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It may be pleasant to think that the economies that are “on top” now will stay on top forever, but it is doubtful that this is the way the economy of the world works.
Figure 1 shows that, for the Advanced Economies viewed as a group (that is, members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)), GDP has been trending downward since the early 1960s; this is concerning. It makes it look as if within only a few years, the Advanced Economies might be in permanent shrinkage. In 2022, the expected annual GDP growth rate for the group seems to be only 1%.
What is even more concerning is the fact that the indications in the graph are based on a period when the debt of the Advanced Economies was growing. This growing debt acted as an economic stimulus; it helped the industries manufacturing goods and services as well as the citizens buying the goods and services. Without this stimulus, GDP growth would no doubt appear to be falling even faster than shown.
In this post, I will look at underlying factors that relate to this downward trend, including oil consumption growth and changes in interest rate policies. I will also discuss the Maximum Power Principle of biology. Based on this principle, the world economy seems to be headed for a major reorganization. In this reorganization, the Advanced Countries seem likely to lose their status as world leaders. Such a downfall could happen through a loss at war, or it could happen in other ways.
[1] The major factor in the downward trend in GDP growth seems to be the loss of growth of oil supply.
In the 1940 to 1970 period, the price of oil was very low (less than $20 per barrel at today’s prices), and oil supply growth was 7% to 8% per year, which is very rapid. The US was the dominant user of oil in this era, allowing the US to become the world’s leading country both in a military way (hegemony), and in a financial way, as the holder of the “reserve currency.”
Data on year-by-year oil consumption growth is not available for the earliest years, but we can view the trend over 10-year periods (Figure 2).
With the rapid growth in the world oil supply in the 1940 to 1970 timeframe, the US was able to help Europe and Japan rebuild their infrastructure after World War II. The US also did a great deal of building at home, including adding electricity transmission lines, oil and gas pipelines, and interstate highways. It also added a Medicare program to provide healthcare for the elderly. The emphasis at this time was on building for the future.
In the 1960s, the Green Revolution was started, aimed at increasing the quantity of food produced. This revolution involved greater mechanization of farming, the use of hybrid seeds that required more fertilizer, the use of genetically modified seeds, and the use of herbicides and pesticides. With these changes, farming became increasingly dependent on oil and other fossil fuels. The green revolution led to lower inflation-adjusted prices for food, as well as greater supply.
The 1970s was a time of adaptation to spiking oil prices and declining growth in oil supplies. At the same time, wages were increasing, and more women were entering the workforce, making the rise in oil prices more tolerable. There were also advances in computerization, changing the nature of many kinds of work.
The 1980s marked a shift to an emphasis on how to get costs down for the consumer. There was more emphasis on competition and leverage (the euphemism for borrowing). Instead of building for the future, the emphasis was on using previously built infrastructure for as long as possible.
Also in the 1980s, the Advanced Economies started to shift toward becoming service economies. To do this, a significant share of manufacturing and mining was moved to lower-wage countries. Transferring a significant share of industry abroad had the additional benefit of holding down prices for the consumer.
[2] Oil consumption growth and GDP growth seem to be connected.
Figure 3 shows that oil consumption growth was higher than GDP growth up until 1973, when oil prices started to spike. This was the period of greatly adding to infrastructure, using the abundant oil supply, as discussed in Section [1]
After 1973-1974, GDP growth tended to stay slightly above oil consumption growth as Advanced Economies started to focus on becoming service economies. As part of this shift, Advanced Economies began moving industry to lower-wage countries. This shift became more pronounced after 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol (limiting CO2 emissions) was promulgated. The Kyoto Protocol gave participating countries (in practice, the Advanced Economies) a reason to hold down their own local consumption of fossil fuels, which is what is measured in Figure 3 and most other energy analyses.
Figure 3 shows that even after moving a significant share of industry to offshore locations, there still seems to be a significant correlation between oil consumption growth and GDP growth. Even with a service economy, oil consumption growth seems to be important!
[3] Prior to 1981, increasing interest rates were used to slow economic growth.
With the rapid growth in oil consumption in the 1940 to 1970 period, the economy often grew rapidly despite rising interest rates. After World War II, government loans became available to returning veterans to buy homes, helping to make the usage of oil affordable.
It was only as growth in oil consumption slowed and interest rates rose to a high level in the 1979-1981 period that high interest rates created a major recession. At such high interest rates, builders of all kinds were discouraged from building. Hardly anyone could afford a new home. Businesses couldn’t afford new factories, and governments couldn’t afford to build new schools. Few people could afford new car loans.
On Figure 3, it is not surprising that GDP dipped at the same time as oil consumption shortly after 1981. The dip in oil consumption was larger because heavy users of oil, such as construction and manufacturing, were squeezed out by the high interest rates.
[4] Falling interest rates in the period 1981 to 2020, as shown in Figure 4, stimulated the economy in many ways.
The 1981 to 2020 period marked a time of generally falling interest rates, with short term interest rates typically being below long-term interest rates. Reducing interest rates tends to stimulate the economy in a variety of ways:
(a) As we all know, lower interest rates make monthly payments on new home mortgages lower. This means that more citizens can afford to purchase homes, leading to greater demand for new homes and their furnishings. Prices of homes tend to rise, partly because people with a given income can afford larger, fancier homes, and partly because more people in total can afford homes.
(b) Even on existing home mortgages, new lower rates can have an impact. In the US, mortgages are frequently set for a long term, such as 20 years, but they can often be refinanced at a lower rate if interest rates fall lower. In many other countries and in the US for business property, mortgage rates are set for a shorter term, such as 5 years. As the loans renew, the new lower rates become available. Borrowers are happy; there is suddenly a smaller monthly payment for the same property.
(c) With lower interest rates, there is demand for more homes to be built. This stimulates the construction industry and helps the prices of all kinds of built structures rise.
(d) A similar situation to (a), (b) and (c) exists for all kinds of items normally purchased using loans. New cars, new boats, and new second homes are affected, as are many kinds of business loans. Even loans taken out by governmental organizations become less expensive. It suddenly becomes easier to buy goods, so more goods are sold. Market prices can be higher because at the new lower interest rates, more people can afford them.
(e) There can be some benefit with respect to long-term bond holdings, if interest rates fall. Bonds generally promise to pay a stated interest rate over the life of the bond, say 20 years. If the market interest rate falls, the selling price of a high coupon-rate long-term bond increases because such bonds are worth more than a similar new bond with a lower coupon interest rate.
Financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies, pension plans, and endowment funds generally have long-term bonds as part of their portfolios. The higher value of bonds may or may not be reflected in financial statements, depending on the accounting rules applied. Sometimes, “amortized cost” is used as the carrying value until the bond is sold, hiding the gain in value. Conversely, if bonds are “marked to market,” then the higher value becomes immediately reported in financial statements.
(f) With mark-to-market accounting, insurance companies, banks and many other kinds of financial organizations can reflect the benefit immediately. As a result, for example, insurance companies may be able to sell policies more cheaply in a falling interest rate environment. (Of course, as interest rates start rising, the opposite is true. I believe that is part of the problem with the spike in insurance rates that the world has been witnessing in the past two years. But this is seldom mentioned because it is less well understood.)
(g) With falling interest rates, practically all kinds of asset prices rise. For example, the prices of shares of stock tend to rise, as does the price of farmland. Prices of office buildings tend to rise. People feel richer. They can sell some of their investments and profit from the sale. Tax rates on long-term capital gains are low in the US, further helping investors.
(h) If generally falling interest rates can be maintained for many years (1981 to 2020), gambling in the stock market starts looking like a great idea. Investment using borrowed funds looks like it makes sense. Buying derivatives seems to make sense. Adding more and more leverage makes sense. People rich enough to gamble in the stock market or the housing market begin to gain huge advantages over the many poor people whose wages remain too low to buy more than the basics.
These advantages tend to drive a wider and wider wedge between the rich and the poor. As diminishing returns become more of a problem, wage and wealth disparities become increasingly major issues. These disparities arise partly because of competition with low-wage countries for less-skilled jobs, and partly because of the need to pay higher wages to highly educated workers. They also arise because owners of shares of stock and of homes have tended to receive the benefit of significant capital gains as interest rates have fallen, for the reasons described above.
[5] Since 2020, interest rates have begun to rise in the Advanced Economies. It is difficult to see how a shift to higher interest rates can turn out well.
News write-ups about the rise in interest rates often say something like the following:
The Fed hiked interest rates a total of 11 times between March 2022 and January 2024, making borrowing more expensive for banks, businesses, and people in an attempt to curb rampant inflation.
However, Figure 4 shows that long-term interest rates (the blue line) started to rise much earlier than this–about the time the US started to borrow a huge amount of money to support the programs it initiated to keep the economy functioning at the time of the Covid restrictions in 2020.
This funding went back into the economy to provide income to would-be workers who were forced to stay home and to small businesses that needed additional funds to cover their overhead. Pauses in student loan repayments had a similar effect. At the same time, fewer goods and services were created because non-essential activities were restricted.
This combination of more wealth in the hands of citizens at the same time as a limited quantity of goods and services were being produced was precisely the right combination of actions needed to generate inflation. So, it was no wonder that there was an inflation problem.
Indirectly, high US borrowing has been, and continues to be, part of the inflation problem. Total goods and services produced in the world economy are not currently rising very quickly because diesel and jet fuel are in short supply, something I wrote about here and here. The US and other Advanced Economies keep issuing more debt in the hope that using this debt will help them purchase a larger share of the goods and services produced by the world economy.
It is not clear to me that this problem can be fixed since the US and the other Advanced Economies need to keep borrowing to support their economies and to fight for causes such as the Ukraine War. Note the downward trend in Figure 1!
One of the big problems with high asset prices and higher-than-zero interest rates is that farmers find that the cost of their land becomes too high to make it worthwhile to grow crops. This is especially the case for new farmers, who may need to buy their land using the higher-cost debt.
People often believe that farm prices will rise indefinitely, but Reuters reports that high borrowing costs and low food prices are cutting demand for farm equipment from John Deere, the world’s largest manufacturer of agricultural machinery. Without a flow of new farm equipment to replace that which is breaking or worn out, food production can be expected to fall.
Another issue is that apartment owners find a need to raise the rent on their units if the interest rate they are forced to pay rises or if the cost of property insurance rises. If they raise the rent of their units, this leaves renters with less income for other goods and services. Indirectly, today’s wage and wealth disparity problems tend to become greater than they were before the rise in interest rates.
In theory, if long-term (not just short-term) interest rates rise and remain higher, the many benefits of falling interest rates in Section [4] will be erased, and even reversed. The economy will be far worse off than it is now because of falling asset prices and defaulting debt. Financial institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, will be especially damaged because the true value of their long-term bonds will tend to fall. This can sometimes be hidden by accounting approaches, but ultimately unrealized capital losses will cause a problem as they did for Silicon Valley Bank.
The heavy use of debt and leveraging in the Advanced Economies makes these economies especially vulnerable to major financial problems if interest rates rise, or even if they stay at the current level. The bubble of debt and other promises (such as pensions promises) holding up the Advanced Economies seems vulnerable to collapse.
[6] The problem facing the people of the Advanced Economies is like the problem the biological world often faces.
The biological world is constantly faced with the problem of too many animals (for example, wolves and deer) wanting to occupy a given space with specific resources, such as water, sunlight, and smaller plants and animals to eat. In some sense, the world economy is an ecosystem, too, one that we humans have made. The Advanced Economies are already in a conflict with the less advanced economies, trying to decide which parts of the world will “win” in the battle over the resources needed for future economic growth.
The Maximum Power Principle (MPP) tries to explain who can be expected to be the winners and losers in an ecosystem when there are not enough resources to go around. I think of the MPP as an extension of the “survival of the fittest” or “survival of the best adapted.” The difference is that MPP looks at the functioning of the overall system, which, in this case, is the world economy.
The parts of the system (such as the individual people, the levels of borrowing, the government organizations, and the narratives governments choose to tell to explain the current situation) will be selected based on how well they permit the overall world economy (not just the Advanced Economies) to function. The goal seems to be to create as many goods and services as possible by dissipating all available energy in as useful a way as possible. In this way, the world GDP, which is a measure of the output of the useful work performed by the world economy, can stay as high as possible, for each time period.
Writings by scientists on this subject tend to be difficult to understand, but they may add some insight. One definition of MPP says that systems which maximize their flow of energy survive in competition. Mark Brown, professor emeritus at the University of Florida, says that under the Maximum Power Principle, “System components are selectively reinforced based on their contribution to the larger systems within which they are embedded,” and, “When resources are in short supply, they need to be used efficiently.” John Delong from the University of New Mexico says, “Winning species were successfully predicted a priori from their status as the species with the highest power when alone.”
I suggest that if these principles are applied to the competition between the Advanced Economies and the less advanced economies of the world, the Advanced Economies will lose. For example, the Advanced Economies have been falling behind the less advanced economies in industrial output.
In addition, the Advanced Economies of the world have fallen behind in the bidding for oil supplies:
Furthermore, the NATO allies seem unable to pull ahead of Russia in the Ukraine conflict. In theory, this should have been an easy war to win, but with limited manufacturing capability, it has been hard for the allies to provide enough weapons of the right kinds to win.
To me, this all points to the conclusion that in a conflict over scarce resources, the Advanced Economies are likely to lose. The conflict could come in the form of war, or it could simply be a financial conflict. Figure 1 shows that the Advanced Economies are already falling behind in the competition for economic growth, even with all the debt they are adding.
[7] There is a lot of confusion about what is ahead.
We don’t know what is ahead. The economy is a self-organizing system that seems to figure out its own way of resolving the problem of not enough resources to go around because of diminishing returns. The world economy seems to be headed toward reorganization.
I believe that the Covid-19 era represented one rather strange self-organized response to the “not enough oil to go around” problem. Figure 6 shows a clear dip in the amount of oil consumed in 2020, particularly by the Advanced Economies. Some of this reduced oil consumption continues, even now, because more people started working from home, saving on oil. Another helpful change was a huge ramp-up in the use of online meetings.
It is possible that new adaptations to limited oil supply may appear in as strange a way as the Covid-19 era did.
Another possibility is that the Advanced Economies, particularly the US, will encounter severe financial problems as the rest of the world moves away from the US dollar. Or the problem could be falling asset prices because of higher interest rates, causing many financial institutions to fail. Or the problem could be too much money being printed, but practically nothing to buy, causing severe inflation of commodity prices.
War may be a possibility because it is an age-old way of dealing with resource problems. For one thing, it becomes easy to raise debt to pay for a war. This debt can be used to hire soldiers and buy munitions. With the higher debt, the GDP of the economy can be expected to suddenly look better because of the stimulus given to it. The major “catch” is that picking a fight with a major competitor or two could prove to be disastrous.
Let us hope that our leaders make wise choices and keep us away from severe problems for as long as possible.
I like the Honest Sorcerer’s use of the term “energy cannibalism” When you are starving for energy, like food, you resort to cannibalism. But use of hydrogen for energy is going from the renewables frying pan of wind and solar to the fire of hydrogen. A lose, lose, lose proposition at every step pf the way.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/could-we-go-back-to-the-1950s-please?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=16win7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
A big Thank You, Hubbs, for the link and a must read by all here. Very well explained and must share…no, why depress folks about the hopelessness
of our predicament…let their last BAU days be unaware bliss..
BTW, our Fast Eddie did post a comment there and pointed out the issue of nuclear waste ponds….like his avatar of the actor Marty Feldman.
PS Art Bermans latest piece is a nice pair too
Not with you on this one:
“The future will be small, local and low-tech. ”
Nope, while our spaceship earth may be finite, the solar system is plenty large enough to meet all foreseeable needs. Starship is working on that. H is currently the only engineering alternative other than fusion which may surprise us by being only three years in the future.
I like H, I like solar collected on earth, I do not like the toxic waste of solar cells at the end of their life, perhaps Starship and Jupiter.
We seemingly need Pt, it is out there and it is the next chemical necessary for us to move forward.
Musk has a new generation of robots supposedly $10k/unit. These are our space workers/explorers, etc. This is not low-tech.
Came across a podcast regarding human’s desire to associate with negativism. Sort of skimmed it. Communism was a religion, only the west seems intent on trying it again.
NASA currently has a craft stuck in space along with two travelers. Going to be interesting times. Perhaps were they to read “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?”
Dennis L.
Whatever, doubt it matters at all what we think or envision for the future…it will unfold without our speculation.
It really matters not ….all thought corrupts…Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jay Hanson and Jason Bradford had an amazing talk somes years ago on a podcast worth a ,listen…RIP Jay …
https://www.resilience.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/reality-report-jay-hanson-interview-3-nov-2008.mp3
It is like a person denying his mortality even at the moment of death
No one will give a crap about such opinion when the Day arrives.
kul,
I have faced the end, it is not that bad. My regret was what I would not have time to learn.
Plans changed, I changed.
Dennis L.
A good point the Honest Sorcerer makes:
“finite resources always had the annoying tendency to run out — no matter how carefully we husband them.”
Agreed, things always run out, something always seems to be a replacement.
My mem is Starship, AI, robots, space and infinite for us minerals.
But we need the courage to look for them and face the issues no not always succeeding on the first try.
Dennis L.
Good article. Lots of moving parts and factirs to consider. Advanced economies are headed downward. How much the other economies advance depends on available world resources, their location and where they can be distributed and used. Overall world standard of living sill probably decrease and level off. Places with more resources and ability to use them will be more advanced. Where that will be is difficult to predict. Overpopulation in some areas will also a factor.
We live in a world with many things going on. I hope you will read some of my other posts as well.
The economic system seems to self-organize, based on where entrepreneurs can make a profit. Sometimes this is hard to predict.
World War III Is On The Way – Chris Martenson.
https://peakprosperity.com/us-missiles-kill-russian-children-at-the-beach-israel-targets-lebanon/
He posted a 15 minute preview video but he makes an observation (at the 11 minute mark) that total net energy is way down and once the neocons get their way, this war will do irreparable damage to our civilization, because the energy needed won’t be there to repair and rebuilt society.
WW3 is always a few months away.
Slowly at first…
yes slowly at first in the 2020s…
que sera sera.
and anyway, war is natural.
Nuclear war?
war (using the most powerful weapons presently available) is natural.
May be true, biology. Chimps don’t get along all that well apparently.
Dennis L.
Can we have a war if no one shows up? Western societies will not be conscripted en masse; I believe they will refuse.
push buttons, launch missiles.
like video games.
A free 15 minutes selling more videos.
Dennis L.
Re: Maximum Power Principle (MPP)
This PhD thesis focuses on Nietzsche’s view of how power structures form by subjugating lesser organisational forces to themselves.
They select what is useful in their environment and order that to themselves and they dispense of what is useless or obstructive.
Thus they augment their power and that allows them to subjugate further weaker forces.
“existence is framed as a constellation of forces vying to augment their power”
“existence is solely composed of actively (even consciously) organising forces, which relentlessly strive to overpower and incorporate those of weaker relative power”
Tbh. I thought that stuff was obvious and frankly unmissable in the later books of Nietzsche but it seems not to a lot of commentators.
There are passages in TWTP where he reflects on the tendency of the ‘whole’ system to maximise its power and that is not covered here.
https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/60927
Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Conflict and the Logic of Organisational Struggle
…. Thirdly, he uses a separate vocabulary of conflict (Kampf) to describe struggles directed at the organisation of complex systems – that is, struggles aimed at the Einverleibung (incorporation), Assimilation (assimilation) and Herrschaft (domination) of certain entities. This form of struggle is then married to another which is directed towards the Unterdrückung (repression), Zurückstoßen (repulsion), Ausscheidung (excretion) and even Zerstörung (destruction) of certain entities.
…. I also argue that commentators have neglected the most significant form of conflict in Nietzsche’s thought. This form is characterised by a combination of measured and unmeasured conflict, and Nietzsche thinks of it as necessary for any form of life – individual or social – to exist and extend itself. We might conceive of this species of struggle as analogous to the biological processes of nutrition and digestion. Through these, an organism simultaneously engages in a measured struggle to incorporate useful material from its environment and in an unmeasured manner to exclude material that presents itself as redundant or harmful. This dualistic struggle is what I term organisational conflict on account of the fact that both incorporation and exclusion form part of a single overarching impetus to achieve healthy organisation.
…. The question we therefore have to ask in Chapter 4 is: how does the later Nietzsche reconceptualise organisational struggle without the metaphysical fundaments of his earlier philosophy? I reconstruct how he uses his readings in the natural sciences to develop a non-metaphysical account of organisation. This involves a detailed exegesis of his theory of the world as will to power (Wille zur Macht), according to which existence is framed as a constellation of forces vying to augment their power. According to this theory, organisation results from certain forces within the self or society taking control and unifying the subordinate forces into a functioning unit. As we see at the end of Chapter 4, for the later Nietzsche, it is insight into the nature of the world as will to power – rather than some kind of metaphysical essence – that sets the cogs of organisation into motion.
…. My thesis in this chapter has been that the principal form of conflict prescribed by the later Nietzsche is one that combines measured and unmeasured struggle. As in UB, I have called this species of conflict organisational struggle and have explicated how Nietzsche conceives of it as a remedy to the problem of disgregation at both an individual and collective level.
We concluded that if disgregation was seen to persist as a problem for the later Nietzsche (which it was), and he wanted to prescribe organisational conflict as a remedy for this, he needed to give an account of how such conflict could engender functional coherence without recourse to his earlier metaphysical presuppositions. Through a reconstruction of his notion of the will to power, I expounded how he drew on Roux (among other natural scientists) to formulate a purely immanent model of how zweckmäßige [expedient, useful, purposeful] organisations arise. The core of his argument was that existence is solely composed of actively (even consciously) organising forces, which relentlessly strive to overpower and incorporate those of weaker relative power. The zweckmäßig appearance of the parts is therefore purely the result of the way in which these parts have been contingently shaped in their reciprocal struggle with the superordinate organisation.
MPP is natural.
New piece from Art Berman:
https://www.artberman.com/blog/metacrisis-getting-honest-about-the-human-predicament/
“Extreme Global Hunger: The UN Warns That Some Of The Poorest Areas Of The World Have “Zero Harvests” Left”
https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/extreme-global-hunger-the-un-warns-that-some-of-the-poorest-areas-of-the-world-have-zero-harvests-left/
we all die, and some die earlier than average due to lack of food.
famine is natural.
Worrisome!
Don’t worry, Elon is gonna take us all to Mars. It’s zero-percent degraded and even has some old buildings that can be repurposed. There are those who have believe they have evidence that it was nuked in ancient times. So there may be some trace background radiation, but we’ll send Norman first to test it out. And if Mars is actually not livable, then he can debunk that theory for us too.
No need for doom if Saudi reserve figures are accurate – 260 billion barrels = 7 years global consumption meaning we get to 2030 with ease:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/visualizing-saudi-aramcos-massive-oil-reserves
even if those figures are gross exaggerations, The Core will roll along with BAU to 2030 with ease.
with ease!
so easy!
Especially as we will be rolling downslope all the way!
degrowth takes very little effort.
roll with the changes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1ml05Ty5Ao&ab_channel=REOSpeedwagon-Topic
(you can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish)
Except that, when Saudi Arabia finally is the world’s sole “energy reserve,” they will mercilessly control output to maximize income. (Art Berman’s latest indicates that US output will begin irrevocable decline this year.)
Let’s hope they are as smart as the average parasite, who takes only as much as they can from the host without killing it.
the saudi problem isnt oil
it is no use to them unless we infidels take it away an burn it—they tried it years ago, and quadrupled the price.
then they had to pump four times as much to sustain their lifestyle.—which was paid for by western industry
this time round they dont have ”four times as much”——so they screw themselves if they make it unaffordable.
and they know that
Iran is full of oil and natural gas, I believe. Iraq still has a lot of oil. Qatar still has vast amounts of natural gas. Qatari LNG is partly what keeps the UK warm in winter since it used up most of its own gas.
I’ve no idea when that contract expires. The UK built a new gas pipeline in a panic ~15 years ago to transport gas from Milford Haven, the port, to the main pipeline network.
Also worrisome!
Berman’s conclusion:
“We need a holistic approach, one that moves fluidly from the whole to the parts and back again. Otherwise, we’re simply shifting problems around, likely making everything worse in the process.”
too bad, no “holistic approach” is coming.
it’s full speed ahead pedal to the metal BAU until it fails.
That would be the Maximum Throttle Principle.
In the movies, I’ve seen Clint Eastward and Tom Cruise doing it in airplanes and Harrison Ford and Sean Connery doing it with submarines.
MTP to the 2030s!!
Dennis was talking about how wet it has been in Southern Minnesota. Now there are news reports out that a dam in Southern Minnesota is near failing.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/rapidan-dam-in-minnesota-is-in-imminent-failure-condition-officials-warn/ar-BB1oOb1p
Rapidan Dam in Minnesota is in ‘imminent failure condition,’ officials warn
The dam is 112 years old.
Not confirmed, but a claim has been made.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/lockbit-30-cyberattack-on-the-federal-reserve-a-critical-wake-up-call-for-global-cybersecurity/ar-BB1oMVUK
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/lockbit-ransomware-group-federal-reserve-hack-claim/
Ransomware group threatens Federal Reserve—claims it hacked America’s ‘banking secrets’
The cybercrime group claims it grabbed ’33 terabytes’ of data from the Fed.
It would be hilarious if it turned out to be Eastern Europeans aka Ukrainians behind the ransomware threats. It appears, according to a ZH article posted today that the nationwide ransomware attack on the 15,000 US auto dealerships might be paid to the “Eastern Europeans” who are behind the attack.
Interesting point!
Behind a paywall, but it might be right.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/goldman-explains-why-trump-victory-will-pop-techai-bubble
Goldman Explains Why A Trump Victory Will Pop The AI/Tech Bubble
Not an expert.
Assume high tariff, money stays in US, we have run this experiment in reverse when we off shored manufacturing and went “service.” This went to useless degrees, we need engineers and engineering mentality, we need makers.
“The bank goes on to caution that tariffs would create a headwind to the performance of stocks with high international revenue exposure due to the risk of retaliatory tariffs as well as heightened geopolitical tensions.” This seems like a feature to me, not a fault.
As for the tensions, bring the troops home while they still have arms and legs attached. Should some faction decide to come to the US and fight it out, send them to LA for a turf war, will be a short overseas tour for those adventures.
We run deficits of trillions, if a software company makes a few billion less perhaps it makes no difference to US economy. We have a border issue, we don’t have to go half way around the world to pick a fight. Of course, the border probably has little need of multimillion dollar patriot missiles.
For those of you who miss it, I care about my country, the US. For all our faults, this is still the place where much happens.
The old in leadership needs to move on, it is the turn of the young.
Dennis L.
A copy/paste from Beamspot comments section .
James Charles
James’s Substack
9 hours ago
You may ‘like this’?
Not ‘BAU’?
‘Most’ ‘economic thinking’ is ‘short run’ and ‘redundant’?
‘It’ ignores the ‘supply side’?
‘Growth’ {and ‘civilisation’} depends upon ‘cheap’ FF – those so called ‘halcyon days’ are ‘over’. ?
“The crisis now unfolding, however, is entirely different from the 1970s in one crucial respect… The 1970s crisis was largely artificial. When all is said and done, the oil shock was nothing more than the emerging OPEC cartel asserting its newfound leverage following the peak of continental US oil production. There was no shortage of oil any more than the three-day-week had been caused by coal shortages. What they did, perhaps, give us a glimpse of was what might happen in the event that our economies depleted our fossil fuel reserves before we had found a more versatile and energy-dense alternative. . . . That system has been on the life-support of quantitative easing and near zero interest rates ever since. Indeed, so perilous a state has the system been in since 2008, it was essential that the people who claim to be our leaders avoid doing anything so foolish as to lock down the economy or launch an undeclared economic war on one of the world’s biggest commodity exporters . . . And this is why the crisis we are beginning to experience will make the 1970s look like a golden age of peace and tranquility. . . . The sad reality though, is that our leaders – at least within the western empire – have bought into a vision of the future which cannot work without some new and yet-to-be-discovered high-density energy source (which rules out all of the so-called green technologies whose main purpose is to concentrate relatively weak and diffuse energy sources). . . . Even as we struggle to reimagine the 1970s in an attempt to understand the current situation, the only people on Earth today who can even begin to imagine the economic and social horrors that await western populations are the survivors of the 1980s famine in Ethiopia, the hyperinflation in 1990s Zimbabwe, or, ironically, the Russians who survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.” ?
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/07/01/bigger-than-you-can-imagine/ https://www.facebook.com/cosheep
“The problem with both visions of the future – and the spectrum of views between them – is a fundamental misunderstanding of the collapse which has begun to break over us. This is that each assumes the continuation of that part of industrial civilization which is required to make their version of the future possible, even as the coming collapse wipes away ALL aspects of industrial civilization. Most obviously, nobody had developed even an embryonic version of the renewable energy supply chain which is the essential first step to turning non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) into the envisioned “renewables” upon which the promised techno-psychotic future is to be built. That is, until it is possible to mine the minerals, build the components, manufacture and transport the technologies without the use of fossil fuels at any stage in the process, then there is no such thing as “renewable energy” in the sense which the term is currently promoted. “
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/07/19/our-predicament-re-stated/?fbclid=IwAR3VlY4z4EV1kM6nTSv2FjmBAmvCEGjqqhiwuc1zQtSn3sIcGDGdqiNaN0Q
The thing that amazes me is the fact that while most economic thinking is short-term and redundant, and ignores the supply side, it somehow is used by the self-organizing system that makes things work out in a reasonable way.
The spiking oil prices of the 1970s really reflected a combination of rapidly flattening world oil supply, taking place at the same time as the demand from the world continued to rise.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/welfare-offices-providing-voter-registration-forms-illegals-without-proof-citizenship
Welfare Offices Providing Voter Registration Forms To Illegals Without Proof Of Citizenship
Illegal migrants are being provided with voter registration forms without requiring proof of citizenship, the NY Post reports.
The forms, available in every state except Arizona – which recently passed a law barring the practice on state (but not federal) forms, are used to obtain welfare benefits, driver’s licenses, and in many cases mail-in ballot voter registration forms.
There is currently no federal law requiring proof of citizenship on voter forms, though it is illegal to lie and claim citizenship in order to cast a ballot in a federal election.
So if an applicant says they are a US citizen, that’s enough to be able to register to vote.
Not good enough. Border patrol should be required to register migrants to vote as they come across the border.. As a alternative it could be be part of the software package in the phone they are given that displays their court date a decade in the future that serves as a visa.
No sarcasm:
Should the Amerindians have refused to give ballots to the Pilgrims?
Guess it is biology.
Dennis L.
24 June 2024
Peak Oil Update 2023 – part 1 NGLs
https://crudeoilpeak.info/peak-oil-update-2023-part-1-ngls
Thanks for the nice charts.
Another part of the problem is that natural gas liquids are not worth very much in the market place. It is hard for oil companies to cover their costs and make a profit, if most of their production is NGLs. They will quit and go home. Oil sells at a much higher price.
In theory, it would be possible to make better use of NGLs by adapting vehicles so they could use NGLs (theoretically possible, at least for small vehicles I expect), but there would be a big transition cost. It is not clear that this transition cost could be recovered before the one-time bonus of NGL’s runs out.
A guess: That is part of the problem with oil production reported in barrels. If the barrels have a high component of NGL the energy content is not equivalent to barrels from say the 1970’s.
Dennis L.
Art Berman reported recently (interview with Nate Hagens, I think) that the energy content of a barrel of oil may be as little as 90% of what it was just ten years ago.
This is due to a combination of natural gas liquids (mainly, propane and butane), refinery gain, and US fracked oil, which is much lighter that Brent or West Texas Intermediate.
Due to the “lighter” nature of a barrel of oil, the diesel obtainable is only about 60% of what it was ten years ago. And diesel runs the world.
Must read on peak oil for a better understanding . Use Google translate .
https://beamspot.substack.com/p/destilado-de-petroleo
One thing this article is dealing with the false belief:
“ When oil begins to become scarce, its price will rise (first part), that will make other alternatives cheaper (second part), and that will cause these other alternatives to take over (third and last part) . ”
. . .
“That phrase is fallacious and relativistic. In reality, what it should say is that other alternatives will become cheaper than oil . It is relative .”
. . .
“If oil rises to $250/barrel, in comparison, the equivalent $200/barrel of electricity will be cheaper than oil, and what this hackneyed assertion says will be true.
However, you can take it for granted that electricity will also rise, equal to $240/barrel equivalent, also cheaper than oil, but more expensive than before . . .
“The inevitable result is that energy , whatever it is, will be more expensive .”
. . .
“But if electricity is expensive, even if it is cheaper than oil, that does not mean that one will be replaced by the other . Let’s add that the replacement cost is not zero: you have to buy a new device that runs on electricity to replace the one that used oil… and it is not always possible.
So in reality, what happens, and it has been demonstrated many times, is that with such expensive energy… the economy goes to waste, demand drops, it is destroyed, and that is why the price of oil drops again. quickly, which dismantles the first part of the message.
Furthermore, it also destroys the third part of the theory due to typical economic myopia: a rapid drop in the price of oil, together with a destruction of demand, cuts short a process of energy substitution, and extends the economic problem to the substitute.
This happens because those who study economics rarely take into account several factors, especially one: time .”
——–
The article goes on and on, in different directions, to a significant extent about why de-growth pushes an economy down.
I would also add that if oil becomes expensive, food becomes expensive. People’s incomes aren’t arbitrarily high. They will stop buying less essential items, such as advanced education and medical care. They will buy new cars less often. International vacations will disappear. Discretionary parts of the economy will start failing, pulling the whole economy down.
Gail , the author is your fan . His comment — Gail is one of my references and a big part of this article draws from her wisdom. By far the Peak Oil writer with better explanations on the economic issues of Peak Oil .
Kudos .
Thanks for the information.
if the energy you have to ”buy” rises in money-price—that doesn’t matter so long as the energy you can ‘earn” is greater in real terms…..which what has been happening for the last 150 years or so
trouble starts when that equation is reversed.
when you ”earn” less energy in physical terms, than the energy you are able to ”buy” to sustain your expected lifestyle, then your lifestyle itself collapses.
this why moneyprinting cannot work.–money cannot be substituted for energy.
people or civilisation, the same rule applies
this is the current reality that few accept or understand.
Exactly,
This is why with a “cubic mile of Pt” as long as the energy out is greater than the energy required to acquire it most likely it works. As a bonus, there are few if any exogenous costs, ie. pollution costs, but…..
Problem: at MREA last weekend was informed that the “recycling” cost of a solar panel is say $25/panel. Toxic waste. So let’s assume panel lasts 25 years, about a $1/year which does not include removal or transportation costs of panel.
Inquired about cost of removing solar panels for roof repairs, silence I tell you, silence.
Purchased a somewhat used, old wind turbine sitting in the weeds. Well, one never knows. Have a high silo with no top, looks like a good place for a turbine.
Think Amish are smarter, sometimes windmills for water, skip electric lights and skip their children spending endless hours ona phone with their thumbs.
Dennis L.
The Amish are hopelessly inbred.
I don’t know whether they are smart, but I do know that their doom will arrive in a few generations as the inbreeding catches up with the.
The end of growth in the Permian is now in the rear view mirror . Read the comments .
https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/and-the-forecasts-just-keep-on-comin?origin=notification
Comment in response to a very optimistic article about future oil production:
“The “efficiency boost” in 2023 was from completion of DUC’s [drilled but uncompleted wells]. That created the illusion that fewer rigs can produce more oil.” … To me DUC’s were one of the top 10 dumbest things the tight oil sector did. You can’t do dumb stuff like that unless you are using other people’s money, so I consider it all grossly inefficient.” . . . “Plugging costs have increased 40% the past 5 years alone and just wait on that. ”
Anne says:
” [More recent wells] have a lot more gas and condensate, hence lower total revenue $ for the same volume of hydrocarbons coming out of the ground. . .
“The next domino to fall will be to see whether any of the new proposed crude export terminals actually breaks ground. ” . . . “if anyone sees press releases announcing that a big producer has agreed to supply an LNG terminal with a bcf or more a day of feedgas for 15 years I’d love to see it.”
Mike:
” Light tight oil is getting lighter and its value to the rest of the world will start declining. Heavy sour below 35 API, the good stuff, is disappearing every day.”
Anne:
Shows image showing that the number of rigs has historically been a leading indicator of production in Martin County. These are now falling. If oil production follows falling rig count, it will be coming down soon. Recent estimates of production may, in fact, be too high if this effect is missed.
Other comments talk about the fact that the optimistic article is written by analysts for a bank and that the whole article aligns with the narrative we are being told to believe.
IEA says there is a glut and Rystad says there is a deficit . WTF .
To almost everyone’s surprise, Rystad Energy says oil supply will not grow in 2024.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/oil-supply-growth-set-taper-2024-rystad-energy -says-2024-06-17/#:~:text=The%20total%20global%20oil%20supply,with%20no%20oil%20supply%20growth.
“June 17 (Reuters) – Global oil supply growth will likely slow this year, Rystad Energy said in a report on Monday, with a high possibility of a further decline in 2025.
The consultancy cited the recent extension of voluntary cuts by OPEC+, as well as the group’s demand forecast for the outlook.
Total expected oil supply growth is now approaching 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 2024, compared to 900,000 bpd at the beginning of 2024. month, Rystad estimates.”
Rystad is saying that 2024 will show slowing growth in oil supply, not that it will not grow.
Regarding 2025, it seems to be saying that growth will slow further.
We are dealing with a second derivative problem.
I am sure that Rystad is showing lower total oil production than the IEA, and I expect that Rystad is closer to right. So, you are sort of right.
Freedom of the Sea was proposed by Hugo Grotius of Holland in 1609, coincidentally when Holland controlled the seas.
Various navies collided here and there until the Battle of Trafalgar led to the domination of the seas by the British, later transferred to Americans.
The Battles of Midway and Coral Sea continued the Freedom of the Sea doctrine for 80 more years, until the Houthi ended it this year.
Whatever happened to the aircraft carrier Eisenhower, it was shown that the Houthis, who own no ships, could close sea lanes at their whim, which has ended the Freedom of the Seas.
Now Malaysia, who can control the Straits of Malacca, is trying to join the Brics. Singapore is dependent on food from the mainland, and like 1942, when the Malaya peninsula is overrun, it cannot be maintained for a long time.
Without the Freedom of Seas, US hegemony is meaningless, and the tech innovations and so forth all end.
Thank you. Interesting as always. Houthis claimed a hit on the Eisenhower and its headed for home. Nonsense I’m sure.
Looking to me freedom of the seas was dependent on nations getting along.
Probably the final year of peace before a final descent.
No number of starships are going to save the failing western economies, like the argonauts unable to save the flailing Mycenean civilization with their meaningless exploits.
With a dead dollar, Elon Musk or whoever cannot finance any big projects. The dollars of the moguls will mean nothing ; only gold, silver or some kind of tangible assets, which will be too precious to be wasted in frivolous space adventures. It will be like trading a fresh bread for a piece of shit.
The West still has a fight or two. Doesn’t matter who wins in November, just a distraction, since the decisive battle was already fought at Bakhmut last year, which few people remember now.
I enjoy what I can. The battle is lost. Those who are still deluded will believe what floats their boat, and I am perfectly fine with that kind of philosophy, but I won’t join itl.
“Probably the final year of peace before a final descent.”
I doubt it, I bet it will be at least two years.
“I enjoy what I can. The battle is lost.”
fairly good attitude there so congrats to you.
que sera sera.
*Two* years? going out on a limb aren’t we David? I think in DC a number of people are saying, we own subs and nukes, some of which may not work, and that’s it. I don’t want to die, they will say. It will be hair rising, but they might get picked out one by one, like so many Orthodox patriarchs, in exchange for a fat bank account and a villa in Kish Island.
It could be that Washington DC is only one provocation away from being nuked while Congress is in session. Or from having North America’s and Europe’s electronic infrastructure fried by the mother of all EMPs.
If these exotic weapons are real, of course. And if the whole conflict isn’t some kabuki play by the elites.
For the West, the issue comes down to how to escalate the crisis without making the opponent loose their rag. The people running the North America and Europe are unlikely to back down and accept a Russia imposed solution to the Ukraine issue without North America and Europe getting a bloody nose first.
Has the West worked out how bloody is the nose it going to have to get, or has it considered that perhaps Russia going to decide that it needs to decapitate the West in order to secure its own survival?
agree with you davidinamonth and so do the elders there is only two years to save the planet in one of my earlier comments i posted this declaration from the elders stating to those that are in the ‘know” that there is only two years left to save the planet of course the regular commenters may have missed the relevance of the cryptic post when the elders say 2 years to save the planet in their climate change jargon they are really saying ‘the shite is going to hit the fan’ in respect to diminishing returns of the fossil fuel , I expect a permanent lockdown with most probably forced vaccinations for everybody their plan to reduce the worlds population to 500 million persons to bring in Bau – lite for the survivors will not be pretty but at least the elders have done us a courtesy by letting us know that their are only two years left they put out their statement in april 2024 so it might be a bit less than two years.
Man I hope not.
Perhaps no better than Ehrlich who thought the world would starve in the early seventies.
Dennis L.
If they listened to Ehrlich maybe we would have gained a centuries to obtain your cubic mile of PT.
Some people think the jabs affect fertility. Yes, mouse studies show LNP accumulation in the ovaries, but all the same, this chart shows birth rates dropped fast for years prior to the pandemic or jabs. The data includes 2023.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf
Peak fertility in 2007. so we never recovered from the GFC/peak conventional oil.
but where is the depop?
2024 could be peak dark chocolate but I would still like to see the start of depop.
am I wanting too much?
No, we all deserve to see depop. I have long said before 2030. Hang in there.
by 2040 depop will be off the charts how low will be oil consumption i predict 20 million barrels a day. BAU…lite forever baby.
One thing doesn’t exclude the other.
But talking of a general problem which has been occuring since a long ago, helps the narrative that mRNA covid jabs were not so harmful for our health on a specific historical context.
It is a little strange to me that the big dip in briths is in 2020. Over half of those babies were conceived in 2019. Essentially none of those mothers had had the covid vaccine. This would imply that the recession started in 2019. Or that there were more abortions. Or something else.
The dip in births in 2020 is small in absolute percentage terms and the y-axis doesn’t start at zero. Since not all births go to full term, a pandemic-scare-related decrease from the March-April timeframe could explain it.
The pandemic scare in the US didn’t start until mid-March 2020 in the US. Essentially all of the drop in births must have been from fewer babies conceived, prior to the time the covid scare started.
The vaccine effect couldn’t have started until 2021. But there was a big effect of temporarily waiving student loan payments. This made families with student loan problems much more interested in having a baby while their financial obligations were low.
From the comment on an article by Kurt Cobb on the new pandemic bird flu scare .
” When I went through a British agricultural college in the 1970s, it was said that the largest number of cows one person could handle [physically plus all the information on the cows like their name, breeding and doing the actually farming – cultivation, harvesting and feeding and to spend time with your animals as they grazed and cudded] was 70 to 75. All cows went out to eat the bulk of their ration with just ‘cow cake’ at milking time according to yield curve and breeding status hence the need to be able to recall everything about each of your cows. Cows stayed in the herd quite a long time. It amazed me to find when I came to Canada that dairy farmers kept all heifer calves as replacements because the average life of a cow being milked was 3 or maybe 4 years.
Now with a dairy herd the number of milking cows can be hundred and thousands, cows have come to resemble battery hens – just a lump of productive meat to be abused to churn out milk for profit. Very much the same way as we have be doing with our world especially with neoliberalism’s raping of the world resources including all living things that are not wealthy.
https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2024/06/what-h5n1-scare-tells-us-about.html
I am sure the animals eat lots of antibiotics, and those antibiotics make it through their system to humans, at least to some extent. We also get a dose of the round-up used to keep weeds down, indirectly through our food. It makes a person worry, and also eat a lot less meat.
Not sarcastic. All the women going to college, getting in debt to take courses in anything but engineering.
Now they are empowered, empowered to work as wage slaves to pay off college debts.
Dennis L.
Seriously?
With the preponderance of testimony and evidence from professionals in reproductive health about the massive increase in serious problems and the testimony from the vast majority of women whose menstrual cycle was radically disturbed this is what you offer? Do you seek out lame tidbits of disinformation like this or what?
IMO Any argument that these countermeasures were somehow either safe or effective is at this point in time beyond lame. This I’d particularly agrievous in regards to assertions regarding reproductive health where immediate and deleterious effects were immediately observed by women who were told it stays in the arm a blatant lie. I would say that’s a opinion shared by 90% of people regardless of political beliefs at this time. almost no one is injecting these countermeasures into their body now.I enjoy your posts you seem intelligent. Believe me you are not going to convince anyone the countermeasures were safe with these little info adverts. I believe you are smart enough to know that. My guess is you are a health professional with guilt about administering the countermeasures. Am I incorrect?
I think that this kind of information is interesting.
Incomes were higher and expenses lower during covid, making it a good time for older women who had put it off to have babies. My daughter and her friends got pregnant. It may be that that effect was greater than any effect from the vaccine.
It is my understanding that in Europe there was more of a drop off in pregnancies.
Data is always interesting. His reference to the data at the beginning as a conclusion was ridiculous. He obviously has a background and is far more intelligent than to make the assertion he did. If he made that sort of conclusion on any other topic in his profession he would be ridiculed. That he feels the need to offer the conclusion he did when he obviously knows what constitutes a professional opinion is more interesting than the data.Me I’m a opinionated ass. I happen to like women and I think their reproductive systems are just fine without addition of spike protein in any quantity. I particularly don’t appreciate the lies that were told us in regard to reproductive health. The testimony about the damage the countermeasures did to reproductive health are numerous from professionals with many years experience in the field. Just the anecdotal evidence experienced my the majority of women in regard to their menstrual cycle alone tells you this stuff was not kosher. The assertion that these countermeasures were proven safe in the area of reproductive health by the standards of a pharmaceutical product is ludicrous.
Read my response. You read what wasn’t there.
PS – I know about the ovarian deposits, Syncytin-1 homology and downstream possible risks that might result. I am not saying definitively that it had no effect, I am proving with the most important metric that it didn’t have a large effect on live births, live births being the most important and clearest measure of reproductive effects. The big-picture reproductive result is in the data and the data is clear cut. If you want to say the data is faked by the CDC, that’s another matter entirely.
You are looking at results from expermentation. Let’s just say your correct your not but let’s say you are. What you are saying is we had no idea how this substance effected reproductive health but we administered it anyway. We experimented on you and it turned out fine.
Then you take this statistic and use it to deny the testimony of the professionals who actually worked in reproductive health and saw the stillbirths and numerous other problems arise. How would you feel if someone did this in your specialty?
Was it ok to lie? This substance distributed all over the body. It particularly accumalated in the ovaries. Its efficiency was crap. A completely novel technology was administered experimentally to the largest population in history and your trying to justify it by taking a single statistic and say it turned out OK after the fact. It’s like a drunk saying I didn’t kill anyone just wrapped the car around the tree while he eyes the next bottle.
If it was a choice between a concentration camp and a jab I would go where sinopharm was available and get injected with it rather than this novel technology. I cant think of a stupider approach to the problem.
Are you using the results from the experimentation to justify new renditions of this novel technology be administered in new experiments?
Do you support the continuing creation of Chimera viruses that clearly caused the problem in the first place?
You ignore both the causal and advocate experimentation on humans with your it turned out ok conclusion that contradicts health professionals actually working in the field of reproductive health.
If the medical profession wants any respect from the public on this these issues need to be addressed. If you presented your arguments to me as a patient I would politely decline medical treatment frOM you. You would go fine just die. Ha ha. Which is actually fine with me as long as I don’t get gangster big pharma DOD countermeasures injected in my body against my will.
I don’t smoke or drink. I intake a little too much sugar. I’m about 20 pounds overweight from fighting weight. I get decent aerobic exercise but I could get more. Besides that it’s in god’s hands. I don’t want your products or services. I know people feel different. Their choice.
Your arguments sustain my loss of trust in the medical profession. They are fundamentally deceiving.
Boom just like that experimentation on humans is ok. It may even yield some discoveries. Experimentation often does. This ill conceived novel concept technology isn’t one of them. It’s a complete failure by every metric. Since we have no control group we will not even know the long term results of the experiment in a decade when they would be apparent.
blast, how you go from “you say it didn’t have a large reproductive harm” to “you approve of tyranny and forced jab-ination and untested medical interventions” is beyond me. stop it.
Perhaps it is time to stop this discussion.
On subjects such as these, a lot of people get offended pretty easily. Just forgive and move on.
I was happy to see the chart. I am not terribly concerned about what interpretation you or anyone else makes of it. I haven’t seen the data for Europe, but my impression that results were fairly different there. Of course, the mix of vaccines was a little different too, and there wasn’t the student loan forgiveness issue..
As you wish Gail. You are the boss! I appreclimate Ivanslavs willingness to discuss.
The fact of the matter is experimentation on humans is now occurring. We are told it is in our best interests. Traditionally people are compensated for this. One way to compensate is to take privileges from non participants.
Obviously there must be a urgent reason for the experimentation to occur. My belief is that reason is we are preparing for the possibility of biological warfare. This is actually transparent from the DOD DARPA involvement.
If that happens the experimentation could be well justified.
My perspective is the people should decide what is in their best interests. My belief it’s in humanity’s best interest to avoid the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction of all types. It may be that the technology may not be able to be contained.
My preference would be a honest portrayal of the situation where a honest disclosure of the experimentation of was disclosed. If the population thought it was appropriate to the risk benefits could be provided to those who participated. Older people could participate rather than youth. The possibility exists that other alternatives than a biological war considered a certainty could be given what is clearly desirable amount of effort. As it is all these decisions are being made for us. That may be a matter of urgency also but it may excuse more preferable outcomes.
It appears were out of time.
Appreciate your response Ivanslav.
The problem is that self-organizing systems act strangely. They don’t do what would seem to be rational. You say that you believe that there is a god behind what is happening. I see the same thing. Somehow, the whole system is induced to act in a very strange manner. The big problem is that the world now has too many people relative to resources. The changes that are needed are ones that tend to bring population down. This can include adverse reactions to the vaccine, in many ways. The self-organizing system somehow leads to governments and leaders taking actions that seem strange by prior standards. Ordinary citizens now have less control over their own fates.
Gail,
I can speak for Europe, as
I travel much for business and I exchange conversations with many people.
During Covid period, people were scared to death.
People were even afraid to touch one another in family, we were taught to wash our hands every minute.
Tv news depicted that period as almost the end of the world, so very few people might have had the idea to make love and have babies.
After this period which was ‘concurrent with Covid’, there was the second period which we could define as the ‘vaccine period’, which was 2021 – 2022.
During this second period people surely had various negative effect from the treatment, if not definitive at least temporary and in this sense the drop could be interpreted.
Now I think we are in third phase, which is the ‘phase of the war’, everyone here in Europe realizes that wars are sorrounding us, see east Mediterranean sea for Palestine-Israel and see East Europe for Ukraine.
This period is charachterized by fear for economic future and even own survival (Tv news often speak of the probability of a nuclear war).
Then one can surely add the problem of poor immigrants coming from North Africa, from the Balkan route and also South America (there are various laws in Europe to help familiy reunifications for that area), so it is easy to see that it is difficult that a couple can have desire to make love and have babies.
I don’t mention all the European policies and propaganda to incentive young people to be on the LGBTQ-plus side, which is another factor that affects the number of young couples in the possibility to have children.
I think that the picture is almost complete, maybe from USA is less clear to see all that.
but now i believe we are entering 4th phase elders announce 2 years to save planet what can we expect it has something to do with financial system perhaps goodbye us dollar reserve currency .
That is very interesting Gail your daughter and friends made babies due to favourable economic conditions now lets say the lockdown was ‘the plan’ but it was all part of an experiment by the ‘powers that be’ because they wanted to see what would happen if the world was ‘locked down’ during this hypothetical experiment ‘free money’ was handed out to eveveryone in the western countries a freeze was put on paying one”s mortgage all this while 29 million barrels a day of oil disappearing from the world”s daily consumption. This sounds like what will happen when oil production starts dropping in the future perhaps a lockdown is the answer to the world”s problems if BAU is to continue.
>> IMO Any argument that these countermeasures were somehow either safe or effective is at this point in time beyond lame.
Take a deep breath and observe that you are attributing arguments to me that I didn’t make. In fact, the heart and cardiovascular risks are clearly supported by *reliable* data (heck, just look at the original trial – 50% more heart attacks which they ignored), as well as a number of other problems. Reproductive harm, however, is *not* supported by live births data, which is the highest level view and of what’s happening on the reproductive front and also the hardest to fudge/misinterpret.
Thank you for your correction. This is useful. I truly appreciate your time and effort. We have found a useful process! If you participate we will achieve clarification and that is a extremely rare event on this topic. I will make a series of statements that I think fairly define the situation. You address them and we will have clarification. Fantastic! I couldn’t ask for anything better. My statements might be considered argumentative. Just ignore that and. Reply to their sibstance. Thank you for your willingness to participate.
parachute fails 10% of the time. Your talking about the 90% where it didn’t. That’s is clearly advocating of the product. Why are you saying the countermeasures are safe in a particular area (there not) when you fully admit they are unsafe as a whole?
What you are saying is yes we experimented on you. Yes as a whole the experiment had significant and widespread deleterious effects on the subjects of the experiment. But it wasn’t a complete and total failure. Lots and lots of bugs that caused harm even death to humans. The benefit was crap. But I found a metric that indicates it wasn’t total 100% harmful crap. There was a cherry lifesaver buried in this steaming pile of crap. And I’m going to discuss how sweet its taste is.
You are a advocate of experimentation on humans or at least condone it. You are a advocate of the the technology that was the premise of the experiment once the bugs are worked out. The phrase “do no harm” is no longer a primary tenet of the medical profession.
If you correct my statements I will understand you position. If you leave them uncorrected then we will still be knee deep in vagueness which is typical for this subject. No need to go too far. I’m not asking g you to sacrifice your career or trying to trick you Into doing so.. I’m sure you will select suitable language to Express yourself that doesn’t go to far. A sincere thank you in advance.
>> You are a advocate of experimentation on humans or at least condone it.
NO NO NO, not in the least.
A US supplied ATACM loaded with cluster munitions was hit by air defense an detonated in the vicinity of a beach in Crimea. Other ATACMs proceeded to military targets and destroyed them. Their were civilians on the beach. 6 dead 145 wounded.
Ukraine has warned on several occasions Crimea is not safe and should be avoided, meanwhile Russian missiles, drones and bombs kill Ukrainian civilians every day.
” Ukraine has warned on several occasions ” . Well so has Russia . What is new ? Is it ” All rules for thee but none for me ” . Typical West attitude . Where were you when Donbass was being bombed by the Ukies before SMO ?
All of the casualties of the war are of course regrettable. Certainly children the most regrettable of all.
The reason this particular incident is important is Russias communication that they are considering holding those responsible for providing the weapons accountable. It has not happened yet. This incededent resulted in considerable outrage from the public. I
It appears to me that considering NATO cobeligerents is not far away. The new alliances Putin has made set the groundwork. I think it would take a significant effort at descelation to prevent it. It appears to me the decision has already been made. Perhaps a full Russian mobilization would precede it.
WW3 seems quite certain, every one willing. It’s a matter of who thinks they are better off with current preparations now. It may supercede any event. It seems to me ww3 has gone from something avoidable to something everyone is resigned to.
Than you Gail, extremely interesting recap and deep analysis of what has been happening after WWII till now to the entire world.
What I would like to say from geopolitical point of view is that, in addition to the engagement of the advanced economies (or G7 or western Countries) in the Ukraine war, there are other 2 conflicts or tensions in which these Countries are deeply involved and don’t want to lose.
Actually they are even acting with double down policies every day.
These conflicts/tensions are:
– Palestine – Israel
– Taiwan / South China sea
With the first one, although good words are spent every day, western Countries are supporting Israel directly or indirectly.
For the second one, western Countries are either supporting directly with navy drills or helping Philippines or others to prepar a war against China or acting with direct economic actions against China.
The first conflict is expecially followed by ‘not-advanced economies’ on the other side than us, meaning that Israel is the oppressor and Palestine is a poor and less developed population, even with no officially recognized land (!).
The second one is against the Country that we decided to use as the factory of the world till yesterday, but now we have changed idea about.
Now we prefer India or we are even trying to re-industrialize us (very egoistic action, simple to see also for a child).
I don’t want to say that is wrong from logical point of view, but that it is easy to see that we want to do what we like, when we like.
We, western Countries, are acting like Cesar in the Gaul campaign, but we are not in our expansion phase.
Something doesn’t add up.
More like Belisario, fighting for a dead empire and probably knowing that whatever he was doing was only for temporary gain.
I am afraid that countries are looking for an excuse for war, as a way to get more resources or more jobs that pay well for their countries. With their very narrow view, they cannot imagine that the Advanced Economies (or NATO) wouldn’t win in a war against the less advanced nations.
War is amazingly beneficial for a country’s GDP, especially if there isn’t huge damage done to their own infrastructure.
“It took the switch to a new source of primary energy – itself driven by the demands of an even bloodier war – to pull the western economies into a new energy cycle of growth. In the USA, this meant merely expanding oil age technologies which already existed on a small scale. In Europe, it meant the wholesale switch from coal to oil in the post-war years. And instead of the depressed economies of the 1920s, once the immediate war damage had been repaired, the result was the unprecedented economic boom from 1953 to 1973 – something, by the way, which caused western policy makers to wrongly believe that war is good for the economy.”
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/05/31/nowhere-to-run/
This is the post where we definitely get out of all that unproductive blather about lockdowns and vaccines. And hey, they are so 2020. There are so many signs of impending collapse now, all over the world and in a variety of sectors. BTW, your humble correspondent from the land of “a bit more freedom and a bit more opportunity” is traveling and left the computer cable at home. Unless I find nice souls willing to share a Mac cable I will soon become silent for a week.
Drb, I can say that I appreciate your posts, but when you are critic of our (western) critics about mRNA Covid-vaccine unuseful and dangerous campaign and relative mandatory policy, I doubt that your are Russian…
I share the same opinions as those people. I just do not like the repetition and clutter.
The Democratic Republic of Belarus. 😂😂
Keep on hearing murmurings of an mbric cbdc currency. Seems as likely of a financial attack as any.
“mBridge”
A bridge mostly brings one to the ‘other side’. A new and improved reserve currency? More balanced looking at our current state of impending implosion of the unsustainable debt load bla bla? Russia wants its cut, China, EU, US, wars, proven reserves disfunction bla bla? A bridge, like a cease fire between …. a bridge before we start throwing nukes.
Sounds logical. Things aren’t in place yet to manage de-growth. A cease fire, a bridge. Never heard of this before. Ivanislav? Something digital approved by (almost) all to keep the exchange of shit’n stuff afloat, to a certain degree? What is it? Please no AI crap…. backed, pure. I hate tongue piercings with nano chips.
I think it’s basically just supposed to support currency exchange in a non-sanctionable manner. I guess a bonus is that it’s CBDC so they can brutalize the peons.
I don’t really know though … we’ll see what actually happens…
Putin’s been talking about a new financial architecture seemingly forever, but talking doesn’t mean the code, hardware, software, security, and process infrastructure is in place.
Thank you. When the time comes, it will be in place. And we will not be informed, but introduced. We are in trouble on a worldwide scale, we know, but you can bet your ass they know too.
I doubt that a digital currency will be used by the BRICS, which seems to be what you are talking about.
Keeping electricity operating is a huge problem. Digital currencies require an operating electrical system.
Hey Gail;
I understand that you operate this blog as a gift. I understand it has to be that way as we could not possibly compensate you adequately for your contribution. There is a problem however. Only receiving and not giving creates imbalance. Time passes. No one is getting younger. If appreciation is not demonstrated it can create regrets.
Is your pay pal linked to your email? Would it be Ok if gifts were made? You know at Christmas or such. You can pass it on to your church or preferably buy some good food for a nice meal with your family. It’s unfair if you don’t allow people to give back and demonstrate their appreciation with something more than a “thank you” post. That simply falls short as appreciation for your contribution which is what TWO DECADES now.
I suppose that what I need now is for someone to figure out how to put together little PDF booklets of, say, five posts on a subject, and publicize them.
If there are donations given, they could be directed toward the person/people working on this project.
Otherwise, things written on a blog tend to get lost.
Maybe other folks have different publicity ideas.
Aren’t we mostly there?
CC are digital, payment on a certain date is digital.
At Menards when someone whips out a checkbook everything slows to a crawl. Cash, hardly ever see that.
Retirement accounts are digital, SS is deposited digitally in banks accounts, from those accounts bills are paid digitally.
There are only a few old farts like myself that bind monthly bank statements and save necessary paper receipts in marked plastic bins. It is a pain. I still write some checks, occasionally trying to pay a bill digitally is a pain, a stamp only requires a bit of spit.
Dennis L.
Thanks for all the time and effort.
Dennis L.
You are welcome. It takes me a fairly long time to put these together because I don’t necessarily foresee the entire post, as it comes together, before hand. It helps a great deal that I have a few editors who help me, but that adds a little time to the process, as well. Even if all they say is, “I don’t understand this point, could you explain it differently?” It is helpful.
Did everyone think that these huge pockes of digital ones and zeros would be traded in for real resources and goods consuming a huge chunk of the remaining finite resources? Get real. All these digital ones and zeros go poof. Unless you got something to trade. Then they’re still good.
I mean, think about it. Store your purchasing power here in digital ones and zeros as the world depletes. Does that make sense? On the other hand you certainly don’t want to get rid of ones and zeros for nations willing to trade resources and goods for them. Those ones and zeros are a-ok! So that’s what’s going on. Just a little restructuring.the first step was triage. Stop the consumption hemorrhaging. Sanctions.
An orderly restructuring: non profitable franchises are downsized; profitable franchises are renovated. The financial system which has huge value remains intact. Perhaps certain tokens will not be allowed to be created anymore but those pedigree tokens work just fine for the owners who actually have something to trade. A bit of restructuring is needed to differentiate. Don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater!
All of our digital ones and zeros have worked for an awfully long time. Even the gold-based currencies before this worked, as did many other currencies.
I agree that the system is now downsizing, without necessarily telling us what is happening. The strange seemingly false narratives we hear are to help citizens downsize, in ways we didn’t consider possible.
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Appropriate for this post ” The advanced economies are headed for a downfall ” . Here is a reason .
” Rings of Power. Concentric Rings of Power. THE ONE ring of power. Thought of this yesterday as Nvidia is like 10% of all GDP. ONE company. So THREE companies are now the whole Stock Market. …I’m sure that won’t end bad or nothin’. Here’s the point though: IF you are in the “Blesse’d companies” and living in one of the 12 Blesse’d Cities, having a insider or government job of any kind, you’re doing great. If you own only Tesla and Nvidia: no recession!
THAT’S THE POINT. The whole Russell 2000, 98% of all U.S. counties are past Recession into Depression. But they don’t care, so long as the 1% apparatchiks are doing their jobs running the government and killin’ people. They are the next (maybe two) rings before real insider power. Stocks are the same.
Okay, HOW did Nvidia become the entire stock market? Not to say, as Cisco and Nortel were too, and they’re fine companies! …Just 99% overpriced. Well, adding a blower and turbo-boost to Cisco, all-free-money-printing from Greenspan, ‘99, They now print not a billion but $1T every 100 days. Okay, but. BUT IT’S ALL FROM EUROPE. That is, Europe, and exemplified by NOT the same people, in Switzerland, print money, pick a designated company (Tesla, FAANG), and drive it 10x any normal price in a stock-pumping op to pay the bills. That’s it: government prints money, buys insider friend’s stocks. Price goes up! What a shock!!! On PAPER that will work…so long as nobody ever sells, ever.
But this time it’s different. This bubble is a “Permanently high plateau” of like 10x any fair value ever. At a 77 P/E ratio (should be 6), and 30x sales. That is, a 30 YEAR waiting for BREAKEVEN.
Insider concentric rings. Actual companies that actually make money and are fair-priced, driven out of the market, starved for capital. ‘Cause when governments ARE the market, that’s “Capitalism”!
For some who follow the bond market and Japan banking .
https://justdario.com/2024/05/norinchukin-bank-officially-joins-the-list-of-bank-of-japans-nightmares/
This article about Norinchukin Bank has a lot of good charts in it. The article points to this article as well:
https://justdario.com/2024/03/why-a-historical-jpy-currency-crisis-is-at-the-doorstep-of-japan/
This article explains why Japan, itself, seems to have huge financial problems. The Yen is worth far less relative to the US$ than implied by its relativity.
An excerpt from this article about Japan:
Copy/paste .
HHH
IGNORED
06/23/2024 at 2:16 pm
The 5th largest bank in Japan, Norinchukin has been in the news lately. This is a Eurodollar bank. Yen carry trade. They use Japanese assets as collateral to acquire dollar funding and invest outside of Japan.
Basically they are being forced to sell US treasuries because their dollar funding cost are higher than the yield they are receiving from assets they have bought. Stated another way. They have a negative carry and are losing money.
Crazy thing is they are being forced to sell safe and liquid assets. And they will be buying more CLO’s which are derivatives. CLO’s or Collateral loan obligations are basically loans that are packaged into securities. A lot of corporate debt has been package into these CLO’s
So they are being forced to chase higher yielding assets that are way more risky. In a recession CLO’s will lose value. Big time!
I think we are edging closer to a global banking crisis.
The majority of people don’t understand that when the Yen carry trade unwinds the dollar goes higher. As it was the currency borrowed into existence using Japanese assets as collateral.
Most people believe the yen carry trade is people swapping Yen for dollars and when it unwinds they swap dollars back into yen driving the yen higher.
George Gammon also reported on Norinchukin. Selling less risky assets for more risky assets just to stop bleeding huge amounts money is probably happening at other banks as well.
A guess: They are selling less risky assets because they are liquid not because they want to do so.
Dennis L.
Thanks for the summary.
Dennis L.
If a company is profitable, it can buy back undervalued shares, or pay dividends, both of which will substantially raise the share price. That the share prices stagnate for years for these smaller companies means they’re bad businesses: unprofitable or barely-treading-water zombies.
At the same time, I believe the point about concentration of market capitalization in the larger entities is true of prior bubbles and cause for concern. I think it is partially the result of the way index funds work: they allocate funds according to market cap, creating a (vicious) cycle in which a growing share price redirects more buying to those same companies and likewise falling share price eliminates that inflow – a double-whammy reinforcing whichever direction a stock is going.
You make two interesting points that I hadn’t thought of.
1. Any (US) company can buy back undervalued shares, if it is profitable. If the price stagnates for years, this indicates that something is seriously wrong.
I am not sure if rules are the same elsewhere.
2. Index funds operate by allocating funds according to market capitalization. More money is pumped into those shares that are already high.
Thanks!
So, you seem to be saying that Europe (Netherlands?) is buying a disproportionate share of the US debt. Also, you seem to be suggesting that some of this rapidly increasing debt is going into buy the NVIDA and other favored stocks.
Or, am I misunderstanding?
Anyone who says to themselves, “This looks like a bubble, I am staying out,” will lose out on the current bubble.
An answer to a commonly asked question .
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/06/23/who-holds-the-recklessly-ballooning-us-national-debt-of-34-7-trillion/
Gail, thanks again for your genius fabulous work!!
This review is of keen interest.
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/these-charts-expose-myth-of-energy-transition?u
Thanks very much for linking to this. Robert Bryce does great work! The new report from the Energy Institute is link at this website. https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
You can download the Excel spreadsheet with data through 2023 after you click on that link.
Bryce says:
These 9 charts from the Statistical Review Of World Energy expose the myth of the energy transition & show hydrocarbons are growing faster than alt-energy.
I need to start using these charts, too.
According to the Energy Institute published notes:
It sounds like a collaboration of a lot of different folks.
When I read the summary of the Energy Institute’s findings, provided by the Energy Institute, they are written with the standard narrative that you find everywhere else. No problems, anywhere. Transition seems to be going fine, blah, blah, blah.
Great Britain is a best example of how it ends up: high priced homes, high priced energy and high priced food. All becomes unaffordable.
The problem with the rising population is to secure cheap living conditions as the humans move into places that need more energy input to fight the adverse natural forces.
The limit of the higher and higher food production is that you need to produce large amounts of food, in high quality and cheaply. This can be achieved only with higher and higher energy inputs into the food production. It usually ends up like Egypt: a lot of wheat is imported, but that is not the quality nutrition. You can not eat only bread to stay healthy.
Good points! Many parts of the world are seeing food and many other things become unaffordable. And diets become very unbalanced.
“A crucial discovery for China, aiming to reduce its energy dependence, has come to light with the Chinese oil company China National Offshore Oil Corporation, better known as CNOOC, reportedly uncovering the world’s largest oil deposit in the Bohai Sea. This is reported by Naftemporiki.
The Bozhong 26-6 oil field, discovered in 2022, has now confirmed record levels of hydrocarbon reserves following a series of drilling operations, potentially exceeding 1.3 billion barrels (over 200 million cubic meters).
The gigantic deposit was found in metamorphic rocks in the Bohai Sea, a small inland sea located at the northern tip of the East China Sea and northwest of the Yellow Sea, on the northeastern coast of China.”?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/china-discovers-world-s-largest-oil-deposit/ar-BB1jcZmn?ocid=BingNewsSearch
“gigantic deposit”?
“Matt
on June 17, 2024 at 10:34 am said:
at a global consumption rate of 100 million barrels per day those 1.3 billion barrels would last 13 days,”?
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2024/05/31/280-not-what-youve-been-told/#comments
Nothing we find today is a really huge supply.
There is a lot of oil, coal and natural gas that we know about, but are out of reach for one reason or another–the price won’t go high enough to encourage production is a big reason.
Venezuela supposedly has the highest proved reserves in the world, but it is difficult to get the oil out and processed.
Day zero is 26th June in Mexico City for the taps to run dry .
https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2024/06/after-cape-town-will-breakdown-of.html
The article points out:
“Day Zero [in 2018] never came for two reasons: First, those officials cajoled Cape Town residents into cutting water consumption in half. Second, the rains finally resumed a few months later.”
There is definitely a problem with getting enough water for all of today’s people however. Part of the problem is that industry, especially making electricity, tends to use a lot of water. Part of the problem is rising population. Part of the problem is aquifers that are running dry.
It is raining here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rFMz3Hm9A4&t=2s
I know it is not popular, but in my area, the climate is changing.
Much more snow in my childhood.
Dennis L.
In Southern Italy the situation is quite important as well.
Half wheat production in Sicily is basically gone this year. In Puglia the “barn of Italy”, the combine harvesters are put on hold because lot of field seems thatt they are gone bad also.
Meanwhile commentators in tv are talking about desalination plants.
With what kind of energy I ask in my mind and at what price?
But nobody ventures to ask those two important questions, of course…
https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/siccita-emergenza-sud-rese-dimezzate-agricoltura-AGIzLUg
No wheat to harvest in Benelux since none was sown , Was raining till 15th June .
Planting is late in MN and also IA I am told. Many areas in fields are literally small lakes. Planted crop ruined, not completely, but reduced at best.
Crop insurance does not pay in ears of corn, sheaves of wheat, etc.
Dennis L.
Let us go all digital . Cyber attack shuts down thousands of auto dealership’s across USA .
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/everything-frozen-third-day-cyberattack-leaves-15000-auto-dealerships-crippled
I read about the outage, after “only” two days. I didn’t realize that it was a ransomware attack. The attackers are trying to extort money from the dealerships.
What do dealerships do, when the system for writing up auto sales becomes unavailable? Most places don’t know how to do pencil and paper, any more.
The Olduvai Theory .
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/21/balkan-regions-hit-by-major-power-outage
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/20/ecuador-power-outage-quito
The Dutch acknowledge the intermittency problem of renewables .
https://dailycaller.com/2024/06/20/netherlands-dutch-newspaper-electricity-grid-green-energy-electiricty/
‘AI will eliminate all jobs, they will remain a hobby: Elon Musk
Updated – May 24, 2024 at 01:06 PM. | New Delhi
Speaking at a startup and tech event in Paris, Musk stated that none of us will have a job, with the advent of AI . CNN reports that in January, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab found that workplaces are adopting AI more slowly than some had expected and feared. The report also noted that many jobs previously identified as vulnerable to AI were not economically beneficial for employers to automate at that time.’
European Newspaper Says Citizens Better Get Used To Not Having Electricity All The Time
Wind and solar leave people freezing in the dark in winter.
There will be workarounds.
Amish don’t freeze in MN winters, many children however, perhaps seasonal?
Dennis L.
No . Possible only if you follow the Amish living style . Any volunteers ? 😊
A happy, healthy, entirely self reliant group of people. In the near future, I suspect many would give anything to live that life style.
Depends how many wives the lifestyle comes with 😉
Yesterday, Sunday, saw a buggy with four young men, white shirts, black vests.
For many now the US is living with two jobs, a mortgage extending to infinity, and what must be very poor quality food as obesity even in Rochester, MN a prosperous city is out of control.
Amish get Sunday off, spend a day together.
Their homes are very nice, clean, white, generally well-tended lawns. Mow by hand, see obesity epidemic above.
News flash, only read headline, latest drug for obesity causes breast issues, enlarged I guess, equity of course.
Dennis L.
Maybe their inbred genes are cold-resistant?
(All Amish are descended fro a few hundred people living in Moravia, and genetically they are all brothers.)
Google “Amish Stud”
I also wonder how the the workers of the industrial sector of Europe (of what will remain of it) will adapt in the era of intermittent energy.
Probably their work routine will return to what it once was, as described in this article.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-the-economy-on-the-weather/
In industrial windmills, work was done whenever the wind blew, even if that meant that the miller had to work night and day, taking only short naps. For example, a document reveals that at the Union Mill in Cranbrook, England, the miller once had only three hours sleep during a windy period lasting 60 hours.
A 1957 book about windmills, partly based on interviews with the last surviving millers, reveals the urgency of using wind when it was available:
“Often enough when the wind blew in autumn, the miller would work from Sunday midnight to Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning to Thursday night, and Friday morning to Saturday midnight, taking only a few snatches of sleep; and a good windmiller always woke up in bed when the wind rose, getting up in the middle of the night to set the mill going, because the wind was his taskmaster and must be taken advantage of whenever it blew. Many a village has at times gone short of wheaten bread because the local mill was becalmed in a waterless district before the invention of the steam engine; and barley-meal bread or even potato bread had to suffice in the crisis of a windless autumn.”
Not possible . I have seen the Smartphone generation smash their tablets and laptops because instead of downloading in 60 seconds it took 61 seconds . They would rather commit ” harakiri” then change . Not going to happen .
When I saw some windmills in Holland, they were only being used to pump out water from the field. The workers could be farmers most of the time. Families would live in tiny homes inside of the windmills.
You’ve been saying for over a decade that grid electricity is unsustainable, and now it seems that prophesy is starting to come true.
Also, when European people complain that “I never voted for this”, their rulers will be able to tell them with a straight face, “Oh, yes you did. You voted for it by not voting hard enough against it. You consented to the fight against climate change and the war on carbon dioxide! You supported the nonsensus! Or, if you said nothing and did nothing in opposition, your silence and your apathy constituted approval of those policies. It’s too late to complain now.”
FLIGHTMARE Travel chaos as ALL flights from Manchester Airport face cancellations and severe delays after power cut
“PASSENGERS at Manchester Airport face travel chaos this morning with all flights cancelled after a power cut.
Huge queues of furious passengers were unable to check in and a sea of suitcases sit unclaimed with arriving travellers stuck on planes.
“The captain on the plane said he’s never experienced something like that”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/travel/28679278/flights-manchester-airport-cancellations-delays/amp/?utm_campaign=sunnewsfacebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1719133024-2
Mexico and Ecudor just had major blackouts too.
the beginning of the end yipee suitcases piled up i luv it furious passengers is this the elders or the olduvai theory in action who knows maybe it is both
Two Years to Save the World: Simon Stiell at Chatham House
10 April 2024
UN Climate Speech
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Simon Stiell delivers a keynote address at Chatham House
Credit: Jon Linden | UN Climate Change
The following is the transcript of a speech delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell on 10 April 2024 at Chatham House in London, England. The speech can also be watched on YouTube.
Two years to save the world…
Good afternoon,
Some of you may think the title of today’s event is overly dramatic. Melodramatic, even.
So let me start by explaining briefly why the next two years are so essential in saving our planet.
First, we know the stakes. You’ve heard me talk before about record shattering heat and massive damage to economies, and how there’s no room for half measures. Let’s take all that as a given.
Second, we are at the start of a race which will determine the biggest winners in a new clean energy economy.
And with the global index of living standards in constant flux, each country’s climate responses will be key to whether they rise up the ladder or fall.
Whether they thrive or barely survive.
Third, for many countries, they will only be able to implement strong new climate plans if we see a quantum leap in climate finance this year.
Fourth, it’s about how the Paris Agreement works.
As of today, national climate plans – called Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs – in aggregate will barely cut emissions at all by 2030.
We still have a chance to make greenhouse gas emissions tumble, with a new generation of national climate plans. But we need these stronger plans, now.
Unfortunately, this is a bunch of baloney. Putting the smog back in the air might work to fix the recent temperature spike, but that is not what anyone is looking at.
I wonder what happens if the airport a plane departs from has electricity, but the receiving airport does not. Does the plane need to divert to a different location with electricity?
Smiling quietly, VFR – visual flight rules.
Dennis L.
South Africa, Cuba, India. ALL having major power blackouts and issues.
It’s happening everywhere…
In Ecuador, the problem has been at least partly hydroelectric power that doesn’t produce enough power when it is dry for a while.
Also, in most of the world, the whole system has not been “sized” to provide air conditioning for any significant share of the people. It also cannot provide AI to everyone who would want it, or charging stations for all kinds of EVs. We would need a huge amount more of fossil fuels to upsize the systems.
HH Gas has risen 40 percent over the past month. It is now over $4 .
https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/5fcbcbb3ee90ec001721308c/hh-gas-has-risen-40-percent-over-the-past-month-it-is-now-over-4?postId=6671e85ef0b1df0010f5d3d8&origin=notification&utm_campaign=777dd79c-d8c3-4d75-9bf2-118b68bffb0b&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&utm_content=c4d8d0bb-220e-4c98-992d-e8af8c4dbde0&cid=fa335351-37bb-44a6-9899-f8c34b4a0f81
The article says,
I cannot see this happening. Our prices always have to be far below Europe’s because of the high shipping costs.
Something is going to interfere with LNG exports I expect.
Gail , a comment on OSB regarding NG . Situations turn on a dime .
To Mike S ,
” Slightly tangential here but regarding NG production and conservation as well…
You wrote recently about illogical energy policy and here are a couple of examples of the schizophrenic reporting on energy policy and effects in Australia. A couple of days ago, an article appeared on Zerohedge touting the abundance of gas down under and how they should emulate the US and export, export, export. Today, on Oilprice.com, there is an article lamenting the shortage of NG in eastern Australia. These folks are their own experiment with the results in hand.
Perhaps the US should watch Australia and see what wanton exports of finite resources bode for the future.
On a side note; do you remember maybe 20 years ago when gas storage projects were the thing? Where did that movement go when scandalous flaring became the norm? If NG is going up in the wake of waning LTO oil/gas production, wouldn’t storage be a better ROI for folks staring down the barrel of future worthless dollars?
Just wondering a bit. The world doesn’t make much sense but you and your commenters do.”
Big news from Italy!
The national pension agency will be basically bankrupt around 2032 becausse there will be more retirees than workers.
The concept of pension will disappear very soon I think.
They’re saying it, aren’t they?
After all, pensions didn’t exist before.
They’re just something “invented” in the last 100 years with fossil fuels abundance.
https://www.ansa.it/english/english/newswire/english_service/2024/06/20/inps-to-be-20-billion-in-the-red-in-2032-report_a023f281-4f42-47dc-9516-631459b0531d.html
I expect all pensions everywhere will have the bankrupt problem.
If there is not enough to go around, the financial system must somehow allocate commodities needed for current living to the people actually working to provide those commodities. The old and disabled have to be left out, I would think.
Economics is probably secondary to biology in a major way.
No children, then you can’t use mine in your old age. Seems reasonable.
Dennis L.
Thank you, Gail. One of your best. Makes me think of the old answer to the question “how do you go bankrupt?”. Very slowly at first then all at once.
I am afraid that “very slowly, then all at once” applies to a lot of bad outcomes.
Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, is being forced to dim lights and cut sanitation services due to bankruptcy
“Once nicknamed “the workshop of the world”, Birmingham was an industrial powerhouse in the 18th and 19th centuries. But today the UK’s second-largest city can no longer afford to keep its own streets brightly lit.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-17/birmingham-uk-bankrupt-cutting-public-services/103965704
I bet the King still has lights at his castle ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Things will only get worse, I’m afraid. After all energy is the economy and the oil&gas production of UK is falling like a rock!
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/UK-Oil-Industry-Needs-Investment-and-Political-Support-to-Halt-Production-Declin.html
From the article: “The UK is currently producing some 1,2 million barrels of oil equivalent but this will fall steeply to just 700.000 barrels daily by 2030”.
First thing to notice is that they are talking about barrels of oil equivalent not petroleum and this is quite misleading to the general pubblic.
Second thing: the decline is around 8% per year!
With this level of annual decline the “real” petroleum production, that is today around 750.000 barrels per day, will decline to less than 500.000 barrels in 2030 and 200.000 in 2040 if no important field will be put on production.
It seems quite clear that the future looks grim, not only for UK, but for Europe in general without adeguate supply of cheap fossil energy…
It is cutting street lights and only collecting trash every two weeks now.
I expect that the schools are not doing very well either.
If governments reveal the predicament there will be chaos. Also any nation who doesn’t play the growth fossil fuel extraction game will be swallowed up. Seems there is no other way. Well the leaves that fall from the tree will feed new growth. I try to be virtuous but it’s not easy.
Governments cannot reveal the predicament; they have to tell a happy story, no matter how ridiculous.
I expect that truth-tellers won’t necessarily be swallowed up by stronger countries. More likely, their own citizens would throw them out–overturn the government, and maybe the whole system. Whether any other country will be strong enough to swallow them up is not clear.
Thanks for the article their certainly does appear to be question marks as to the future course of events but i believe the elders are planning something big for the financial system The following is the transcript of a speech delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell on 10 April 2024 at Chatham House in London, England. The speech can also be watched on YouTube.
Two years to save the world…
Good afternoon,
Some of you may think the title of today’s event is overly dramatic. Melodramatic, even.
So let me start by explaining briefly why the next two years are so essential in saving our planet.
First, we know the stakes. You’ve heard me talk before about record shattering heat and massive damage to economies, and how there’s no room for half measures. Let’s take all that as a given.
Second, we are at the start of a race which will determine the biggest winners in a new clean energy economy.
And with the global index of living standards in constant flux, each country’s climate responses will be key to whether they rise up the ladder or fall.
Whether they thrive or barely survive.
Third, for many countries, they will only be able to implement strong new climate plans if we see a quantum leap in climate finance this year.
Fourth, it’s about how the Paris Agreement works.
As of today, national climate plans – called Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs – in aggregate will barely cut emissions at all by 2030.
We still have a chance to make greenhouse gas emissions tumble, with a new generation of national climate plans. But we need these stronger plans, now.
And while every country must submit a new plan, the reality is G20 emissions are around 80% of global emissions.
So G20 leadership must be at the core of the solution, as it was during the great financial crisis. That’s when the G20 came of age and showed major developed and developing economies can work together to avert global economic catastrophes.
Fifth and finally, every citizen of every country has an opportunity to be part of this transition. Every voice makes a difference. This year and next, we will need every voice more than ever.
Let’s consider for a moment what is up for grabs if we do make the next two years really count.
Bold new national climate plans will be a jobs jackpot and economic springboard to boost countries up that global ladder of living standards.
In the face of crop-destroying droughts, much bolder climate action to curb emissions and help farmers adapt will increase food security, and lessen hunger.
Cutting fossil fuel pollution will mean better health and huge savings for governments and households alike.
The transformative potential of bold climate action – in tandem with steps to advance gender equality – is one of the fastest ways to move away from business as usual.
For those who say that climate change is only one of many priorities, like ending poverty, ending hunger, ending pandemics, or improving education, I simply say this: none of these crucial tasks – indeed none of the Sustainable Development Goals – will be possible unless we get the climate crisis under control.
In fact, business-as-usual will further entrench the gross inequalities between the world’s richest and poorest countries and communities that unchecked climate impacts are making much worse.
These inequalities are kryptonite for cooperative global climate action, and every economy, every country and its people pays the price of that.
To start curing this global cancer of inequality, we need to enable bold new national climate plans by all nations that protect people, boost jobs and drive inclusive economic growth. And we need them by early next year.
The next generation of national climate plans must be investment plans for sustainable and strong economies.
Which brings us back to the crucial importance of climate finance…
…Because it’s hard for any government to invest in renewables or climate resilience when the treasury coffers are bare, debt servicing costs have overtaken health spending, new borrowing is impossible, and the wolves of poverty are at the door.
A quantum leap this year in climate finance is both essential and entirely achievable.
Every day, finance ministers, CEOs, investors, and development bankers direct trillions of dollars. It’s time to shift those dollars from the energy and infrastructure of the past, towards that of a cleaner, more resilient future…
…And to ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable countries benefit.
This year, at COP29 in Baku, we need to agree a new target for climate finance that meets developing country needs. But it’s not enough to agree a target. We need a new deal on climate finance, between developed and developing countries.
That deal should have four key components.
First, more concessional finance. Especially for the poorest and most vulnerable countries.
Second, we need new sources of international climate finance, as the G20, International Maritime Organization, and others are working on.
Third – as Prime Minister Mottley and President Ruto have made clear – we must reform development banks to make them work better for developing countries, embed climate in their decision-making, and build a financial system fit for the twenty-first century.
Fourth, debt relief for the countries that need it most to give them the fiscal space for climate investment. Developing countries spent more than four hundred billion dollars servicing debts last year.
Experts have shown that if we do all of this together, we can meet developing country needs, mobilizing hundreds of billions of dollars.
Ever-closer cooperation between international institutions is more important than ever. I offer UN Climate Change’s partnership wherever it can help to support stronger and faster climate-related outcomes. To the World Bank, IMF at the upcoming Spring Meetings. To the G7, G20, and their finance ministers. Together we can make this deal real.
Together we must step up the pace. The Spring Meetings are not a dress rehearsal. Averting a climate-driven economic catastrophe is core business. It can’t slip between the cracks of different mandates.
We can’t afford a talkfest without clear steps forward, when there is an opportunity to make real progress on every part of the new climate finance deal all nations need.
At the Spring Meetings we need an ambitious round of replenishment for the World Bank’s International Development Association. Doing so could lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and increase clean energy access, especially across Africa.
Progress in Washington DC on revising the World Bank’s capital requirements could free up billions more for concessional lending without asking donors for more money.
Next, to help give countries the fiscal space they need for climate action, the IMF can help more countries deal with debts made worse by climate change and the pandemic. For example, by making more use of the Catastrophe Containment Relief Trust.
The World Bank’s work on Climate Resilient Debt Clauses – which allow countries facing supercharged storms to focus on recovery – are another welcome step in the right direction. Eligibility should now be expanded beyond small and island states to more countries and more climate impacts.
The G7 has a crucial role too, this year chaired by Italy.
G7 governments are the key shareholders in the World Bank and IMF. In truth, they provide both capital and direction. With their say-so, these institutions can do much more to use all the tools at their disposal to deliver large-scale impacts on the ground.
It’s entirely in the interests of every G7 country to take much bolder climate action at home and abroad, including on climate finance.
Firstly, because serious progress on climate finance is a pre-requisite for bold new national climate plans from developing countries, without which all economies, the G7’s included, will soon be in serious and permanent strife.
Secondly, because resilience building is equally urgent to protect the supply chains that all economies depend on. We have just seen what supply chain disruptions flowing from covid did to inflation, and to households and businesses. Well, you can bet your bottom dollar these disruptions and inflationary impacts will only get dramatically worse, without bolder climate action.
So too, the world needs the G20 to rise to this moment.
We are all aware of geopolitical challenges. I do not downplay them. But they cannot be an excuse for timidity, amidst this worsening crisis.
I’ll be candid: blame-shifting is not a strategy. Sidelining climate isn’t a solution to a crisis that will decimate every G20 economy and has already started to hurt.
So the financial firepower the G20 marshaled during the global financial crisis should be marshaled again and pointed squarely at curbing runaway emissions and building resilience now.
Brazil, who also host COP30, has a vital role to play to kickstart the ambitious action we need.
I’m encouraged that the G20, under Brazilian leadership, is exploring ways to find new finance for climate and development. Brazil itself is also trialing new ways to reduce unreasonable borrowing costs for clean energy which could work for other developing countries.
Ultimately, it’s not enough to invest in clean energy and resilient infrastructure without measures that also speed up the decline of fossil fuels. Stronger domestic progress on carbon pricing is essential to reflect the real economics of fossil fuels, including the massive health and economic costs of greenhouse gas pollution, which should not be shunted on to government, households, and other industries to pay.
When I say we have two years to save the world, it begs the question – who exactly has two years to save the world?
The answer is every person on this planet.
More and more people want climate action right across societies and political spectrums, in large part because they are feeling the impacts of the climate crisis in their everyday lives and their household budgets…
…Rising costs for fossil-fuel-powered transport… for heating and cooling… energy… rising food prices as climate disasters hit production and supply chains… to name just a few.
A recent survey by Gallup of 130,000 people in 125 countries found that 89% want stronger climate action by governments.
Yet too often we’re seeing signs of climate action slipping down cabinet agendas.
There is a disconnect – because in living rooms around the world, climate impacts and costs are rising quickly up the list of household worries.
The only surefire way to get climate up the cabinet agenda is if enough people raise their voices.
So my final message today is for people everywhere.
Every voice matters. Yours have never been more important.
If you want bolder climate action, now is the time to make yours count.
Thank you.
There is nothing we can do about climate change.
Actually, didn’t it change when the planes stopped flying?
I think it is real, it makes other discussions pointless.
Farming in MN has been interesting this year. Water and cooler temperatures.
Dennis L.
“Actually, didn’t it change when the planes stopped flying?”
Yes, but counterintuitively the temperature rose, didn’t it, Dennis?
“I think it is real, it makes other discussions pointless.”
It’s real, but it is influenced by humans only at the margins. That is what I have come to believe. But hey, we’re human. We can do anything we want. We can stop it if we want. All it needs is for somebody to found the King Canute Party, then we can turn back the waves too. No more storms. And let’s stop gravity too, while we’re at it. Then we won’t need transport any more – we can float everywhere! Imagine the amount of fossil fuels we could cut down on.
The skies became clearer in 2020. The smog dissipated. This allowed more heat to heat the earth. New laws are keeping smog down, even now.
That speech was utter rubbish
I’ll second that. And the medium article linked below by Ravi, where collapse is driven by climate change, is of similar quality.
“In theory, this should have been an easy war to win, but with limited manufacturing capability, it has been hard for the allies to provide enough weapons of the right kinds to win.”
The FT reports that NATO estimates that it lacks basically all of the air defence systems that it would need to stand a chance in a war against Russia.
And there is zero chance of NATO providing Ukraine with what it needs.
https://www.ft.com/content/5953405f-d91a-4598-8b6b-6345452ca328
Nato has just 5% of air defences needed to protect eastern flank
Lack of systems required in case of war lays bare vulnerabilities, according to alliance’s own assessments
Europe has only a fraction of the air defence capabilities needed to protect its eastern flank, according to Nato’s own internal calculations, laying bare the scale of the continent’s vulnerabilities.
Russia’s war against Ukraine has underscored the importance of air defence, as Kyiv begs the west for additional systems and rockets to protect its cities, troops and energy grid against daily bombing raids.
But according to people familiar with confidential defence plans drawn up last year, Nato states are able to provide less than 5 per cent of air defence capacities deemed necessary to protect its members in central and eastern Europe against a full-scale attack.
One senior Nato diplomat said the ability to defend against missiles and air strikes was “a major part of the plan to defend eastern Europe from invasion”, adding: “And right now, we don’t have that.”
Some EU capitals have suggested raising common debt to fund defence projects.
But officials say Nato members have so few such systems to spare that their capacity to deploy any more beyond their own territories is severely limited.
* * *
USA and Europe NATO have neglected the military-industrial base for decades and they have largely deindustrialised their entire economies anyway.
The talk now is of Europe raising common debt to build some air defence systems but it is not as easy as that. It takes decades to build a serious military-industrial base.
And yet they still want to ‘big up’ themselves with Russia?
It is a strange world we live in. Somehow, they imagine that their own government is strong, regardless of what the evidence shows.
Summary:
We are burning the candle at both ends. One a natural order and the other a man made folly.
One end from an increasing EcoE or decreasing EROEI. Throw in the cost of raw materials- having to dig deeper for less ore.
The other end by a debt trap through creation of a central bank system that issues fiat in a debt based system that guarantees wealth concentration—- until the crunch.
Other enablers:
Internet which allows vast transfers of currency by useless parasitic moneychangers.
Devolution of society from a Representative Constitutional Republic, which had previously let only producers vote, to a pure Democracy where parasites eventually outvote the producers and from there corporatism, socialism and central government control ensue. Debt allows the politicians to pay for the promises that get them elected / re elected. Remember, no voter ever refuses a free lunch, as long as it is paid with debt.
One thing to think about is, “What is the overall end of the entire ecosystem we are embedded in, considering plants, animals and our economy?” Is the purpose of the entire ecosystem to dissipate as much energy as possible, producing the most plant and animal life? Or is it to create as much complexity as possible, while do this? Or something else?
Every part of the Universe seems to move toward greater complexity, according to Eric Chaisson, so this may be the goal. If so, too many humans may not be a problem.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/13-chaisson-trend-is-toward-more-complex-energy-intense-form.png
according to gatesy our only chance is innovation ” Innovation is the reason our lives have improved so much over the last century. From electricity and cars to medicine and planes, innovation has made the world better. Today, we are far more productive because of the IT revolution. The most successful economies are driven by innovative industries that evolve to meet the needs of a changing world.
My favorite innovation story, though, starts with one of my favorite statistics: Since 2000, the world has cut in half the number of children who die before the age of five.
How did we do it? One key reason was innovation. Scientists came up with new ways to make vaccines that were faster and cheaper but just as safe. They developed new delivery mechanisms that worked in the world’s most remote places, which made it possible to reach more kids. And they created new vaccines that protect children from deadly diseases like rotavirus.”
Probably not quite as glorious as high-tech vaccines would suggest. More like clean water and antibiotics. Even those now are becoming less assessible/effective. Polluted groundwater and surface water. And when I was practicing medicine, I could almost be assured that the drugs like Cipro, or even some of the cephalosporins like good old Keflex would knock out most infections like urinary tract infections or wound infections. In fact, I could almost treat empirically without requiring a wound culture and sensitivity or a urinalysis with culture and sensitivity. Towards the end of my career, I would never dare do this because antibiotic resistance had become so rampant.
As far as clean water, I still filter all my municipal water through a Berkey filter but even this I am skeptical in light of some quality control issues through the producers of the filters by New Millennium Concepts. Reportedly the filter had not been tested for affecting this after 200 gallons yet claiming 6000 gallons. Then the arsenic fluoride attachments use aluminum To extract, toxic metals, but aluminum itself may result in logic disorders like Alzheimer’s. Naturally, I do not trust any of the research out there now because it is so corrupted by money and big Pharma. Maybe I’ll jjust go back to my silver impregnated ceramic Katadyn filters.
water is definiteley very good for you eight glasses a day is the recommendation but i am only having 3 to 4 glasses a day i guess you being a doctor can confirm the eight glasses as being absoluteley necessary?
No sarcasm:
I don’t drink much water, but gallons of diet Coke. My understanding is that Coke plants go to great lengths to filter their water.
Just luck, no conclusions; I chose my parents wisely.
Dennis L.
Thankyou Gail, once again a brilliant description of what’s happening in the bigger picture of the world of human civilization. The very first graph, along with the oil growth decline graph, added to debt levels shown together, paint a picture of the early stages of collapse.
It’s the stage where decline is papered over trying to hide the reduced energy problem by whatever means. For humans it’s been doing extreme damage to the world environment, our home in the desperate attempt to maintain modernity.
Once we get below the zero growth line, for GDP growth and oil use, is obviously where all the debt becomes unrepayable, plus known by everyone, leading to feedback loops of chaos throughout the world economy.
There will be a litany of cascade failures throughout our extremely complex system of human civilization, with the future failures being unpredictable in a chaotic manner.
Overshoot always leads to collapse and modern civilization is so deep in into overshoot that continued denial of the reality of our situation for decade after decade, dismissing all the warnings, guarantees a hard and fast collapse, which is completely misunderstood by even many in the overshoot sphere.
We know how collapse has taken place in the past. It generally has taken quite a few years. Even if it seems obvious, it probably will happen over a period of years.
We really don’t know what is ahead. The Covid-19 era was strange compared to anything before it.
The covid 19 era could not have been a coincidence but a planned occurrence by the bilderbergers who have been monitoring the end of easy oil for at least 50 years, there is not much information on this group but I’ll wager that this group are the elders and pull the strings of all governments trying to manipulate the end of easy oil to their favour they would have made these plans knowing full well what we know that eventually the shits gonna hit the fan and an alternative way of life would need to be put in place for the winners or survivors of the “game”. I think that is a good analogy of life we are all players in a game everybody is competing but unfortunateley only a handful can be winners or survivors.
the last covid ”era” was different to previous ones, only because we have mass media now.
back in the 1920s one, 50m people died, but the rest got on with their lives and basically trusted to luck.
back then—there was no concept that: “Bill Gates was selling infected vaccines”—or “Fauci is working for the Chinese, and trying to bump us all off”–or a POTUS advising that ”we shoild inject ourselves with bleach”
or conspironuts on OFW coming up with other loonytoons stuff.—and could spread that faster than the virus itself, and do far more damage.
Right at the start–I said it was all a knee jerk reaction by people panicking, and it would go away in due course.
There were definitely some reactions to the countermeasures Norman spot on.. Some jerking with bells play. Sure there were knees too.
While we’re on the subject of bleach, Domestos kills ninety-nine percent of all known germs!
I’m not sure about the unknown ones.
Are you fully protected at the moment, Norman? You wouldn’t want to kill any grandmas by sneezing in their direction, would you?
Collapse is likely to come in waves, knowing why and when they happen could save your life.
https://sjgenco.medium.com/what-are-we-talking-about-when-we-talk-about-collapse-94f4e617e2e0
survival is going to be tough look at these fools believing in a bit of climate change ” Kalmus and Abramoff are among the rapidly growing number of those exasperated with the lack of urgency around the climate emergency. According to the American Psychological Association, which defined eco-anxiety in 2017 as “a chronic fear of environmental doom”, more than half of US adults see climate change as the biggest threat facing humanity.
Climate change and the anxiety around it can wreak havoc on the human mind in a multitude of ways. Studies have linked rising temperatures to increased visits to emergency departments and spikes in suicide rates. Climate-related stress can bring about despair and hopelessness “
Especially when there is no climate emergency,….except it appears to be getting slightly colder globally now.
Gail, thanks for another fine article!
You are welcome!
quick summary——-
we have built a civilisation on cheap surplus energy
we are trying to sustain it on expensive scarce energy.
lots of variables and peripheral influences on that of course, but in essence that is the problem that faces all of us.
not that it will change anything, been saying it for the last 10 years
Correct, I am afraid.
Norm,
It is going to be fine, incredible changes taking place, human life spans are very short.
We built our civilization on what we had or chose to use. North America had tremendous NRR, only used fairly recently. Different civilization.
Dennis L.
Incredible changes are taking place, just to a direction you do not like.
Everything is going to be lost. You will die deluded, as the world falls into hell in a handbasket.
Thank you! Very informative, as usual. Question: In paragraph 1 you write about “world oil production” in the 40s to 70s. Does that include the Soviet Union / Comecon ? Or is “world” limited to the West?
I presume it includes everything. It came from Vaclav Smil’s book.
The USA already is picking fights with Russia (Ukraine) and China (Taiwan). Ukraine’s coup in 2014 was a backed by the USA (no elections for quite a while) and triggered by a classic loan in external dollars. (See: Economic Hit Man). Ukraine is the invasion route into Russia, and so Russia treats it as the existential threat that it is. This existential threat is declared by the Biden administration to have the goal of regime change, which means overthrow of Russia. So far Taiwan’s leaders are avoiding taking the bait to become the next Ukraine.
The Biden administration’s declared intent to “stop China” by any means necessary has been the catalyst for the BRICS basket of currency new international settlement currency. It pushed Russia and China together.
BRICS has been having the same problem that the post-ww2 period had. The most powerful nations don’t agree. China wants to be the new reserve currency. Russia also wants it. Both are foolish as Keynes argued unsuccessfully. The power the reserve currency nation gets is temporary because being reserve currency causes a huge “export” of the nation’s currency for doing nothing. This forces the reserve currency nation’s manufacturing to become more expensive and pushes industry out. This has happened to the USA.
A special international settlement currency is the correct way to do it. This puts all nations on the same playing field. And that is the problem. A free ride for almost a century is awfully tempting.
This is what worries me. The children in the West Wing are pushing Russia to nuclear war. Russia will use its nuclear weapons before allowing itself to be defeated. The USA will decisively lose that war leaving China as the greatest world power and Russia with around 60 million survivors. This is not a game and they are not kidding.
https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/
At some point in the 1990s (after the implosion of the Soviet Union) the U.S. understood the finite nature of technically and financially viable resources exploitation, and decided to conquer what is left, or destroy what they can’t get so competitors (EU, China) can’t get them either. Cue 9/11, color revolutions, etc, up to the Ukrainian war. The U.S. NEEDS the Russian resources to keep the game on for another 30-50 years, and to keep them from the Chinese. That’s what makes this war so dangerous, as it truely is about survival for both sides. We are on the very edge of thermonuclear war. And in case of the U.S. they will not only target Russia, but the EU, China, and India also. Because the U.S. is uncompromised in its determination to remain the last civilization standing.
You probably are right about the US needing the resources of Russia, but I am not certain the US has figured out that, even if Russia has a smaller population, the US probably can’t really beat Russia. A war against Russia, or worse yet, against Russia and China, would likely turn out badly.
Unless policy has changed?
“By the time you got to the first Bush administration, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they came out with a national defense policy and strategic policy. What they basically said is that we’re going to have wars against what they called much weaker enemies and these have to be carried out quickly and decisively or else there will be embarrassment—a way of saying that popular reaction is going to set in. And that’s the way it’s been. It’s not pretty, but it’s some kind of constraint. “?
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/03/noam-chomsky-populist-groundswell-u-s-elections-future-humanity.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29
The USA had full access to Russian resources. Ditto for the EU. The currency was created and Russia accepted it. Russia had little use for the currency but they were fine with the situation. China accepted the currency for manufactured goods and purchased resources with it. The situation created a lot of consumption. That’s not desirable so the situation was ended. Downsizing.
Digital ones and zeros with dollar pedigree is what the world uses to buy things. It’s what the financial system uses. The financial system doesn’t care but if not those digital ones and zeros something else. The USA doesn’t own those digital ones and zeros the world does. The USA just got first spend. The USA is just the breeder; they don’t own the dogs. If you negate that pedigree, it’s the owners that lose, not the USA. There would be nothing to trade with.
The financial system works GREAT for Russia and China. They have no problem whatsoever with it. The system worked GREAT for consumers in the USA and EU. The trouble is someone thinks too much is being consumed. Downsizing is being implemented in unprofitable franchises. Profit is not measured in dollars. Dollars are created from nothing. It would be silly to measure profit in dollars.
The corporation already owns everything. The resources are all theirs. There is no power struggle for the corporation. This is a simple matter. Unprofitable franchises were consuming too much resources. They are being downsized. Russia didn’t stop accepting the dollar. China didn’t stop accepting the dollar. They can’t. The USA doesn’t own those digital ones and zeros anyway, other customers do. Those customers have things of real value and they sell them in dollars too. The corporation has no problem with them.
USA and EU had FULL ACESS to Russian resources. Russia and China couldn’t orchestrate the downsizing. The USA and EU did. The downsizing is called sanctions. It was implemented by the USA and the EU. They put themselves on a diet. It is unknown how strict the diet will be. We are in the preliminary stages of the downsizing.
Another appropriate term is restructuring. War is the primary restructuring tool. Where assets will be moved to is unknown. It’s not necessarily a plant closure but it might be. We will just have to wait and see.
There is a video out from Inside China (Kevin Walmsley) claiming that China and others are using “Tether” for trading. Such trades act very much like trading in dollars, but it avoids the problems of a reserve currency. The US can’t see what is going on and can’t seize the funds.
Agree. A guess is previously the US with reserve currency caused others to purchase dollars while we purchased goods and services in dollars which we printed.
Crypto to date is very difficult to inflate. This implies prices may settle down.
An economy which depends on exporting inflation may have serious issues.
Dennis L.
I disagree that Russia and China want world reserve currency status. IMO the exact opposite is true.
When Saudi declared renminbi its preferred currency, China could have accepted reserve currency status then. It declined.
Both Russia and China value their manufacturing. This is particularly true in ties when war seems likely. Both Russia and China have plans to increase their military’s and weapon systems.
As a reserve currency gains value as a credit instrument the nation that issues it products become non competitive. Manufacturing and industry leave the country. Russia and China understand this well. They were quite content to have The USA hold the bag, lose its industry, and rack up debt of enormous levels.
In fact using the I financial system and dollars is so convenient to them as a .matter of risk avoidance they continue it even when they are in more or less open conflict with the USA. Why not? It harms the USA to have reserve currency status. Why not get the benefit of the financial system and let the USA PUT nails in its coffin?
This is why there is no BRICS settlement system. No need to take risk of reserve currency. And why? World bank says Russia economy is growing leaps and bounds. The financial system works great for Russia and China.
The reality is the financial system always is associated with successful franchises. That’s Russia and China. The USA and Europe are now non-profitable franchises getting downsized. This has happened many times. The nation being downsized looks at its pink slip with dismay. “But I was the star”. Financial system says “Sorry boss, it’s not personal. See yah! Your card key is cancelled. Please reduce your energy consumption by 50%”
I agree!
Triffen’s dilemma. I don’t think Russia or China want the reserve currency mantle. They just want to stop US from abusing the dollar to economically /militarily bully any country that does not toe the line.
When that stops, US living standard goes down. US has less than 5% of world population, uses about 18% or resources; my guess secondary to inflating currency.
That gig is ending.
Dennis L.
https://www.iea.org/news/slowing-demand-growth-and-surging-supply-put-global-oil-markets-on-course-for-major-surplus-this-decade
The IEA thinks that we will be producing 114 mbd in 2030 with demand only 106 mbd. They think there will be a spare capacity surplus of 8 million barrels a day!? If the IEA was correct, would not such a large overhang in spare capacity lead to a collapse in oil prices, destabilizing the middle east, destroying their oil production. Would not such not a large overhang in spare capacity lead to such lower prices that oil demand would rise to consume much of that oil. I don’t understand the IEA’s thinking.
Art Berman has an article up on this issue:
https://www.artberman.com/blog/ieas-staggering-oil-glut-is-staggeringly-unlikely/
I always look forward to reading your blog here at ourfiniteworld.com. Thank you for all that you do, you are probably one of the most intelligent people on the internet
I haven’t had time to look at either the Berman article or the IEA report. But we are dealing with a competition between buyers and sellers. Prices will readjust to match supply and demand. Or other changes (like the Covid-19 era) will take place to match supply in demand.
28 comments you will enjoy .
https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/world-faces-staggering-oil-glut-by-end-of-decade-energy-watchdog-warns-i-ll-just-leave-this-here-for-the-pigeons
Yes I remember when this came out. It was the top story of the day! It is almost like they think if they say it enough it will come true. Art is a great resource; I have noticed that he has become a lot less sanguine recently. Although we may have a glut of oil soon but I think that this will be because we are heading for a world wide depression. This will make the price of oil come down for a while. I think then trump will become president and start printing money like a drunken sailor and the price will shoot up. Collapse soon followed behind but what better candidate to have in power then one that has all the right wing fall and kiss his feet and think that he has been sent by God?!
It is so hard these days people are so dumb to what is going on around them.
Gail,
Your superb superior articles are much appreciated and THANKS much.
There is a MAJOR problem that needs mentioning, and that is the powers that be in the USA are hopelessly ignorant and delusional to the extreme, focused on the current stylish siren call of the manufactured importance of the DEI malarkey.
Thus the very serious issues of our macro economic factors you discuss so well are never addressed at all. With our leader being a hopeless empty shell of a stupid ignorant Demented Fool there is no leadership to the affairs of state whatsoever.
These adjectives not used lightly or casually. The ship is missing its rudder.
His dementia has accelerated to the point that he cannot read the teleprompter or cue cards, and has to be led on and off the stage.
Biden seems to have bought into the HOAX of the foolishness of the “Green New Deal” early on as there is a video of him rushing up to a small group at a rally after the election, (which was stolen to install him), and he is screeching to the little group, “Look in my eyes, I promise you I am going to eliminate hydrocarbons”!
Of course what he actually did was just to double the price of gas and diesel thus lifting the prices of everything all the hundreds of millions of semi trucks are hauling everywhere.
Obviously big changes cannot come fast enough, hopefully!
Somehow, these strange narratives self-organize themselves. There is no way Biden can say, “The economy is headed downward. We really need a lot more manufacturing here, and cheap fossil fuels to allow this manufacturing to go forward.”
It makes a lot more sense to tell a “Sour grapes” story. “We never wanted all of this fossil fuel anyhow. It heats up the atmosphere too much. It makes too much pollution.
Besides, Biden can tell the narrative that all of the subsidies (with more debt) might somehow get somewhere, sometime. The research will allow universities to keep going and young people to have hope for the future.
I have told the story many times about a textbook company telling me that they would love to have me write for them. The only detail is that the books they sell need to be ones that they can hope to use for 20 years. They shouldn’t tell any scary stories that might concern students or teachers. Ideally, they should make it sound like the energy transition will provide lots of jobs that pay well for students who study hard.
Biden needs to tell a similar story, whether or not he understands what is really going on.
I think it’s the other way around: the “DEI malarky” is being pushed expressly to mask fundamental declines.
The whole idea of making “ESG” a metric for valuation side-steps now-out-moded concepts such as, “does the company currently make money?”, “can the company increase sales?”, “will capital investments yield returns?”.. stuff like that.
Guess: Biology wins in the end.
Dennis L.
face facts
no world leader knows what course of action to take.
expecting politicos to ”know” more than everyone else is delusional
there will be no more growth
which means the end of our political system
thats one thing most of them do know—except the orange one of course
on the ”stolen election”–Im right now watching a program about it, with the orange one screeching down the phone about finding 11000 votes in Georgia
And accusing the Georgia speaker of being a criminal because he refused to do so.
plus lots a verifiable stuff. on Flynn Guiliani and Powell in particular—talking revolution and martial law—that is real..
Any thoughts ursel?
Biden sees where fossil fuel taking all of us, and the futue isnt pleasant..
That is responsibility of all of us.
Enjoy your conspiracy theories–but it wont change reality
When I watched the night of the election, it certainly looked as if Trump had won in quite a few states. The next morning, those amounts reversed. It could have just been that the city counts were put in late, and that reversed the indications. It may have been the big load of mail in ballots were finally counted. Stories had been going around saying that they were disproportionately fraudulently voted ballots of people living in nursing homes who would not otherwise vote. Anyhow, the very strange result was reported the next morning.
I can understand why Trump didn’t believe the results. They were very strange.
You coax the blues right out of the horn, Trump!
You charm the husk right off of the corn, Trump!
You’ve got the banjoes strummin’
And plunkin’ out a tune to beat the band,
The whole plantation’s hummin’
Since you brought Dixie back to Dixie land.
You make the cotton easy to pick, Trump!
You give my old mint julep a kick, Trump!
Who ever thought a Yankee would put
Our llittle Dixie belles to shame.
You’ve made us feel alive again,
You’ve given us the drive again,
To make the South revive again, Trump!
You’ve brought the cake-walk back into style, Trump!
You make the weepin’ willow tree smile, Trump!
Your skin is Dixie satin,
There’s rebel in your manner and your speech,
You may be from Manhattan,
But Georgia never had a sweeter peach.
You make the old magnolia tree bud, Trump!
You make camellias bloom in the mud, Trump!
You make the bougainvillea turn purple
at the mention of your name
We’re baking pecan pies again
Tonight the chicken fries again
This time the South will rise again, Trump!
Bloomberg published a nasty piece on an american in Russia doing nice videos about Russia.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-06-12/youtube-influencers-in-russia-push-anti-sanctions-talking-points
Sample video from the guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_9VDtJc_LY
although he published one that was viewed 2M times (and triggered bloomberg) but now i can not find it.
Following that many vloggers from Russia have lost their youtube account. If you need a list let me know. And yesterday the USA closed the two russian visa centers in the USA. Ursula has come up with a 14th sanctions package.
Economy doing quite well, I tried to get a train ticket a week ago for tomorrow, they were sold out over a 20 hours interval. Local Kremlin overran with tourists, with many people out at night due to warm weather. I was on the phone with a friend yesterday and he commented that everything he bought in the last two years (since he arrived) is made in Russia. The oligarchs are busy starting giant agricultural projects in Siberia, but it looks like generally the sanctions pie has been split equitably.
The sanctions generally seem to have hurt the US more than Russia, it seems. It has made the rest of the world more interested in getting away from the US$, since the US doesn’t seem to stand behind its promises.
Let us make an assumption that the sanctions are causal–Let us evaluate the effects. Germany’s economy has tanked. They have had to repeal social protection laws that prohibited layoffs. It is justified by the idea of conflict and war. What are the effects of not trading energy for Euros in Russia? World bank says Russia is approaching third largest economy in the world. My takeaway: The financial system as it is works fantastic for Russia.
It was always known that inexpensive energy from Russia drove the EU economy. It was a concern that Russia would manipulate the EU with energy. The sanctions accepted the loss of energy to the EU economy as a temporary measure to get compliance from Russia. That the energy would disappear forever from EU consumption was not considered.
All of the things we witness could be considered a lessening of consumption or downsizing. The sanctions have the same effect as climate change measures or alternative energy less energy consumption ie downsizing.
The people of course are unhappy with the downsizing. This is observed in France and to a lesser degree in Germany. In what used to be East Germany slightly over 50% of the people support the pro Russian political parties.
Conflict or war is the reason provided for the downsizing. A reason is needed if things like social protection laws prohibiting layoffs are repealed.
Whether you attribute this downsizing to a natural phenomenon or a continuous and continuous series of “bad calls” what is clear is downsizing of USA and Europe is occurring. IMO it’s very likely to keep occurring.
If we experience war, it is likely it will involve radical downsizing either through destruction of energy infrastructure that we witness in both parties active conflict or rationing.
If we regard downsizing as a unmistakable active trend and disregard our ideas about causal war is very likely as it results in radical downsizing. IMO what the fallacy is is that after the war infrastructure is rebuilt and consumption returns at increased levels.
If we regard the pandemic it was effectively downsizing with many small businesses shutting doors permanently. Whatever the phenomena it has two effects the downsizing of the USA and Europe and to a lesser extent increased activity in China and Russia. IMO we may have ideas about causals but this is secondary to the observation that the trend is very active and consistent.
We may hope that war does not occur on a worldwide basis but the active and consistent trend observed would support its occurrence. I would suggest that this active trend is much more of a reliable indicator than hope regarding our leaders. Our leaders are one of the most reliable indicators of the active trend observed in demonstrated actions regarded as “bad calls”.
If radical downsizing occurs and I believe it quite likely obviously this will result in net downsizing for Russia and China albeit at a less radical degree than USA and Europe as a function of economic activity between the two. There is still a great deal of consumption of the products of Russia and China by the developed countries and this will cease. As we note Russia and China are setting up trade networks and military alliance that completely disregard the developed countries as anything other than an enemy in the phenomena known as war. Everyone seems to be on board with war and this is hardly surprising considering the active and consistent trend.
In regard to hope what we can hope for is this downsizing trend to continue where consumption is reduced in contrast to ending completely. In this matter the trend is our friend.
Radical downsizing seems like a good way of describing the situation in the not-to-distant future.
No one can tell citizens what is really happening, so we get the strange situation we see today.
Agree.
Dennis L.
“Let us hope that our leaders make wise choices and keep us away from severe problems for as long as possible.”… Don’t count on it.
How about “let us hope that our leaders are extreme cowards, and given a proper offer while on the brink, they will follow self interest”?
A quote from Woody Allen is appropriate here: More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
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Great points.
Your concluding statement regarding war between competitors reminds me of Tainter’s argument in The Collapse of Complex Societies:
-such polities tend to get caught up in spiralling competitive investments as they seek to outmaneuver others and evolve greater complexity together
-the polities caught up in this competition increasingly experience declining marginal returns and must invest ever-increasing amounts leading to greater economic weakness
-withdrawing from this spiral or collapsing is not an option without risking being subsumed by a competitor
-it is this trap of competition that will continue to drive the pursuit of complexity regardless of human/environmental costs
-incentives and economic reserves can support this situation for a lengthy period as witnessed by the Roman and Mayan experiences where centuries of diminishing returns were endured
-ever-increasing costs and ever-decreasing marginal returns typify peer polities in competition
-this ends in either domination by one state and a new energy subsidy or collapse of all
-“Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.” (p. 214)
” Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.”
That very well could be. China has a huge debt problem, not unlike the US. Russia is very spread out and very cold, making it difficult to create an economy on its own.
Thank you for this intelligent observation. Too many times people think where is the best place but they will all have problems. No country trust another country now.
The survivors might disproportionately be in what are today very poor countries.
Or maybe things will turn out differently than we think. In my thinking, there has to be a god somehow created the system and even now is controlling this whole system–in fact the whole Universe. This god is active every day, in every part of the system. Maybe the god that controls the system has different idea than the ever-rising complexity that we humans seem to aim for. Perhaps, time is up for this Universe, and we move to something totally different.
This sounds bizarre, but we really don’t know what is ahead.
Thank you for voicing your honest opinion on this. No matter what you believe…there has been a miracle for life to have happened. As Joseph Campbell said “life is something that should not have happened ” but it did.
Given a large enough energy gradient, some mechanism will arise to bring it closer to equilibrium.
yup lidia—the mechanism is called die-off
I enjoy when you post this optimistically, but I think God wrote the laws of physics and then walked away. What is so striking from your writings is how mechanistic the whole system is. Diesel peaks in 2015-2017, cars and phones peak in 2017. Peak coal led to WWI, WW2 and the great depression. etc.
Even when considering the death cult now owning the US, we have to believe that they are dissipative structures which need to be put in a situation where they choose a path different from extinction. As is always the case with humans, both carrots and sticks need to be used.
As far as sticks goes I think we have witnessed a fundamental change in Putin. He just stated with the addition of the 600 Chinese ICBMs, the Russia China alliance will destroy the USA in a nuclear war. Those additional ICBMs are targeted one place–it’s not Europe. Russias new missile base in North Korea will expand. In Putin’s mind The destruction of the USA and Europe is a certainty even if a preemptive strike would occur. He is most probably right. The addition of 600 ICBMs probably means close to 100% casualty rates.
Putin appears nervous, but in some ways at ease. He has put in the wests hands. If long range weapons attack Russia the countries providing those weapons will be hit. If its war with NATO its war with NATO. If its nuclear war its nuclear war. He has clearly stated consequences. The new alliances have allowed him to accept it’s out of his hands. There is really no stick or carrot. There is only actions and consequences. Everything is on autopilot now. The decision making period is over and Putin is relieved. Now we see the real Putin as there is no need to practice diplomacy.
This idea is actually not bizarre. In fact, if we can answer the question why we (humankind) are here in the first place, then we will know where we (the current civilisation) are going to.
There has to be a God who created the whole system, and who controls the end of it.
we are all carbon based life forms
the only thing we can move onto is a different variation of that
BIS figures show that China’s debt, as a % of GDP, is the same as the West’s.
China’s economy is growing rapidly (growth eats debt) and its borrowings are backed by assets 4:1. The HSR system, for example, has an 8:1 ROI. The Three Gorges repays its construction cost 100%, in cash, every 47 months, etc.
Beijing is holding $5 trillion in foreign reserves, inflation is negligible and the mood is sunny..
I found this chart in the Economist a while back. Hopefully, it isn’t behind a paywall. It shows the hourly rate for labor much higher in China than in a large number of other Southeast Asian countries. This makes it harder for China to compete.
https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20230225_WBC032.png
If the level of industrialization is better, or education or tooling or software is better, then workers can still be more productive even if more expensive. Also, the larger Chinese economy means economies of scale and so labor costs can be amortized across a greater quantity of production whenever there are fixed one-time costs (eg. for setup of a factory). If labor costs were all that matter, importing all of Mexico into the USA would be good for the economy.
Exactly. China was a agrarian nation 30 years ago. When they first started manufacturing it was a bit rough. Skill levels were rough. Tooling was rough. Six sigma was non existent.
China whips up a product and process like the galloping gourmet now. They understand price point like no other.
A datsun b210 sold for what $3k?
As value changes prices change. Chinese “labor” has mad skills now.
Germany is the suddenly uncompetitive story. Even with the Euro keeping Gerrman pricing low. That cute trick is over.
Another “bad call” I guess.
Godfree, I enjoy also your writings. But the writing is on the wall for China. You can use the harshness of their lockdowns or the fact they insisted on writing a joint document with Russia that declare their intention to collaborate with the WHO, to see what the future is. Of course that suited some Russian globalists like Gref or the remnants of the dirty seven just fine. The Chinese maneuvered themselves into a better spot, compared to the West, but there is no amount of good governance that can violate conservation of energy.
Russia new defense agreement with represents a fundamental change. Russia needed artillery shells. It can’t consume them all in Ukraine it has to save some for NATO. The recent North Korean shipment was reported to be 5 million.
Ray McGovern is reporting that North Korea has already received advanced missiles from Russia. Solid fuel, precision, maneuvering capability range includes the USA. Basically unstoppable. Of course nuclear warheads will be fitted.
Putin promptly warned South Korea that it would “be a mistake ” to do the same thing North Korea did–provide weapons for the West. South Korea grumbled, but what are they going to do with Kim Jon with nukes just north? Now North Korea’s interests are the same as Russias.
The USA reportedly moved nuclear assets to the area, so if South Korea is nuked, they will have consolation in North Korea getting nuked.
South Korea is obviously going to stay clear of the whole mess best it can.
Putin gave Kim a Russian luxury car and they went for a spin. They exchanged pedigree horses and dogs. You know the kind of things leaders concerned with the people and a fair and just BRICS do.
This is a worrying situation!
The world oil supply appears to be over the hill for good ( https://davecoop.net/seneca ), judging by prices since early April ( http://oil-price.net/ ).
Oil prices can spike and fall back. It is easy to get misled by oil prices.
But I think you are probably right about crude oil being over the hill. Natural gas liquids production can perhaps rise for a while more. It makes the combination confusing.
Brava
That is Italian for “I like your post,” I take it.
Generally used for a virtuoso soprano after a particularly well sung song.
Often followed by shouts of “Bellissimo!” and “Encore!”
It always reminds me of this, from 11:34.
Thank you for the new article Gail!