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Back in 2005, the world economy was “humming along.” World growth in energy consumption per capita was rising at 2.3% per year in the 2001 to 2005 period. China had been added to the World Trade Organization in December 2001, ramping up its demand for all kinds of fossil fuels. There was also a bubble in the US housing market, brought on by low interest rates and loose underwriting standards.
The problem in 2005, as now, was inflation in energy costs that was feeding through to inflation in general. Inflation in food prices was especially a problem. The Federal Reserve chose to fix the problem by raising the Federal Funds interest rate from 1.00% to 5.25% between June 30, 2004 and June 30, 2006.
Now, the world is facing a very different problem. High energy prices are again feeding over to food prices and to inflation in general. But the underlying trend in energy consumption is very different. The growth rate in world energy consumption per capita was 2.3% per year in the 2001 to 2005 period, but energy consumption per capita for the period 2017 to 2021 seems to be slightly shrinking at minus 0.4% per year. The world seems to already be on the edge of recession.
The Federal Reserve seems to be using a similar interest rate approach now, in very different circumstances. In this post, I will try to explain why I don’t think that this approach will produce the desired outcome.
[1] The 2004 to 2006 interest rate hikes didn’t lead to lower oil prices until after July 2008.
It is easiest to see the impact (or lack thereof) of rising interest rates by looking at average monthly world oil prices.
The US Federal Reserve began raising target interest rates in June 2004 when the average Brent oil price was only $38.22 per barrel. These interest rates stopped rising at the end of June 2006, when oil prices averaged $68.56 per barrel. Oil prices on this basis eventually reached $132.72 per barrel in July 2008. (All of these amounts are in dollars of the day, rather than being adjusted for inflation.) Thus, the highest price was over three times the price in June 2004, when the US Federal Reserve made the decision to start raising target interest rates.
Based on Figure 2 (including my notes regarding the timing of the interest rate rise), I would conclude that raising interest rates didn’t work very well at bringing down the price of oil when it was tried in the 2004 to 2006 period. Of course, the economy was growing rapidly, then. The rapid growth of the economy likely led to the very high oil price shown in mid-2008.
I expect that the result of the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates now, in a low-growth world economy, might be quite different. The world’s debt bubble might pop, leading to a worse situation than the financial crisis of 2008. Indirectly, both asset prices and commodity prices, including oil prices, would tend to fall very low.
Analysts looking at the situation from strictly an energy perspective tend to miss the interconnected nature of the economy. Factors which energy analysts overlook (particularly debt becoming impossible to repay, as interest rates rise) may lead to an outcome that is pretty much the opposite result of the standard belief. The typical belief of energy analysts is that low oil supply will lead to very high prices and more oil production. In the current situation, I expect that the result might be closer to the opposite: Oil prices will fall because of financial problems brought on by the higher interest rates, and these lower oil prices will lead to even lower oil production.
[2] The purpose of the US Federal reserve raising target interest rates was to flatten the growth rate of the world economy. Looking back at Figure 1, the growth in energy consumption per capita was much lower after the Great Recession. I doubt that now in 2022, we want even lower growth (really, more shrinkage) in energy consumption per capita for future years.*
Looking at Figure 1, growth in energy consumption per capita has been very slow since the Great Recession. A person wonders: What is the point of governments and their central banks pushing the world economy down, now in 2022, when the world economy is already barely able to maintain international supply lines and provide enough diesel for all of the world’s trucks and agricultural equipment?
If the world economy is pushed downward now, what would the result be? Would some countries find themselves unable to afford fossil fuel energy products in the future? This might lead to problems both in growing and transporting food, at least for these countries. Would the whole world suffer a major crisis of some sort, such as a financial crisis? The world economy is a self-organizing system. It is difficult to forecast precisely how the situation would work out.
[3] While the growth rate in energy consumption per capita was much lower after 2008, the price of crude oil quickly bounced back to over $120 per barrel in inflation-adjusted prices in the 2011-2013 time frame.
Figure 3 shows that oil prices immediately bounced back up after the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Quantitative Easing (QE), which the US Federal Reserve began in late 2008, helped energy prices to shoot back up again. QE helped keep the cost of borrowing by governments low, allowing governments to run larger deficits than might otherwise have been possible without interest rates rising. These higher deficits added to the demand for commodities of all types, including oil, thus raising prices.
The chart above shows average annual Brent oil prices through 2021. The above chart does not show 2022 prices. The current Brent oil price is about $91 per barrel. So, oil prices today are a little higher than they have been recently, but they are nowhere nearly as high as they were in the 2011 to 2013 period or in the late 1970s. The extreme reaction we are seeing is very strange. The problem seems to be much more than oil prices, by themselves.
[4] High prices in the 2006 to 2013 period allowed the rise of unconventional oil production. These high oil prices also helped keep conventional oil production from falling after 2005.
It is difficult to find detail on the precise amount of unconventional oil, but some countries are known for their unconventional oil production. For example, the US has become a leader in the extraction of tight oil from shale formations. Canada also produces a little tight oil, but it also produces quite a bit of very heavy oil from the oil sands. Venezuela produces a different type of very heavy oil. Brazil produces crude oil from under the salt layer of the ocean, sometimes called pre-salt crude oil. These unconventional types of extraction tend to be expensive.
Figure 4 shows world oil production for various combinations of countries. The top line is total world crude oil production. The bottom gray line approximates world total conventional oil production. Unconventional oil production has been rising since, say, 2010, so this approximation is better for years 2010 and subsequent years on the chart, than it is for earlier years.
From this chart, it appears that world conventional oil production leveled off after 2005. Some people (often referred to as “Peak Oilers”) were concerned that conventional oil production would reach a peak and begin to decline, starting shortly after 2005.
The thing that seems to have kept production from falling after 2005 is the steep rise in oil prices in the 2004 to 2008 period. Figure 3 shows that oil prices were quite low between 1986 and 2003. Once oil prices began to rise in 2004 and 2005, oil companies found that they had enough revenue that they could start adopting more intensive (and expensive) extraction techniques. This allowed more oil to be extracted from existing conventional oil fields. Of course, diminishing returns still set in, even with these more intensive techniques.
These diminishing returns are probably a major reason that conventional oil production started to fall in 2019. Indirectly, diminishing returns likely contributed to the decline in 2020, and the failure of the oil supply to bounce back up to its 2018 (or 2019) level in 2021.
[5] A better way of looking at world crude oil production is on a per capita basis because the world’s crude oil needs depend on world population.
Everyone in the world needs the benefit of crude oil, since it is used both in farming and in transporting goods of all kinds. Thus, the need for crude oil rises with population growth. I prefer analyzing crude oil production on a per capita basis.
Figure 5 shows that on a per capita basis, conventional crude oil production (gray bottom line) started declining after 2005. It was only with the addition of unconventional oil that crude oil production per capita could remain fairly level between 2005 and 2018 or 2019.
[6] Unconventional oil, if analyzed by itself, seems to be quite price sensitive. If politicians everywhere want to hold oil prices down, the world cannot count on extracting very much of the huge amount of unconventional oil resources that seem to be available.
On Figure 6, crude oil production dips in 2016 – 2017 and also in 2020 – 2021. Both the 2016 and the 2020 dips are related to low prices. The continued low prices in 2017 and 2021 may reflect start-up problems after a low price, or they may reflect skepticism that prices can stay high enough to make continued extraction profitable. Canada seems to show similar dips in its oil production.
Venezuela shows a fairly different pattern. Information from the US Energy Information Administration mentions that the country started having major problems once the world oil price started falling in 2014. I am aware that the US has had sanctions against Venezuela in recent years, but it seems to me that these sanctions are closely related to Venezuela’s oil price problems. If Venezuela’s very heavy oil could really be extracted profitably, and the producers of this oil could be taxed to provide services for the people of Venezuela, the country would not have the many problems that it has today. The country likely needs a price between $200 and $300 per barrel to allow for sufficient funds for extraction plus adequate tax revenue.
Brazil’s oil production seems to be relatively more stable, but its growth has been slow. It has taken many years to get its production up to 2.9 million barrels per day. There is also some pre-salt oil production just now getting started in Angola and other countries of West Africa. This type of oil requires a high level of technical expertise and imported resources from around the world. If world trade falters, this type of oil production is likely to falter, as well.
A large share of the world’s oil reserves are unconventional oil reserves, of one type or another. The fact that rising oil prices are a real problem for citizens means that these unconventional reserves are unlikely to be tapped. Instead, we may be dealing with seriously short supplies of products we need for operating our economies, including diesel oil and jet fuel.
[7] Figure 1 at the beginning of this post indicated falling energy consumption per capita. This problem extends to more than oil. On a per capita basis, both coal and nuclear energy consumption are falling.
Practically no one pays any attention to coal consumption, but this is the fuel that allowed the Industrial Revolution to start. It is reasonable to expect that since the world economy started using coal first, it might be the first to deplete. Figure 7 shows that world coal consumption per capita hit a peak in 2011 and has declined since then.
Many of us have heard about Aesop’s Fable, The Fox and the Grapes. According to Wikipedia, “The story concerns a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he states they are undesirable. The expression ‘sour grapes’ originated from this fable.”
In the case of coal, we are told that coal is undesirable because it is very polluting and raises CO2 levels. While these things are true, coal has historically been very inexpensive, and this is important for people buying coal. Coal is also easy to transport. It could be used for fuel instead of cutting down trees, thus helping local ecosystems. The negative things that we are being told about coal are true, but it is hard to find an adequate inexpensive substitute.
Figure 8 shows that world nuclear energy per capita is also falling. To some extent, its fall has stabilized since 2012 because China and a few other “developing nations” have been adding nuclear capacity, while developed nations in Europe have tended to remove their existing nuclear power plants.
Nuclear energy is confusing because experts seem to disagree on how dangerous nuclear power plants are, over the long term. One concern relates to proper disposal of spent fuel after its use.
[8] The world seems to be at a difficult time now because we don’t have any good options for fixing our falling energy consumption per capita problem, without greatly reducing world population. The two choices that seem to be available both seem to be far higher-priced than is feasible.
There are two choices that seem to be available:
[A] Encourage large amounts of fossil fuel production by encouraging very high fossil fuel prices. With such high prices, say $300 per barrel for oil, unconventional crude oil in many parts of the world would be available. Unconventional coal, such as that under the North Sea, would also be available. With sufficiently high prices, natural gas production could be raised. This natural gas could be shipped as liquefied natural gas (LNG) around the world at great cost. Additionally, many processing plants could be built, both for supercooling the natural gas to allow it to be shipped around the world and for re-gasification, when it arrives at its destination.
With this approach, food costs would be very high. Much of the world’s population would need to work in the food industry and in fossil fuel production and shipping. With these priorities, citizens would not have time or money for most things we buy today. They likely could not afford a vehicle or a nice home. Governments would need to shrivel in size, with the usual outcome being government by a local dictator. Governments wouldn’t have sufficient funds for roads or schools. CO2 emissions would be very high, but this likely would not be our most serious problem.
[B] Try to electrify everything, including agriculture. Greatly ramp up wind and solar. Wind and solar are very intermittent, and their intermittency does not match up well with human needs. In particular, one of the world’s primary needs is for heat in winter, but solar energy comes in summer. It cannot be saved until winter with today’s technology. Spend enormous amounts and resources on electricity transmission lines and batteries to try to somewhat work around these problems. Try to find substitutes for the many things that fossil fuels provide today, including paved roads and chemicals used in agriculture and in medicine.
Hydroelectricity is also a renewable form of electricity generation. It cannot be expected to ramp up much because it has mostly been built out already.
Even if greatly ramped up, wind and solar electricity production would likely be grossly inadequate by themselves to try to operate any kind of economy. In addition, at a minimum, natural gas, shipped at very high cost as LNG around the world, would likely be needed. Also, huge quantity of batteries would be needed, leading to a short supply of materials. Huge quantities of steel would be needed to make new electrical machines to try to replace current oil-power machines. A minimum 50-year transition would likely be needed.
I am doubtful that this second approach would be feasible in any reasonable timeframe.
[9] Conclusion. Figure 1 seems to imply that the world economy is headed for troubled times ahead.
The world economy is a self-organizing system, so we cannot know precisely what form changes in the next few years will take. The economy can be expected to shrink back in an uneven pattern, with some parts of the world and some classes of citizens, such as workers versus the elderly, doing better than others.
Leaders will never tell us that the world has an energy shortage. Instead, leaders will tell us how awful fossil fuels are, so that we will be happy that the economy is losing their usage. They will never tell us how worthless intermittent wind and solar are for solving today’s energy problems. Instead, they will lead us to believe that a transition to vehicles powered by electricity and batteries is just around the corner. They will tell us that the world’s worst problem is climate change, and that by working together, we can move away from fossil fuels.
Again, the whole situation reminds me of Aesop’s Fables. The system puts a “good spin” on whatever frightening changes are happening. This way, leaders can convince their citizens that everything is fine when, in fact, it is not.
NOTE
*If the US Federal Reserve raises its target interest rate, central banks of other countries around the world are forced to take a similar action if they do not want their currencies to fall relative to the US dollar. Countries that do not raise their target interest rates tend to be penalized by the market: With a falling currency, the local prices of oil and other commodities tend to rise because commodities are priced in US dollars. As a result, citizens of these countries tend to face a worse inflation problem than they would otherwise face.
The country with the greatest increase in its target interest rate can, in theory, win, in what is more or less a competition to move inflation elsewhere. This competition cannot go on indefinitely, however, because every country depends, to some extent, on imports from other countries. If countries with weaker economies (i. e. those that cannot afford to raise interest rates) stop producing essential goods for world trade, it will tend to bring the world economy down.
Raising interest rates also raises the likelihood of debt defaults, and these debt defaults can be a huge problem, especially for banks and other financial institutions. With higher interest rates, pension funding becomes less adequate. Businesses of all kinds find new investment more expensive. Many businesses are likely to shrink or fail completely. These indirect impacts are yet another way for the world economy to fail.
Another analyst I follow, Peter Zeihan, also made Gail’s remark that raising interest rates in what are unprecedented circumstances might not have the same effect as before, ie. rein in demand and stop inflation. Things just aren’t that simple anymore. Well, things never were terribly simple, but they were stable for a long time so that interventions and their effects could be predicted somewhat. But is the Fed really that blind? Pushing the economy into recession serves certain goals I see mentioned a lot in ruling circles, such as social control, population reduction, or ending fossil fuel use. Maybe they don’t want us to have a vehicle and a nice home. At least not most of us. So somewhat controlled self-destruction, by means of imposed ideology, ie. by choice, as is happening right now in Europe, might be what is considered a better choice than chaotic collapse.
They never say openly that mitigating climate change means not having that vehicle and nice home. But it does mean that. Instead they say we can drive electric cars and live in smart cities, which is not true. At least not at scale and not for long.
According to Zeihan, whose analysis is based on demographics and geography, America is extremely well-positioned compared to the rest of the world to preserve industrial civilization. Yet we are culturally choosing to self-destruct. When things start to go bad, negativities emerge like crazy. Inequality, mass shootings, corruption, war, polarization, narcissism are all cultural matters, social choices, based on greed, fear, tribalism, selfishness, mendacity –all the negativities that are making it hard for us to protect what’s good about our social inheritance and carry on as best as might be.
May the pendulum swing back to the positive side once our society structurally implodes and people are left on their own in a not-too-bad wasteland.
The US needs to import many things from elsewhere to keep its economy operating. I don’t think that the full US can go on as before. I am not sure if part of it can continue, fairly well. Even the agricultural sector of the US needs fuel and spare parts to keep operating.
If parts of the US continue, there will no doubt be violence in the separation into parts. It is hard to believe that the US central government can continue indefinitely, either.
susuru
They’re not pushing the economy into recession by raising rates. Let’s not put the cart before the horse. The transitory inflation IS the US in recession: when fake-growth was at 1-2pc and inflation is at 8pc or whatever, then GDP in real terms is negative, meaning recession.
reante- Good observation that cart before the horse thing. IMO the fed is always following the economic shifts and using the lies as cover for their raising and lowering BS.
When the economy is booming they goose it further by lowering rates, raking in massive profits instead of raising rates to keep the economy from overheating.
Then after the economy is well on the way down they raise rates to make as much as they can from what little lending is happening instead of lowering rates to help keep the economy plugging on.
Either way it seems to me they are behind the curve everytime. The old pump and dump. The rich get richer and the poor get….scroomed!
Exactly Jef while Fed rates are obviously functional in their own right, sequentially they are just trailing indicators of where we are in the cyclical pump ‘n dump asset stripping MO of the creature from Jekyll island.
“Examining the relationship between 3-month and 10-year benchmark rates and nominal GDP growth over half a century in four of the five largest economies we find that interest rates follow GDP growth and are consistently positively correlated with growth. If policy-makers really aimed at setting rates consistent with a recovery, they would need to raise them. We conclude that conventional monetary policy as operated by central banks for the past half-century is fundamentally flawed. Policy-makers had better focus on the quantity variables that cause growth.
Reconsidering Monetary Policy: An Empirical Examination of the Relationship Between Interest Rates and Nominal GDP Growth in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan” ?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800916307510
Policy makers are acutely aware of the ‘quantity variables’ lol that cause growth. 🙂
According to Zeihan, whose analysis is based on demographics and geography, America is extremely well-positioned compared to the rest of the world to preserve industrial civilization.
America is one of the worst positioned countries because most of it can’t function without more or less universal car ownership.
Europe will be paying a premium for Russian oil and gas from India, China and Turkey. Whatever they want to do…. it is really up to them. They insist on a price ‘cap’ that is destined to become a premium…. whatever…. Europe has been belly up to the USA since WWII and everyone is taking a dump on them now thanks to the USA…. USA has hacked Europe off from Russia/ China but the rest of the world is cohering around them….
> Trade between India and Russia surges. EU continues to self-destruct
India may become the great middle man. It will buy oil from Russia (at above the price cap), and perhaps resell part of it with even more mark-up to Europe.
UK 2021 census results are starting to come out. 10 M usual UK (England and Wales) residents were born abroad, 1/6 of the population. They are predominantly younger and of child-bearing age, while the general UK population is the oldest that it has ever been. Thus they will make up an elevated proportion of younger cohorts and of parents. No stats of ‘age groups by origins’ were released.
Of course, the 10 M includes only first generation migrants and not 2nd, 3rd, 4th generations. Stats for ethnicity will be released on Nov. 29, but they are unlikely to include any clear stats on ‘age groups by ethnicity’. I could give ethnicity figures based new births and on school cohorts, but let us wait and see what the ONS comes out with (and does not come out with) later this month.
As I noted last night, UK has seen basically zero increase in real wages since 2007 (soon to be since 2004, as they drop) or in productivity, and nearly all GDP growth now depends on labour expansion, which is got from abroad as fertility rates are collapsed in UK. The British State is bound by its legal contracts, by its structural debt and state spending commitments, to grow GDP…. bourgeois economic states have their own ‘logic’.
(I have no strong subjective feelings about this, it is what it is and it can be framed in various ways.)
> Number of foreign-born residents rises to 10million: One in six people living in England and Wales were born outside the UK, census data reveals, rising by 2.5million since 2011
One in six people living in England and Wales were born outside the UK with ten million non-UK nationals now calling the two countries home, census data has shown.
The number of usual residents of England and Wales born outside the UK had risen by 2.5million since 2011.
The news comes as statisticians from the ONS today revealed:
One in six usual residents of England and Wales were born outside the UK, an increase of 2.5million since 2011, from 7.5million to 10million;
London was the region with the largest proportion of people born outside the UK with 40.6 per cent in all;
England and Wales’s population grew by more than 3.5million from 56,075,912 in 2011 to 59,597,542 in 2021;
The vast majority of foreign-born nations arriving in England and Wales – 4.3million – were aged 18 to 29;
India remained the most common country of birth outside the UK with 925,000 people;
The census data reveals the population of England and Wales continues to grow year-on-year. Currently, both nations are the oldest they’ve ever been, with more than 11million people (or 18.6% of the population) aged 65 or above.
The local regions with the highest median ages in 2021 were:
North Norfolk (with 33.5% of residents were aged 65+)
Rother (with 32.4% of residents 65+)
East Lindsey (with 30.4% of residents 65+)
India remained the most common country of birth outside the UK – with those 925,000 people making up 1.5 per cent of the population.
It was followed by Poland, which had 743,000 people – or 1.2 per cent – and Pakistan, with 624,000.
Meanwhile, the countries no longer in the top 10 non-UK countries of birth were the US and Jamaica.
But Italy entered the table in sixth place behind Romania, fourth, and Ireland, fifth, and ahead of Bangladesh as seventh, eighth-placed Nigeria, Germany, ninth, and South Africa at tenth.
The data showed those who listed Ireland as their country of birth declined from 407,000 in 2011 to 325,000 in 2021….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11381445/Number-foreign-born-residents-rises-10million-England-Wales-576-boom-Romanians.html
I found a US article saying that as of 2017, 13.6% of US residents were born outside the US. Of course, the US is larger geographically. It also has a lot of immigration among states.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/30/immigrant-share-in-u-s-nears-record-high-but-remains-below-that-of-many-other-countries/
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/japan-weighs-raising-taxes-evs-higher-output-motors
Japan Weighs Raising Taxes On EVs With “Higher Output Motors”
The give-aways have to end sometime. Road maintenance is a major problem with limited diesel supply.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/power-blackout-risks-loom-quarter-all-americans
Power Blackout Risks Loom For Quarter Of All Americans
I am not sure that I agree with the nuclear future, but at least the article does point out the wind and solar inconsistency.
it was very mild here up until about a week ago, very little need for heating, but now it’s seasonably cold.
I saw a story that the Bidet administration was thinking about limiting some diesel exports, so that their mostly lib voters up here would have a normal bAU winter.
natural gas (for electricity) is of course a very different situation.
if there is inadequate supply and rolling blackouts, I hope they “roll” in other areas besides mine.
time will tell.
The as always stoic and well spoken Dr Robert Malone discusses the current events surrounding the injections. How the CDC recommendation for child injection is playing out in Louisiana USA is discussed. Louisiana state legislature passed legislation that made child injection a decision of the parents. This was vetoed by the Louisiana Governor and similar new legislation must have a veto proof majority to stand. IMO this is the roadmap we face for all states with three outcomes. Governor decides mandatory child injection. Governor decides parents have choice in child injection. Governor decides mandatory child injection but state legislator has majority and enacts legislation that parents have choice in child injection. Only five states have state surgeon generals and they will simply be a extension of the governor in this matter. Anyone who has a critical interest in this matter would be wise to size up the reality of their Governors position and move sooner than later if appropriate. For instance those that have a strong interest in all children having a injection of any substances that have a emergency authorization that bypasses standards for safety testing could move to a state where that is soon to be mandated.
On a separate note the vaccine passports were reinforced as the future at the recent G20 (or G19) and the end game is of course is inevitable CBDC institution and denial of same to those not injected. State legislation to the contrary may prove somewhat inconvenient in this matter. IMO another crisis event of some magnitude looms necessary to eliminate these islands of liberty demonstrated in its very essence by bodily autonomy and the question of whether the state or parents have precedence in the same in regard to children. Two birds one stone. The foundations of the next crisis event remain to be seen but I expect a real humdinger. IMO states that do not require mandatory child injection will lose federal funding of some sort perhaps even medicaid. IMO whether a state could hold to the principle of bodily autonomy as a fundamental principle of liberty and withstand the outcry from the withdrawal of federal funding of medicaid is doubtful. IMO funding whether pre or post CBDC; whether individual or non compliant states; will be a most effective tool in compliance in this and other matters and the illusion of state autonomy will become apparent augmented by the selection of state governance as needed. None the less time is a precious commodity and movement to a state that cherishes liberty may or may not be appropriate.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/ES3I9kgXRIUA/
Thanks banned. You’re overview of the situation presupposes that the great reset politics of ‘infinite’ (yet further) centralization currently being marketed to us should be taken at face value. I do not take it at face value because collapse, by definition, brings simplification and not further complexity (centralization). IMO at this late stage people should only be moving house because of impending collapse for the same fundamental reasons the rest of us have already done so – for a little open space in which to operate. Lebensraum.
Moving just for more open political spaces is short-term thinking. It’s placing politics above fundamentals. If you don’t want your kids to get vaxxxed then homeschool. Stand your ground. These lingering, regressive covid’ machinations are just further setting up the establishment for it’s fall, and of course physically softening up as many establishmentarians as it can while the establishment still has room to run.
I know that my forecast ‘seems to good to be true,’ but put yourself in their shoes. If you were in their managerial shoes under these circumstances would you go great reset or would you go with an ostensibly fair, austere, revolutionary conservative martial law on the heels of a ludicrous developed-world cultural orgy of overindulgence, after the fatal damage has already been done?
It seems very obvious to me which they would choose. And it’s not like, when we read between the lines, all the signs for the national socialist ‘revolution’ aren’t there. Look at the last couple weeks. Nonviolent antisemitism was just normalized by Dave Chappelle, as set-up by other famous blacks, and curated by the (fake) semites themselves! Blacks have been used as the mainstream cultural vanguard for white youth for 50 years now. That’s not going to change, it’s just going to mutate. The Third Reich was a race-based ideology, it was a racialist-based ideology, and racialism is a cultural conception; the SS was the only racially integrated fighting force in WW2.
Kanye is bringing to light what I have known for a few years now would be used against the establishment for ‘revolutionary’ purposes, in that of the black genocide perpetrated by Planned Parenthood. It is the greatest skeleton in the American closet – 50pc of US blacks have been aborted.
And the midterms just reinforced the great Red-Blue ossification. The Red-Blue is not working for anybody but retired people with pensions and the 1pc right now. How is that going to work out for the elites come collapse? Obviously it’s not.
Third Reich WASN’T a race-based ideology
Gail is correct….to restrict goods …just make them unaffordable..
Inflation Hammers the Car Market, Driving Up Prices and Reducing Affordability
Popular, mainstream models like the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4 are no longer affordable for the average consumer, even on the used car market
BY JULIE BLACKLEY · OCTOBER 19, 2022 5:57 PM EDT
https://www.iseecars.com/car-affordability-study
Summary
New car affordability has dropped 13.3% from August 2019 to August 2022; used car affordability has dropped 26.7% based on iSeeCars Car Affordability Index
Used cars which had been affordable in 2019 but aren’t in 2022 include several popular models such as the Honda Accord, Honda CR-V, Subaru Forester, Toyota Camry, and many others
New cars that were affordable in 2019 but aren’t in 2022 include the Nissan Frontier, Chrysler 300, Jeep Cherokee, and Kia Sorento
Car prices have increased as a result of changes in consumer behavior, supply chain issues, and other effects of the pandemic; however, household incomes and wage growth have not kept pace. According to the latest iSeeCars.com analysis, these price increases have resulted in drops in car affordability: new car affordability has dropped 13.3% from August 2019 to August 2022, while used car affordability has dropped 26.7% over the same period. This has priced many popular models out of reach for the average consumer, forcing buyers to use longer loan terms with less money down, or simply choose an older, less desirable vehicle.
iSeeCars analyzed new and used car affordability over time by calculating its Car Affordability Index, which compares median household income to an idealized income for financing a car. An index value of 100 suggests household income is exactly equal to the idealized income for a car purchase. Values above 100 indicate household income is above the idealized income and therefore cars are affordable; similarly values below 100 suggest actual income is less than the idealized income, meaning cars are unaffordable. For example, an index value of 125 means household income is 25 percent more than the idealized income, and an index value of 75 means household income is 25 percent less. The idealized income is based on typical car loan rates and terms (60 months for new cars and 36 for used cars), as well as an assumption that car payments should be no more than 10 percent of a household’s annual income.
“Due to supply chain shortages and increased demand, the rising prices of new and used cars have outpaced income growth,” said iSeeCars Executive Analyst Karl Brauer. “From August of 2019, well before the pandemic lockdowns started, to August of 2022, new car prices increased by almost 29 percent, and three-year-old used car prices increased by 52 percent, but incomes increased by only 13%. People still need to replace their vehicles, so the resulting drop in affordability means shoppers are either taking longer loan terms and paying higher interest rates, putting down less money for a down payment, or even forgoing the kind of car they originally wanted for a lower cost model in order to make ends meet
There have been articles in the past about how excessively long automobile loans have become. Also, the price sometimes “rolls in” unnecessary costs. At higher interest rates, even a lower-priced car becomes a problem.
affordability of the actual product is irrelevant.
Imagine a blacksmith who can’t afford charcoal. He is forced to try to make a living by making horse shoes of of cold iron.
No matter how much muscle power he puts in, he cant make horse shoes quickly enough to buy food to replace his muscle-energy losses.
goods become unaffordable through ‘market forces’ relative to ‘him’ (charcoal costs too much)
if he cannot afford a loaf of bread, it is because the processes that deliver the bread to his local store are priced out of his reach because he is not in a position to earn sufficient wages to buy that loaf.
but wages have only one source—ie the conversion of one energy form into another. (charcoal + iron= horse shoes= wages.)
and that energy must be both cheap and surplus to get down to his level of affordabilty.
right now an increasing number of us are leaving the ‘era of surplus’ behind, and entering a time where we have to expend most of our working effort (the ‘conversion’ part )getting hold of energy itself, rather that the actual products of that energy (the bread).
but of course we can’t ‘eat’ energy, we can only eat the ‘products of energy’. The blacksmith cant eat iron or charcoal–only the products of the two, via wages.
I think both the affordability of the final product to the ultimate buyer is closely related to the affordability of the fuel to the bread maker or the blacksmith.
The bread maker or blacksmith can, in theory, get a loan to pay the higher costs of the charcoal or other fuel, and then pass on the higher costs, including any debt costs, to the final buyer. If the buyer cannot afford the higher costs, he will make fewer sales.
In theory, the bread maker or blacksmith can cut back his operations, and only sell to those buyers rich enough to afford the higher prices. The problem, however, is that overhead expenses won’t go down proportionately. The bread maker or blacksmith may need to raise his rates by more than the higher cost of charcoal or other fuel. He may also need to make up the higher overhead costs.
Those who cannot afford necessities may become troublemakers. Police costs are likely to rise. Theft may become a bigger problem.
Target blames criminal networks for up to $600M in lost profits
Fox News 5
NEW YORK – Target is the latest big retailer blaming shoplifting for putting a big hit on its profits. The company said its gross margin rate dropped from 28% in last year’s 3rd quarter to 24.7% this year. Along with shoplifting, referred to as shrink in the industry, the company blamed higher markdown rates and freight costs for dragging down profits.
The company says “inventory shortage or shrink” is a major drain on profits and it “is a growing problem.” Target expects theft to cost it $600 million in lost profits this year.
At Target, year-to-date, incremental shortage has already reduced our gross margin by more than $400 million vs. last year and we expect it will reduce our gross margin by more than $600 million for the full year,” company CFO Michael Fiddelke said in an earning conference call this week. “This is an industry-wide problem that is often driven by criminal networks.”
“It started probably in some localized geographies originally, but we see those circles expanding and the impact continuing to grow,” John Mulligan, Target COO said. “This is primarily driven by organized crime.”
Target says it is working on training and technology to help cut down on theft and is working with other companies to find industry-wide solutions
It is also locking up items. Images from a Target in Queens showed items like toothpaste and razors locked behind glass doors. Customers are required to use a sensor device to summon store workers to unlock the items.
Target has also taken shoplifting so seriously that it has its own forensic science team.
Based in Las Vegas and Minneapolis, the forensic team helps solve organized retail crimes committed at Target stores through video and image analysis, latent fingerprint, and computer forensics.
Yes, Gail….thank you
that is what i’ve been saying for years—we have been borrowing money in order to continue to make things affordable. We can now no longer afford the necessary fuel to make things work.
we have now reached the stage where the credit line of humankind itself has expired. That is what we are seeing all around us, right now.
10 years ago, i wrote:
“humankind has maxed out the credit card of our environment”
Now we are stealing them outright…progress!
The British may make the most excellent horseshoes.
The Chinese make them shoddier but cheaper.
So a lot of horse owners gallop off to the local home center/garden centre and buy Chinese in bulk, while the products of British craftsmanship remain unsold.
This is why our stout yeoman blacksmiths can no longer afford to buy charcoal.
pointmissing has always been your strong point Tim
Just as point labouring has always been yours, Norman.
For want of an affordable horseshoe, the kingdom was lost!
It’s estimated that in just one Roman fort on Hadrians Wall the weight of the nails used in total was 20 tons.
When the Romans could no longer produce iron weapons and tools in industrial quantities, the empire began its collapse.
Producing iron weapons with wind and solar would not work well at all. We can guess what would happen to the world economy.
More coal!
Here in Alabama coal seams are frequently found just under the ground. I pick up pieces on my property.
However, the leftists (with Biden as their front man) are mightily trying to ban coal plants.
It seems we are heading for some inflections points in this struggle of tyranny versus states rights. We now see groups of states banding together for common policy objectives to resist this national/global tyranny.
Thankfully, they are now starting to fight back as a group against the ESG scam and for the first time, I saw an article calling for state banks to be established. States are now banding together to fight the federal gov in court.
Out future freedoms here lie in the balance.
I think the road ahead is very difficult but with our energy situation forcing reality….the massive federal machine cannot be sustained forever…can it? Can government rule over people from afar with jsut modern internet? That would be the governments dream…in this fashion little energy and few resources would be expended to enact rule over the “provinces”.
I think the key is electronic monetary control.
there are no future freedoms
we are in the process of reverting to the tyranny of mother nature.
Nature gives the illusion of freedom, but her rules are very strict
a tyranny where you died by about 50 (take your pick of causes)
one in 5 of your kids didn’t survive to adulthood
where your ‘normal’ condition was hunger
Electronic money control has nothing to do with it. Without sophisticated technology, electronic money simply cannot exist—let alone be used.
You are quite right about ruling from afar though–it can’t be done. This is why large nations will not hold hold together.
Out future freedoms here lie in the balance.
You have never been free. You were allowed to believe you were.
Nor do you own anything. The government owns your home and always has done. If you doubt that, try not paying your property taxes.
No more or less free than any other barnyard animal… free to chew grass like a cow and give milk… you can roam about the pasture as long as you don’t try to get out of the fenced area…
What more can you ask for?
David says:
November 18, 2022 at 4:44 am
Well it does, but possibly only at a 1960s material standard of living.
I say:
1960s material standard of living means 1960s level of population.
In 1970 the world had 3.6 billion.
Enough said.
[re: other David and comments]
not enough said, too simplistic.
total world energy production is far above the 1970 level.
recent per capita decline is 0.4% annual, so in the 2030s it could possibly be down 4% total, though the 0.4% rate will surely vary over the next decade and probably accelerate, so this is no mathematical certainty, just a suggested path.
surely the 1%ish annual population growth could continue, and the inevitable energy decline will mean that the average person is poorer.
too many variables here to have any accurate conclusions, especially since there is some evidence that TPTB have loosely decided in general that there should be global steps implemented to reduce the population.
I am guessing a very slow depopulation will begin in 2023, and that will be mirrored by the very slow energy decline.
who knows?
another year, late 2023, those of us who might survive will possibly know more.
Hopefully, those of us survivors will have electricity and internet as well, to tell what is happening, too.
I expect that the quality of publicly available data will go down. In fact, it may have already. No one wants to admit how bad things really are.
population levels are important, but a side issue
even if the conspironuts were right, and there was a ‘grand plan’ to reduce population by 50%–75%—90% even.
we cannot return to the level of 1960s (or any other era) resource availablity.
If world population returned to pre industrial levels of 1 billion (say), the so called ‘elite’ or ‘elders’ would face the same problems we do. Not enough resources to support their imagined lifestyle entitlement.
The elite (for as long as it lasted) would be reduced to horse transport and lavatories that empty into the moat. (or the street).
(garde a l’eau)
I was reading thru JHK’s blog post this morning and I got to thinking. Would any of these i.e. global complexities, have been possible without fossil fuels?
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/a-smoldering-fuse/
I seriously doubt it.
The Bankman-Fried extended family is the quintessence of Woke aristocracy. Dad Joe Bankman and mom Barbara Fried are both law professors at Stanford. She also acted as a money-bundler for the Democratic Party and ran two non-profit “voter registration” orgs (against the IRS laws which only permit non-partisan organized voter registration). Brother Gabe Bankman-Fried headed a non-profit named Guarding Against Pandemics (funded by Sam), which lobbies Congress to construct new platforms for medical tyranny. Aunt Linda Fried is Dean of Columbia U’s Public Health school, and is associated with Johns Hopkins, which ran the October 2019 Event 201 pandemic drill (sponsored by the Gates Foundation) months before the Covid-19 outbreak.
Excerpts:
The economy is in such poor shape, this could perhaps send it over the cliff.
Thank you for excerpts.
Also Byoblu news is talking of the FTX collapse.
https://www.byoblu.com/2022/11/18/crac-ftx-la-societa-aveva-finanziato-studi-contro-le-terapie-covid/
Hilarious https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bankman-fried-secretly-cashed-out-300-million-during-ftx-funding-spree
Given crypto is orchestrated by the Elders… one wonders if FTX was not just part of a big ol psyop…
I run mickey mouse stuff compared to this — and I guarantee you if I was to raise funds and cash try to cash out on investor cash without disclosing that — this would be picked up by their lawyers… and keep in mind the likes of Black Rock were putting money in — they don’t employ ding bats on their legal team..
And then there is this
The amount raised contained numerical references to marijuana and oral sex: $420.69 million raised from 69 investors. An article published by one of FTX’s investors, Sequoia, called that fundraising a “meme round,” referring to the embedded jokes.
Now watch this … WTF?
https://www.tiktok.com/@needweb3/video/7165654405772021035?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7165654405772021035
Is this a person who you invest your $$$ with??? He looks like the kinda person who would take your investment … put it in his pocket… and spend it trying to get laid… cuz a guy like that … well… this is the kinda action he normally gets:
His girlfriend and partner in crime Caroline Ellison
https://didi.pakasak.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/11/caroline-ellison-ftx-ceo-alameda-research-feat-image-1.jpg
I showed that the Hoolio when he was trying to hump my leg… and he immediately lost his boner and ran and hid in the corner. Going forward I am going to stick that photo on my leg.
Imagine miles mathis’ reaction upon seeing Samuel Bankman-Fried’s name for the first time last week lol.
There is a very interesting take on the FTX fiasco on Tom Luongo’s “Gold, Goats and Guns” website.
It is speculated that FTX was a ponzi scheme designed to vacuum up other ponzi schemes cash.
(Eurasia review – war analysis)
A very interesting update on the war. An interview with former Colonnel Douglas McGregor.
“The Stage Is Set For US Combat Troops In Ukraine – OpEd”
[…]
“Napolitano– Do you know whether Sullivan mentioned the presence of the 40,000 US troops (101st Airborne) in Poland?
MacGregor– We don’t (know that) But we think– based on the language that has leaked-out in the paragraph I received from another source, that he (Sullivan) did imply that they have 90,000 troops in Poland and Romania, and that, potentially, if Russia escalated, presumably– on the scale that we think the Russians will escalate– that we (the US) might be prepared to jump in. And we would jump in with 40,000 US troops, 30,000 Polish troops and 20,000 Romanian troops….. Sullivan made it clear that we are in a position to intervene.”
[…]
“MacGregor– I think that implication was made. That is the impression I am getting and I don’t think we should be surprised about that because Ukraine’s position is deteriorating very rapidly… And we are very concerned about a Ukrainian collapse. Some estimates indicate that the entire economy and social structure will collapse within 60 days. Some say they are going to general mobilization in Ukraine right now, which may include women, because their manpower base is exhausted. And, remember, people continue to leave Ukraine as much as possible because nobody wants to be stuck in a country that shortly will have no power, no electricity, and where there will be trouble getting water, and trouble getting food. The situation in Ukraine is dire.”
…and other intesting insights…
https://www.eurasiareview.com/15112022-the-stage-is-set-for-us-combat-troops-in-ukraine-oped/
And also: “No nation can be expected to live at peace when a gun is pointed at its head. That is why Putin opposed NATO membership for Ukraine, and that is why the current war is being fought.”
Russia has gone all in. They are committing a sizable portion of their military capability to the Ukraine both in personnel and equipment.
A simplistic analysis continues the poker analogy. Is the USA bluffing or do they hold a hand yet to be revealed? Commonly its seems to believed that one or another part will just fold and walk from the table destitute not up the ante ala six gun.
From my perspective the USA governments action in this matter has wide support from all political perspectives. The left believes Putin is a dictator and violates minorities such as homosexual rights. The right believes that Russian moral is low and their military technology inferior. Repeated references are made to Iraq’s performance with soviet era military technology when discussing a full non proxy military conflict in the Ukraine. Many believe that the USA would dominate air just like Iraq and with air domination ground armor does not matter. The huge mistakes that Iraq made are not understood. The Russian air defense capabilities are poo pooed. Offensive strategic capabilities are poo pooed as propaganda. Belief is strong USA stealth aircraft will destroy air defense just like Iraq in Ukraine and that any strategic nuclear attack will be intercepted. There is also a belief that the Russians are bluffing, that their military will not follow orders to execute a strategic nuclear attack. Tom Clancy novels and movies are the blue print. Oppressed Russian people all long to join the USA and have a pick up in Montana. Owning a pick up in Montana is actually a very desirable thing. Electric pick ups for all!
Russian air defense recently was demonstrated during the Russian Kherson withdrawal. Thirty or so HIMARs missiles were launched at the retreating forces. None of them reached the target all were either destroyed by Russian air defense or electronic counter measures. Apparently the Russians have been able to purchase a intact HIMARs rocket and this may indeed have helped them dial in electronic counter measures for HIMARS. Of course a HIMARS rocket is not stealth aircraft technology.
Scott Ritter states it would take ten armored divisions to even consider success in battle against Russia. NATO has one or two in Europe. After the Soviet collapse armor was no longer a priority. A armor division is actually a old term. We really dont have armored divisions anymore. We have much much smaller armored battle groups. All of those would have to be transported to Europe to even have a chance against Russia by Mr Ritters assessment. We dont have that capability. Most of the armor in Europes NATO is Soviet Ts. No one has wanted to spend on the massive resources it takes for modern armor, Where would the diesel come from? The Russians are struggling with logistics in their back yard with internal domestic fuel production. How could a NATO force be expected to fuel armor even if every single piece the USA has is somehow transported to Europe with a magic wand? Above all is the certainty that Russia would use nuclear weapons if they were to lose ground rendering the whole idea a exercise in futility. All of this is well understood by the pentagon. What options are they considering? What options are they offering the commander in chief?
None the less I would put the number of USA citizens such as myself questioning the wisdom of a direct non proxy confrontation with Russia at maybe 20% of the adult population. In this matter I believe the will of the people is being exercised. The majority either feels Russia is the aggressor , Putin is a hitler, and or Russian military capabilities are inferior. Also a large portion just care about their needs the war is an abstract “over there”.
We will find out very very soon. Russia will have half a million troops with their newest equipment in the conflict in a month or so. The Ukrainian defense has been remarkably capable and brave. Its obviously time to negotiate peace. It wont happen. USA either shows some aces or folds. If it folds whats left of the Ukrainian military and the foreign “volunteers” get slaughtered and the era of USA military supremacy ends.
Ukraine is unable to move assets with electric trains not moving. Its build up in troops and equipment at Kherson is stranded there unable to cross the Dnieper or move to new points of Russion troop concentration. Russia picks a spot of their liking moves assets there and punches through. Perhaps at multiple places. Then they will have flanked and will exploit that. Same as it ever was. The pentagon knows this. What options are they considering? What options are they offering the commander in chief? Is the USA “armed for bear”?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/uJjmRbW42q9u/
Russia drafted/enlisted 1% of their pool of 30 million soldier age male civilians.
if USA/NATZO went in, would that 1% become 10%?
no doubt that Russia would deploy 3 million men if the threat from the West escalates to innsane levels.
Your argument is essentially that the USA military is bluffing. That may be true. IMO if they go in they will go in armed for bear. I dont know what tools they have for bear hunting nor do you. Its almost a certainty that we will not ever know no matter what happens. Things might escalate very very very quickly. The pentagon is not stupid. The efficiency of antique 2nd generation soviet air defense as used by Ukraine to deny air to anything but Russian fast movers has of course been studied and volumes of classified analysis written. If that old technology keeps TU-95s from flying just think what the new stuff is capable of. There is NO POSSIBILITY of bringing armor to the conflict. There is NO POSSIBILITY of fueling the imaginary armor. As you state there is NO POSSIBILITY of matching Russian personnel.
So the pentagon is bluffing. Or they are planning on using a tool we dont know about. I dont think they play to lose. Do you? Really? This isnt for chump change. Proper commander in chief selected. Everyone is all in. Coincidentally they need a big event to explain everything. OK corral 3 2 1. Hoo Ra.
When you fight someone who really knows there business all paths lead to a boot upside your head. Whether the USA “wins” or “loses” the outcome will be a desirable one for the pentagon. IMO that is not questionable. Perhaps not the most desirable but they have the ability to make the outcome more desirable from the position of their motives and IMO they will most certainly do so. If bluffing to a defeat is desirable from their motive base it will be so.
I won’t comment upon the ability of US weapons since I don’t know anything about it.
However, proper commander in chief selected? Who is he? Every single general officer in the Pentagon is a political hack, waiting for their next, much more lucrative job in the defense industry.
If this was real war, and if the Pentagon were to escalate beyond a certain threshold, crossing one red line too many, wouldn’t the Pentagon be vaporized by a mushroom cloud?
The elite NATO Lesbian/Dyke/Trans 3rd Mountain Division will show those Ruskies how to fight.
I’d be amazed if the U.S was stupid enough to think they had a hope in hell’s chance of winning. A bloated military, that’s only fit for beating the weakest of the weak, would be slaughtered in short order.
Adding NATO quite literally adds nothing.
“This reality should be a concrete warning to Western countries, who have scaled down military industrial capacity and sacrificed scale and effectiveness for efficiency. This strategy relies on flawed assumptions about the future of war, and has been influenced by both the bureaucratic culture in Western governments and the legacy of low-intensity conflicts. Currently, the West may not have the industrial capacity to fight a large-scale war.”
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare
The idea that they could control the skies is laughable when you compare the service worthy record. Russia isn’t iraq and their equipment can fly almost non stop. Stealth is no problem for Russia and wouldn’t be for even Iraq when you consider operational time limits. Then we have the awkward issue of missile tech, were the Russians are at least a decade ahead.
“GAO examined 49 aircraft and found that only four met their annual mission capable goal in a majority of the years from fiscal years 2011 through 2021. As shown below, 26 aircraft did not meet their annual mission capable goal in any fiscal year. The mission capable rate—the percentage of total time when the aircraft can fly and perform at least one mission—is used to assess the health and readiness of an aircraft fleet.”
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106217
Then there’s the embarrassment that’s generally referred to as their navy.
“The 76-page report into the accident is amazingly damning, especially considering that huge swaths of it are blacked out. But what seeps out nonetheless is a tale of an undersea nightmare of sloppy sailoring and lackadaisical leadership. How bad was it? A total of six crew members — including the skipper and his deputy — were canned from the Connecticut in its wake. This wasn’t a case of one bad apple— there was a bushel of rotten fruit aboard. While “fully qualified” for their assignments, they made “a particularly weak team,” the inquiry found. That team was hand picked by the Navy brass.”
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2022/06/the-bunker-one-incredibly-lucky-submarine
The examples I have given above are a tiny sample of the bloated incompetence that is the present day U.S military.
Just read the last one and ask yourself if you’d bet on those incompetents.
What a shambles, what an amazingly expensive shambles.
It’s hardly surprising that they are now attempting to claim they want peace. Their bluff has been well and truly called.
You’ve pondered a few times about unknown tech advances and I’d say, show it soon if it exists, or watch the seat of power move. I don’t see any other hope against a well trained and practiced outfit that also has all the fuel it needs.
The ‘new weapons’ (DEWS) aren’t game-changers. They’re less destructive than nukes. Their only practical advance is that, in deployment, they are almost completely stealth to the public. They can turn the heavy fog of war into a pea soup. That doesn’t mean though that Russia doesn’t know where they’re coming from, or vice versa, if Russia has them, too.
That said, this is in all likelihood a manufactured war wherein both countries’ actions are largely predetermined by supranational actors. This is possible because ultimately the interests of the supranational actors and the political class are aligned: globalization MUST die now AND total chaos must be averted, so the ‘omnicient’ elite can advise the political and military classes on both sides to play the chessboard the right way. The war is the primary Degrowth feathering mechanism being used right now. If that wasn’t the case then the West wouldn’t still be importing Russian oil. It’s all hot air, smoke and mirrors, and cannon fodder. Many of us knew that they would mask collapse with war, we’ve talked about it for years, and now they’re doing it. It’s not like this is a true resource war. There’s zero chance the West can steal Russia’s resources. And there’s zero chance that even if they could that that would forestall Western collapse. Therefore this is not a true resource war.
It doesn’t sound good at all. I notice “banned” says, ” USA either shows some aces or folds. If it folds whats left of the Ukrainian military and the foreign ‘volunteers’ get slaughtered and the era of USA military supremacy ends.”
The USA is not used to actually fighting wars, except against clearly less able opponents. With inadequate diesel supplies, it becomes even harder to wage war.
Yes, it’s a strange situation and as banned said, we don’t know what they know and we certainly don’t know where they plan to take this.
We can only look at the available evidence and try to guess.
I’ll go for the historically safe bet of ridding themselves of as many useless eaters as possible, whilst rearranging the order of things for their own ends, with a liberal application of propaganda to convince people that it’s what they themselves wanted all along.
The freeze has started in uki, so it should only be a week or two before we find out.
One point about the pentagon, is that they are the ones pushing for talks, so maybe they realise that their bluff has indeed been called and I’m fine with that given the alternative.
ww2 was won by the USA through access to virtually free energy resources
in ww3, those resources will no longer be available
Instead of energy resources, other approaches need to be used. It is becoming apparent that spreading disinformation is part of the portfolio of approaches being used, to try to make today’s situation look more favorable to “our side” than it really is. Using labs to create viruses and vaccines to supposedly counter these viruses seems to be another low-energy approach to war.
I expect that, internationally, we can expect approaches aimed at harming other countries’ energy supplies (bombing Nord Stream 2, for example), or electricity supplies (such as using malicious code to disable electricity transmission), or Internet (bombing cables, for example).
I expect that financial collapse of high-tech providers will be one of the things that bring the system down. For example, Cloud Services of Amazon is reported to have problems.
i agree with the above—apart from ‘creating viruses’
viruses can’t tell the difference between friend and foe.
But if the problem is overpopulation, viruses can tell the difference between oldsters and young folks. Oldsters are fairly dispensable, according to some ways of thinking.
viruses, by their very nature, mutate to take advantages in the way that suits their purpose. (mass multiplication)
We are all living beings, old or young. Our physiology is common to all.
A virus might start by affecting/killing more of one or the other, but it will very quickly find a way of affecting everybody,
in any event, mass deaths on the necessary scale to affect global population would bring about total social chaos and collapse that would destroy our infrastructure altogether.
anyone clever enough to create the virus, would be clever enough to figure that out.
GOF ‘viruses’ are synthetic exosomes designed to simulate an ecological change that the intelligent body feels the need to respond to, in order to adapt to it. They are designed to simulate a huge population of organisms all producing that same exosome so as to alert other organisms about what is going on in their ecology.
An engineered and released coronavirus, for example, would simulate a mass exogenous exosomal release of a call to all receiving relevant mammals to strongly consider engaging in an acute seasonal respiratory detox, which is what a bad cold/flu is. So I agree with Gail that when older people already struggling with major health issues are met with an unnaturally powerful (GOF), carefully designed (via relentless trial and error experimentation on relevant mammals) synthetic exosome release, they are going to have a much harder time juggling that fourth tennis ball.
That said, the vaxxxes are the almost infinitely more powerful inner weapon compared to the outer GOF weapon that would quickly disperse and dilute and breakdown in the outer ecology. Making the body itself make completely inappropriate, toxic protein formations that it then has to try and clear isn’t even an exosomal, healing dynamic anymore, it’s a self-harming dynamic. Healing takes a toll but at least it’s for a good cause.
Also, we are already in an undeclared WWW III.
certainly beginning to look/feel like it
Norman, WW2 was not won by the U.S.
70-80% of all German forces, including all of their best men and equipment were on the eastern front.
The 20-30% on the western front were fighting an amalgamation of many nations, so the best that can be claimed for the U.S is that they beat about 5-10% of the second string of German forces.
If any single nation won the war, it was the Russians.
The we won the war story, was just that, a story, propaganda.
Much like the story that they nuked innocent civilians to end the war with Japan quicker and so save lives. Pure bullshit. Japan was already discussing surrender, but the psychos wanted the rest of the world to know that they had the weapons and no qualms about using them on innocents and that’s exactly what they done.
you may be correct on certain points there–these things have lots of different threads—but the Germans were having to produce their oil via a coal conversion process, which was vastly more expensive than pumping it out of the ground. Oil is the critical factor .
another, possibly more important thread, is that if the UK hadnt kept itself open as an aircraft carrier until 1942, The USA could not have invaded Europe, Germanys factories would have remained intact, they would have produced nukes and ICBMs capable of reaching USA by mid 40s.
Then it would have been game over
As it was, Hitler made some very foolish decisions
I agree about the Germans energy constraints, but not so much the need for Britain as an aircraft carrier. The Soviets once on the move west had an unstoppable momentum and would have won in roughly the same time frame with or without the western front.
German industry and our bombing of such had no great relevance, given their energy constraints. That said, I probably should give more credit to the North Africa campaign, because if the Germans had got hold of the oil countries of North Africa and Western Asia it would have been a harder fight for the Soviets.
Lots of small things can and often do make a difference, such as the resistance in occupied countries, who I consider some of bravest people of that time and we should never dismiss any effort, no matter how small, but by far the greater sacrifice was made in the east and that should never be underplayed, which is all the western narrative does and that leaves a particularly bad taste.
you are quite about getting hold of suez and saudi oil—that would have changed everything—but wars are built of things that ‘change everything’—machine guns, submarines etc.
but that can cover good or bad.
Hitler being so daft as to declare war on the USA for instance, or Japan for that matter doing the same thing.
They disregarded to energy resource equation, as if it simply didnt matter.
Which is roughly the mindset of the average voter.
As a cousin said to me some years ago, discussing the current problems: “whats energy got to do with it?”
And that was someone responsible for a massive local authority spend, with 00s of staff.
But he had the same mindset.
Can’t disagree about the energy equation overall Norman, but you’ll have to explain this bit
“or Japan for that matter doing the same thing.
They disregarded to energy resource equation, as if it simply didnt matter.”
My understanding is that Japan went to war because they had no other choice after the actions of the U.S to deprive them of energy resources.
Wouldn’t that suggest that they understood the equation quite well and knew that they were left with no other choice?
Would that then make it a very deliberate action, in anticipation of the only logical choice presented?
Problem-Reaction-Solution. An age old fraud that always seems to work.
So who really wanted war?
agreed, the Japanese were raping China to take its resources for themselves. They started in the 30s. I don’t think it was a coincidence that Japanese outthrust began after the 1929 crash, they recognised the economic danger if they didn’t grab resources from somewhere. One might even say they flexed their military muscles in 1905 by sinking the Russian fleet.
Roosevelt cut off their oil and steel supply to try to stop them. He was fully aware of what was going on.
Japan was run by the military at that time, so ‘losing face’ was not an option–so they were ‘forced’ to attack the USA, (and UK and Dutch) in order to free the Pacific for taking oil and rubber from Indonesia,
(simple summary there–nitpickers please note)
By ‘disregarding the resource equation’ I meant that while they were aware of the disparity (obviously) the military mind overrode common sense because the alternative was to return the troops to the Japanese mainland, and for the generals to practice their hara kiri techniques.
They couldn’t ‘invade’ then just pack up and go home.
They convinced themselves that Americans would not have the will to fight.
oh–it was the Japenese who wanted war…to answer that part of your comment.
Their economic system was built on war-expansion, just as Germany/Italy was.
I don’t think Hitler was daft. Hereditary german socialism was in a truly existential fight against two rapidly industrializing imperialism. It was do or die. It was the death throe of a proud agrarian culture at the end of agrarianism. Same goes for Japan.
Russia won WWII. The Eastern Front was where the real action happened. 80% of German casualties were inflicted by the Russians.
Ukraine (as a proxy of the West) has no chance in the current war. The US has no escalation path apart from nuclear. Their industry, infrastructure and troops are not set up to fight this type of war.
you may be right
but the usa was fighting on 3 fronts, whereas the Russians didnt declare war on Japan until the very end
(Adverse reaction report)
‘1985 Clip From The Phil Donahue Show – Doctors Warning People Against the Jabs.’
‘This was filmed in 1985, a year before vaccines became liability-free’
It was filmed during an episode of Phil Donahue’s Tv programme.
(the first link doesn’t work in Italy for territorial restrictions, while the second yes. I don’t know exactly if the second video has the same lenght of the first one.)
I kindly ask your help with comments if possible, because the audio is not very good, additionally, Doctors talk too fast and with a strong unclear accent for me. Therefore it is difficult for me to follow all the details of the speech well. Thanks.
https://adversereactionreport.com/opinion/1985-clip-from-the-phil-donahue-show-doctors-warning-people-against-the-jabs/
https://ifunny.co/video/brave-doctors-were-warning-us-decades-ago-1985-phil-donahue-r3EHceD0A
You know, a few years ago I visited my doctor for my yearly physical. I asked about multivitamins and if I should take them. He said NO, they are not safe, because it’s been proven by medical science.
And yet he had no trouble trying to get me to take different types of maintenance drugs. I even remember him trying to push psychotropic drugs on me and I refused. That’s modern medicine today, looking for the repeat business. IMO, doctors have become legalized drug dealers.
Rodster – I have been having trouble for years with nightly leg cramps, so my doc, Dr. Sally, suggested magnesium supplements. It helped, some, but I really improved when I added calcium and potassium to the mix. I’m sure that a regular doctor would have suggested some big pharma drug with the usual list of side effects, but Dr. Sally is more holistic than most other physicians I’ve been to.
tonic water if it contains quinine–its the quinine that does it
keep a bottle by the bed, works every time
I’ll try that too. Thanks, Norm.
It sounds like those talking were particularly concerned about vaccinations involving live viruses. One of the bad effects they were concerned about was multiple sclerosis in later life.
I found this link by a law firm trying to collect awards for damages:
https://www.vaccineinjurylawproject.com/vaccine-injuries/multiple-sclerosis-ms
This is a link called, “Severe Multiple Sclerosis Relapse After COVID-19 Vaccination: A Case Report.”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2021.721502/full
This is a video of describing a woman who developed Multiple Sclerosis after getting vaccination.
Fred says:
November 18, 2022 at 12:18 am
You sidestepped the obvious solution to the predicament Gail, that of engineered population reduction.
One could reasonably conclude that certain events of the last couple of years had that as an objective.
And I had said
kulmthestatusquo says:
October 27, 2022 at 1:55 pm
The reason the collapse is coming to us is because of two reasons.
1. The increase of the population of Third World from 1.2 billion to 7 billion plus.
2. The attempt to raise the standard of living for the Third Worlders.
It all came from the World Wars when the colonials were used to fight wars, which eventually led to their independence. USA really contributed to this as well; it balked against European countries trying to re-establish their old relations over their possessions, and blatantly tried to stop the recolonization.
The Dutch almost succeeded recapturing the East Indies (around 75 million natives) but the good ol’USA balked and a monstrosity called Indonesia, now boasting 275 million people, was born.
In my opinion, every city of the Third World over a million needs a tactical nuke , one for a million, and the pop of the Third World must be reduced to less than 1 billion. Only then all these future techs will have a chance.
And
• Fred says:
October 27, 2022 at 5:41 pm
Good to see Gail still allows free speech. Let the wackos loose Baby!
Why don’t we have transgender rights supporters on here? Which of the 47 genders do you claim FE?
I assume this is not the same Fred who made this comment above. That made my comment disappear, but fortunately I copied it so it survived.
Whether you like it or not, a Malthusian solution, which will make the decision makers hated for ever, is needed to save the civilization. It is brutal but the end of civilization is never easy. We have to taste the bitter pill. No time for weaklings.
I have a hard time supporting tactical nukes to kill off people. The self-organizing world economy will figure out a way (or combination of ways). We just don’t understand the solution yet.
“I have a hard time supporting tactical nukes to kill off people”. Yep I agree Gail, a very messy approach.
Has anyone ever thought of a more subtle way to kill off a few billion?
Viruses and vaccines, if they can get the method to work. Maybe it just takes a little time.
They will have done the numbers on how long they believe they can hold BAU together… and are looking to time the end game with the tipping point on the supply of affordable energy….
They can to some extent manage the burn with lockdowns etc… this is likely what the China story is all about — makes sense to focus on the big beast that has a government that already has extremely restrictive policies …
If they tried that in the USA the risk of freedom loving people reaching for the weapons is very high … and you risk a situation that topples the very sick BAU.
If UEP continues to be delayed they can always selectively rotate lockdowns through other high burn countries like they did for the last 3 yrs….
Inject them with a substance that ruins their immune systems… they die off from all sorts of diseases and they never attribute this to the injection because BBCCNN told them the injections were safe.
Mother nature will take care of the over population using the four horse-persons. Humans just need to watch. I substitute pollution for pestilence. It will be a slow process taking two hundred years (?).
Much faster than 200 years. In northern countries like the UK I would add the fifth horseperson of Winter.
I understand Gail is doing a tremendous job, going thru comments of the most pessimistic/realistic people on earth every time, so it is understandable that she wants to take some break then and now.
There are 44 days remaining and this post will expire on Dec 6 so I think there will be just one more from her for this year.
yes very soon it will be 2023.
so 30% of the 2020s will be in the history books.
onwards to 2024!
We still have 40 days in Q4… if we all wish really hard for the Crack >> BOOM! it still might happen.
This is how Crack Booms happen… the bridge could be fine for decades then one day you are driving across and the the wife says – what’s that cracking sound … and before the husband can answer it’s BOOM! and both of them have crashed to the ground and are busted up howling in pain … moaning WTF happened…
Or better still how about if a terrorist put a bommm b under the bridge … no crack.. just Boom
Pingback: Today’s Energy Crisis Is Very Different from the Energy Crisis of 2005 – Olduvai.ca
Unconventional energy gets the US becoming “a leader in the extraction of tight [sic] oil from shale formations.”
Fracked oil is unusable as it comes out of the ground. It is light oil. You can’t make a lot of products out of it, like diesel. Heavy oil, or light sweet crude, is preferred. That’s what the Russians have “in shameful abundance.” Fracked oil must be sent to a refinery where all the water and all the chemicals used in the fracking process can be removed. Then it must be blended with heavy oil.
Same thing with imported sour crude, which is too high in H2S to be used until it is blended with heavy (light sweet crude) oil. At present, approximately 50-percent of all crude oil being imported into the United States west coast refineries is sour crude. The United States increased the amount of sour crude it imports because supplies of heavy (light sweet crude) oil are in decline worldwide. Sour crude is really an offset, not a substitute for light sweet crude. Somethings you cannot substitute.
As far as the whole fracked oil thing goes, you would think that all these additional handling expenditures would be reflected in the cost of fracked oil, but they are not. As the entire fracking industry is subsidized from the top down, these costs are hidden by government subsidies, and borne by the American taxpayer.
The United States moved to fracked (or light) oil because its supplies of heavy (crude) oil are in decline.
Excellent! Thank you blame e for the recap…add this
https://www.foxbusiness.com/energy/diesel-hits-record-premium-over-gas-oil.amp
Fox Business News no less..
Diesel hits record premium over gas, oil
The price of the fuel—used in farm equipment, shipping and manufacturing—has risen about 50% this year
Dwindling stockpiles of diesel have driven prices to a record premium over gasoline and crude oil, showing how war, weather and other disruptions to globalized energy markets are still producing price shocks and potential shortages.
While the price of gasoline is up about 14% this year, diesel has climbed about 50%, to $5.35 a gallon, according to AAA/Opis. The gains widened the gap between the two to an all-time high of $1.61. A year ago, it was 23 cents. Wholesale diesel, delivered into New York harbor, traded at a record premium to crude oil in October, according to the Energy Information Administration, which also reported the country had only 25 days of diesel in reserve, the lowest since 2008.
Diesel, like gasoline, is refined from crude oil and is the fuel of choice for most of the engines in farm and manufacturing equipment, as well as the trucks and trains that transport the country’s goods. Its price at the pump includes those refining costs, which often vary with the price of the natural gas used in the process.
major driver of the dearth is the war in Ukraine. Russia’s exports of diesel have been more interrupted than those of its crude. The country’s curtailment of natural-gas flows to Europe has also lifted refining costs there, while pushing end users such as power plants to switch from gas to diesel.
OIL MARKET FACES ‘CONSIDERABLE UNCERTAINTIES,’ OPEC WARNS
But the war only amplified a pre-existing problem. Last year’s severe weather had already lifted natural-gas prices and suppressed diesel supplies. And there was little drop in demand for the fuel during the pandemic, when millions of sequestered Americans paused driving, while ordering more goods delivered to their homes by truck.
High prices are hitting businesses from mining and manufacturing companies to distributors and retailers, who are paying record sums to transport goods. Bath & Body Works Inc. Kroger supermarkets, Hormel Foods Corp. and Kellogg Co. have all cited diesel costs as a headwind in recent months. Those costs, passed on to consumers, could feed inflation, after signs of easing price increases recently sparked the biggest stock rally since 2020.
Of course, Ukraine was the ” major Driver”…
Things will get back to normal once the conflict ends….
Gail, thank you too for your lastest, well done and hope your visits went well!
Peak Oil = Peak Everything
Unbeknownst to most people, Europe’s supply of oil hit peak around 2005, and is going down about 5% every year.
And since no alternative is as cheap and convenient as oil (fossil fuel, generally speaking)…
I looked on BP’s data, and you seem to be right. There is a little difference if you use “Europe Total” or “European Union,” but the result is similar.
The Most Important Video of the Year was Filmed in 1983
https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/the-most-important-video-of-the-year
Frank Warren Snepp, III (born May 3, 1943)[1] is a journalist and former chief analyst of North Vietnamese strategy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Saigon during the Vietnam War. For five out of his eight years as a CIA officer, he worked as interrogator, agent debriefer, and chief strategy analyst in the United States Embassy, Saigon; he was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work.[1] Snepp is a former producer for KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, California. He was one of the first whistle blowers who revealed the inner workings, secrets and failures of the national security services in the 1970s. As a result of a loss in a 1980 court case brought by the CIA, all of Snepp’s publications require prior approval by the CIA.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Snepp
It’s all fake … everything. But hey — feel free to continue to reference the MSM fake news… cuz otherwise it’s a vacuum
How bout that Russian landing craft hahahaahahahaha (f789)
Now this is real – FE has asked me to pick him up a wet suit and the other gear… 2.5 hours to there
Does Hoolio like blue fish?
Maybe fake is easier than the “real thing.”
(G20 declaration for perennial passports)
– G20 leaders’ declaration asks to continue with Covid passports, given the great success of this measure…
“We support continued international dialogue and collaboration on the establishment of trusted global digital health networks as part of the efforts to strengthen prevention and response to future pandemics, that should capitalize and build on the success of the existing standards and digital COVID-19 certificates.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/11/16/g20-bali-leaders-declaration/
– Covid passport forever
https://www.laverita.info/g20-green-pass-per-sempre-2658686775.html
I wouldn’t like to be too pessimistic, but the above G20 declaration could be an attempt in the direction of point 8:
[8] The world seems to be at a difficult time now because we don’t have any good options for fixing our falling energy consumption per capita problem, without greatly reducing world population.
For instance: reach and powerful people will buy passports, while normal/poor people should constantly comply with the rule…
Bribe your way out of the problem, for the rich.
Thanks for once again a great new article Gail. I hope you enjoyed your family visit.
You wrote “Practically no one pays any attention to coal consumption, but this is the fuel that allowed the Industrial Revolution to start. It is reasonable to expect that since the world economy started using coal first, it might be the first to deplete.”
Tim Watkins has also pointed out this circumstance:
“Here’s a question you might not have thought about: when did the world reach the coal limit of coal production? Because the world today is more dependent upon coal than at any time before – largely because the western economies offshored our industry to China, and because China has leaned heavily on coal to develop its economy. But almost all of the coal production today depends upon diesel-powered machinery. The days when steam power – combined with animal and human labour – could provide us with all of the coal we needed, ended in the second decade of the twentieth century:”
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/11/15/welcome-to-the-oil-death-spiral/
A very good article.
Tim ends. ” the future is not some green techno-utopia, but something more akin to a new dark age.”
I am afraid he is probably right.
“Coal consumption in the European Union is expected to rise by 7% in 2022 on top of last year’s 14% jump. This is being driven by demand from the electricity sector where coal is increasingly being used to replace gas, which is in short supply and has experienced huge price spikes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ”
“Several EU countries are extending the life of coal plants scheduled for closure, reopening closed plants or raising caps on their operating hours to reduce gas consumption. However, Europe only accounts for about 5% of global coal consumption,” the agency said. ”
The IEA executive director, Fatih Birol, noted that the encouraging news is that “solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary”.
– Of course the ‘temorary uptick’ might become an indefinite one if the situation in Eastern Europe is not resolved, while Africa is expected to stop using coal …
Europe has to compete with other buyers for coal, however. The supply of the better quality coal is depleting. Very often, shipping coal to Europe is a long way. I wouldn’t count on Europe being able to solve its other energy problems with coal, even if it tried to.
Oh WOW! https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/55606
Can ya’ll see now how fake it all is?
Haha MORE-ONS https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/41862 (VAIDS)
It’s all a big con .. fake https://www.corbettreport.com/musk/
The Corbett Report is available either as a 1 hour audio or video. The blurb says:
“The Basic group of negotiators — Brazil, India, China and South Africa — have uniformly condemned developed countries as having ‘double standards’, as rich countries increasingly use fossil fuels while simultaneously pressuring developing countries to move away from these resources. ”
“There has been a significant increase in the consumption and production of fossil fuels in the past year by developed countries, even as they continue to press developing countries to move away from the same resources.
“Such double standards are incompatible with climate equity and justice,” said the ministers of the Basic (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) group of negotiators in a joint statement at the United Nations climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
In South Africa, Gwede Mantashe, the minister of mineral resources and energy, has at various energy-related events in the latter half of 2022 told members of the media that Germany, for example, had increased its imports of South African coal “eightfold” this year. ”
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-11-16-brazil-india-china-and-sa-accuse-developed-world-of-double-standards-incompatible-with-climate-equity-and-justice/?utm_source=top_reads_block&utm_campaign=africa
The global issue seems to be centralization – a decentralized system would solve many problems locally. Many countries have suffiecient resources for their own consumption, but because their resources are considered as bieng global resources they are not (really) in charge of them. In a globalised system everyone sufferes globally during a global energy decline. In a decentralized system some countries have more difficulties than others because some are more endowed with resources than others. One can see how centralisation suits rich countries because they can draw on all the resources of the entire world, and profit from all resources around the world, However it is exactly globalisation that has now lead to a global energy and resource crises, because it has caused everyone to lose sight of boundaries and the Limits to Global Growth. The only solution would be to allow decentralization to happen so that balance can be restored in local places, but that would mean a loss of power and income for rich nations which is why said nations are likely to attempt to keep globalisation going for as long as possible.
We’re in a predicament. By definition, decentralization requires REcentralization of complex local supply chains, which is an undertaking that heralds an EVEN MORE complex (numeral complexity) mode of systematics than the existing global one operating under economies of scale.
There is no industrial decentralization out of necessity, except in a few regional pockets perhaps.
Maybe the necessity is that international trade can’t hold together, and that governments start falling apart as pensions become un-payable. Then, there really isn’t really re-centralizing taking place. Each individual system has fewer nodes.
Yeah totally. I believe EnergyShifts was suggesting widespread industrial decentralization as a possibility, and we’re seeing that the reality will be deindustrializing decentralization, with fewer nodes per individual system and therefore a much more simplified industrial base if in fact there is one at all. Are there any examples of vertically integrated regional fossil fuel industries? I highly doubt it. How does anywhere build that out during collapse and maintain it and have it pay for itself during collapse? That would be industrial decentralization.I don’t see it happening except for highly favorable circumstances like what I mentioned with feudal California pump and rod stripper well operations with microrefineries, intermittent ‘renewables’ power, and a warehouse full of spare parts.
Gail and Reante:
Expanding (and/or rebuilding or improving) already in place regional decentralization, would be the way to go. In South America Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay already have some energy leasing/sharing agreements with a mix of hydro, nuclear and others. Capacity could be expanded, but more localization could take place perhaps with nuclear – those Argentina and Brazil are massive large countries. Paraguay is well endowed with hydro for local use and has sufficient supply for export. Expanded industrial systems would have to run off that, but regional industrialization already exists there.
South Africa used to be in the top 5/6 industrialized countries in the world (during Apartheid). The transition to ‘democracy’ has seen a rapid decline in industrial and economic output and expansion and apartheid-era industrial infrastructure has decayed to the point of stagnating growth to hovering just above zero in recent years with real unemployment figures sitting at 50% (mostly among youth), more than double since the transition took place. The country is still the most industrialized on the continent though and supplies electricity, goods and services to at least 5 neighboring countries and to an extent it effectively ‘powers’ and supports/sustains almost the entire southern half of the African continent.
[As an aside: If South Africa would lose it’s affirmative action policies (more race-based laws in place than under Apartheid) which saw it dismiss 1000’s of competent engineers from it’s power utility ESKOM, normality could be restored, but it has now committed itself to a “Just Energy Transition” to renewables which will take years to implement while the country has had rolling blackouts for more than 10 years. This year (2022) has seen 149 days with power cuts so far – the worse year to date. The issues in S.A. are clearly political, i.e. (1) ‘forced’ regime change, (2) forced mass lay-offs of competent people and (3) ‘forced’ transition to renewables.. In a nutshell: DE-industrialization. The country does have the capacity to recover (the human capital and resources – especially coal and off-shore natural gas), if it were not for politics.]
Every continent already has it’s regionalised industrial zones that could be bolstered and expanded and more localization could also take place – if it were ‘allowed’ to happen. Naturally imports would still be necessary to regions not rich in fossil fuels. I’m not convinced that it would be too complex to regionalise industrialization and shorten supply chains – in fact I’m convinced this will eventually have to happen out of necessity. However, everything comes down to geopolitics though, which largely determines how things go.
We have entered a very uncertain times, but as stated earlier, developed nations (in the East and West), are still committed to globalization, which would continue to hinder regionalism or localization.
I’ve written quite extensively on the metaphysical side of centralization vs decentralization. If interested my latest chapter can be found here:
https://energyshifts.net/humanity-at-a-turning-point/
In case there was a misunderstanding, I should have said that there CAN BE no industrial decentralization out of necessity. That move would have to be a voluntary transition made with foresight, while the affordable resources were still there in order to pull it off. Obviously that could have only taken place in an alternate reality. Was never gonna happen in this one.
“One can see how centralisation suits rich countries because they can draw on all the resources of the entire world, and profit from all resources around the world, However it is exactly globalisation that has now lead to a global energy and resource crises, because it has caused everyone to lose sight of boundaries and the Limits to Global Growth.”
That is a good point! Drain all of the resources, worldwide, at the same time.
This is what happened during the decline of the Roman Empire too – Rome increasingly drained the resources from the countryside thereby impoverishing the rural folk while the city folk enjoyed their bread and cricuses and life carried on relatively normally (for a time …). But eventually reality came knocking even in the capital and city fold had to abandon the capital and revert to agriculture. The result: narural decentralization took place. History has a tendency to rhyme.
it is possible to have ‘de centralised industry’—on the scale of the local tailor, carpenter, blacksmith, cobbler and so on.
it isnt possible to have de centralised industry on the scale of producing vehicles, fuels, medication, electronics, etc.
problem is, most people fantasise about the former, but expect delivery of the latter.
How would you explain South Africa developing its most rapid industrial and economic expansion in its entire history (along with the most rapid economic upliftment of all communities/ethnicties in the country) under international sanctions? Is bieng internationally isolated and under severe sanctions not a case of having been decentralized from the international (supply-chain) system? On the same theme – how is it that Russia has largely benefitted from being cut off from international trade and bien sanctioned? Was South Africa back then and Russia today on the level of ‘the local tailor, carpenter, blacksmith, and so on?
Vehicles were produced in South Africa on an industrial scale while it was decentralized under sanctions and the same is the case with Russia today.
If you think that the ordinary peoples of Russia are benefitting from what’s going on right now then it’s a clear sign that you are severely distorting reality in order to make it fit into the argument you are struggling to justify.
South Africa was able to industrialize despite the sanctions because the sanctions didn’t wholesale exclude it from industrial civilization. Same goes for North Korea. That fact doesn’t support your argument.
The ordinary people of Russia have seen enough to know they’re in an existential fight.
They also have China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Iran and most of the Global South on their side. Their economy is ticking along OK and glowing with health compared to any EU country.
One of the tasks ‘God’ seems to assign to Russians periodically is to dispose of satanic, N–i hordes and they appear to accept that.
Key parts of the Russian economy are structured completely differently to the West. Their goal is to achieve certain tasks irrespective of what challenges emerge, as opposed to maximising this quarter’s profits.
Thus they a high level of autarky and a lot of redundancy and spare capacity built in that can be quickly activated. According to the MSM the Russians have been “running out of shells, missiles etc” since early March, but they still launch daily barrages of 40,000+ shells and 100+ missiles.
Thanks Fred I hear that. I absorbed what it was Orlov had to say so favorably about the Russian resiliency WRT collapse compared to the West. And I don’t doubt most Russians agree with what Putin says about the Western elites. Hell, we agree with what he says, too. I wouldn’t say, however, that Russia was in an existential fight before they invaded Ukraine. I understand why they did it of course. Are they now in an existential fight with the Anglo-zionist elites? No, I don’t believe so because the elites aren’t suicidal. This war is just the non-public degrowth agenda playing out. Global perestroika. I realize you don’t agree with that but it should explain why I don’t think ordinary Russians are the long-term beneficiaries of such a situation, least of all the recently conscripted and their families, or the conscientious objectors who had to become political refugees or presumably get locked up.
See my comment to Norma Pagett.
Not exactly au fait with the economic structure of South Africa in detail, but under apartheid, (unless I’ve missed something) It seems that the indigenous people (and other non whites) of south Africa supplied what was little above that of slave labour to support the ‘economic system’ of the social system there.
S Africa also has colossal coal deposits, and used the coal to oil liquifaction process (SASOL)–that single factor helped them to withstand sanctions for years. The same (Fischer Tropsch) system as used by Nazi Germany in the 40s.
https://www.salon.com/2006/07/11/south_africa_6/
I don’t think Gold and diamond production ceased either
I wouldn’t call the average living conditions in the ‘townships’ exactly uplifting? Even today. Would you?
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/apr/30/cape-town-apartheid-ended-still-paradise-few-south-africa
of course it’s possible to have industry in such circumstances, because the means to sustain it exists elsewhere in the world. As with Russia today, no sanctions are total. Iran has also been sanctioned for years now.
Sanctions on Russia were imposed last February, they could not not possibly have any radical effect in such a short time. Expecting otherwise is naive in the extreme.
If modern industry exists, people will always seek it out.
My comment (which I should have made clearer perhaps, though I didnt think it was necessary) was intended to cover a post-collapse situation. The production of oil gold and diamonds will be economically pointless.
Your reply which is mostly based on hearsay (because like the large majority of people you are admittedly at least – not au fait with what was really happening South Africa back then, or what’s happenig there now).
I’ll keep it brief regards to that part: Black South Africans’s quality of life were raised to the highest levels of black people on the African continent during apartheid, becuase the aparthied government built in excess of 8000 schools, eight universities, created 100’s of thouands of jobs, built infrastructure (roads, sanaitation and water supplies) including hospitals and clinics. The wages of unskilled black South Africans were no worse than that of unskilled labor anywhere in the world. The fact that township life was below the quaitt of white neighbourhoods is not the fault of whites (except if you believe that the flavellas in Brazil, the slums in India and the poor conditions of indigenous people in Peru are also the fault of whites. Which is exactly why the towsnhip situation in S.A. has not been resolved, but has gotten worse after apartheid ended. Like with all regime-change projects (which the anti-apartheid movement was) it had to frame the country and the people in charge in the worst possible light to garner support for the project.
The general point I am making is that when decoupled from the global (globalised) system some countries still manage to thrive – or do relatively well – especially if they already have good resources. It has a lot to do with the capacity to innovate, to adapt, and to create + competence and work ethic.
It is exactly the globalised system that keep local regions from growing as much as they could/would whould they be decoupled because they are tied into and made dependent on global systems.
Localisation existed long before globalisation and centralisation is never a constant. The USSR centralized and then broke up again – there’s a pattern there.
South Africa itself is an artifical centralized construct that was created through British Empire building in 1910 after reources wars for gold and diamons. The Ango colonies and Boer Republics as well as the Indigenous areas (later to become known as Bantustans/Homelands) were all incorporated into this construct known as ‘Republic of South Africa’ today. As an aside; It’s not as if the people of South Africa had any say in the matter.
Centralised systems allways produce problems because they insist on standardization of everything. South Africa has 11 official languages, a multitude of ethnicities and cultures and a variety of religions, yet the government of the day increasingly does not recognize group cultrural rights and differences. The big question nobody wants to asnwer is if this utopian centralized melting pot (Mandela’s Rainbow nations) is actually working post-apartheid? (And wny not?). Silence on the airwaves …
It’s well known Russia has already made new alliances and has diverted a lot of its energy salses to China, India and other allies. Naturally sanctions will have an impact over time, but not to the extent that was intended, morover it seems to have made Russia just more resilient. I’m no fan of Russia, but I’m just pointing out some facts. Countries/nations will survive – and some will even thrive – outside of global centralized systems.
Your final comment I would say is purely speculative – in a post collapse scenarion there is always new growth. After the Western Roman Empire collapse and fractured, the Eastern Roman empire grew and ended up thriving for almost a 1000 years. (I have written about this in my most recent two chapters).
you are no doubt correct in much of what you say… Ive looked at your website and see where you are coming from. I prefer to offer no opinion on it, either way.
I offered links to S.Africa.
but it has diverted from the original thread, as i tried to point out.
Which was:–Discussion of ‘industry under ‘world collapse scenario’, not something akin to a ‘sanction’ economy.
The two things bear no, or very little, relationship to one another.
In an industrialised world, sanctioned section regions ultimately don’t work, because ‘industrial means’ exists elsewhere. Which is why I gave diamonds as an example. (there are 000s of others)
Even under sanctions, diamonds were still in high demand. And provided trade income. Technology isn’t ‘fixed’ as long as energy is available to cause it to flow between peoples.
In a totally collapsed society, diamonds would be almost worthless. Because there would be no ‘energy flow’ between peoples.. Hence no ‘need’. Diamonds can only be used as decoration (ie in the crown of a King)-if sufficient money exists in the system that makes them affordable. And a king to wear them of course.
BAU in the sense that we know it now, is the direct result of energy-intelligence flow between peoples.
Yes, isolated peoples will know how to build energy-producing turbines (for instance), or trucks, or TVs.
But consider the complexity involved in those devices.
In a sanctioned society, such things are possible.
In a collapsed society they most certainly will not be… other than in ‘legacy factories’. That will be very short lived.
But ignore that statement. (as you most likely will), and build a few 00 trucks,
The purpose of building anything is to sell/use it at a profit.
Otherwise its just a hobby.
In a collapsed society no one would have much use for motorised vehicles, because the means and purpose to make them run would be absent.
As to my final paragraph, the Egyptians were the most powerful nation on Earth in their time. But they used gold only to decorate themselves. They paid their workers mainly in food.
Speculating on post Roman collapse doesnt give the full picture.
Humankind itself has never been in a ‘collapse’ situation until now,. I can only suggest you give some serious thought to that. And what that means.
There can be no growth without corresponding energy input.
Pre-industrial revolution, progress of humankind could not exceed the speed of tree growth.
After the Western Roman Empire collapse and fractured, the Eastern Roman empire grew and ended up thriving for almost a 1000 years.
That’s the story we are told but I don’t think it was thriving. It clung on, but greatly diminished from the days of the old empire.
Population collapsed there due to exhausted land just as it had in the West. For example the Dead Cities region in Syria where there are 700 former settlements that were abandoned in the 8th century.
Many of us have heard about Aesop’s Fable, The Fox and the Grapes. According to Wikipedia, “The story concerns a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he states they are undesirable. The expression ‘sour grapes’ originated from this fable.”
In the case of coal, we are told that coal is undesirable because it is very polluting and raises CO2 levels. While these things are true, coal has historically been very inexpensive, and this is important for people buying coal. Coal is also easy to transport. It could be used for fuel instead of cutting down trees, thus helping local ecosystems. The negative things that we are being told about coal are true, but it is hard to find an adequate inexpensive substitute.
Nice analogy!
Instead of insisting the oil is ‘sour’ – cuz we don’t drink oil… they tell us it causes the planet to broil and therefore it is an evil villain and we must leave it in the ground …
Maybe the story is to provide an explanation as to why a lot of oil will be left in the ground (people can’t understand the economic/energy reasons).
Very interesting analysis. Do you follow Neil Howe of Fourth Turning fame? I watched an interview today of him and Danielle DiMartino-Booth, a well known fed watcher. They believe the Fed is going to be over-hawkish with high rates, deepening the recession. And while demand destruction occurs, inflation will still remain high. Which will be very bad for the global economy. Also the rising tensions with Russia and China will continue to create market disruptions. We seem to be headed for a showdown with China over Taiwan, and the situation in Ukraine doesn’t seem to be improving at all. Sadly, I believe the adversarial situation with China is all ideological and not in either of our best interests. My personal view is that we instigated all this with Ukraine by trying to flip them to NATO and it seems to be driving us toward further destabilization of Europe, much of it centered around oil and natural gas. Thanks for your insights!
Yes, I am familiar with Neil Howe. He and I were both speakers at the same reinsurance conference in Bermuda in 2018.
It is interesting that Neil Howe sees the current hikes in interest rates as deepening the recession. All of the conflict today is interconnected, as well. I think the conflict with China relates to “not enough energy to go around.” Europe’s problems are ultimately related to inadequate fossil fuel resources to go around. Russia has not been receiving high enough prices for its fossil fuel exports. This makes them react badly to poor behavior by buyers.
You sidestepped the obvious solution to the predicament Gail, that of engineered population reduction.
One could reasonably conclude that certain events of the last couple of years had that as an objective.
Help me understand what happens to the financial system if we reduce population
more energy per capita, so IC keeps rolling with bAU into the 2030s.
Seems to be happening in Japan…
Fred makes a good observation here and I’d like to add to it.
I think we all step away from any Malthusian interpretations in these matters…some more than others, it is distasteful in a world of distasteful things.
But there is a more important reason for stepping back from these conclusions and that is that the world we have come to know so well, this modern world, is a product of SCALE. It is the scale of the enterprise, the human enterprise, which gives the outcome we call modernity. What would have been done with all the bitumen if not to build roads?
The scale of the project is necessary to absorb the waste that it produces and this is not at first obvious. Without the worlds current population the waste would overwhelm the system….counterintuitive? No?
Japan seems to be the only nation effectively using population reduction. Good for them.
Economies of scale have been very important in allowing the growth the world economy has had.
Anything anyone tries to do in the direction of engineered population reduction is likely to offset economies to scale. Overhead will go up disproportionately, even as population and resource go down.
I expect the self-organizing system will handle the overpopulation problem better than what we could have thought of. I imagine it will involve a combination of different effects. Poor people in poor countries will tend to disproportionately die off first. Maybe general health will deteriorate thanks to our new “vaccines.” Maybe failing governments and financial systems will add to the effect.
The founder of bust cryptocurrency exchange FTX has admitted he talked up his ethical credentials as part of a “dumb game we woke Westerners play” to burnish his reputation “so everyone likes us”. The Telegraph has more.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old founder of collapsed cryptocurrency company FTX, admitted in an interview that his public stance on ethical issues was in part a “front”.
The admission comes amid accusations that Mr. Bankman-Fried scammed investors out of their money. Regulators around the world, including the U.S. Department of Justice, are investigating the collapse of FTX, which has left over one million creditors out of pocket.
Mr. Bankman-Fried, who at one stage was worth around $16bn, was a self-proclaimed “effective altruist”, meaning he aimed to make as much money as possible in order to give it away to charities.
He appeared in multiple videos explaining his views on climate change and world poverty and posted his thoughts on how to maximise his positive impact on the world on Twitter.
However, he told the website Vox: “Man all the dumb s*** I said… it’s not true really.”
He said: “I feel bad for those who get f***** by it, by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”
On Thursday morning he then attempted to row back his comments, saying: “Some of what I said was thoughtless or overly strong, I was venting and not intending that to be public. What matters is what you do – is actually doing good or bad, not just talking about doing good or using ESG language.”
But Sam, all the dumb s*** you say, it’s not true really, so why should we believe you now? Can I also suggest that anything you don’t intend to be public you omit from media interviews?
Douglas Murray in the Spectator suggests people shouldn’t feel bad if they experience pangs of satisfaction at seeing the woke charlatan fall.
Today when you want to show that you really care – as opposed to actually caring – then you talk of how concerned your company is about ESG [Environment, Social, Governance]. Firms are even rated by their ESG scores. It is a great medieval Vatican-style scam. And it is everywhere.
In any case, FTX was big on ESG. On a video from January this year the company’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried and the vlogger Nas Daily – the first a shyster, the second possibly a naif – claimed that FTX existed only to make money that could then be given away. The two young men are weirdos in different ways – but the main one, Bankman-Fried, looks about 14 and has a face like a stress ball being scrunched by somebody who’s very stressed indeed.
This pair talk about all of the things that our age values most, claiming as they do that making money to pass on to special causes is much better than merely getting rich and buying a Lamborghini. If you make money and give it away to these causes, they say, that makes you way more happy than spending it on yourself.
With some infelicitous turns of phrase, Daily says various things about Bankman-Fried, which the latter then responds to. “He is funding everything you can think of: global warming” (“It’s one of the biggest problems that we have to tackle together as a world”). “COVID-19 preparedness” (“We have to be ready for the next pandemic”). “Neglected tropical diseases” (“More than a billion people suffer from them – we have to eliminate these diseases”). “And of course animal welfare” (“Animals deserve to live just like we do; it’s also why I’m vegan”).
People should really have learned about ESG by now, says Murray:
ESG – like its fellow traveller ‘Diversity Inclusion and Equity’ (or DIE, as I prefer to call it) – ought by now to be a great big warning flag to investors and speculators everywhere. When a firm or investment fund goes on about ESG or DIE it should cause hard-wired suspicion of the kind provoked by, say, a sinister stranger with a comb-over volunteering to look after the kids at bathtime.
Bankman-Fried is a rare thing – someone formerly on the inside who’s come out and uttered the truth about wokery: that’s it’s the sanctimonious creed of a prestige faith, a set of luxury beliefs there primarily for show that demonstrate how with it you are while personally costing you nothing.
Link?
The link was on Daily Sceptic but it was broken
This is it I believe.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-delicious-fall-of-sam-bankmanfried/
https://stevetobak.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/its-alive.jpg
it was 8.07 before you began obsessing, there’s something very wrong. Do I have a rant rival for your affections?
Maybe a few people will start thinking about how silly ESG really is. Also, how problematic digital currencies can be.
In some ways, the digital currencies add to demand. When they collapse, they reduce demand.
How good would it be if Bitcoin vapourized hahaha
Thank you for the new article Gail! For alternative “A” ” Governments would need to shrivel in size, ”
We know that will not happen in the USA. With the ability to create money by treasuries being in effect a credit card service charge the goverment spending is not limited. Also the idea that goverment spending has constraints dictated by constraints of the physical world seems absent or even ill conceived by all politicians.
Spending may well increase. Inflation will increase no matter what the interest rates are determined to be. Its not just the trillion or two more of goverment debt. That trillion or two gets leveraged for money creation. That money creation is on private banks books when they create loans. Lack of demand for treasuries is the only thing that can limit USA government spending. THat lack of demand can only come from the banks not having demand for loans that can reasonably expected to be paid. It is well known the USA government debt will never be paid and it somehow is exempt from gravity. If there is no loans to be made that can be paid the banks have no need for treasuries as the arbitrary primary requirement for their money creating license.
Every loan is a function of time. This puts the burden of enough energy in the real economy to pay in the future. How do we see this manifesting? How about the recent FTX event? Poof its gone. The unspoken alternative since neither “A” or “B” is possible is collapse. My guess is that will be a function of it becoming clear that the ability to pay loans is dependent on the per capita energy consumption. The goverment believes its spending has no limits. In fact it has limits dependent on per capita energy consumption. Since the goverment sees no oak tree it will drive right into it.
The thing we call inflation is a function of exponential growth in our push it to the future paradigm. That paradigm does not consider that “inflation” can also be the very phenomena one would observe with pushing it to the future becoming increasingly constrained by per capita energy consumption. The ball of yarn coming unwound. Once again. Raising interest rates is a act of desperation to keep the ball of yarn from unwinding. It buys a little time.
Yes all sorts of things will be blamed on those darn sour grapes but creating debt that is a claim on future energy that doesn’t exist can not be questioned. We will hit the oak tree because that oak tree is not considered in “economics” . Everybody knows it. Jerome knows it. Raising interest rates is like applying brakes with your left foot while your right foot puts the pedal to the floor and saying only the brakes are a causal. The only two questions are when is oak tree impact and what they have planned for after impact. Even after the tesla is wrapped around the oak tree of a finite planet the oak tree will not be discussed. But somthing will be discussed thats for sure! Maybe a new virus pandemic?
Perhaps the US will be one of the countries with hyperinflation. Wheelbarrows full of money, but nothing to purchase with the money. Like Weimar Germany.
It seems like it would work better to focus resources on workers, rather than spreading them evenly over the economies. If pensions are cut off, more finished goods and services could go to workers, I would think.
But, with a printing press, and a do-gooder in charge, they might try to distribute goods and services evenly. The result would be like the result in calories. If people on average need 2,000 calories a day, but the resources you have provide only 1,000 calories a day, on average, the system will work a whole lot better if it can get rid of half of the people.
A do-good economy that spreads food evenly to the whole economy will starve everyone. This is why self-organizing economies function based on “survival of the best adapted.” Some part of the economy can go forward, even if part of the population is lost.
If the US does indeed spread its money fairly equally using the printing press, it likely will be a loser in the world game of musical chairs.
Fox and the Grapes and other Aesops fables. I love the “digression,” as insights into human nature may be more predicitive than all the phony-baloney economists.
But it’s stone simple in a way: No one saw any need for an alternative fuel in any meaningful way, even nuclear, as long as oil was the kingpin- for decades and decades after coal was “usurped,” indicating that oil was “better” than coal. The frantic searches and hype for alternative fuels that have emerged are tantamount to admitting that the oil is starting to get costly and scarce, otherwise there would be no need to seek alternative fuels in the first place.
It is a “duh” moment. Kind of like when I was trying to plant Mangrove plants at my former beach house in Siplay, Negro Occidental, Philippines. My nephew in-law simply asked. “Why are you trying to plant them? If that part of the beach could support them, they would already have been growing there.”
“… as long as oil was the kingpin- for decades and decades after coal was “usurped,” indicating that oil was “better” than coal.”
oil + coal was and is better than either alone.
Right. Coal didn’t go away. Oil was just added to the portfolio.
I have no existence outside of this comments section.
You have an existence outside this comment section as a human living in a world surrounded 8 billion human right when resources start depleting for the next 1,000 years
after 10 days, you have risen from the dead!
from my perspective, this comments section would not exist without my existence.
I comment, therefore I am.
What do you mean?
obviously you find meaning outside of libraries.
Lol! You are often amusing. Actually, I was wondering what “Slowly” meant.
If I may. He meant we are all scared that Gail may tire of telling truth in the nicest possible way and our connection with truth and sanity will cease. What we must realize is Gail has free will and respect that.
What Banned said! 🙂 Yes, thanks to Gail, we miss her when she is gone.
Slow·ly
/ˈslōlē/
adverb
1.
at a slow speed; not quickly:
“they moved forward slowly”
It means Slowly exists … only if FE comments here….
Thanks for giving him existence.
I do not see how high price oil or high price wind and solar is a solution. It might work for the top 20% but the bottom 50% at going to be left out.
but the bottom 1% should be fine after the Collapse.
I am afraid the bottom 1% will be among the first to die, for one reason or another.
the bottom 99% will be looking for someone to blame – and they’ll go looking for the 1% — and skin them alive
I just came across the latest from the Club of Rome, Earth for All:a survival guide for humanity, a book and earth4all.life a website. Their method is to state a narrative and assume it will come true, pure magical thinking. They offer no references, no calculations, no models. In the long run reality will cause the magical thinkers to wither away but I worry about the damage they will cause with their false hope in the short run.
most people derive their “false hope” from their normalcy bias.
why worry?
The book 2052 came out a while ago, also published by the Club of Rome. It was wishful thinking, dressed up with some charts showing how that wishful thinking would play out. The author surveyed a number of his close friends and got their input. This book sounds like another version of the same kind of wishful thinking. Someone else mentioned it either. It didn’t sound like it was worth buying.
Club of Rome sounds the like name of an organization that involves old fat bald men with a penchant for young boys — owned by the Biden Family?
Hi Gail,
Your conclusion makes sense as a solution to the baby boomer population bubble i.e. a high proportion of the population that is past workforce age:
a) the population in countries such as Canada have high proportion of citizens in or entering into retirement
b) an energy crisis – manufactured or not, hits that segment of the population hard
c) as noted in a comment earlier, MAID has really come to life in Canada of late
d) no politician is going to say it is better for the country, financially, that grandma/grandpa take that longest of sleeps
e) and yet, while the left hand enjoins/encourages/promotes/normalizes legal euthanasia the right hand is ramping up immigration of working age people (slated to be 500 000 per year by 2025 in Canada…at ~340 000 per year currently).
f) Canada has the oil sands as well as offshore rigs that could, but haven’t, ramp up oil production to meet the needs nationally
g) Liquidation of assets from deceased boomers expected to trickle down through the economy
h) energy & financial crisis averted
Canada is quite possibly the most contemptible, immoral, cowardly nation within this similacrum. When the gates of heaven close in 2106 I suspect a lot of souls remaining here awaiting similacrum destruction will be Canadian.
The reasons are myriad and obvious.
I know that Ugo Bardi pointed out that when witches were killed off in Salem, they were relatively wealthy. I believe Ugo was one who also pointed out that the Jews in Germany at the time of the holocaust were relatively wealthy. Killing them out was beneficial to the survivors, since their wealth could be inherited. There was also a problem with inadequate food supply, due to coal shortages. Having fewer mouths to feed was helpful.
The oil sands in Canada can be used to produce diesel fuel, because it has a substantial share of of long hydrocarbon chains. These can by “cracked” into shorter chains. The process usually uses natural gas. The US has facilities to do this. Canada’s oil sands provide the heavy oil needed to keep diesel fuel and jet fuel available.
Maybe there is a way that part of the world, including the central part of Canada and the central part of the US can continue their existence, at close to a normal level. Atlanta is hopefully not too far away from this central area. The areas that are too “woke” are likely to have big problems.
I only disagree with your assessment of world leaders and the renewables scam, and then only to say that politicians are, themselves, conned by the nonsense so long curated by fossil fuel interests. As a certain Senator candidly said, “You don’t have to be intelligent to get voted into office.”
I will also note the elephant in the room, which is US led sanctions on Russia that have so harmed the German economy due to the extreme power of “Greens” there over politics.
with Thanksgiving Day approaching here in the USA, it reminds us that we should be grateful that the EU is sacrificing some of their per capita energy so that others around the world can have more.
thank you to the Greens!
The stronger the green party, the closer a country is to its end!
On the topic of Germany, energy-literate economist Michael Hudson provides an interesting (imo) historical frame to current events:
Sorry I didn’t “approve” this comment earlier. I have to approve the first post of any new commenter. I had already turned off my computer for the night with your first attempt.
Maybe this link works better?
This link works for me.
Gail, another great article. You are correct. This energy crisis is different from past ones. Especially for the US economy. Because we have never been so dependent on fossil fuels as we are now. I recently took a 5 week x-country road trip from Los Angeles to Philadelphia and back. I was shocked by the traffic and congestion, everywhere in the country. The amount of growth in new suburbs around even medium sized cities was remarkable. And everyone is commuting in vehicles. Commutes of 20 or 30 miles one way seem to be common. The interstate highways are jammed with tractor trailer trucks. At certain times of the day in some places like northern Indiana and northern Ohio, 6 or 7 out of every 10 vehicles are trailer trucks. Some trucks pulling 2 trailers or occasionally even 3 trailers. Any glitch in the supply of diesel fuel or gasoline would shut the country down . The way the various parts of our our economic system are so interdependent, just about guarantees that this will happen. And it doesn’t help that the US population has climbed to about 335 million and is still growing. The economic law of supply and demand doesn’t really work when the “supply ” is limited and actually is diminishing.
We are running out of fossil fuels. The bottom line is: “our FINITE world”
“The interstate highways are jammed with tractor trailer trucks. At certain times of the day in some places like northern Indiana and northern Ohio, 6 or 7 out of every 10 vehicles are trailer trucks. Some trucks pulling 2 trailers or occasionally even 3 trailers.”
amazing! beautiful!
thanks for the wonderful update.
I linked to OFW on a substack… and someone responded with – I see you are influenced by Malthusians…
hahaha… to which I responded.. yes of course … it’s Our Infinite World
Was it on the 15th November?
The day we officially passed 8b, because that’s something to celebrate for those that believe, as you pointed out, infinite everything is possible.
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/8-billion-souls-cce919a54030?source=user_profile———1—————————-
How true! I am struck by the same thoughts when witnessing the power of fossil fuels in our basic needs often. Those that live in very cold climates and have the ability to conceive of what happens without control of temperature for living and working environments have further observations for contemplation. Try working a long day without adequate calorie intake in sub freezing temperatures without adequate calorie intake. Even with insulated clothing that is comfortable the body will let you know it needs energy intake to balance heat losses for continuance. I really do not understand how northern tribes made it. Having experienced hypothermia several times in my life in different degrees it seems a basic physics issue not a endurance issue to me and no laughing matter. My experience has been that protein as a sole energy source in diet does not cut it in cold climates you need carbs and carbs are not readily available in a hunter gatherer environment. You can use will to push the body but it is subject to physics and energy requirements like everything and these are accented in cold climates. The body communicates to the thing we call will in a progressively more urgent manner as its energy needs are not met.
Our roads seem to be pretty full here, as well. Every time I look at all of the vehicles, I think of all the fuel that is being used. Everything has gotten very big.
Too often, goods sold in stores are larger packages than customers really need. Businesses want to sell lots to customers, if they can even somewhat get their attention.
As for foxes not eating grapes — good idea. Foxes are canids, related to our canine friends, dogs. We are warned not to give grapes or wine to dogs, as their bodies cannot cope with it.
“Wine is made from grapes, and grapes are highly toxic to most dogs. Grapes have been known to cause kidney failure in dogs.”
Sorry, I am not an expert on the proper diet for dogs.
apparently, Aesop wasn’t either.
Dogs shouldn’t eat grapes in the USA because we use fluoride based insecticides (both commercial and organic) that dog’s livers lack the enzyme to reduce, so grapes in the USA make dogs ill or kill them because of the insecticide residue.
Probably not so good for humans either, grapes or rasins, unless you grow your own sans insecticide
Aesop’s reputation has been redeemed!
You would think he had interns researching this stuff on the web.
very good 🙂
I have muscadine grapes and my dog loves them. He also eats blueberries and figs and pears and acorns and dirt. I guess he believes, like me, that the more different stuff we eat the better chance we have of getting that one special molecule that our body needs. I haven’t tried the dirt yet.
The world doesn’t get it, I’m afraid. The Guardian reports on the rebirth of pronatalism. Leaders are looking at their falling populations and panicking. But how would they be able to support growing populations anyway?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/17/the-guardian-view-on-a-demographic-paradox-the-rebirth-of-pronatalism
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.>>
In the same issue, Larry Elliott says: “Kicking our growth addiction is the way out of the climate crisis. This is how to do it.”
He’s wrong, of course. It won’t stop the climate crisis. Nor can his green solutions work.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/17/growth-addiction-climate-crisis-economic-policies
It is hard to get the population numbers to work out right. There is such an oversupply of population from Africa and the Middle East, I am afraid they will continue to spill into Europe, including the UK, no matter what anyone does. It is only when living conditions are worse in Europe than in the countries these people come from that they will stay home.
Well that probably isn’t too far off given the EU’s sooperdooper sanctions regime.
I have started to look at coal as the main stream media thinks our oil problems can be solved with electric cars.
Sale of Vales Point: How will Czech brown coal baron Pavel Tykac with
business registered in Liechtenstein impact on NSW coal and energy markets?
http://crudeoilpeak.info/sale-of-vales-point-how-will-czech-brown-coal-baron-pavel-tykac-with-business-registered-in-liechtenstein-impact-on-nsw-coal-and-energy-markets
Your summary says:
“In 2015 the NSW government moved all the problems of its Vales Point power plant and associated coal mining to a domestic private investor. 7 years later, the same problems are set to be forwarded to an international company which expects to make money with a growing coal business. We are only one mining accident and one turbine failure/boiler explosion away from this export model to fail. Has Callide C not been a lesson?”
I am sure that a Czech company is desperate for coal to keep the lights on in the country. If there is any chance that it can get coal from this deal, the buyers will think that this is a good deal.
If Pavel buys an Australian mine to secure coal supplies for the newly acquired power plant but tries also to export coal from such a mine to the land-locked Czech Republic then this would be an extra-ordinary logistical exercise.
I wish Pavel good luck with Vales Point. VP5 is offline right now.
https://opennem.org.au/facility/au/NEM/VP/?range=7d&interval=30m
These are old bombs. It’s like driving a 1970s car.
From the Australian perspective foreign investors of energy assets introduce new risk factors for domestic energy supplies. They may, for example, not spend enough on maintenance. Above I referred to the Callide C power plant. A hydrogen explosion last year at that plant resulted in a complete shutdown and caused electricity prices to spike.
14/6/2021
NSW power spot price spikes May 2021 become regular (part 2)
https://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-power-spot-price-spikes-may-2021-become-regular-part-2
The plant is still under repair
Martin Armstrong reports on a growing trend in Canada, medical murder. If you are not paying taxes, you are no use to the government.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/canada/medical-murder-in-canada/
How times change! According to this article:
If you add the vax crowd into the assisted suicide numbers, it will show a healthy growth.
I see no problem … the MORE-ONS should be encouraged to end their lives.
They are worthless garbage – and quite stoopid as well
Crush them like Cockroaches
Fast, always the optimist. 😎
“If the world economy is pushed downward now, what would the result be?”
Black Swan? commodity market prices collapse, deflationary wave, collateral holders snatch
Loanshark for the IMF, top US diplomat for the middle east threatened Lebanon with the usual playbook
“I can see scenarios where there is disintegration … where there is just an unraveling.”
hmmmmmm
She also “noted that Lebanon’s collapse will enhance reconstruction of the nation free of Hezbollah, adding that Lebanese security forces may lose control of the situation in the country”
After their triumphs in Colombo and Islamabad, incense burns for the colour ops team to pull off a hat-trick in Beiruit. Just a side show really from the main act, Teheran
https://english.almanar.com.lb/1727200
It’s interesting that these IMF “deal for you” include clauses binding on other loan providers to restructure within the context of an IMF arrangement. How, one wonders, can these nation’s newly installed leaders with a clear conscience be acting in their own nation’s best interest???
Madness Blackmail Panama accts
none or all of the above
Are the decisions of Europe’s leaders to turn off their own energy evidence of FE’s two parallel worlds? Those in one, The Club, get to see the real world, a simulacrum of Monopoly in which they play wars and reources with nations and peoples (Go directly to the tumbril, do not pass Davos and do not collect 200 million) while we in the other are provided with MSM theatre … mortgages, student loans, unpleasant employment. All maya
Is there an “us” not in a real world while The Club members get to not only see the script we’re enacting for them but they themselves write and direct the performance we imagine we’re living as “true reality”? One a reality and one illusion, or are there two illusions, or could there be more, myriad of illusion, or reality or both?
The perception of there being a club which we ain’t in is by no means a recent inference as to the nature of the world. “All we like sheep” we’re told in the bible. De Sade explores the dichotomy in infinite minutiae in ‘Julliet, or Vice Amply Rewarded’ in which the thirst for thrill drives club members (aristocracy, of course) to ever higher levels of degradation, described as libertinage. Up to and including black masses in St Peters in which Julliet tortures and kills one of her parents, for kicks. When I saw Kubricks ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ I recognised the parallel to this immediately in his ultimate film, which I regard as one of his most culturally sigficant, perhaps even more so than Strangelove.
William S Burroughs proposes in his early novels a world where we below the salt are controlled by the elite, gods, extra terrestials, in fact any class or order of creature or even mineral, who contest in a Darwinian mode up there and down here with their human guineapigs, manipulated through the means of obsessive behaviours – from junk to sex practices, smoking to eating peanut paste
But now in the West our addicition to the illusion of wealth creation through financial architecture leaves our industries are largely gone east, an economy running on fumes, GDP growth foundering and the financial cardhouse of unrepayable debts private, commercial and all levels of govt debt facing certain breakage under CB ideological monetary policy. The US might still hold a marginal advantage in retained industry over the rest of the west, but the outcome of challenging militarily the rest of the world is of a different order of consequences
In yet another completely different interpretation from this same contemporary evidence it could be that those in the Club are just going along with their own group think, just as we are, but live a different version of illusion. Infalibility. Are they really in command deciding plotline and casting, or are there yet greater powers running their show and those we see as above the salt priviledged just as deluded as we? Is all this a theatre to test our virtue, if god is dead is everything then permitted, life after nukes, can Jōshū answer the monk “Does a dog have buddha nature”?
Meanwhile in Colombo the complaisant new govt furiously ruling up whatever gets pointed out to them by the usual suspects
https://colombogazette.com/2022/11/14/srilankan-airlines-hilton-colombo-slt-to-be-restructured/
Sri Lanka, Lebanon, and other countries with real financial problems have real problems in our world with not enough to go around.
Hi Gail, your new article came out on a dramatic day for the UK economy, with a 60 B £ ‘black hole’ in the state budget, massive tax rises and state spending cuts announced, 11% official inflation (the state-funded price cap on energy ends in April), the onset of what is forecast to be the longest recession on record and the deepest fall in living standards, &c.
I will pick out one aspect for your attention. UK real wages are already the same as they were in 2007, at the time of the financial crisis, and they are now projected to fall over the next two years back to the lowest that they have been since 2007, ie. to the same as they were in 2014.
“The OBR said that rising prices would erode real wages and reduce living standards in the biggest fall in six decades, down 7 per cent over the two financial years to 2023-24. This would wipe out the previous eight years’ growth, despite over £100bn of additional government support.”
https://www.ft.com/content/5daeca83-dc55-4371-bfe3-b20140cf1fe1
That puts UK real wages back to the level that they were at in 2014.
Real wages today are only barely above (basically the same as) what they were in 2007, and 2014 was the lowest that they fell post-2007:
(see figure 1.)
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2022/11/uk-voters-austerity-spending-cuts-opinion
So, the UK has made absolutely zero gain in real wages since 2007, and they are now forecast to return to their lowest level post-2007, ie. to 2014 levels. No gain whatsoever will have been made in UK real wage since the lowest level post-2007.
In fact, in 2014, the post-2007 low, they had fallen back to where they were in 2004 (see figure 1 linked above). So that will be 20 YEARS of zero real wages gain when they fall back to that level over the next two years, as forecast today.
If UK real wages had continued to increase since 2007 at the pre-2007 rate then they would soon be about double what they are now (I will have to go through my notes and calculate an exact figure for that), so about HALF of UK real wages will have been lost, from trend, since 2007.
The ‘bigger picture’, to date, in 2024, will be that UK real wages and living standards never recovered, not one penny, from the lowest point post-2007.
!!!!
…. unless the situation gets even worse by then…. The UK Tory government openly says today that it will hold back some of the measures, that it sees as necessary to ‘balance the books’ and which will further damage the economy and living standards, until after the next General Election in 2024…. purely for political partisans reasons…. That is the childish level that UK politics operates at, even in an economic and financial crisis….
“…. unless the situation gets even worse by then….”
oh dear, but it will.
The world economy is in a terrible situation. Every government, including the UK, has made way too many financial promises to its people. Liz Truss tried a different way of getting out of the UK’s financial problems, and it didn’t work.
I see the WSJ is saying, “Britain becomes first major Western economy to try to limit debt growth after piling on spending from pandemic and new energy subsidies.” Somehow, all of this spending has to get paid for.
I wish you well, as all of this rolls out. I suppose that there needs to be vote, before all these changes take place. Maybe there will be a compromise, with changes made incrementally rather than all at once.
Given the UK’s main remaining industry is money laundering and they stuffed that with Brexit, things ain’t looking great.
Small island, chock full of people with not much left in the way of natural resources. Race to the bottom with the other self-suiciding EU countries.
Oh ya … UK will be the Bloodbath of Bloodbaths if UEP does not complete.
Like a giant cage match hahaha
“[9] Conclusion. Figure 1 seems to imply that the world economy is headed for a troubled times ahead.
The world economy is a self-organizing system, so we cannot know precisely what form changes in the next few years will take. The economy can be expected to shrink back in an uneven pattern, with some parts of the world and some classes of citizens, such as workers versus the elderly, doing better than others.”
yes!
the Figure 1 slope of a 0.4% annualized decline 2017-2021 is a very “uneven pattern”, but calculates to a solid decline.
the future will be a bumpy ride down.
I think that you are right about the road being bumpy. And those folks not making a big contribution to the economy now are likely come out worst.
we have effectively monetized the planet. All of it that is capable of supporting human life belongs to someone. ie it has ‘value’, and can be traded, or fought over. (take your pick on that score).
All wars are fought in the pursuit/destruction of someone else’s resources.
But money cannot exist without energy to underpin it, which means that the indigenous energy that allows the planet to exist in the sense that we need it to be, must be rendered into cash.
Everyone wants cash, so we tear the planet apart to get hold of more and more of it.
The ambition of every millionaire is to make his second million, so the fight for resources goes on.
The endgame of that has been that about 1% of the world’s wealthiest people own as much as half the world’s population. And still there is demand for more. Musk buys Twitter on the assumption that $44Bn can be rendered into even more money.
Which shows that the demand for wealth is infinite, while the means of making it in a real sense (ie planetary resources) is finite.
We have, right now, reached that finite stage.
There is not enough energy in the system to keep 8 billion people alive.
But our leaders tell us that growth can go on forever, despite the fact that energy per capita can be clearly seen to be falling.
If energy per capita is falling, then cash per capita is falling and devaluing at the same time.
In everyday terms, this means the groceries you buy in the supermarket this month will cost more next month, and the month after that. Ad infinitum.
Food is energy. You either pay more for it, or go without. Food/energy will never be cheap again. As we pay more for food, less money/energy is available for peripheral business/services, so they will fail and accellerate the downslide.
The endgame of that is deprivation, and then starvation. Food aid is now endemic, foodbanks are becoming critical to survival. Millions are already starving, and migrating to where survival is a possibility.
This creates friction and conflict.
We are seeing it accellerate this century, but it started back in the 1930s.
yup, down 0.4% annually, and possibly accelerating.
“The endgame of that is deprivation, and then starvation.”
I’m okay with that; it’s quite natural for starvation to become widespread during population overshoot.
why do people get upset by Nature?
que sera sera.
they only get upset by nature, when nature turns on them.
until then—its somebody else’s problem
I agree. The world economy no longer has enough energy to sustain today’s population of 8 billion.
But it likely will, for a while.
yes, just a bit longer.
though I am guessing population decline begins in 2023, it’s very probable that next year remains at “about” 8 billion.
I very well could be wrong, but I don’t care.
I’ll go with 2032 as the first year of global population decline.
hopefully we can discuss this in 2033.
i/we are being sustained as long as our supermarkets are full
crisis only becomes real when your supermarket/ petrol station is empty
Well it does, but possibly only at a 1960s material standard of living.
By the way, Denmark does have several seasonal stores that store solar heat summer to winter. However, the technologiy was being tentatively investigated in the 1970s. As far as I can see, we did a lot on energy efficiency and renewables c.1975-85 and then pretty well lost interest until after peak oil.
The sharp rise (on top of the ongoing upward trend after the 2005 peak – the logo of my website and twitter account) in oil prices in May/June 2008 was caused by China going on the world oil market with an extra demand of 800 kb/d to cater for higher consumption during the Olympic Games in Aug 2008. It happened at a time of the year when Saudi Arabia etc. start burning oil in power plants for air conditioning. But the Saudis could not pump more. Insofar Matt Simmons was right in his book “The coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy”.
China had already fuel shortages in 2005 and did not want the world to see similar shortages. These were the most expensive Olympic Games the world ever had because this oil shock caused the financial crisis in 2009.
And by the way, in the Georgia war, Russia bombed the BTC pipeline in that very month of the Games.
I hadn’t thought about the Olympic Games in August 2008 in Saudi Arabia and needing to buy oil in advance.
The peak in oil prices came in July. This was when US debt was at its highest. I think that it was lower debt (and demand) that brought oil prices down.
They didnt bomb the BTC pipeline. It remained in operation.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121866234961938253
Some craters in a field which the WSJ says is ‘near’ the pipeline is not bombing the pipeline. The pipeline remained in operation because it was not in fact bombed.
“You can’t fix stupid”. – Ron White
Someone needs to update her on the Scamdemic.
In the US the middle class has been so devastated that many are now living paycheck to paycheck. Good luck counting on them to buy a $45K and up on an EV. The entire notion of switching to EV’s from an economic standpoint is laughable. The other problem facing EV’s is that we don’t even have enough rare earth materials to build out an entire phase to EV’s, just once. Let alone needing replacement batteries.
We have a better chance of seeing flying cars before we find ourselves going fully electric.
Perhaps golf carts with lead acid batteries would be a better choice for most people. All we need to do is change the rules of the road so that the roads will accommodate slow moving vehicles, like golf carts.
Bicycles with baskets behind them might also work as a substitute.
A single 18ft trailer will have a jolly time running over these golf carts
Will an actual Rothschild be at the wheel, or will they pay some random guy to do it?
Here’s where they told the random guy that he’d been chosen for the job (no need to ask who’s the boss in this picture).
https://twitter.com/KirbySommers/status/1567945974537936897?s=20&t=H-TeRfdYv-ZqLZQCfKUrqA
“I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, … The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply.” Nathan Rothschild
At what point did that stop?
Stop?
Why stop when you’re on a roll.
Have a look into the country within a country that is the Corporation. The place that even the monarch has to ask permission to enter and who’s lobbyist directs the speaker of the house.
Here’s a little peak into their world.
https://youtu.be/np_ylvc8Zj8
That’s the financial aspect.
There’s also two other such places.
The spiritual(Vatican).
The enforcers(Washington).
I often wonder about present events in uki with this in mind.
If you wanted to change the order of the world, but were concerned that certain groups in countries that believd they were free(particularly the military), might not go along, wouldn’t it be a good idea to slowly destroy all their equipment, after you’ve destroyed their means of production?
Uki seems to be the scrap yard for western military equipment.
Send it, then watch it get blown up and send more, until there’s none left.
Why is Charles not standing at attention?
Have you not heard Gail? According to Randall Carlson the breakthrough in contained plasma energetics has been achieved. He claims contact with secretive team in Maldives has cracked the code of unlimited energy using Tesla’s theoretical underpinnings.
What?….. you sound pessimistic?
I have faith that Randal is being conned.
This similacrum will now bear witness to increasingly desperate claims of miracles to divert the collective attention of the teeming billions as they start to starve out.
A miracle will certainly occur,….. just not the kind people wish for.
Blue Kachina/Nemesis object is incoming.
does Kachina come in any other colors?
blue is not my favorite.
Take it up with the four corners “ First Nations”….. it’s their prophecy. The incoming inhabited celestial object is bluish apparently.
Nemesis X object is not ascribed a color scheme to my knowledge.
The 6 year earlier Phoenix event will probably remove all human ability for detailed discrimination….. faces covered by hands in terror and all that.
We need solutions in large quantity, right now, unfortunately.
Had to find the clip. Sounded like he said ICE vehicles are easily retrofitted to run on, after we all grow dreadlocks, sacred geometry notebook sketches, wad it up & stuff it in the tank, the plasmoids will vibrate out unlimited energy into the retrofit torridal orbit motor/fuel system.
I like Randall though, made some good points made in the past about the Vostok ice core sample data
Hope he’s right tho and i can just give my car a sound bath and some reiki when it’s empty. If it works it will likely work for cargo ships and airplanes too.
No different from those who talk about German wonder weapons in 1945. Anything they might have come out would have been overwhelmed by US manufacturing power.
Welcome back
Sorry I was so slow. I was visiting my grandson and his parents up in the Boston area, for a while. It also takes a while for my articles to “gel.” I have some initial ideas and they don’t work out. I try something different, and then something else different. Eventually, something works.
Thank you for your thoughtful analysis and forum for others to comment.
Dennis L.
first??
Careful now; remember: The last will be first and the first will be last …