for everyone.
“Tunisia’s political crisis worsens as president dissolves parliament.
“Tunisia’s populist president has dissolved the democratically elected parliament, intensifying the country’s political crisis eight months after he staged a power grab decried by his opponents as a coup.”
https://www.ft.com/content/72f58982-3e44-4ec8-b087-51a50dc0813c
“Lebanon’s wheat crisis worsened by funding delays.
“Ahmad Hoteit, the president of the Association of Mills in Lebanon, said: “The Ukrainian crisis has begun to have repercussions on Lebanon. Wheat shipments may arrive next week at higher prices, and given the high demand, the country that pays more gets the wheat.””
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2053866/middle-east
More countries doing poorly!
“Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has said he will not resign, striking a defiant tone ahead of a no-confidence vote expected to take place on Sunday.
“Pakistan’s embattled prime minister says he will not resign and accuses the US of conspiring with the opposition.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/31/pakistan-pm-imran-khan-defiant-before-no-confidence-vote
“The UK’s only shale gas wells have been handed a year-long reprieve amid pressure on Boris Johnson to use fracking to lower energy prices.
“Cuadrilla had been under instruction to plug its two wells in Lancashire by the end of June 2022. But the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) said the firm now had until the end of June 2023 to evaluate options…”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10672533/UKs-shale-gas-wells-NOT-sealed-summer-amid-bills-pressure-Boris-Johnson.html
“Campaigners have blocked the exits to seven oil facilities near London, Birmingham and Southampton, in a bid to halt new oil and gas developments.
“Protestors from the Just Stop Oil Coalition and Extinction rebellion have planted themselves along roads to stop oil tankers from leaving the facilities.”
https://www.cityam.com/protestors-block-exits-to-seven-oil-facilities-in-bid-for-no-new-oil-pledge/
Their life expectancy will decline significantly if they continue to do shtick like that.
Would be interesting to see how much gas comes from the shale gas wells – less than 1% of UK production I would have thought. The reason they were expected to shut down was because they were causing earthquakes – minor ones compared to the likes of California.
Perhaps UK will look at this option a bit more, if the price is higher.
“Historic oil release unlikely to solve energy crisis… US President Joe Biden announced on Thursday the US would release 1 million barrels of oil a day from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months…
“Strategists are sceptical the largest strategic oil release in history will be able to arrest the global energy crisis, as Russian President Vladimir Putin ramps up pressure on European buyers to pay in more favourable terms.”
https://www.afr.com/markets/commodities/historic-oil-release-unlikely-to-solve-energy-crisis-20220401-p5aa2i
“Venezuela’s PDVSA seeks oil tankers in anticipation of U.S. sanctions easing.
“Venezuela’s state-run energy firm PDVSA is in talks to buy and lease several oil tankers amid a possible expansion in exports, according to three sources and a document seen by Reuters, a sign the country expects U.S. sanctions on its petroleum sector to be eased.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-venezuelas-pdvsa-seeks-oil-tankers-anticipation-us-sanctions-easing-2022-03-31/
Perhaps the US will get a little oil from Venezuela.
I understand the president is using the petroleum reserve for political gain but it seems totally irresponsible. Yemen could destroy more Saudi infrastructure or other world events could easy disrupt supply. We could get in a situation where we really need this reserve for survival not just to lower gas prices by 10 cents a gallon temporarily.
once oilflow is interrupted, it will not be available for ‘survival’ or anything else
it cannot be ‘turned on or off’ randomly
UK Sleepwalking Into Food Crisis As Fresh Produce Set To Vanish From Supermarkets
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/uk-sleepwalking-food-crisis-fresh-produce-set-vanish-supermarkets
Insect-borne viruses like Zika and Dengue could be the cause of the next pandemic, world health chiefs warn
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10673727/amp/Insect-borne-viruses-like-Zika-Dengue-cause-pandemic-warns.html
Drone which can release infected mosquitoes that could spread bioagents if lethal Covid variant fails to arrive:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPMWkM_X0A0RYFR?format=jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPMWkNAXEAoBSsP?format=jpg&name=large
It’s just as well there’s no such thing as infected mosquitoes then isn’t it? Or infected people for that matter. Good thing we all learned that two years ago.
Currently we run on bird-bone pandemic called Bird Flu.
I heared that in some contries backyard chickens are already prohibited.
Question is if the police officer might want half a chicken….
More crazy ideas:
Abstract of first one:
A device for the areal release of mosquitoes includes an unmanned areal vehicle operable by remote control. It carries a container holding a central processing unit and a mosquito breeding bin, which is a self-contained volume housing mosquitoes and a mosquito food having a toxin suitable to be transmitted by mosquito bite after the mosquito consumes the food. . .
If that’s what they’re calling ‘infected mosquitoes’ then they have their terminology all wrong, because they don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground. And the synthetic toxins wouldn’t be “bioagents,” they would be….toxins.
it’s chemical warfare using a biological vector.
47 Year Old Nurse Has Leg Amputated Following Vaccine Induced Thrombosis (VITT)
https://community.covidvaccineinjuries.com/sirline-47-year-old-nurse-has-leg-amputated-following-vaccine-induced-thrombosis-vitt/
Very stupid move bu that nurse. She should have known that menopausal women are at greatly increased risk of DVT and that the jab increases the risk several fold. At least she is now sure that all the time and money spent to get a degree were in vain.
On the bright side, at least she get a stupid prise from the stupid contest,
How do you know that she was menopausal? Is there a study on that?
47 years old female. She is either in menopause or pre-menopause. Even if she was still ovulating the ratios of her female hormones (which are highly protective against vessel diseases) at almost 50yo is dissmal and a risk factor in itself.
The study is called female anatomy and physiology.
It amazes me that someone working in the medical profession would continue to inject – surely they are seeing epic vaccine injuries…
Well actually no I am not amazed – MOREONS are stooopid.
The initially took the shot based on this https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/1463932846570192901
Yet they continue to inject — how STOOOPID is that!
Since we accept that resources are failing, this Tanzanian perspective adds hexes and vexes to our Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On?” discussions here on OFW:
Dr Mpango (viice-president of Tanzania) said that the African continent is going through a “momentous time” and seeing “a transformation of trade routes from the established colonial ones to Africa doing more business with the eastern world.
“This is an opportunity for the continent to make progress, by diversifying its culture and using technology to better interact with the world. We are witnessing the shifting of tectonic plates, particularly with the rise of China and India on the global economic stage,” Mpango said.
Source: https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/dr-mpango-on-tanzania-s-position-in-the-russia-ukraine-conflict-3766570
Additional conference coverage: https://www.zawya.com/en/economy/africa/future-of-africa-is-bright-amid-major-investment-opportunities-say-uganda-tanzania-guinea-leaders-v4w2rm6g
I cannot see Africa coming out of this ahead of anyone else, or better than they are now. The outlook for Nigeria is looking pretty grim.
Too much population in Africa right now.
I have a sister who is, as I write this, on her way to visit Uganda for almost two weeks. She said she hopes there is a window of opportunity to visit now, before more problems develop. She has been to Uganda previously. She is planning to visit a female friend there related to some collaboration efforts for her work.
I am not sure I would fly to Uganda now.
I was a big fan of Idi Amin Dada … big fan
Hahahaha!
US warns India not to help Russia undermine dollar
Washington’s point man on anti-Russia sanctions warned India against deeper cooperation with Moscow
A top US national security official has called on India to scale back its economic and military ties with Russia, warning of “consequences” for any nation that helps Moscow avoid a recent wave of Western sanctions.
Speaking to reporters after meeting with Indian officials on Thursday, Washington’s deputy national security adviser for international economics Daleep Singh urged New Delhi not to boost Russian energy imports, and to avoid any moves that might “undermine” the US dollar.
https://www.rt.com/news/553082-india-russia-dollar-sanctions/
Is there a statement from the Inidian side? I wonder what they have to say
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/in-uk-foreign-secretarys-presence-eam-hits-out-at-campaign-against-india/articleshow/90578848.cms?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=TOIDesktop
Thanks
“India has already started buying oil from Russia, since it has come at a discount at a time when the country needs it, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said.
“”We have received quite a number of barrels. I would think about 3-4 days of (national) supply. I would put my country’s national interest and energy security first,” said Sitharaman.”
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/economy/india-has-already-bought-russian-oil-to-the-tune-of-3-4-days-of-national-supply-fm-sitharaman-8306661.html
Good for them. I like their new backbone.
India, China, Russia and also Iran (Persia) were empires in the past.
I think US is underevaluating their ability to make correct geopolitical choices or effective diplomatic actions.
My impression is that US has been a fast growing empire, but in decline phase now,
US is probalby failing to understand that the world is changing.
At the same time the world is so crowded, polluted and in difficulty at the moment that we are all risking a lot, because there are many actors ready to act like Samson.
I suppose the idea is to get everyone to denounce Russia.
Drilling deeper in the cold Arctic and supporting the Russian population in the cold areas poses a rising energy demand which is not sustainable. The drilling in warmer countries will put Russia out of business.
” The drilling in warmer countries will put Russia out of business.”
Could you be more specific?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1197585/natural-gas-reserves-in-africa-by-main-countries/
The collapse of Russia can be postponed by moving the population of Russia to warmer areas, which means basically to the West. The problem of Russia is bigger than the problem of Ukraine.
The reality is that both Ukraininas and Russians move to the West. Here, in my Western part of Slovakia, I regularly meet Russians in my regional capital while shopping.
See how NZers are some of the stoooopidest MOREONS on the planet – this is even in the MSM and still .. and STILL… these f789tards boost haha
Cases per 100,000 for each vaccination status in NZ…
160 cases per 100,000 for unvaccinated
338 cases per 100,000 for double vaccinated
234 cases per 100,000 for BOOSTED
And still some employers and councils are contemplating private mandates and vaccine passes.
Mindboggling
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/covid-19/450874/covid-19-data-visualisations-nz-in-numbers
What’s the point of this?
https://twitter.com/clumsybear0129/status/1508739626038710272
It is called fear factor
Tape on the back of the robot is a little bit a chinese way of fixing things.
Hilarious.
But still scary.
I find the tape very charming. It made me smile too
To provide jobs for people designing and making these devices.
hahaha https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/34225
German Chemical Giant Warns Of “Total Collapse” If Russian Gas Supply Cut
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/basf-ceo-warns-germany-total-collapse-if-russian-gas-supply-cut
Germany really cannot get along without imported natural gas.
The reforms of Zelensky which addressed the falling banks.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/12/zelenskiys-reforms-were-too-slow-for-us-but-too-fast-for-putin
The reason for obesity is the falling energy availability and the falling energy production of the body itself with the ageing. The overeating is caused by the oversupply of energy to the brain that seeks the way out of the energy scarcity while the body can not cope with the energy implosion.
The story of Petro Poroshenko, the producer of the sweets who became the president, confirm this. His successor is a comedian Zelensky, i e. the person who has got no solutions, except for harsh reforms in order to combat the rising energy prices.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roshen
This post has attracted a lot of excellent discussions. 2-3 days and we are already close to breaching 1000 posts.
I remember Short on Oil. I believe he was an engineer and owned a company. He had a great little website which spelled it all out. You could buy a PDF file for some small sum of money. It showed all his evidence and data. I didn’t know he died. Too bad! He commented often on peak oil news website. Back then people actually argued if peak oil was real or not. I’ve always felt peak oil is like watching paint dry. Like the slogan goes: You’ll only know when it’s in the rear view mirror.
Q1 is now in the history books.
and what a terrrible quarter it was for some of the Periphery: Sri Lanka, Turkey, Ukraine and others.
and here at home 16% inflation, wooooooo!
no nuclear war/WW3 oh well can’t have it all.
of course, there was a multidecade-significant historical event, not the war begun 2/24, but the innnsane self-inflicted damage of the West and their “sanctions”.
I’m a bit disappointed that the Great Russian Reset has not entered into the vocabulary of the narrative of 2022.
not yet.
oh well, on to Q2.
bAU in the Core of IC remains standing tall.
Germany disgrees about that. Not much, just a bit
Add Sri Lanka to the energy crisis list.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/sri-lanka-turns-street-lights-energy-crisis-worsens-fishermen-unable-sail-lack-fuel
“Sri Lanka Turns Off Street Lights As Energy Crisis Worsens; Fishermen Unable To Sail For Lack Of Fuel’
Tiny Sri Lanka is struggling through an economic crisis that is having terrible repercussions for its economy, as a brutal energy crisis threatens to blossom into shortages of food and other essential goods.
Thanks to an energy crisis (and China’s reluctance to allow the country to restructure its debts), Sri Lanka is resorting to turning off its street lights to save electricity as its worst economic crisis in decades bites, forcing – among other cutbacks – the temporary closure of the local stock market as the impact of the crisis is felt (the Colombo Stock Exchange reduced daily trading to two hours from the usual four-and-a-half because of the power cuts for the rest of this week at the request of brokers).
The island nation of 22 million people is struggling with rolling power cuts for up to 13 hours a day as the government is unable to make payments for fuel imports because of a lack of foreign exchange.”
This research claims that currently 10% of oil energy goes into producing more oil and that it will increase to 25% by just 2024 in 2 years. I haven’t looked into the quality of the work yet, but this would be utterly catastrophic if correct.
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/03/30/weak-oil-the-looming-collapse-of-putins-petro-dictatorship/
From that article:
“Last year, a team of French scientists who work for the government-backed National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology found that the world is already using a tenth of the energy produced globally to keep producing oil. By 2024 – in just two years – this will increase to a quarter, a predicament verging on being economically unsustainable. By 2050, fully half of the energy extracted from global oil reserves will need to be put back into new extraction to keep producing oil: equivalent to total collapse.”
Wasn’t that debated endlessly on the other Peak Oil News Site with the chap named Short on Oil, who may have died recently from a post that was placed here somewhere.
He stated the same and apparently it’s coming about. Believe there were a wager placed there on the timing and he lost the bet. He was shunned afterwards and relentlessly badgered because he would not pay it off.
RIP Shortie…can’t take it with you!
Short on Oil commented often on the Peak oil news website.
He had a small website detailing all the evidence and data. And sold a pdf for a modest sum which contained all his work. I believe he was an engineer and owned a company. Back then I could only find his website by clicking his name in the comment section. It must still be out there somewhere.
Steve St Angelo who runs the website SRSRocco Report has also done extensive research wrt our energy predicament. He also came to the same conclusion as Shortonoil.
I thought he was dead?
His ideas certainly are. His formulae predicted the price of oil could only go down in line with its EROI due to its decreasing usefulness to the economy.
Here is something on the work of The Hill’s Group that took me a few seconds to find:
https://peakoil.com/geology/thermodynamic-model-of-oil-depletion-sparks-controversy
“His ideas certainly are. His formulae predicted the price of oil could only go down in line with its EROI due to its decreasing usefulness to the economy.”
But is it really that far fetched? We really are getting to the point where it cost so much to pull the stuff out of the ground and other places. It can’t get priced high enough because if it does people can’t afford it so it loses its value. It produces higher prices everywhere for the consumer as in, inflation which we are seeing today. So at some point when you invest more energy to the point that you aren’t getting enough in return, so you just leave it in the ground.
At one point oil lost its value to the economy. Didn’t we experience that at the start of the pandemic? Oil at one point was practically being given away.
Govt’s can get away with higher costs by loading up on debt. Consumers, not so much.
So I don’t see his reasoning all that far off from what we are experiencing today.
Too much bickering and heckling over at that site ..
ManyFE personalities with issues and attack each other.
Must keep in mind that knowing our situation won’t change the outcomes….some comments are good and articles posted.
BTW, wasn’t there a paper stated the same for mining about the waste is ever increasing to the point of making it not worth the effort? Posted here.
Seems we are being hit on all sides …perfect storm
Let’s assume all the friends of Klausi dismissed the ETP model but had an idea of resetting the world. The main point Klaus Schwab has is that turmoil must by all means prevented.
So when we see a lot of hickups in the energy/fertiizer situation it could in principle be engineered by Klausis friends but the inflation and other “news” from Harry McGibbs point in the direction of turmoil.
I do not yet see a clear picture here but if the ETP model by Hills Group is at work here and Klausi miscalculated on it we can understand that a lot of things can go wrong as Gail uses to say.
On the other hand you can say that the elders behind them clearly knew if the ETP is valid or not and probably rushed in some very draconian measures.
This can only be nailed when FF delivery really starts to fail.
Currently we do not see if it is just a financial issue (Sri Lanka, Pakistan) or if it is what the fringe calls the cliff…
Huh, that low?
Didn’t FEASTA or someone estimate shale EROEI to be 10-15:1, and right about at the brink of what industrial civilization needed to break even?
And what, 7, 8 years later that’s the global average? Doesn’t smell right to me. I know that the plandemic destroyed quite a bit of demand but still.
And, furthermore, that quite appears to say a tenth of TOTAL ENERGY is being spent on producing just oil, which puts the EROEI of oil way down in the single digits and I’m definitely not buying that.
According to Tim Morgan’s model the oil used to obtain more oil is the enrgy cost of energy (ECoE; kind of inverted ROE). His historical models show that the western economies are unsustainable when ECoE exceeds 5%. He also wrote that at the end of 2021 the ECoE for western economies was 9%.
The frenchies are right in their conclusion but they miss the point that ECoE of 25% means no complex industrial covilization. ECoE above 10% in the west means degrowth, fall in prosperity and simplification of economic activities and technology.
When a person looks at the details of the original Limits to Growth computer model, it ended up with a 5% reinvestment rate being the threshold for sending the world economy downward. This 5% reinvestment rate included far more than energy spent on energy extraction. It also included energy and other resources expenditures spent on extracting all other kinds of resources, including fresh water and mineral extraction. I would think that investments in roads and dams would be part of energy investments, as well as factories.
The 5% rate is calculated on a year by year basis, not giving credit for “future energy output.” Thus, investment in solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and their batteries, and nuclear power plants all is included in today’s ratio, without credit for future benefit. Standard EROEI calculations are based on wishful thinking over the life of devices. Battery storage costs are ignored.
The Limits to Growth indications would agree with the 5% threshold being critical. It seems to me that the overall ratio of resources invested in the world economic system has to fall below a 5%. This is a worse conclusion than what Tim Morgan comes up with.
Tim Morgan has fate in humanity and its ability to act coherent. It is very palatable when reading his articles. He thinks (or even believes) that humanity can cope with degrowth more or less peacefully. I have seen degrowth and collapse, people don’t act sane and coherently and violence is the name of the game.
They are on the verge of tearing each other to pieces over a bottle of cooking oil… hahahaha
“Seba’s book projected that solar, wind, batteries (SWB) and electric vehicles (EVs) were on track to become so cheap and efficient they would rapidly displace incumbent fossil fuel energy and internal combustion engine vehicles by around 2030.”
The only way EVs displace IC engine vehicles is if the total number of cars on the road shrinks by about 95%. I just don’t see most people affording a car that costs 2x an IC engine car in the current economic climate.
EROEI is a mathematical certainty. There is no negotiation
More and more people from middle class can’t afford used car. I bought A4 3.0 TDI (2011) at the beggining of last year for about 7000 euro. The same model now is at about 13 000 euros in the used car dealerships.
Not sure. There is in fact a distribution of prices. Saudi and Russian oil are currently cheap, as is Iranian oil. Fracking and tar sands are expensive. As other resources become energy expensive, the cheap existing ones will become more valuable.
some good news over from my area the mandatory jabs in jobs are being revoked in my area so no more jabs for me i can continue working without that hanging over my head i only got two pfizer jabs but only one person only got one astrazeneca shot out of about 100 employees everyone else was either double or triple jabbed or quadruple jabbed not one person had zero jabs in other words not one person was prepared to lose their job and inject themselves with a questionable substance that could ultimately harm them or kill them.With those sort of odds a depopulation agenda is definitely baked in the cake think about it if this was all planned with those sort of odds the world’s population could be drastically reduced in a short period of time, this would assist the world in carrying on for a lot longer than anyone realizes that is why putin could be one of the elders only doing what is part of the plan to bring in the new world order you may be thinking impossible that does not make sense but ilook what happened in my work area amongst all my work colleagues a 100 % injection rate thinking and believing in what was being fed to them is anyone on this website sure they have got it right with putin maybe he is part of the plan to usher in the new world order.
I would have no trouble believing any of this. Sadly, I have to consider myself dead man walking. Quite enjoying the extra days I’ve been given. I’m at a vulnerable age, but I dare not trust the medical establishment to keep me going. I don’t expect many of us here will live to see a sudden massive decline in population. I think we’re going out one at a time, but at a steady clip. Putin did study under Klaus and he’s a very smart guy. I have to go with FE’s CEP theory if a critical number of humans can’t find an escape door. I still believe there are some.
CEP?
Crapppy Extinction Plan…
a weirddddo idea that the ruthlesss greeedy Elites are so nice that they want human extinction to happen soon and in a Compassionate way.
it’s sort of self-contradictory.
and not based on any real evidence.
but that doesn’t stop its few supporters.
When that gets posted on substacks… it gets a lot of support….
Cuz it’s what the plan is. It is logical.
Maybe the ‘elders’ are obsessed with power to control? If so, couldn’t you replace ‘compassion’ with Lidia’s ‘plausible deniability?’ They don’t want people rioting. The smoother and more opaque the kill off (which is proceeding apace but in a way and at a pace that makes denying that it’s happening plausible) the better it suits them. That seems to be the pattern of the ongoing kill off? I know. At a certain point, nothing makes sense.
Why didn’t TPTB see this coming? Without any science or business knowledge I knew 50 years ago that the ship we were in could not go far.
I know with even more certainty now that if you treat the earth as either a utility or a garbage dump, things cannot go well.
Land is smarter than humans. It has somehow managed to survive catastrophic disruptions and changes over 4 billion years. Maybe it’s tired, and so produced a murderous species that is smart enough to exterminate all life. I doubt it though. Maybe this smart enough species can mostly kill itself off.
Some of the ways it can do this through ideas:
– network the global economy tightly together so that if any part of the network fails, all of it fails.
– expand the store of nuclear fuel pond without any plan for their safe disposal.
– build and glorify an economic system that requires infinite growth on a finite planet.
– put deemed human “welfare” above that of the planet that hosts humans.
I suppose the list is endless. We need to stop with our colossal stew PDT. There is no case for building one more permanent house with a foundation that compacts and fractures the land. Why is that not clear? Sure, it’s just one link in a long chain of absurd ideas, but since not building permanent housing wouldn’t necessarily impinge on the essentials of the BAU we need right now, it could be a good place to begin minimize the insane damage we do to our host.
The idea is that to go through a full economic and social collapse with eight billion humans would unbearably painful and traumatic and entail unspeakable suffering and cruelty. So reducing the population quickly through infertility/disease/poisoning would be a more compassionate act than merely letting nature take its course. Hence the term, Compassionate Extinction Plan. Fast EddyTM
Are you sure of that provenance?
Not sure at all. But on a Google search, the first two pages show FE as the earliest source. Of course, he could have picked it up from a bloke in a bar, but he gets a pat on the back for being its foremost popularizer.
oh, my bad.
I thought it was Crapppy Extinction Plan. 😉
though I am all for the extinction of the human species, which will greatly reduce human suffering.
it will be when it will be, in its time and season.
turn turn turn.
Odd, I have an impulse to simply get rid of anyone who feels that way. Maybe we could come to some arrangement, like you are simply got rid of. It would be a ‘mercy’, right? Certainly for the rest of us.
is that some sort of value judgement?
I’ll be out of here within a decade or two at most.
when I go, then from the perspective of “me”, the entire universe will cease to exist.
no big deal.
within a few million years, the human species most likely will be extinct.
no big deal.
meanwhile, “you” do you, but again what’s up with the value judgement about human extinction?
‘Value’ is rooted in the instincts (will) not in ‘reason’, which is merely a tool of the instincts.
Any creature with healthy instincts would want to eradicate any members of the species that are hostile to the existence of the species.
The preachers of extinction would be pretty high on any list for population reduction when the time comes.
We can call it RCEP, the Real considerate extermination plan. It likely is coming.
You can sign up here.
‘no big deal’
well then, are you for millions of years of continued human suffering?
where do I sign up?
I’m just a messenger, obviously with no say as to when human extinction happens.
no big deal.
In note that David, Mirror, and FE are all in broad agreement on one point. You are all in favor of compassion for strangers. That’s a value judgement, or indeed a moral sentiment, very common among BAU bourgeois liberals but not shared by anything like that number of hunter-gatherers, nomads or even peasants—particularly in the lean season.
If there is not enough food and other basic necessities to go around, compassion for strangers goes out the window.
Humans are not very pleasant animals…we’ll see the true nature of these wicked beasts as BAU winds down… it is not hyperbole to suggest that neighbours will kill – and eat – each other … as food becomes scarce. They will literally kill – for a can of tuna
I coined CRAAPP: ‘covert reduction and adjustment of population plan’.
It combines FE’s view with Lidia’s ‘plausible deniability’.
NB No ‘compassion’ at all is required: just the determination of the Rothschilds, and friends, to prolong their own bloodlines and dominance as ‘this sucker goes down’.
Deaths so far have been very modest indeed: a question is, are these pseudo-vaxxes also partially sterilising, or will they come in a later iteration?
I’m inclined to view the first round as partly exploratory as well as getting the ball rolling, as it were……
Mirror – “Any creature with healthy instincts would want to eradicate any members of the species that are hostile to the existence of the species.”
Since the daily actions and lifestyles of the majority of all we humans living on earth cause a decline in the planetary life support systems for humans and nearly everything else alive on this planet. Then you can say that practically everybody is hostile to the existence of the species. We should self eradicate. If we don’t do so willingly then limits will make us unwillingly.
Entropy doesn’t negotiate.
If you think about it evry existence is struggle and suffering. Nothing new here. same old, same old
Quiet right Geno, and we definitely need a RCEP to get rid of all the ‘nay sayers’ to existence.
‘It can be arranged, and likely will be.’
They can sign up here.
The preachers of death can have a quick death provided to them.
All of this ‘suffering’ really does need to end for them, and the sooner the better for the rest of us.
RCEP… it is coming!
nikoB: “Since the daily actions and lifestyles of the majority of all we humans living on earth cause a decline in the planetary life support systems for humans and nearly everything else alive on this planet. Then you can say that practically everybody is hostile to the existence of the species. We should self eradicate.”
Not really, it is more accurate to say that liberal capitalism totally fails in population management, especially since WWII, and that harsh measures needed to be taken. On the other hand, liberal capitalism is time dated, and that problem will solve itself, and its own outcomes will be even harsher.
Going forward, we will have limited resources, and we will be able to support a limited population. Anyone who feels that the human species should be eliminated will have volunteered themselves for elimination. We can strengthen the instincts of the species by getting rid of the extreme pessimists.
If the ‘suffering of existence’ is just too much for them to bear, then we have a solution for that. RCEP – the REAL considerate extermination plan. Likewise those who feel that ‘morality’ precludes population management. Their instincts are also faulty, and they can go too!
RCEP is coming… and you can sign up for it here!
Mirror, the problem is we are far into overshoot so a population reduction is just timing and I think we have left it far to long to take care of it ourselves. Could be I’m wrong but being an optimist I think I am right 😉
The collapse of capitalism will take care of most of the population reduction, and that is fine, and then we can take a rational approach to population management going forward. It is all good. Anyone who wants to opt out of life is free to do so, and indeed they can be helped with that. RCEP.
Anyone who wants to opt out of life is free to do so, and indeed they can be helped with that.
Mirror, with an attitude like that, have you considered volunteering to work on the phone lines for the Samaritans? Then you could put your idea into practice by talking suicidal people into getting on with it.
Unless, of course, this is all just posturing and you aren’t really such a callous hard-hearted misanthrope after all.
Minor addition at the end.
The CEP would be studied in business schools the world over except that there won’t be such a thing – cuz everyone will be dead. hahahahahaa
COMPASSIONATE EXTINCTION PLAN (CEP)
1. Every country on the planet is on board with the Injections. Even Sweden. When have all countries aligned on any issue? Never.
2. Not a single MSM outlet is interviewing any of the expert dissenters – Yeadon, Bridle, Montagnier, Bossche etc… and the mainstream social media platforms are blocking them.
Why?
Conventional Oil peaked in 2005 http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/C-Cdec141.png
Shale in 2018.
According to Rystad, the current resource replacement ratio for conventional resources is only 16 percent. Only 1 barrel out of every 6 consumed is being replaced with new resources
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Biggest-Oil-Gas-Discoveries-Of-2019.html
Shale binge has spoiled US reserves, top investor warns Financial Times.
Preface. Conventional crude oil production may have already peaked in 2008 at 69.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) according to Europe’s International Energy Agency (IEA 2018 p45). The U.S. Energy Information Agency shows global peak crude oil production at a later date in 2018 at 82.9 mb/d (EIA 2020) because they included tight oil, oil sands, and deep-sea oil. Though it will take several years of lower oil production to be sure the peak occurred. Regardless, world production has been on a plateau since 2005.
What’s saved the world from oil decline was unconventional tight “fracked” oil, which accounted for 63% of total U.S. crude oil production in 2019 and 83% of global oil growth from 2009 to 2019. So it’s a big deal if we’ve reached the peak of fracked oil, because that is also the peak of both conventional and unconventional oil and the decline of all oil in the future.
Some key points from this Financial Times article: https://energyskeptic.com/2021/the-end-of-fracked-shale-oil/
Shale boss says US has passed peak oil | Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/320d09cb-8f51-4103-87d7-0dd164e1fd25
SEE PAGE 59 – THE PERFECT STORM : The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel https://ftalphaville-cdn.ft.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf
Our fossil fuel energy predicament, including why the correct story is rarely told https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/11/10/our-fossil-fuel-energy-predicament-including-why-the-correct-story-is-rarely-told/
“The global economy was facing the worst collapse since the second world war as coronavirus began to strike in March, well before the height of the crisis, according to the latest Brookings-FT tracking index. “The index comes as the IMF prepares to hold virtual spring meetings this week, when it will release forecasts showing the deepest contraction for the global economy since the 1930s great depression. https://www.ft.com/content/9ac5eb8e-4167-4a54-9b39-dab48c29ac6c
Collapse Imminent: https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-systemic-collapse-and-pandemic-simulation/
The Illusion of Stability, the Inevitability of Collapse http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-illusion-of-stability-inevitability.html
Fed is sharply increasing the amount of help it is providing to the financial system https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/fed-repo-overnight-operations-level-to-increase-to-120-billion.html Banks did not trust each other – similar situation when Lehman collapsed
Oil Gluts – do NOT indicate we have found more oil. We just pumped what’s left too fast.
Summary In 2019 a second Perfect Storm was approaching – the central banks had been doing ‘whatever it takes’ for over a decade…. Essentially nothing was off the table — throw the kitchen sink at pushing GFC2.0 into the future. In 2019 the guns were blazing but the beast was no longer held at bay…
What do you do when you are burning far more oil than you discover — and your efforts to offset the impact of expensive to produce oil push you to the edge of the cliff? You can accept your fate and allow the beast to shove you into the abyss…. Or you can take the ‘nuclear option’ and shut down as much of the economy as possible, preserve remaining oil and pump in trillions of dollars of life support to keep the system feebly alive.
Punchline: The problem global leaders face is that if you unleash the nuclear option without some sort of cover, the sheeple and the markets would be thrown into a panic and you risk blowing things up prematurely. So you need a reason for putting the global economy on ice — one that does not spook the masses – one that is big enough to justify such epic amounts of stimulus and extreme policies — and one that allows you to explain ‘this is just temporary – once this is gone — we will get back to normal’
A pandemic is the perfect cover.
End Game – Covid was foisted on us as cover for the response to peak oil (if we don’t slow the burn oil prices go through the roof and we collapse) but it is also being used to convince billions to be Injected. The Injection is meant to cause extremely deadly variants similar to Marek’s this .. only worse because we are deploying into a pandemic https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous.
“Mass infection prevention and mass vaccination with leaky Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic can only breed highly infectious variants.” https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/
French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier called mass vaccination against the coronavirus during the pandemic “unthinkable” and a historical blunder that is “creating the variants” and leading to deaths from the disease.
The Vaccines and Boosters will Result in a Catastrophic Outcome – From a scientific viewpoint it is, therefore, difficult to understand how booster immunizations using vaccines which are not evolution-proof could prevent a highly mutable virus from escaping neutralizing anti-S Abs while driving the pandemic in a catastrophic direction, both in Israel and worldwide. How can the WHO stand by and watch as this additional experiment unfolds, soon to be followed by other countries? https://thehighwire.com/videos/vaccine-expert-warns-of-covid-vaccination-catastrophe/
If you have a large pool of hosts that all have the same fixation, then you have a large number of individual labs in which to have such a mutation occur. You have far more hosts in which to have random chances occur, all selecting for a mutation that attacks one specific weakness and that weakness is in most of the population, so once it’s out, there is no stopping it. And if this fixation prevents the hosts from developing strong new immunities based on these novel pathogens, this becomes iterative. you get wave after wave of pandemics until you wipe out the susceptible population. https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/homogenizing-herd-level-antigenic
The reason for this is that 8B people need cheap oil to live. They would starve without it. And 8B people without food would result in epic starvation, violence, rape and cannibalism. Industrial civilization ends soon after peak oil. Unfortunately we also have 4000 spent fuel ponds that will boil off and release toxic substances for centuries. These facilities cannot be controlled with computers and energy. So even the few remaining hunters and gatherer tribes will die as they consume these toxins in the food, air and water.
The PTB understand all of this and that is WHY every leader is on board with the Injections. There is NO way out of this — so they have decided to mitigate the suffering as much as possible by putting us down and here is the mechanism https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/why-the-ongoing-mass-vaccination-experiment-drives-a-rapid-evolutionary-response-of-sars-cov-2.
Also note – when BAU collapses the PTB will not be insulated from the violence or starvation – or the spent fuel ponds. They are likely to be scapegoated and targeted by violent hordes. They have chosen to go down with the ship (although some may choose to enter the nuclear doomsday bunkers and remain in these underground prisons until supplies of food, water and diesel run out)
Thank you FE very nice recap.
I read Tullet Prebon report when it come out. It was extremely interesting and I think that many people in real power read it and decided consequent actions for the following years…
Yeah of course Putin is part of the non-public Degrowth agenda aka depopulation. Whether he knows it or not is the million dollar question, though if any of the politician’s do it would be him since he’s a player-coach with no term limits. The Ukrainian invasion is Round 2. The elite need to stay ahead of collapse until the nuclear power industry is decommissioned, thus their understandable justification for depopulation. That and the fact that, technically, none of us would be alive in the first place if it wasn’t for them. That’s justification in their eyes too.
I was wondering today whether round 3 will be throwing the corrupt politicians under the bus. A great attraction for the center ring of the circus. Especially if bread is getting harder to come by.
IMO the neolib/neocon establishment assembled on the gangplank is the climax of Round 2, if by ‘Round’ we mean a definable war theatric serving as political cover for Collapse. Round 1 being the plandemic fake war on imaginary terrorists without boxcutter destroyer of distributed demand, and 2 being this dastardly ‘Russian’ war theatric serving up a heaping plate of more destruction culminating probably in military coupsin the West is my best guess, and military-run elections installing Putin-style National Socialists like Tulsi Gabbard and Sahra Wagenknecht.
The dominant consciousness sets the framework of reality
Yep, and the dominant consciousness is manufactured in smoke-filled backrooms.
It does not matter. Even if it was manufactured in the agora it would be still the dominant consciousness
Saying that Platonic democracy or whatever s hegemonic, too, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It does matter. It just doesn’t matter to civilization.
If you weren’t so civilized and it would start mattering again. But that’s your business.
Can’t grasp your point from the above. Is there a point at all?
Point is just that the manufacturing of culture at all does matter to people who value freedom and ecological health.
Ok bro, go to google translate and use it to make your statement. I am not a native speaker but your reply seems like a sign of stroke, do I need to call the ‘bondulance’
Vax-induced stroke / blood clot? It seems to be the in thing these days…
BASF warns of output cuts if gas supply halved
German chemicals company BASF has warned of an effect on its operations from any cuts to gas supply, saying it will halt production at its Ludwigshafen complex if it cannot meet half of its current demand.
The warning followed Germany’s activation yesterday of its emergency gas plan after Russia said it may require payment in roubles for future supply. G7 countries including Germany have rejected paying for gas in roubles, and German economy minister Robert Habeck has said there are no supply bottlenecks.
“The chemical industry supplies the base products for almost all manufacturing industries,” BASF told Argus Media. “Therefore, severe bottlenecks in gas supply and resulting impairments or shutdowns in BASF’s production can be expected to lead to serious interruptions in many value chains of our downstream customers.”
It said “almost all industries” would be affected, including agriculture, food, automotive, cosmetics/hygiene, construction, packaging, pharmaceuticals and electronics.
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2317433-basf-warns-of-output-cuts-if-gas-supply-halved?backToResults=true
Open an account in Gazprombank. WTF?
You may also create a virtual company in Ukraine using the Diia App.
Just slosh it around as we always sloshed it around.
You would not really want me to comply to any laws from today? Laughable!
More fakery – slow motion https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/34218
https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/34215
A lot of people say hindsight is 20/20, but if anyone had half a brain, one could see what was going to happen in the world a century ago.
Break Russia, Turkey, what used to be the Dominion of India (let every Maharajah have his own kingdom), and China into a hundred pieces, do NOT accept any third world students in the West, do NOT allow anything bigger than a motorcycle to be sold to the Third World, do NOT sell anything more advanced than 1990s tech to there, as well.
The whole situation is because of the Third World consuming too much.
How do you explain that usa (450 mil) consumes 25% of planetary resources and india (1.3 bil) orders of magnitude less? Or maybe you mean usa and the west when saying 3rd world?
USA is 330 million. BP shows the US as 15.8% of world energy consumption.
Gail, do you have any data on total historical energy consumption in the modern period by region?
thanks for the correction. I messed up the 1st digit it seems. What I mean under consumption includes alll kinds of resources (energy and non-energy). But even if the percentage is 15.8% it is still unsustainable compared to the share of usa population versus world population.
Here is nice refference from edu domain – https://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380American%20Consumption.htm
Some bits from the article:
On average, one American consumes as much energy as
o 2 Japanese
o 6 Mexicans
o 13 Chinese
o 31 Indians
o 128 Bangladeshis
o 307 Tanzanians
o 370 Ethiopians
Here is a quote from the same article:
‘If undeveloped countries consumed at the same rate as the US, four complete planets the size of the Earth would be required. People who think that they have a right to such a life are quite mistaken.’
And this is very cute infographic which also delves in who consumes what and how many – https://internationalbusinessguide.org/hungry-planet/
I think the 25% of resources estimate is a very old estimate, from back prior to 1973, that got a lot of publicity. At that time, the US was producing a lot of things within the US. Once the United States started importing cars and trinkets made in Japan, it started going down. Adding manufacturing using coal from China really brought the percentage down. The US imports a greater quantity of finished goods than it exports, but this use of energy is not usually considered in energy consumption estimates.
I believe you are correct Gail, as the below confirms.
“Energy consumption fell in most countries, except in China, the largest energy consumer (24% of the global energy consumption in 2020) which rapidly recovered from the COVID-19 crisis. China’s energy consumption rose by 2.2%, a much slower pace than in previous years (+4%/year over the 2008-2018 period and +3.4% in 2019).”
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-consumption-statistics.html
Some nice graphics, where you can overlay different countries.
USA and the West
You seem to be arguing that those who are unable to survive the modern period somehow ‘deserve’ to do so. It is not a prima facie convincing argument. It smacks of a resort to alternate timelines, a retreat to the imaginary.
Just let me leave it here for today:
@Norman Paget
I can’t reply directly, guess too many replies for a sibfle thread.
Anglo-saxon gentleman is a cultural denomination which in no way is based on genetics. Lot of Anglo-saxon gentlemen with hindu origin for example. You see Norman, i am using it to describe your attitude and not your origin.
But since tou asked nicely i will let you know avout mine – thracian, bulgarian, slavic, latin and jewish (listed in decreasing order) . Diversified genetic portfolio 😉
You are so fortunate to have some Jewish ancestry…
Fast Eddy’s membership application keeps getting rejected by the Elders because HE lacks that … HE even tried to change his surname to Eddywicz… they chuckled and said nice try … you will remain as an advisor only
You should see their VIP room — only The Best of the Best of the Best… and the Blow …. truly magnificent stuff…
You should apply – maybe you can bring a guest?
Gail you say in your essay that Russia has easy to get oil but does it really? And aren’t they decreasing in supplies?
Where in my post do I say that Russia has easy to get oil?
I say that the cost of extraction is rising, and Russia cannot get a high enough price in the marketplace for it. This leaves the standard of living of people in Russia very low.
conflict. If such an early win occurs, the aim is for Western forces to step in and inexpensively ramp up Russian resource extraction, allowing the world a new source of cheap-to-produce fossil fuels and other minerals.
This is the quote I was talking about
I was also confused by this. It is paradoxical and counter-logical. If russia cannot ramp up production how the west ia going to achieve it. Inexpensively.
The west can not, nobody can. It is the end of the road.
Exactly, Ed. Nobady can. This is why i found the following quote paradoxical:
‘If such an early win occurs, the aim is for Western forces to step in and inexpensively ramp up Russian resource extraction, allowing the world a new source of cheap-to-produce fossil fuels and other minerals.’
The West has a lot of confused people who think that the rest of the world has huge amounts of oil, gas and coal that can easily be exploited. How else could climate change occur? This is the source of the double think.
One item must be wrong of these:
– We end FF to fight climate change
– We must conquer Russia to get more FF
Yes, a person would think one of these would be wrong.
Also, one of
–The US must cut back on its own fossil fuel production
–The US must send more fossil fuels to Europe to help them through this tight spot
Milan today, and beyond. Retired, disabled and children with fathers ask for bread while mothers look for used clothes. Unpaid energy bills in February rose to 16%. Meanwhile, Mario Draghi sends weapons and money to Zelensky. Soon in Italy there will be a civil war for bread.
https://twitter.com/RadioGenova/status/1509467713550393353
Unfortunately I’m not so optimistic.
Italians can be easily manipulated.
They have an enemy to blame: everthing is Putin’s fault.
The conflict in Ukraine does seem to allow Russia to be a scapegoat to the problem. The problem is only “temporary.”
The “scapegoat” you mention is known from the
“Food Chain Reaction Simulation”
that Ice Age Farmer talks about:
https://www.cargill.com/story/food-chain-reaction-simulation-ends-with-global-carbon-tax
Cargil?
I met the CEO of Cargil once and I said:
“progress in climate change is too slow”
She said:
“We will need a carbon tax”
I said:
“Well, I can not ask for that but you have the connections”
The problem with “external costs” is that it does not really destroy demand. We even had it here:
“I will pay 200$ a gallon, I do not mind”
That exactly is the problem, sorry guys.
Tax equals more money to spend equals less discretionary spending. The basic quagmire of Gail’s OFW topics.
For me personally speaking I can say that I have enough s*t but the main problem of our society is unsolved:
“What is enough?”
What is discretionary?
Add some stuff to your home.
Inflation only applies to things you want/need to purchase…
Scapegoats are very convenient.
When factories and farms in the USSR failed to produce their full quotas, or even when a machine broke down, it was automatic to blame ‘saboteurs, enemies of the state and counter-revolutionaries’.
Russia, anti-vaxxers’ and ‘misinformers’, fulfill this role today.
They just need to go without three consecutive meals, and Putin will be forgotten.
I tried cutting down to breakfast and one good meal per day: every evening I went to bed thinking only of food!
To be honest, I eat once a day, twice if I am doing physical work. I skip meals without a second thought. but for most of the populace, that is torture.
This seems to be a fuller picture of what is going on. Euros will go into one bank account, and will be sold for rubles that will go into a second account from which gas will be purchased. Nuanced. Germany is mouthing off about that it is ‘unacceptable’, and about fresh sanctions on Russia.
> Putin threatens to turn off Europe’s gas supplies TOMORROW if countries refuse to pay in roubles, saying ‘We get nothing free of charge and we are not going to engage in charity either’
Vladimir Putin today threatened to turn off Europe’s gas supplies from tomorrow if countries refuse to pay in roubles.
The Russian President, announcing a decree in televised remarks, said foreign buyers would have to ‘open rouble accounts in Russian banks’ which can be used to pay for ‘gas delivered starting from tomorrow’.
‘If such payments are not made, we will consider this a default on the part of buyers, with all the ensuing consequences. Nobody sells us anything for free, and we are not going to do charity either – that is, existing contracts will be stopped,’ he said.
A Kremlin decree published today sets out that contracts will be stopped if buyers do not sign up to the new conditions, including opening rouble accounts in Russian banks. The buyers can still pay in foreign currency and authorise the bank to sell that for roubles, which are placed in the second account, where the gas is formally purchased.
Putin also decreed today that foreign buyers of Russian gas will have to use special accounts at Gazprombank to pay for the import of Russian gas.
A foreign buyer is now obliged to transfer foreign currency to one special, so called ‘K’, account. Gazprombank would then buy roubles on behalf of the gas buyer to transfer roubles to another special ‘K’ account, the order said.
Gazprombank would then transfer rouble funds from a ‘K’ type account of the foreign gas buyer to Gazprom’s rouble accounts, the order said. Gazprombank can open such accounts without a presence of a foreign buyer’s representative.
…. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck rejected Putin’s the demands as an unacceptable breach of contract, adding that the manoeuvre amounted to ‘blackmail’ and that he had not yet seen a new decree signed by Putin mandating gas payments in roubles.
Germany on Wednesday triggered an emergency procedure to monitor gas imports and storage capacity and urged consumers and manufacturers to reduce consumption in preparation for any Russian delivery stoppage.
The network regulator said on Thursday the situation was stable and that storage had risen slightly. Habeck said he and French Finance and Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire discussed possible new punitive measures on Russia, declining to go into details.
‘The last sanctions package must not and should not be the last. We spoke about what additional sanctions can prevent Putin from continuing the war in Ukraine,’ Habeck said.
Scholz also raised the possibility of new sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, adding that Germany was prepared for all scenarios, including a stoppage of Russian gas flows to Europe. (Daily Mail, extracts)
Who determines the exchange rate? What is the mechanism for the rates change if any over time? Thats the wheat the rest is chaff.
“float” rate equals western banks decide rate
Moskow decides rate equals be nice if you dont want to freeze.
Whats the middle ground? Has anyone even asked? Macron? No one steps up? Bloods and crips crouched down behind their 68 chevys?
Interesting!
Putin was perfectly logical.
He explained the situation clearly enough for a child to understand.
He reminded listeners that euro and dollar accounts had been frozen.
Consequently, Russia suddenly finds that gas it sold now turns out to have been given away! Clever!
So, no more giving gas away by accepting payment in euros or dollars.
What’s not to “get” here?
Pretty basic, actually.
Europeans leaders throw tantrums and pretend not to understand the logic, because they can, because they are not held to account by their electorate and media. The electorate is uninformed because their media intentionally misleads.
“This time they walked into the wrong bar”
or
This time they sanctioned the wrong country
To some extent the west acknowledged that the “maidan” in 2014 was bold. Ukraine is not El Salvador. It acknowledged by referring to the russian interaction with Crimea as “annexation”.
Russia has declared eastern Ukraine as a security buffer. I would define it as three zones. 3 East of the dnieper. 2. Donbass. 3. Crimea and the “russian border”.
Russian energy production is not far from the Donbas. This wars proximity is not a coincidence. I can not see how any incursion into russia through Ukraine by NATO would not be regarded as a “existential threat” in regard to russias nuclear weapon first use policy. Perhaps even penetration by NATO into the Donbas would be regarded as a “existential threat” or perhaps Chernobyl. The elimination of the the demilitarized buffer zone might also be regarded as a existential threat My belief is this is absolutely understood by the western military who well understand security concerns and russias nuclear policy. I do not think it will happen. It might however if russia plays hardball with demands for western Europe to enter a command and control resource based economy. I dont think that is what we are witnessing. The key to avoiding the extinction of humanity lies in finding the middle ground between debt economies and resource economies. No one will fold. There is no Gorbachev.
I cant help but think that trump a man committed to the art of the deal was taken out because he represented a future for humanity. That and his slav wife. Not acceptable. No trump fan but compared to … Our chances are slim indeed from the perspective of capabilities in leadership to rise to the occasion. No JFKs here. Hell i would be much happier if Obama was in! Or a random citizen selected by lottery with only women with children allowed in the pool.
Very little weapons technology has been revealed in the conflict. No one wants to show their hand only to have it not be the real deal. By the other way of looking at things if they show their hands its on. A fight to the death and all die. If anything close to full capabilities start being shown their is no turning back IMO. Use it or lose it.
Thanks for your insights. One of the things Russia may want is the energy resources in/near the Donbass region. If prices of fossil fuels are high enough, these may be valuable. It may be that some of the earlier fighting (in 2014) was over who gets these fossil fuels.
I have heard elsewhere that high level weapons have not been used to date. And Biden is clearly not someone we want negotiating a deal. A major concern is that Russia or Europe will be backed into a corner, and someone will use nuclear weapons, perhaps in a way to implicate the other side.
I like random selection of all who submit petitions with at least 100 signatures endorsing them.
It remains to be seen what the russian gas in rubles represents.
Russia may say its not in the charity business but it very recently was. The soviet union distributed what amounted to welfare in its currency exhange rates.
Prior to the wall falling all the eastern block countres currencies were regarded by the western “float” method of determining currency value as zero. No value. If you walked into a bank in France with bulgarian notes they said nice wallpaper. Russiam established exchange rates for that wall paper that allowed food and energy purchases. They guaranteed you wont freeze and you wont starve. The inbetween the two systems was the blackmarket. It was discouraged both by the west and the east. The west saw it as “hard currency” in ther enemy’s hands. The east as indulging in decadent and exploitative finance. None the less the black represented a reality. Yea you could get vast quantities of the eastern block wallpaper for $ in singapore. The russian exchange rate represented giving the eastern block currencies value sometimes 10x the value of what the black market valued it at. Charity. And the degree of that charity directly reflected how cozy the sattelite was with moskow and as such was a control mechanism.
Western float exchange rate; ZERO
black market’; a little
Soviet rate; A LOT
NO interaction at all between western “float” rates and soviet “charity” rates.
So whaat does the “gas in rubles represent”? That like all trades depends on the rate. If it represents only the west doing business with the russian banks trading fiat for rubles at the western “float” rate it represents not a big change. If it represents a rate determined by Moskow its a big change but not a return to soviet days. It is proposed that the two systems interact in some fashion. That presents big problems. I have doubts. For intance if moskow gives india the ability to exchange rupees for rubles and Europe needs rubles it puts India in a rather nice trading position but one that represents a hole or leak formally reflected by the black market. So a new hybrid non autonomous systems has logical problems. None the less to my mind a hybrid represents a attempt at solutions that has value.
I would say that it is widly understood on this blog that debt represents claims on future energy that doesnt exist. All debt is a function of time. Due dates determine “solvency”. Regardless of its value when time is added to the equation fiat has value. It overwhelmingly popular to the consumer. It enables growth that would not be possible. Where would russia and china be without fiat? Still back in largly agricultural societies watching the rest of the world boom off the growth of fiat.
In my opinion nether China or Russia want to give up fiat.
Resource backed economies dont have no juice.
humans regard the thing we call money in four ways.
1.Spenders
2.Savers
3.”im too special for money money is dirty”
4. I use money to get resources for projects
The main groupings are 1 and 2. For some reason spenders always seem to hook up with savers in relationships and yes there is conflict. I put forth the perhaps dubious premise that russia represents a saver in a relationship and the west a spender. The spender knows they cant just go bancrupt. THe saver know that holing it al away for a rainy day is stupid.
Russia in my opinion is proposing somthing new a hybrid. Oh yes they want it one way. Oh yes the west wants it another. Cabn we find a hybrid?
My personal belief is that humanity would be well served by matching its actions with the reality of a finite world. The interaction with russia represents a opportunity to find a economic system where some sort of representations that acknowledges a finite world is defined. Where we have some sort of orderly transition into resource depletion at much lower standards of living. If somone tries to “win” russia for intance thinking it can just bring western europe under its thumb with determined exchange rates like the old eastern block back into a economy soly based on resources both fail. Russia does not want that Russia would not be what it is including its military modernization without fiat. What is called for is the spender and the saver to kiss and find the middle ground. No one wins. No one loses. We accept the reality of finite resources. WE accept a lessor standard of living while not going totally to the drab and dark of a resource economy. Middle ground. Whether they and we are adult enough to find the middle ground is unfortunately doubtful.
Unfortunately, it is not clear that there really is a middle ground that works.
Spending sort of works for now. Saving looks like it works, except that there are virtually no resources for the future.
A middle ground with a high price for resources is what Russia needs. It is not clear that that is available.
Banned – You call that charity but personally I believe it looks closer to true value than $.
$ are IOUs that the US gives to other countries for their real assets/resources. Then the US says to those other countries “we are not going to pay off those IOUs but you can go ahead and give them to whoever you are dealing with and they will accept them for their hard assets”. The end result is the US has had the Greatest Free Lunch in the history of the world. Scribble out an IOU and you can exchange it for anything and anybody in the world.
This new move, new world currency system, by the Arc of resistance, Russia, China, and a dozen other countries with dozens more about to flood into representing over half the productive population of the planet spells the end of that scam.
The rising prices of gasoline for Russian oil in my country of Czechoslovakia in the 80s were the hallmark of the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc. The oil was initially ought in roubles, but, with the rising costs of Russian oil, Russia started to demand hard currency from other countries in the Soviet bloc, which meant that they could not supply cheap goods to Russia anymore and had to get that hard currency from the West. This meant the end of the Soviet bloc.
Demanding roubles for costly energy and blackmailing the customers is ridiculous. Russia simply becomes an unreliable supplier, which means it becomes another Venezuela: high reserves, but the costs are too high for the customers.
Humans are an easily distracted bunch., ohh milkshake!
If communities behave like symbionts, we can likely adjust to resources limitations for some time. Cooperation is the key and that is now happening less and less at a global level. The lights are going out. Energy must be invested into this more beautiful behaviour, we’re now seeing the alternative at play.
What we seem to see now is more a turning to exploitation by power, self defeating responses, parasitic behaviour or hedging to protect. Some countries (and corporations) are exhibiting all these strategies at once.
I would label the vaccine response to the so called covid pandemic as parasitic behaviour in totality. It created a false demand and simultaneously actually destroyed the economy as well as people’s lives literally and relationships extensively. It is the worst poison in the current mix of things. The fear drive within the human psyche (including my own) has largely enabled this as well as exploitation by a number of leaders and premeditated benefactors.
Countries that take advantage of or create extrinsic conflicts elsewhere also tend to act in a parasitic manner. The world has a long history of this. America has been the greatest exploiter in this vein in recent history, and as many recognise is ‘geared for war’ to ensure this continues. It’s just a fact. The position of the dollar as the primary reserve currency of FF is an outcome that won’t be given up. Americans own demise will be likely self inflicted mainly because of internal divisions.
Russia’s response of hedging and protecting regards Ukrainian is damaging their FF based economy, largely because of the response of their western colleagues (as Russia calls them) Russia has locked in their option for what they perceive as their best choice in a bad situation. Maybe their hand was even forced.
Europe’s response so far has been largely self defeating and it is almost a proof of Europe’s weakened vassal state. They are enhancing the conflict and sanctioning themselves essentially as well as taking on more burdens like refugees.
Europe’s nearer enemy and slow economic demises was likely the prolonged briexit, which should never have been tolerated. The Uk should have just been made to exit or given an easier option sooner, but not without the danger of the results we are seeing today.
What we see now from England is largely stirring agitation towards Russia, because of their own immediately imminent FF shortage post exit once they removed themselves from European cooperation. Again a self inflicted injury.
Generally the core countries are still sort of stumbling toward what is increasing becoming just the perception of BAU, while the ROTW has entered deep dodo territory.
Symbiosis is still possible within smaller cooperative groups, perhaps that is our pathway, but only if there is adequate resources and the acceptance of limited footprints.
Some people will never accept this and may die denying it. I still hold hope.
The system breaks when we make unrealistic demands. Whether it’s to own everything, control others or just maintain the ‘good life for ourselves and those we love’ or are charged with.
If we horde perishable food for example, we may not consume it before it goes off.
Therefore we contribute to the process of resources depletion even though we’re just trying to survive or think a head.
If we see limits coming and slowly stock up on longer lasting foods it’s a better strategy but far from ideal.
If a supplier withholds a good or service be it wheat, FF, or through sanctions they tend to limit there own economic base and future production capacity, supply chains and markets. It’s self defeating.
Sharp price rises in the context of further perceived hikes cause general consumers to stock up and we get the ‘collapsing straw effect’ this is what’s happening in the world.
Think of a kid sucking on a depleting strawberry (or chocolate;-) milkshake with a straw that’s too thin.
The suppler benefits very briefly from higher returns in the context of panic and gets a hit,
Supply lines get strained and can not deliver a good or service.
People stop panicking or exhaust their ability to obtain said service or product.
Demand drys up and only begins below the threshold of profitable return.
This applies to FF supply, Rent, Loans, Food and other goods or services.
What ever we need or want is in this recipe.
If we have actual resources limits of non renewables this behaviour/ phenomena is going to rinse and repeat until the system goes down or we wake up.
Best solution I can see is we enhance our ability to produce goods AMAP using as little FF as possible ASAP, I think that’s where we’re heading wether we like it or not.
Population reduction seems to be baked into this scenario regardless. What can be said, it’s an un-pritty attempt at a soft landing., and it’s our whole world at the same time.
Middle Earth may appear to be Evaporating, maybe even be Sublimating or about to be vaporised.
Don’t panic, This too will pass. See you on the Middle ground where all human cooperation and collaboration, community and collective causes and needs are realised…
Anyone want a chocolate milkshake?
Thanks for your insights. Is the collapsing straw effect your own idea, or an idea from elsewhere? The effect is really the thing you are talking about: the quickly rising demand, leading to hoarding, and even higher demand. This quickly is followed by more investment at a higher cost. When more of the missing product becomes available, price falls below the cost of production.
Now we have rising interest rates, as well, to contend with. Businesses tend to collapse from lack of profitability.