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Economists, actuaries, and others tend to make forecasts as if whatever current situation exists will continue indefinitely or will perhaps improve a bit. No one wants to consider the possibility that things will somehow change for the worse. Politicians want to get re-elected. University presidents want their students to believe that their degrees will be truly useful in the future. Absolutely no one wants to hear unfavorable predictions.
The issue I see is that many promises were made during the period between the end of World War II and 1973, when oil prices were very low, and most people assumed that oil supply could grow endlessly. No one stopped to think that this was a temporary situation that likely could not be repeated. If things didn’t work out as planned, debt bubbles could bring down the economy. This was a heading I used in my talk at the recent Minnesota Degrowth Summit:
In this post, I will provide a few highlights from my recent talk. I also provide a link to a PDF of my Degrowth Summit talk and a link to a Vimeo recording of the summit, which includes a transcript. To access the transcript and an outline of the timings of the various talks, scroll down on the front page of the recording. Joseph Tainter spoke first; there was a recorded section showing clips by other speakers that only online viewers saw, and I spoke last (starting at about 1:55 on the video).
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Between 1920 and 1970, US oil supply grew rapidly. The early oil was easy to extract and close to customers wanting to purchase it. There had been warnings from physicists (including, most notably, M. King Hubbert) that this could not go on indefinitely, but most people assumed that any obstacles were far in the future.
Of course, there were other countries producing oil besides the US at that time, so it was possible to purchase imported oil. The US still had some oil it could produce, but it tended to require more complex operations. For example, some of the oil was in Alaska. Bringing this oil to market required working in a cold climate, laying a long pipeline, and using ships to transport the oil to locations with refineries.
Low oil prices were very beneficial to the economy, for as long as they lasted.
We don’t appreciate how important low-cost food is to our personal finances. If food purchases amounts to, say, 50% of available income, necessities such as clothing and housing would take nearly all our income. There would be little left over for optional items. On the other hand, if purchases of food require only 5% to 10% of available pay, there would much more likely be money left over for discretionary purchases, such as buying a vehicle or paying for school tuition for a child.
Oil and other energy products are like food for the economy. During the period when oil prices were very low, there was sufficient margin for purchasing all kinds of “extras,” such as the items listed in Figure 4 below.
In the low-priced oil era, small businesses were sufficient for many types of operations. There was little need for a deep organizational hierarchy, or for advanced energy-saving versions of manufactured devices. Most goods used in the US were made in the US.
Once the economy started to need more complexity, things began to change.
The economy needs a strong middle class to maintain the buying power needed to purchase goods such as vehicles, motorcycles, and new homes, to keep the price of oil up. If the middle class starts to disappear, or if young people start earning less than their parents did at the same age (adjusted for inflation), then it becomes difficult to keep the prices of oil and other energy products up. Prices must be both high enough for producers and low enough for consumers.
Recessions took place when oil prices rose. Governments found that they needed to bail out their economies with more debt when oil prices rose. Since 2008, the ratio of US debt to GDP has skyrocketed. Quite a bit of the added debt has been to pay for programs for poor people and the elderly.
The current level of debt of the US government is widely viewed as being too high. One analysis suggests that if the ratio of government debt to GDP exceeds 90%, economic growth is inhibited. The US debt to GDP ratio is now 120% on the basis shown, which is well above the 90% threshold. One concern is that interest payments on debt already exceed the amount the US spends on defense each year. Taxes need to rise, simply to pay the interest on the debt.
Growing debt, particularly during the Stagflation Stage, is one of the issues mentioned by researchers into so-called secular cycles, which are long-term cycles that take centuries to complete. In the book Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov, a group of people somehow obtain possession of an area of land (often by cutting down trees or winning a war) that allows the population of the group to temporarily surge. When the population reaches the carrying capacity of the area, population growth greatly slows in a period referred to as Stagflation. Wage and wealth disparity become more of a problem, as does debt.
Eventually, according to Turchin and Nefedof’s study examining eight societies, populations tended to collapse over long periods, ranging from 20 to 50 years. Such cycles are closely related to the periods of growth and collapse analyzed in Prof. Joseph Tainter’s book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies.”
The time ahead looks worrying, if my analysis is correct.
A few comments for my regular readers:
- My presentation included 51 slides. Look at the PDF to see the full presentation.
- Even though I didn’t mention it, having a rapidly growing energy supply at a very high EROI would not be sufficient to forestall collapse indefinitely. Other issues would emerge. Population would rise higher, and pollution would be more of a problem. Eventually, the system would still reach a limit and tend to collapse.
- I only included EROI because I thought a few people would already be aware of the concept. I didn’t define it or talk about it.
- My analysis seems to suggest that extenders of fossil fuels, such as wind, solar, and nuclear, need to have very high EROIs. But even with high EROIs, they are unlikely to be helpful for very long because the system would still tend to reach its limits.
Gail , if the U.S can open Venezuela oil and get it flowing again; won’t that be a game changer. 300 billion barrels of crude there
It might offset a little of the world’s coming collapse in oil supply, but it won’t do enough.
Venezuela currently produces about 1 million barrels per day of crude oil. IIRC, a fair amount of that goes to China, to repay debts. Even if that were doubled, and it all went to the US, it wouldn’t solve the world’s overall oil problems.
Tulsi nails Obama as manufacturing Russia Gate. An act of treason. But of course nothing will come of it.
I have a bottle of champagne for when the first nuclear bomb is used in WW3. I will repurpose it if Obama hangs.
Elon says he wants to put 100GW of AI compute into orbit yearly.
Maybe he can put a second 100GW per year into orbit to benefit humans? I know in modern thinking help humans is taboo. It is rich Ashkenazi (a genetic group, not a religious group) first, second and only.
Hopefully the Han and the Indians will be urban adapted enough to fight back.
He says a lot and hardly follows through
I wonder how this will work:
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Germany-Caps-Power-Prices-to-Save-Its-Industrial-Base.html
Germany Caps Power Prices to Save Its Industrial Base
Germany has agreed to subsidize electricity for its heavy industries, capping prices at about €0.05 per kilowatt-hour from 2026 through 2028—a major policy move aimed at keeping its industrial base from eroding under the weight of Europe’s soaring energy costs. . .
Since the 2022 energy crisis, power prices have remained volatile—spiking again this fall as renewable generation faltered and gas-fired output surged to its highest level since 2021. Low wind speeds, weak hydro output, and grid bottlenecks forced Germany to burn more natural gas and coal to stabilize supply.
Those dynamics have made energy security a central political issue. Forecasts of a cold winter have already driven German power futures near €100 per megawatt-hour, reigniting public anger over industrial competitiveness and household affordability.
The promised price for industrial electricity is astoundingly low! It is lower than the current industrial electricity rates in nearly all US states today. The state of Texas would be close, as would New Mexico. Rates in the state of Washington (which I think of as low with all of its hydroelectric) seem to be a little above the capping rate in Germany.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/7?agg=0,1&geo=vvvvvvvvvvvvo&endsec=vg&linechart=ELEC.PRICE.TX-ALL.Q~ELEC.PRICE.TX-RES.Q~ELEC.PRICE.TX-COM.Q~ELEC.PRICE.TX-IND.Q&columnchart=ELEC.PRICE.TX-ALL.Q~ELEC.PRICE.TX-RES.Q~ELEC.PRICE.TX-COM.Q~ELEC.PRICE.TX-IND.Q&map=ELEC.PRICE.US-ALL.Q&freq=Q&ctype=linechart<ype=pin&rtype=s&maptype=0&rse=0&pin=
I don’t know how US rates work in practice; maybe “heavy” industry gets a slightly lower rate than less heavy industry, so that US very heavy industry really does get as low a rate as €0.05 per kilowatt-hour. The point is that the rate is incredibly low, and it is being guaranteed for three years.
How will this be funded? Will residential customers be charged sky-high rates, or more government debt added? What will happen to the relativity
i’m a bit naive on energy economics
but if germany is subsidising its industrial energy base, isnt the real money for that subsidy derived from taxation on industry itself?
Or attempted taxation of the people, or artificially high electricity rates for non-industrial consumers. Perhaps more government debt could used, but is iffy. If the debt level becomes too high, interest rates tend to rise, making debt repayment more difficult or impossible. Furthermore, the EU would frown greatly on huge levels of German debt.
If Germany had its own currency, its currency would tend to fall with a high debt level. If one country tries a stunt like this, it seems likely to get kicked out of the EU. Or the EU starts disintegrating because every other country wants to try a similar stunt.
with my own rudimentary nderstanding of uropean politics, I am picking taxation of the people.
Right, if subsidies were funded by the recipient of the subsidy, as Norm wondered, it wouldn’t be a subsidy in the first place. I’m going with a combination of Gail’s options: higher consumer rates but with a government debt-based consumer subsidy feathering mechanism as the consumer outrage becomes deafening.
Germany is liable for a number of EU countries, so it is difficult to say whether Germany does not have its own currency, namely the euro. Together with Ursula von der Leyen, it also determines EU policy. Germany has now found a “legal” way to be able to take out very high loans in order to be able to pay for the Ukraine war.
The official figures of Germany are good, the population does not feel this, however, there is a broad upper class with money like hay. Many EU countries produce intermediate products for German cars, this could distort the statistics.
The Germans have paid an extremely large amount of money for the energy transition, I have EUR 5-600 billion in my head in 20 years. The Germans also pay for the integration of the former East Germany and for integration attempts of migrants who are far from education. At the same time, the EU is trying to destroy the German car industry. The policy is more than absurd and can probably also be attributed to incompetence.
Presumably, these subsidies were awarded completely unplanned after complaints from the industry and no one has calculated them through. They will certainly come out of the debt pot.
Germany is governed by a coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats, who together no longer have a majority in polls. The new right-wing party is defamed as National Socialist and the government is trying to ban it. Freedom of expression is also being noticeably restricted and many people, including lawyers, have lost confidence in the legal capacity.
Germany is certainly on the decline.
Norman, in fact just everybody around is subsidizing Germany’s industrial energy base to some degree! From .NO hydro to FR/CZ NPPs to even occasional PL coal based grid – ALL are keeping these cr@t#@ins necks above the water.. in terms of both regular/peak-emergency electricity (~fq) deliveries..
the german people are better engineers than everyone else—right now theyve run into the same problem as everyone else—-insufficient surplus energy to drive their economic system,
?? ehm, OK..
perhaps another planet / dimension..
The reply was about the long term evolving situation and [WELL KNOWN FACT] in which DE govs for starters choose to decommission -switch out too fast and too many “hard” as in stable electricity generating sources on the electric grid, which resulted into non stable grid situation with spill-over into large part of Europe (the grids are interconnected to some degree). In effect [ONLY THANKs] to increased effort from the neighbors feeding DE the proper stable frequency into their grid avoided [BLACKOUT ] already and not destabilizing the situation in the region further..
Actually this happens repeatedly in some varied form-severity every year now.. usually around spikes in RE power production..
You can tell Norman.
But you can’t tell him much.
That’s without network cost, so still way higher than US. Ekectrity cost is only like half of the cost in Germany where you pay the grid separately. For the future grid costs are expected to rise
Thanks for filling me in on that. I was making a wrong assumption.
There may still be a cost problem for the Germany government, if it freezes electricity prices, but it won’t be as extreme as I was worried about. The government will still have to figure out a way to get subsidies from somewhere, they just won’t be as large as I was imagining.
A new study from the Federal Reserve of San Francisco indicates that tariffs operate in a different way than many people expect. They tend to hold down inflation and raise unemployment.
I might argue that tariffs are a way of reducing demand in a world without enough goods and services to go around.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/150-years-data-upend-economic-orthodoxy-fed-study-finds-tariffs-lower-not-raise-inflation
150 Years Of Data Destroy Democrat Dogma On Tariffs: Fed Study Finds They Lower, Not Raise, Inflation
A new historical analysis is challenging the central premise that has guided trade policy, inflation forecasting, and Federal Reserve decision-making for decades. According to the study from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco spanning 150 years of tariff changes across three major Western economies, higher tariffs consistently lower inflation and raise unemployment – directly contradicting longstanding economic orthodoxy.
The authors, Régis Barnichon and Aayush Singh, examined tariff shifts between 1870 and 2020 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France – and came to the conclusion that the conventional view of tariffs causing inflation does not survive empirical scrutiny.
“We find that a tariff hike raises unemployment and lowers inflation,” they write. “This goes against the predictions of standard models, whereby CPI inflation should go up in response to higher tariffs.”
Original Study;
https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/working-papers/2025/11/what-is-a-tariff-shock-insights-from-150-years-of-tariff-policy/
Decelerationism ‘confirmed.’ Duh.
As in overall global return to tariffs regime (of sorts / intensity) had to get that final touch of officialdom approval via FED research paper. And the new reality will just percolate down through the artery-pipes of the system from now on (Wall st., offshore hedge funds, F500biz, .. , . ) .. + eventually even via “also ran” (ECB) – actually in these deepest dungeons of finance you can’t never be sure who is scheming who..
Totally “not” nudged-scripted development, lolz..
Is it possible to give an example of that paragraph, I find it turgid in extreme.
Dennis L.
And the Fed nudge-scripting the forthcoming Supreme Court ruling on tariffs lol
It seems that the tariffed items might more likely be manufactured locally and with that process lead to a acquisition of skills by the local population as well as technical schools to teach those and related skills.
Wealth is young people, there is no economics without biology.
Dennis L.
You’re bargaining with Collapse by bargaining with biology. Why not drop the masking and just leave biology alone so that bargain with Collapse directly. Failing acceptance, at least the directness remains a virtue.
Provide an example of economics without biology. My guess is the key is self replication on the part of biology.
Dennis L.
I would ask you, Dennis, to invert your bargaining into post- acceptance constructivism and instead pick an example of biology without economics. For just once, instead of gaslighting biology into only existing in the form of homo industrialis economicus such that it continues on with Einsteinian insanity.
Newsflash: there is also no life AFTER economics without biology.
Biology provides a close-to-free type of replication. Offspring tend to vary. Evolution assures that the best adapted to the changing situation will tend to survive. Somehow, evolution (through biology) is a way to prevent the economic system from deviating too far from what will work.
I just say this Dennis because we are facing the greatest economic collapse of all-time so it behooves young people to at least partly look outside of economics in order to develop a life plan.
Forgotten but not gone away . The Yen game .
The creditors’ revolt: how Japan’s bond market ended the era of easy money and triggered the largest capital repatriation in financial history.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/179099797
From the same author.
”Japan just fired the starting gun on the next global regime shift.
Q3 GDP fell about 1.8% annualized, exports dropped after new 15% US tariffs, and private consumption barely grew. Tokyo’s answer is a stimulus package expected to exceed ¥17 trillion while the 10Y JGB has ripped to around 1.7%, the highest since 2008.
Translate that into market language:
• The world’s largest net creditor is sliding into fiscal stimulus with rising real yields.
• A $1T+ yen carry complex suddenly has to reprice “risk-free” home yields.
• Even a small repatriation of Japan’s ~$6T overseas assets tightens global liquidity and lifts global rates.
This is not just “Japan’s problem”. It is the quiet beginning of the end of the post-2008 free-money era. Investors still trading as if JGBs are stuck at zero are the real bagholders in this story.
https://x.com/shanaka86/status/1990390619106406556/photo/1
All this talk of foreign buyers is irrelevant. They constitute something like 25% of outstanding debt and meanwhile we have to roll over about 10 trillion a year, so the 1T owned by Japan is small potatoes. Disclaimer: all figures are from memory and ballpark.
From the Substack report, in describing how the “carry trade” has been affected:
Japanese buying provided a persistent bid under global bond markets, suppressing term premiums and keeping borrowing costs artificially low across the developed world. The presence of this patient, yield-hungry capital allowed the United States to run persistent fiscal deficits, Europe to maintain its currency union despite structural imbalances, and emerging markets to access hard currency funding at historically low costs.
For three decades, Japan’s deflation exported disinflation to the rest of the world. Japanese savers, unable to earn returns at home, effectively subsidized borrowers everywhere else.
The Inversion
November 10th marked the moment this arrangement began to unwind in earnest. . .
In plain terms: it now costs Japanese institutions money to own American government debt on a hedged basis. . .
When a creditor the size of Japan begins withdrawing from global debt markets, the effects cascade through multiple channels simultaneously. . .
By exporting capital at zero return, Japan was essentially exporting the psychology of deflation. Global asset prices inflated not because of fundamentally strong growth prospects but because vast pools of capital had nowhere else to go. Negative real yields became normalized. Risk premiums compressed to historic lows. Investors reached desperately for any positive return, no matter how fragile the underlying asset.
This dynamic inflated equity valuations, suppressed volatility, and encouraged speculation.
But it looks like the yen carry trade is going away, and Japan may have major financial problems. Japan is a very major player in the system, so its problems affect everyone else. I think the Substack writer may be pointing out a real issue, to add to other issues. It will tend to pull interest rates up, when consumers are clamoring to have lower interest rates.
Bond markets are reacting . The debt it so huge that even a minuscule higher rate will explode /implode the market .
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/japan-bond-rout-deepens-fears-052647655.html
It is amazing that the Japanese government has been able to stay together this long, with its lack of fossil fuels, amazingly high debt level, and falling population.
It is my understanding that Japanese debt is to a significant extent in the accounts of citizens, who are trying to save for retirement. If it doesn’t pay out, it will affect these retirement accounts.
The Japanese situation may not be all that different from the US situation. The US has lots of totally unfunded promises, including FDIC bank guarantees of deposits, Medicare promises, and part of Social Security. Where future payouts to retirees are funded, it looks like the funding may include AI debt, private equity debt, and lots of other iffy promises for future payouts.
Yen deflation exporting disinflation via yen lending facilities is getting replaced with dollar deflation exporting disinflationary dynamics with reverse lending facilities. Inflating currency holders lending to the US Treasury such that when recouped the investment has not lost real value to inflation. Who is going to look that gift horse in the mouth?
There’s the carry trade, which borrows in a low interest rate currency in order to invest in a higher interest rate currency.
There’s the uncommon reverse carry trade, which borrows in a high interest rate currency in order to invest in a low interest rate currency in anticipation of a favorable change in the exchange rate.
And now there is the stablecoin inverse carry trade, which invests (not borrows) in a low interest rate currency in order to not invest, sooner than necessary, in a too-high interest rate economy that’s bleeding real value all the time.
When inflation hits a certain point, money takes on a use it or lose it dynamic that turbo boosts into hyperinflation. Venezuela would presumably have hyperinflation by now if half of all transactions under 10K weren’t in stablecoins. It’s a pilot program for the Hand. Which makes Venezuela a burgeoning financial protectorate of the United States. And not the only one.
Inverse carry trade. Not to be confused with the reverse carry trade.
Arbitrage.
Now, we are seeing more problems in Japan, including an escalating clash with China.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/japan-bond-yields-soar-record-slamming-door-stimulus-just-economy-implodes-amid-escalating
Japan Bond Yields Soar To Record, Slamming Door On Stimulus Just As Economy Implodes Amid Escalating China Clash
The dispute [between China and Japan] will deal a harsh blow to Japan’s already reeling economy, as Beijing has urged its citizens not to travel there. Chinese form the largest number of all tourists to Japan, accounting for nearly a quarter, official figures show. Tourism-related stocks in Japan plunged on the news.
More than 10 Chinese airlines, such as Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines, have offered refunds on Japan-bound routes until December 31, while Sichuan Airlines has cancelled plans for a Chengdu-Sapporo route until at least March, state media said.
Film distributors have also suspended the screening of at least two Japanese films in China. . .
Apart from tourism, Japan is heavily dependent on China for supply of critical minerals used in items from electronics to cars.
The Takaichi Doctrine will make Japan the Ukraine of the Far East and so the Japanese public should take heed of Xue Jian’s advice and take the necessary action to stop that, before the Chinese do.
The tourist issue amounted to just under half a million cancellations(serious stuff) and the language from Chinese officials has been brutal(with troubling historical references).
When someone like Xue Jian(Chinese consul general in Osaka) says “Cut off her neck!” he’s referencing Chen Tang* and it means China is once again ready to hunt it’s enemies near or far(a new military doctrine).
Okinawa, as it’s now called, may soon be returning to it’s historical and rightful place in the Liuqiu islands.
* Entrance to Yi County is the dried-up skull of the Manyi chief who, staring blankly into the world, reminds all that whoever offends and assaults the Mighty Han will be hunted down then put to death however far away he flees”
Chen Tang in his report to emperor Yuan Liu Shi 36BCE
I like that. The US military is obviously going to be withdrawing from Japan in the not too distant future.
So, It’s just not me..imagine that…from Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2025/11/14/why-high-food-prices-will-make-public-groceries-inevitable/
“In 2025, Grocers Sold 13 Billion Fewer Units Of Product Than In 2021
Grocery industry sales have jumped almost $225 billion since the pandemic ended, according to NIQ data. But that growth is all price inflation. Grocery prices outpaced the rate of inflation by several points from 2021-2023, with the gap growing as the consumer price index cooled off (NIQ).
Based on NIQ data exclusively shared with me, the top 10 most consumed categories, including beef, soft drinks, eggs, milk, salty snacks and coffee, experienced an average price increase of 60% since 2019, with a 1.3% decline in unit volume. In 2019, a basket of the top 10 items cost $36. In 2025, $56. This far outpaces the nominal wage growth of 22% in the same period.
Grocery store gross margins, more or less the markups they take on their wholesale costs, enable them to keep the lights on and pay for employees, rent, utilities, and taxes. Gross margins range from 22% for Kroger and Walmart to up to 35-40% for Sprouts, Whole Foods or your neighborhood co-op or supermarket. In order to bring retail prices down to 2019 levels, grocers would have to sell nearly everything at or below their wholesale costs.”
Now I avoid buying potato chips and similar, along with coffee (drink organic white tea instead, doesn’t stain teeth as much), absolutely do not go out to Fast Food any longer…killer garbage.
Basically, buy vegetables..carrots. Onions, potatoes, cabbage, greens rice and beans,
some cheeses and unsweetened almond drink/milk. Still like my frozen pizza I put toppings on top myself peppers onions.
Snacks…maybe popcorn, cookies and sometimes chocolate….
Definitely, has affected my grocery buying…ps look for deals buy one get on free.
Don’t know how modern families can eat if they don’t cook themselves.
groceries are packaged energy
looked at that way, its easy to see why certain grocery items are dwindling in sales.
we have had a couple of generations of eating to excess—-now that is slowly changing….
Oh, Norman, I forgot to add I enjoy pineapple from Costa Rica (99 cents at Wally World), Golden Kiwi from New Zealand (5 for $5), Golden Delicious Apples from Michigan $2,50 3 lbs , Oranges from South Africa …..those are my fruits…yes they are in a package…I don’t grow them myself in Florida..👍.
The only thing here in Florida are mangoes, coconuts, and feral cats and wild iguanas running free, along with fish in the canals that are probably toxic..I did once grow some Okra
“groceries are packaged energy”
Good point!
Yeah, especially after gulping down a can of Jolt High Energy Drink..
We know about the ELM model. Mr B goes into detail .The Oil Import Curse
Why oil imports might fall far faster, far sooner than supply .
14 min read
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/the-oil-import-curse-34a20270aaa9
I don’t know. I always push back from the Export Land Model. There is probably some truth in it, but it misses other issues.
Mr B. shows a link to a recently published forecast by the IEA showing what would happen if there is no more investment in oil and natural gas extraction, and says that is what Peak Oil and Peak Gas would be like. I am not certain that is the case. The forecasts look very similar to ones I have seen for years. The question is, “How much unconventional oil and gas can we really extract, at a low enough price for consumers.” Prices tend not to rise high enough for long enough.
Figure 40 from
https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/9ea2076e-5a0d-4a0d-9767-a1eec20aff23/TheImplicationsofOilandGasFieldDeclineRates.pdf
I believe that oil consumption tends to go to countries that can leverage its use in an efficient manner. They have low-cost labor. They make lots of goods for export. They have lots of low-cost energy of other types (coal and perhaps cheap hydro) that tend to bring down the overall cost of energy that is used in that country.
Also, with inadequate energy supply, country borders tend to change–mostly fall apart. Governments tend to collapse. Exporting countries collecting inadequate prices for their oil extraction (such as the Soviet Union in 1991) seem to be especially at risk.
Clearly Europe has a big problem, no matter how you look at it. But I am not sure about the rest.
I agree Gail. The fundamental flaw in the ELM is that countries are only exporters in the first place because they are structurally dependent on chasing profits in more profitable markets. The domestic market of any given exporter (whose domestic market is underdeveloped by definition) is secondary in volume. Secondary markets are structurally dependent on primary markets. There goes the model right there. Like I said B makes thinking mistakes left and right. And each thinking mistake is connected to the rest of your systems thinking. Doesn’t take many mistakes before everything is out of whack and somebody starts calling you on it and you don’t know what else to do but ban them and act like nothing’s the matter.
If oil prices always rose and favored the exporters, maybe the story would work closer to ELM.
Yeah but that expectation just harkens back to the thinking mistake of perceiving the petrodollar as a fiat currency rather than a hard, oil-backed currency price-pegged to a barrel. It’s only the prodigious power of oil that allows for fractional reserve lending and mature financialization that makes it seem like the dollar is fiat. The hard dollar just replaced hard gold because gold was inadequate collateral for investment as compared to oil.
Destroying the dollar with too much inflation only destroys oil production by destroying demand for them both by destroying the real value of both, because marginal wages never keep up with inflation and unaffordable oil has no real value. Deflating the dollar maximizes collapsing production by maximizing demand for the dollar by maximizing its real value which, in turn, enables the dollar to maximize oil purchases by maximizing the value of oil.
That’s Foss’s “Unbearable Mightiness of Deflation.” When production is in terminal collapse, only hard reserve currency deflation the might to resist entropy.
So in order for exporters to chase production during Collapse, they have to chase dollars (or USD stablecoins) more than ever, because of the dollar’s increasing real value. And those dollars are abroad. So the export market that chases dollars and is the primary market always remains the primary market. And the increasing real value of the dollar destroys the real value of the domestic currency which reduces domestic consumption faster than it otherwise would. The domestic population also starts to chase dollars (stablecoins) with telephone apps, amplifying the domestic inflation. If anything the ELM has it backwards and petrostate domestic market collapse faster than their export market unless the petrostate prioritizes using as many as possible of those dollars/stablecoins to cushion the domestic market collapse such that social unrest doesn’t threaten the whole shebang. That’s a hybrid petrostate national socialism, financially based on a foreign country’s now-publicly-issued USD nationalist stablecoin currency in conjunction with the socialist goal of putting a subsidized floor under people’s standards of living such that they don’t tear the house down because your exporting all the oil in order to chase dollars. And putting that floor under everyone comes at the cost of elitist petrostate institutions like the House of Saud. The whole Arabian house remains barely affordable only by way of the Elite House becoming immediately unaffordable. Trump and the Saudi developers setting up shop in Trump Tower right now is yet more trolling by the Hand in service of manufacturing yet more reactionary consent for the above.
Thanks. I asked AI to translate your comment to inform my regenerative homesteading plan for our 30 acre farm and it offered 3 pillars:
– Low-input perennial production
– High-value, low-volume exports
– Circular local flows that increase your land’s energy return each year
Pleasure.
Fence it. Stock it. Savanna it. Guard it.
Jeffery Brown’s model had nett zero exports by 2015 ; He like us many did not take into account shale . Gail and many others are now of the opinion that ” there will be a financial collapse before there are lines at the pump ” . However there is still a bug . The refineries do not refine a single grade of oil for example no refinery can refine only Canadian heavy and no refinery can refine only shale . All refineries use a blended grade suitable for their setup . All grades must have a substantial portion of 28–35 API in the blend . Without this grade there is no blend . This is also termed as light sweet or sweet oil . This is mainly coming from KSA , Iraq , Kuwait , Russia and Norway . I think the new oil is coming from Guyana also but not sure . This is where the Leibig’s law of the minimum comes into play . Just my thoughts and point of view .
I had posted an excellent article by Stephen Bowers on the intricacies of refining .
Great info thanks ravi. That blending requirement certainly complicates the matter. As in, if the Hand doesn’t exist then total civilizational Collapse will happen immediately following the financial collapse of globalization because there would be no parallel architecture ready to go for coordinating the blending requirements of the world’s refineries. Which generally speaks to why I was a fast collapsnik even before I was a conspiracy theorist.
Would you mind reposting the Stephen Bowers article?
I don’t have the article but it has been posted here several times , perhaps Gail can search in the archives and do it again .
I think that this is the Stephen Bowers comment that I found previously:
The US exports circa 4.5-5mbpd of shale oil . Why does it not replenish its SPR ? Finally I got the answer from Stephen Bowers at ” the oily stuff ” . Long but worth it .
stephen.bowers
6d
Anne/ Mike,
I know exactly why they do not want to put LTO into the SPR. Crude is categorized in two main ways.
The PONA is used for the whole crude and primary products (naphtha, jet, diesel)
Paraffins (sometimes divided into normal and iso paraffins)
Olefines
Napthenes
Aromatics
The residue and especially the vacuum residue is categorized in terms of SARA
Saturates
Aromatics
Resins
Asphaltenes
The main refineries in the US are concentrated in the south and a are heavily into lower API crudes, which have a lot of atmospheric residue, that contains a large amount of vacuum gas oil (VGO) which feeds the hydrocracker and FCC units. The gasoline fraction from the FCC makes up the main component in the gasoline pool ( RON Octane approx 91-93) that means it does not need much octane booster. The second largest component is reformate produced on a reformer using heavy naphtha (you may see this listed as N&A naphtha on pricing reports).Reformate has a high RON octane between 94-100 depending on the severity of operation. Generally speaking the olefines and aromatics have high RON, naphthenes middle and paraffins low. There is one exception with paraffins ( and a few more) which is iso-octane (2,2,4 trimethylpentane) which has an octane of 100 and is the reference fuel used to assess octane numbers. Phew.
Since the US has a very high gasoline/ crude ratio about 0.45, then certain crude types are preferred, in fact are required to meet the demand of the varous fuel types. LTO would not produce the required gasoline output with the current refinery configurations, and it would severely reduce crude throughputs if run as is. Some can be blended into the crude charge but would have to be balanced with even heavier crude, and this is where the fun starts.
LTO is generally regarded as a paraffinic crude. A lot of heavy crudes have high resins and asphaltene content. Asphaltenes are soluble in aromatic solvents but insoluble in in paraffinnic solvents. Indeed vacuum residue is often processed in an SDA (solvent de-asphalter) to remove the asphaltenes, which contain heavy metals. The solvent can be propane, butane, pentane and up to heptane.
Many years ago I was working in a big refinery owned by the company with a double cross in its name. At that time they were processing a range of ME and North Sea crudes. They bought in a ship (shit) load of Souedie from Syria and mixed an asphaltenic crude with a paraffinnic crude( Forties). Fatal. The asphaltenes precipitated in the feed tank, it became a solvent desaphalter, and the asphaltenes dropped out in the crude pre heat chain ( heat exchangers) and desalter. A total disaster and there was about two weeks of running this shit which fouled everything in the crude unit and beyond. The desalter washed out huge amounts of sludge which then overloaded the waste water plant.
Another example is the recent change to ship bunker oils. The low sulphur bunker oil introduced another instability. Blending heavy residues with heavy low sulphur gas oils also caused issues. I digress
Were the SPR to be filled with LTO it would become the world’s biggest SDA. The LTO would precipitate a huge amount of asphaltenes which would drop out eventually and settle into the bottom of the SPR as a thick sludge pool.
I hope that this helps explain the situation because in the oil business, there is not black and white, just shades of grey.
I have attached a copy of Basrah( Iraqi) Heavy crude assay which is a 24 API heavy asphaltenic crude. This crude will be on the limits of stability. Look closely at the residue and the RON of the naphtha cuts. This shit is very similar to the Saudi crude. Just do not mix it.
Guess what you will not get this from the numerous internet experts who have never touched a drop of crude in their miserable lives, because you have to have skin in the game to work this out. Seeing is believing and nothing beats having your ass on the line.
My addition : Thinking that 10 API ( Tar oil) + 48 API ( shale oil) =29 API at the refinery gate is ludicrous .
Thanks guys. Missed that one. What a comment. Loved that “skin in the game” reflection at the end. Jesus what a mess we’re in. Precision chemistry at gargantuan scale. Impressive feat in the best of times.
Where did you find that comment Gail?
Ravi, you first posted the comment yourself with the following introduction:
“The US exports circa 4.5-5mbpd of shale oil . Why does it not replenish its SPR ? Finally I got the answer from Stephen Bowers at ” the oily stuff ” . Long but worth it .
You posted this in this comment:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/02/14/should-the-us-add-more-lng-export-approvals/comment-page-1/#comment-452801
Sorry Gail, right, the oily stuff. Missed that. Thanks.
Thanks Gail . This was what I was talking about .
We got lucky . Today Stephen put up a new post on cracking and refining . Lots of fine details ; Enjoy .
https://www.oilystuff.com/group/oil-natural-gas-refining/discussion/18f368e8-cfd2-4254-a29a-01a930527359
Study on interesting potential savings for government of expanding assistance in dying.
“Abstract
This study explores the potential economic savings from expanding medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada, where it is currently a leading cause of death, to include vulnerable groups that cost the government more than they contribute in taxes. These groups include individuals with severe mental health issues, the homeless, drug users, retired elderly, and indigenous communities. Both voluntary and non-voluntary scenarios were analyzed, projecting total savings of up to CAD $1.273 trillion by 2047. (…) estimated 2.6 million deaths in the voluntary scenario”
https://journals.sagepub.com/home/OME
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00302228251323299
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02x3LCCDYtnrLMbpxUnUNcEKrfJvFcgXatPRD6xmMch2qn8rM1GwWTYLhhgaeRfSMZl&id=61568792593700
Original post from Prof. Marco Cosentino
https://t.me/MarCosent/4594
Music to Kulm’s ears. Any doubt left that Western civ. is disgusting?
It’s just the Hand manufacturing consent for ‘nazi’ revulsion via one of its many tentacles. Don’t take the bait.
A person could argue that COVID in the US (and its vaccines) were ways of raising the death rates among people who would normally be heavy users of medical care in the future. Thus, they would be helpful to the system (besides allowing more government debt, to bail out the financial system).
On the point of reducing fertility, reducing life span, increasing mortality etc. I agree with you, but on the point of a policy dedicated to “people who would normally be heavy users of medical care in the future”, I have a different opinion.
Your way to see things, in my view, risks to be too optimistic in this tragedy.
We should remember, in fact, that during the Biden administration wrong-treatments for Covid and so-called vaccines were reccomended and given to everyone, including children, regardless social or economical condition.
So, in my view, it was more a indiscriminated cut from which, probably, only a few group of people escaped.
We may call it élite, but in whatever way one wants to call it, it was a limited group of people who have been informed that in order to treat Covid effective treatments were available and also that just-discovered vaccines had a very high probability to hurt you.
So, the project, in my view, had an objective of an indiscriminated cut.
Daan Daan Daan, Dat Dat Daan, Dat Dat Daan
Daan Daan Daan, Dat Dat Daan, Dat Dat Daan……
March of the Chinese robots.
They are coming to terminate the workers!
No feedin’, no fussin’, no fur, no salaries, health insurance, pensions, or tea breaks.
“It speaks in a heavy Austrian accent. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever until you are dead!”
Whoops! The above video very naughtily cuts off before the best bit.
And what did that remind me of?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqRjDGAJ5dc
The Children Of The Hydra’s Teeth
Jason and the Argonauts
Yes, a definite “homage” there to animator Ray Harryhausen.
By the way, did you notice the resemblance—beard-wise—between Aeetes of Colchis and Alex C of the Duran?
Medea: “The goddess Hecate has spoken. There will be one among us today from the ends of the world. His name is Jason. Any man of whom he asks his way shall say this: Aeetes, king of Colchis, awaits him in the temple of Hecate. And that is all *any* man shall say to him.”
On small step for a man……
Not helpful, unless the robots are paid wages and can buy things.
I know Bender worked a job on Futurama. 🤣
The Tesla Two car uses zero rare earths. It appears anything can be worked around.
Electric stator?
Yes
But lots of rare minerals from Mars, I’ll bet. 🙂
Was any rare earth used during the manufactiring of that?
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/11/16/if-demographics-is-destiny-were-screwed/#more-380806
Their plan has been to replace the educated white people in western countries with low IQ 3rd world parasites, as a means to their end of controlling the masses in a digital prison of their making. Feminism was designed to convince women to stop having children, stop marrying strong men, and believing their lives were more fulfilled working 60 hours a week rather than raising children. The cultural destruction of America is almost complete.
Our globalist overlords have succeeded spectacularly in destroying the social fabric and community mores of our nation and other “developed” countries. And, as designed, the gene altering Pfizer/Moderna jabs are causing global fertility rates to plummet further, exacerbating the already dire trend.
Highly educated women tend not to have many children, I will agree. They start late having children, if they do.
In Beijing modern built compounds be they work, housing, education, medical have protective walls all round with gateways with guards and closable/lockable gates. They also have prefect police control on the streets and subways 24/7.
In the US we do not have police protection because the politicians want to destroy the country. The corporations like IBM have fenced compounds with security guards backup by town police, backup up by county police, backup by state police, backup up by federal police and troops.
This is insane.
Reminds me of Soprano’s episode when the guy won’t give Tony back his deposit.
The music is playing in the parking lot of an abandoned Kroger store. It doesn’t seem to be clear who is playing it.
When I looked online, I found that Kroger was closing four stores in the Atlanta area this summer. This one was the first one closed. I am pretty sure the reason it was closed is because the financial results were not good enough. It may be that the neighborhood is changing so it is poorer.
At this time of year, many people sleep with the windows closed. Doing this would presumably help the noise issue. The last couple of nights have been warmer, so perhaps they didn’t feel a need to close their windows.
Does nobody own a bolt cutter?
Public health policy journal and also Prof. Paolo Bellavite:
“The harsh truth is now coming to light. The UK Health Security Agency is the British agency responsible for health prevention and vaccinations. It collected reports of deaths following inoculations with anti-COVID products but did not communicate them to the public. The reason: otherwise, the population would have become alarmed and might have had doubts about whether to get vaccinated or not. It seems absurd, unbelievable, but it is the reality. The same thing happened here too (edit: in Italy), but using a different method: stubbornly denying any correlation.”
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/uk-government-caught-hiding-covid-shot-death-data-to-prevent-distress-or-anger/
https://t.me/PaoloBellavite/12591
“According to the report, UKHSA justified the secrecy by claiming that releasing the figures could cause “distress or anger” among bereaved families if a connection were discovered.”
This is just craziness. But it seemed to be what we were seeing.
Not craziness but a plan for depopulation
“This is just craziness”
Imagine there’s a deadly pandemic happening and you are in charge of Public Health England. You might think that dealing with the scary pandemic would be your number one issue, but alas no, your number one priority in the middle of an oh so deadly pandemic is changing the name to something more suitably authoritarian.
Public Health became Health Security(no concern for the public anymore), which neatly fitted with the corporate friendly mass law change and SDGs.
The outcome of the ICO/UKHSA FOI court case for anonymised death data in the vaccinated
Dr. Clair Craig, who took the bastards to court, but is a lot more polite than I am, explains what the case was all about.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-178300135
The UKHSA first rejected my request on the grounds that anonymising the death and vaccination dates would amount to “creating new data”. The ICO initially disagreed and cited case law that supported my position. So I hoped that would resolve the matter. I was naively optimistic that this would be the end of the matter. Then, after receiving a submission from the UKHSA, the ICO did a 180 turn and said the data could not be released saying that release would be likely to “endanger the mental health of bereaved families” and could “fuel misinformation.”
At that point, we had no choice but to take the matter to the Tribunal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-HKCbd1wBA
China Bans American Chips and Joins Russia in a Major Move Away from the U.S. Dollar (12:32)
137 views Nov 15, 2025
In this eye-opening video, we delve into the groundbreaking news as China implements a ban on U.S. semiconductor chips, taking a bold stand alongside Russia to shift away from the U.S. dollar. Discover the implications of this strategic alliance and what it means for global economics, technology, and geopolitics. From the motivations behind the ban to potential impacts on the tech industry and international trade, we break it all down in just 10 minutes.
Reminds me of the BRICS stuff.
China wants to build a self-sustaining manufacturing ecosystem, completely separate from the US. I don’t blame it for doing so. It has been able to become very much closer to this goal in past years. Calling it the world’s second largest economy is somewhat misleading. In terms of manufacturing, it is the largest.
Yes, strictly speaking, if you include manufacturing, agriculture and mining, it is 3 times as large as the US’s.
CHINA has just pulled the trigger on silver
✅ In China, you can only trade gold or silver futures if the metal is physically deposited.
🚫 This past Friday, the Chinese said: “No more deliveries. We’re keeping our metal.”
Shipping metal from China to London might delay a default by 3-6 months, but the stop is now.
“I received a email from a London LBMA broker this morning. He writes that the gold price is being driven by China and other BRICS central banks… due to de-dollarization and a move into hard assets. We expect this de-dollarization to spill over to other hard assets, including silver.”
The Blueprint is Already There
✅ “The Russians showed how it’s done. They bought over $500 million of silver for their central bank last year.
🔥 If that trend continues globally, things will get very interesting.”https://x.com/Mark4XX/status/1989672369879646651
https://x.com/Mark4XX/status/1989672369879646651
Below is a nice summary from Eric Yeung of what’s happening with gold and silver in China with the recent tax rule changes and pending silver export controls.
Eric Yeung:
CHINA’S BRILLIANT MOVE ON GOLD
The Gold Shakeup: New Tax Rules
Objective: Concentrate ALL gold liquidity through the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE).
Before: A messy system where recycled gold avoided VAT, undercutting official channels.
Now: The ONLY way to get VAT-exempt gold is through the SGE.
Result: Liquidity is being vacuumed out of the OTC market and into the SGE. Trading volume is projected to jump from 60% to 80% of all Chinese gold trade.
The Ramification: Squeezing the West
SGE has a ~70% physical withdrawal rate. COMEX is less than 10%.
In 2024, over 1,400 metric tons of gold were physically withdrawn from the SGE. That’s roughly the entire reported COMEX vault inventory.
China is inviting central banks (like Cambodia) to store their gold in SGE vaults, building trust and moving the global center of gravity East.
The Silver Hammer: Export Controls
Starting Jan 2026, China is imposing export controls (review & quota process) on silver.
This is a de facto ban on shipping silver to the LBMA.
Silver is now a STRATEGIC METAL for China. They are hoarding for their industrial and technological future.
The Bottom Line: China is systematically rewiring the global precious metals market. They are centralizing gold liquidity in Shanghai and locking down their silver supply. This will drain physical metal from the West, exposing paper markets and accelerating the East’s financial dominance.
Today’s Shuibei (small Chinese hashtag#Gold Jewelry retailers mall) listed hashtag#Gold price is 1050 RMB Yuan/gram which is $4586 USD/Troy Ounce.
Today’s China major hashtag#Gold jewelry chain retailers hashtag#Gold price is around 1268 RMB Yuan/Gram which is $5540 USD/Troy Ounce.
Today’s China state-owned commercial banks’ hashtag#Gold price is around 930 RMB Yuan/Gram which is $4103 USD/Troy Ounce.
We hear stories about the futures market involving trading far larger quantities of materials than are really available. This could affect gold and silver.
Could it also affect oil?
Has anyone verified this? I think it’s a game cy
Interesting point!
” See above post . “Starting Jan 2026, China is imposing export controls (review & quota process) on silver.”
The above is confirmed news . China added silver as a critical metal and subject to an export licence ( which it will never give ) — all silver remains in China .
I had in the last post started a thread on the subject , maybe Gail can trace it and repost .
Here I got it .
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/10/06/what-has-gone-wrong-with-the-economy-can-it-be-fixed/comment-page-5/#comment-494176
We had this discussion recently (and previously), so lets recap / unpack the reasoning for this trend..
1/ Silver used in some (yet undisclosed) next gen energy generation scheme – perhaps ala locking up pellets of the fuel in laser ignited / concentrated fusion etc., i.e. as spendable commodity-resource..
=> my probability 4%
2/ Silver intended as the desired / pre-selected appreciating co-vehicle in the future monetary – reserve system. Basically, providing avenue for little people to get access to a new long term savings – investment vehicle as well.
=> my probability 55%
3/ Various modifications of the previous #2 ; chiefly in the area of them expecting very hard (~PO induced) societal techno / reset scenarios, i.e. possibility – necessity of return to real coinage (domestic + foreign trade) during incoming global melt-down as such.
= my probability 40%
..
.
To add .
1 . Solar panels
2 . Electrodes used in desalination .
The Cuban landowners who lost their land on 1959-60 still have enough documents to back their claim to make everything return back to 1958 when the current regime changes.
The landowners have very long memories and see all of the current changes as temporary. They have never given up the world to return to feudal times, this time with technology, hence technofeudalism.
I do not bet on nonexistent technology or some metal deep in the space and out of reach. I bet on exiting tech only, and my bet is on technofeudalism, with today’s winners, who all own lots of land here and there, lording over what is remaining of humanity basically forever.
Tech will scale down according to available energy but their domination won’t end since they will still be commandeering the best of the remaining tech.
Things have changed since 1959-1960 in Cuba.
When my husband and I visited Cuba in 2015, we saw a lot of close to empty roads. There was so little traffic, it was possible for farmers to spread out their rice on the road to dry.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=39859
What seemed to help Cuba was its low population per square mile.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/population-per-square-kilometer.png
Partly, families were given fairly nice homes that were supposed to fit three generations. Once the home was full, there was an incentive not to have more children. Also, for a long time, people who wanted to leave were able to sail to the US, and become citizens of the US, helping to hold population down. But the country is still dependent on imported food.
When the current regime ends tge landowners will return with a vengeance and kick the farmers out.
I must have clicked on this by accident on that nothingburger of a economics news site Wolfstreet.com because there’s no way I’d click on this on purpose.
“TESTOSTERONE PIT Kindle Edition
by Wolf Richter (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 90 ratings
The whole business boils down to numbers. Either you have them, or you don’t. And a job is a day-to-day affair of numbers. Move the goddamn iron, and everything else will follow—commissions, satisfied customers, job security even. But nothing happens until then. And no one can move it like Ferronickel, the general sales manager at the Ford Superstore.
…
Edgy, cynical, and loaded with insider-only details about the car business, Testosterone Pit will change the way you think about dealerships, their people, who struggle to survive in their sometimes funny and often nasty world, and their sales processes, which are older than dirt.”
Looks like Norman has some competition in the book department.
The icon to click on, on the Wolfstreet.com website clearly says that it is a novel by Wolf Richter. The icon also says
the Oil Bust
the salesmen
a dealership
https://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/TP-banner-2-336-300.jpg
Food stamps are back, but millions will soon lose benefits permanently
Even though the shutdown is over, the GOP’s signature tax and spending law is poised to kick people off the nation’s largest anti-hunger program.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/15/food-stamps-snap-trump-one-big-beautiful-bill-impact-00653447
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program provides an average of $6 per day for nearly 42 million people, roughly 40 percent of whom are children. Under the new law, parents and older Americans will be required to meet stricter work requirements, and states eventually will have to share in the cost of SNAP benefits, which could force further program cuts, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Tens of thousands of legal immigrants will also lose access to the program under the law.
Millions of low-income families will also lose access to Medicaid in the next few years, when stricter work requirements and other changes for that program kick in. Republicans’ tax and spending law has made certain legal immigrants, including refugees, ineligible for Affordable Care Act subsidies. And the Trump administration is working on a new public charge regulation that could deter millions of lawfully present immigrants from participating in federal safety net programs.
Useless eaters are the first in line to be kicked off what has been called the “Great Simplification” or big squeeze what I like to call it… retirees included ….it’s a beautiful thing for those on top…let them eat cake…the self regulating system cares not about fairness I’m afraid, right Kulm? It’s about to get ugly out there on the streets, what your back, literally….
What do we do, when there are not enough well-paying jobs to go around, and the things that these well-paying jobs would allow workers to afford. Jobs that pay well require an adequate energy supply. When the supply is short, the system seems to push people into a two layered system, with many people not able to afford the basics of life.
The government can try to support the many people who need money for food, plus a few others who try to game the system. But at some point, the financial system starts faltering. It is then that administrators try to kick as many as they can off the system. Unfortunately!
It remains to be seen if we are at the point where the financial system is failing. Right now, it seems like the lockdowns increased the interest on the debt the government borrows to the point they cannot service it. Whether Trump was in power or not, cutbacks in spending would have to be on the table because borrowing and spending is not possible to the degree it was before the pandemic. I don’t know why Republicans are not blaming the government spending during the lockdowns for the budget cuts.
Trump’s first term ended January 20, 2021, so a significant part of the excessive government spending was during Trump’s first term. This makes it difficult to blame the Democrats for that part of the problem.
It is really the entire time since 2008 that has been problematic. Way too much money has been spent by both parties (or not collected in taxes).
One could make the argument that Trump was against the lockdowns and the accompanying excessive government spending but was forced to comply. Both parties don’t want raise revenue to match spending because they don’t answer to voters and don’t want to. Democracy is an contradiction. In a democracy or republic, politicians are suppose to follow the orders of the average voter, which would make the average voter the leader, and politicians not leaders. The reality is the politician present options and then persuade the public to follow the options they prefer by using more propaganda and less overt coercion than leaders operating in other forms of government. Sometimes they don’t even present options but the point is they set the agendas.
Living beyond one’s means is not a phenomenon that is limited to individuals or governments. Large businesses have also become dependent on cheap debt and cooking the books to make themselves look more profitable than they really are. Politicians are more than likely influenced by financial wizardry being used in the private sector. They hope financial tricks can be used please everyone and generate cash flow in the public sector as well without having to make hard choices.
2005 was peak oil….
it took until 2008 for the physical reality of that to kick in…
since 2008 we have been engaged in an ever increasing frenzy of ”denial borrowing”..
(ie the denial that we have an oil supply problem)
that phase seems to have reached its peak this year…
before the final plunge ito financial/energy oblivion.
Millions will refuse to work. Then we wall in the workers to protect them or we wall in those who refuse to work to protect the workers.
“Ed explained that the math just isn’t mathing. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, needs something like $900 billion of annual subscription revenue at 25% margins just for a 10% ROI.
Nope, not going to happen.
And certainly not before their first waves of chips wear out and have to be replaced at enormous cost.
So, what happens when this bubble bursts? Ed believes that a serious market crash is in the cards. Of course, this means stocks will drop in price, but the main action is going to be in the credit markets.
Treasuries will continue to advance in price (fall in yield), making them an attractive option to ride out the storm, while other forms of lesser credit will implode, as is already happening across the subprime lender space (TriColor, PrimaLend, First Brands).
When will this happen? According to Ed, it already is. He tracks the Free Cash Flows (FCF) as the more important arbiter of company health and by that metric, all of the Big 7 companies are experiencing declining FCF, while Oracle’s debt is getting more and more expensive to insure against a default.
And, oh by the way, stocks are at historically expensive levels, a condition that has historically resulted in very poor returns over the following years:”?
https://peakprosperity.com/ed-dowd-it-has-begun-housing-credit-and-fcf-have-cracked-stocks-are-next/?vgo_ee=E4pdd3KI5aV4fXjALN2E2jkHkwZixkiz9wMFlmNVLkM%3D%3ADg4eldrAXxvDs%2F0r5EMYSDy%2F1TAzJO2r
If debt is bad, why do governments keep borrowing trillions? The truth about national debt is stranger than you think — and it affects your future more than you know.
https://medium.com/the-geopolitical-economist/why-every-country-is-in-debt-and-why-no-one-seems-worried-72ac49eaa77c
I wasn’t able to read because it is behind a paywall
The video is not behind a paywall for me, but the transcript is.
I believe that politicians believe that political problems can be solved with financial wizardry. The guns vs butter issue never has to come up.
People enamored with debt also see government debt as a sensible financial investment.
“With investment-focused government spending in both the US and Europe, we see the pump as being primed for resilient global growth in 2023 that overcomes the monetary tightening of 2022.”
https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual/insights/guns-and-butter
They also see debt as peace treaties…they call it interdependence and think that will deter countries and individuals from fighting each other.
I surmise that the reason US companies emphasize AGI, as opposed to Chinese companies which focus on current applications, is because it is an investment thesis that sets longer time-horizon expectations and for funding and measurement of results delivered.
AGI should be considered another branch of the military. Like all future tech, it may or may not be possible, but it makes everything about this AI madness make a little more sense. I would never short AI for that reason. Something is always going to feed the beast.
I am afraid Ed Dowd may be right. The problem is that it is hard to escape financial issues that will affect the whole system.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to the video yet, but there certainly are a lot of cracks appearing.
Another important issue is with the circular capital funding of most of these AI and data center firms. They sign huge contracts with nVidia whose stock price goes up, who then invests in those firms to fuel the growth like some kind of weird Ouroboros.
All Dressed up and no where to Go….
USDA Still Sees Record U.S. Crop Output This Year
The USDA projects the 2025/26 corn crop at 16.75 billion bushels, a record high despite a slight decrease from the prior estimate
By Kirk Maltais Updated Nov. 14, 2025 2:27 pm ET. WSJ
The Agriculture Department kept its upbeat outlook for corn and soybean crops in its first monthly world supply-demand report since the shutdown, although there was no sign of China following through with its promise to purchase more U.S. soybeans.
In its World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report published Friday, the USDA said that it sees the 2025/26 corn crop at 16.75 billion bushels. That is down from the agency’s previous estimate of 16.81 billion bushels, but still the most corn ever produced by U.S. farmers in a marketing year by nearly 1.5 billion bushels.
Corn yields were pegged at 186 bushels an acre, down from 186.7 bushels an acre in the USDA’s September report but also still a record high, beating the previous record of 179.3 bushels an acre.
Soybeans maintained their outlook for record-large yields in 2025/26. The USDA said that it expects this year’s yield to be 53 bushels an acre, slightly lower than previously forecast by the agency but well up from the record of 51.9 bushels an acre set in 2016. Production was pegged at 4.25 billion bushels.
Analysts surveyed by The Wall Street Journal this week said that they expected corn production at 16.53 billion bushels, with a yield of 183.5 bushels an acre. Soybeans were projected at production of 4.27 billion bushels with a yield of 53 bushels an acre.
Following the release of the WASDE, CBOT grain futures sank. Most-active corn futures are down 2.2%, soybeans fall 1.7%, and wheat is down 1.7%.
Hmm, beginning more and more like a 1929 era depression reboot..we be in big 😵💫
Another headline
Former Finance Minister Lou Jiwei warned that China’s property market downturn will continue and worsen deflationary pressures, citing households’ poor expectations for the future due to homes losing value.2 days ago
Same seems to occuring here and elsewhere…hold on, tight…right..
There are not enough jobs that pay well. This is part of what held prices down in 1929, and part of what is holding down jobs now.
Also, in 1929, automation was helping some big farmers produce food very cheaply. Smaller farmers without automation could not match the price. We may run into some of this with AI, if AI actually cuts costs for some kinds of producers of goods.
At the moment A.I. is only displacing lower wage white collar workers. Artists, and musicians are not highly paid at all. High wage workers ,like, say data forensic specialists, surgeons, lawyers, and middle managers are not being displaced.
The people who are being displaced by A.I. are moving into lower wage, lower skill, lower status jobs. This is important because it reflects the historical trend of industrialization. Prior to industrialization, unemployment was less common than it was after it. When industrialization began it made unskilled labor more employable and pushed skilled labor replaced by machines into newer jobs that paid less , required less skill, and commanded less respect. I don’t know where this narrative about technology and efficiency creating lots of high wage high status jobs came from. Employers or consumers do not have any incentive to create high wage jobs or high status jobs for people displaced by innovation. In fact, I came across comment online about job displacement in the industrial age. A affluent person with more money and time on his/her hands would not create demand for more rocket scientists , Hubble telescopes or medical services, this person would eat out at fancy restaurants more or go on more vacations or buy secondary homes. They spent more money on services and not necessarily just expensive ones like legal, educational, or medical services but on cheap ones to make themselves feel high status. I can’t remember where I read it but it shows that automation/innovation does not have a uniform effect. In a given market, unskilled labor or skilled labor may be more expensive to employ and that will effect how automation is developed.
Natural gas is used for many things: heating and cooking, industrial uses, and to support electricity production. Now with much interest in using more electricity created by burning natural gas to support AI, there is a likely problem of inadequate infrastructure for everything. More load shedding by businesses may be needed. A new group overseeing “gas readiness” is needed.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/us-gas-infrastructure-storage-support-electric-grid-naruc/805383/
US needs more gas infrastructure, storage to support electric grid: NARUC
The United States needs additional natural gas pipeline infrastructure and storage opportunities to reliably meet the growing demand for energy, a National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners task force report concluded on Wednesday.
https://pubs.naruc.org/pub/2527936B-BEB6-767B-50BE-01BEEEB3091F
Recommendations are given on pages 7 and 8 of the above linked report.
There is a benefit for a Landowner led civilization, which was the case until about 1920.
Landowners do not really care about innovations or new tech.
They are there for the long haul, intending to keep their holdings for a looooong time, and they do not really pay attention to trends or anything.
All they care about is maintaining their land holdings for their clan forever.
They cull their crops, and kill livestock they raised themselves. So they do not really care too much about two legged animals as well – they are tools, just like rakes and shovels, and easily replaceable.
But, since they do not want their land to be spoiled, they do take care of the land so the next gen could use it.
In my opinion, those who lack a stake on civilization, say a net worth of 250,000 per capita, should have no say on how the world is run. Otherwise the rabble will vote for whoever promising most benefits.
I think the other early approach, besides only the landowners voting, was the King or Lord or whoever was in charge decided to do whatever he wanted to do, and the rest (who were mostly serfs) were stuck with the outcome.
There was no such degree of organization, especially in the early days. The ruler spoke rightly and prevented war and provided for some stability. People have what they do, resources are still diverse and free at the beginning of the Middle Ages.
Which is correct: The nobility demands a disproportionate amount of luxury and thus consumes a lot of wood and contributes massively to the near-crash.
Before the Middle Ages, some people still lived in peregrine farming. The Roman cities continue to develop into the well-known medieval city.
The cities are not subject to the emperor and contradict him. Even today, for example, it is still called: “Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg”. This is the official name!
The Middle Ages were not totalitarianism, this is a reinterpretation. In addition, all rulers were bound by the moral standards of Christianity. The Middle Ages were social and modern. For example, no one could refuse a pregnant woman to break into a private fenced garden and eat from the trees and vegetables there, on the spot.
We are not the crown of creation. Our ancestors were good people! And we know a lot about the Middle Ages in particular.
Ebenezer Scrooge is from 1843.
Yes, depends on locale and timeline.
For the ~greater German [ realm within CEE ] lets assume the serious onset of top-down totalitarianism only after the end and recovery of the 30yrs war, i.e. late 17th century. For Spain much earlier onset though etc. But Italy different again – way fragmented till ~19th century..
And as you alluded even then it was fluent situation on the ground as cities, church, and local feudal jockeyed for primacy in various forms (econ-biz, political, culture, ..) apart from the centralizing state bureaucracy vector.
Scrooge was no landowner
Dickens could satirize Scrooge, a nobody who got rich because of his stingyness, but he wrote not a single word about the landowners and lairds who continued to abuse their tenants since he knew crossing them was not too great for his health.
In his little Dorrit, the book ends with the titular character , a girl at the beginning of the book, wed Clennam, from a prestigious family which had fallen to a harder times, and was already 40 years old at start, making the Clennam clan to continue, a grace he did not use to John Jarndyce in Bleak Times since the Jarndyces were newcomers while the Clennams came from landed gentry.
The problem with the early approach of rent to the Lord, etc. was the income started to come from various enterprises when industrialization began. England benefited more from industry than land so rents were decreased by the English government I believe. Overall, there was more income for the country as a whole when land was used for industry. Energy input from coal most likely.
Dennis L.
An owner needs to be respectful to what it owns. This doesn’t mean it has to share it. It also doen’t mean it has to sell it. An owner needs to determine a fair value. With 8 billion people on fiat steroids this becomes quite impossible. So, why not turn the system into a capped tokenized blockchain system which settles itself? A beautiful deleveraging. In the works as we speak.
Indeed it is!
What Kulm describes as so self-evident here only came into being in the Middle Ages, when improved iron production made agricultural implements possible, which made possible a permanent use of the soil without slash-and-burn and shifting cultivation. As a result, the population and agricultural production increased and it was worth investing in better buildings. The increased wealth needed protection, which the emerging knighthood provided with iron weapons. The first fences are being built. The forests, formerly in the general possession, fall to the emperor, who awards them as a fief. Kulm generalizes a historical state, which also depended on resources. Population growth, iron, glass, salt, architecture and shipbuilding led to the removal of forests and the Middle Ages almost collapsed due to a lack of energy. At that moment, coal is invented and industrialization begins. European history.
In today’s Germany and Austria, the nobility is reforesting for their hunting pleasure. Forest is formed where the soil is poor and is not suitable for intensive grain and vegetable growing. The forest changes the microclimate, moderating heat, cold and humidity. This makes grain farming possible in the first place.
France and Spain are not reforesting and therefore have climatic problems and lack of water.
The sung-about “German Forest” is a nature-oriented plantation.
Pop growth were culled. Ubsavory but necessary.
Important points!
Jan, great topic. Surely, as (AUT assume-recall) you are well aware of this but certain soil types (and overall geoprofile underneath) are way more fragile in that quick succession repeated on/off cycle in re-forestation. Largely in part the deep fungus network (the core pillar of forests essentially) doesn’t re-new as fast and vibrantly (3D glory) as in others.. The typical example being the more fragile (washed away) slopes say in typical ClubMed / Balkan / MENA areal.. which now barely feed few goats per sq km (in itself very dangerous animal w.out proper land management)..
““As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.””
― Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
250 years later we know who were more sustainable
Once everything implodes assets will probably lose 99.99 % of their wealth so imagine 10 dollars per capita being high
That means a 1000000 dollar house dropping to 1500 dollars. Those asset rich people will be starving.
Allow for brief ~update on the CATL batt upgrade here under discussion.. From very recent example, the FR automanuf. Renault just launched (Q1 26) – reinvigorated their 1992 brand-model Twingo (yet) again. Nowadays ” Twingo E-Tech ” is an econobox sized platform, full BEV with ~260km range and <EUR20k price tag..
Peak output 60kW @ 1.2t weight so very sporty.. around suburb/city.. ; )
Now, the CHN Batt supplier CATL provides *LiFe(PO4?) based pack for it which has been used already in Asia for several years in EVs (and in solar / energy storage for ~2decades). So, the key note here – that announced ~paradigm shift~ towards Sodium-ion batt tech is still reserved (later) either for way bigger platforms (e.g. sw/SUVs) or more luxurious brands and models as such.. Perhaps there will be also very similar delay, i.e. first ~2-4yrs China-Asia sales only, then it follows in export-partner manuf. regions as well..
—
* when (~1-2yrs ?) this replaces [NMC] in current JEEP / Stellantis PHEVs it's a (final-countdown) signal to purchase.. you are set for ~2040..
sure be nice if you didn’t use so many abbreviations that only you know…..You might get more response if you did….
1.CHN
2.CATL
3. LIFE PO4
4. NMC
Sorry, from the ongoing feedback – evolving discussion and msm citations I thought it was self-explanatory.. So, I’ll try here fill up a bit again on your list:
1. CHN – China, country code..
2. CATL – brand/corp. name of one of the worlds biggest battery manufs – aims at whole packs supplied for top automanufs be it in China, EU, US..
3. LiFe(PO4) – lithium ferrous – (phosphate upgrade) – type/specific chemistry of the most advanced cost/lifecycle/mass production volume/.. combo battery known to mortal-man on this planet nowadayz. As mentioned it has been earlier proven in batt/solar systems, now some more automanfufs (grr decades delay!) tried to use it in their plugin / plug charged hybrids / phevs / partial EVs ..
4. NMC – nickel-mangan. cobalt lithium battery – environ shit(t)y / weird performance-lifecycle vs other chemistries, for some reason Italian-US- and some Japanese automanuf brands dearly like it.. Apart from “sabotage claims” perhaps sunk giga-money into this horrendous pit of glowing failure pre-maturely.. so upto now stuck with it for too long..
“On the other hand, everyone understands that selling more electric cars means less oil is needed, so they can easily be “convinced” that if all cars were electric, oil would no longer be needed…”
I saw this quote from Quark and I thought it was interesting. I think I fall into this thinking sometimes
Not true . Understand we do not buy crude oil but petrol , diesel , ATF etc which are refined products . The problem is that EV ‘only reduce consumption of petrol . There is already a glut of petrol and this will add to the problem . There is only so much storage of petrol available and refineries hate it because it evaporates , disintegrates and is a fire hazard . The only solution is going to be to reduce the refinery runs which means less diesel, less ATF , less bitumen etc . Unintended consequences .
I am afraid Ravi is right. There is some differences in percentages of eventual gasoline, diesel, propane, and butane in different fields that only slightly changes this situation. All of the types of oil are hooked together, to some extent. But there are some differences.
The US tends to produce oil that gives a lot of gasoline. We need to import heavier oil from elsewhere (such as the oil sands of Canada) to make enough diesel. Substituting EV’s for gasoline in the US would tend to make US crude oil less valuable. Less US crude might be extracted. With lower extraction, the US would be less able to buy goods and services it needs. It would likely worsen the US’s financial problems.
On the other hand, substituting EVs for private passenger vehicles using diesel would help the world diesel shortage. There still are quite a few private passenger cars in Europe operating on diesel. Of course, Europe also has an electricity shortage (except in Norway, with its hydro). So it is not clear that EVs would really be helpful there, except in Norway.
Ravi> in that very context you have to acknowledge the rise of PHEVs – because they are chiefly targeting diesel munching ~SUVs in ~sub/urban low speed traffic.. Larger engine volume – displacement carz are nowadays – usually diesels as well. The market for gasoline high performance (lux) carz is minuscule.
So, the reminder or legacy fleet (well in many countries the majority) is the segment of small gasoline / lpg carz. And econobox EVs are coming there as well (see post above) – yes still xy% premium price over ICE carz.. but closing in..
Moreover, as posted few days ago, gasoline hybrids are on the rise as well, you need only smallish batt pack added to [DELETE] large part of the y/y gasoline consumption.. This has NOT been addressed by the manufs massively up to date, perhaps the Sodium-ion would change it, i.e. few hundred bucks for say 20kWh @ 20yrs longevity pack..
A long article about what is ahead, based on the observations of the previous “Fourth Turnings.” The article ignores energy issues. It has four possibilities regards how collapse proceeds. I quote a section about the current financial problems.
https://no01.substack.com/p/the-darkest-hours-are-before-the-f1e
The Darkest Hours Are Before the Dawn
Every Fourth Turning includes a monetary reset. The Revolution gave us the Constitution’s gold and silver clause. The Civil War brought greenbacks and the National Banking System. The Depression/WWII era ended the gold standard domestically and created Bretton Woods. What’s coming this time will be even more dramatic.
The numbers are so large they’ve lost all meaning. The U. S. national debt stands at $37 trillion as of August 2025. Unfunded liabilities—Social Security, Medicare, government pensions—exceed $200 trillion. The Federal Reserve holds over $1 trillion in unrealized losses. Commercial banks sit on $600 billion in underwater securities. We’re not approaching insolvency. We’re already there. Just one repricing away from systemic collapse. And everyone in finance knows it. The only question is whether it happens slowly (inflation), suddenly (default), or systematically (CBDC rollout).
Every Fourth Turning includes a monetary reset. The Revolution gave us the Constitution’s gold and silver clause. The Civil War brought greenbacks and the National Banking System. The Depression/WWII era ended the gold standard domestically and created Bretton Woods. What’s coming this time will be even more dramatic.
The numbers are so large they’ve lost all meaning. The U. S. national debt stands at $37 trillion as of August 2025. Unfunded liabilities—Social Security, Medicare, government pensions—exceed $200 trillion. The Federal Reserve holds over $1 trillion in unrealized losses. Commercial banks sit on $600 billion in underwater securities. We’re not approaching insolvency. We’re already there. Just one repricing away from systemic collapse. And everyone in finance knows it. The only question is whether it happens slowly (inflation), suddenly (default), or systematically (CBDC rollout).
Frankly speaking I am not impressed with ” The Fourth Turning ” . I came across it in about 2010 and it does not have an impressive track record . I would equate it to forecasts by Martin Armstrong or in finance ” Elliot wave theory ” . Logical , yes, but it was written in 1997 , not valid today . Heck all peak oilers ( including me ) were /are wrong , but then did we know about QE and shale in 2008 . If anybody here knew about QE before the GFC he should be nominated as the FED chairman or even higher like chairman of the BIS .
I can’t say I am impressed with it either. I spoke at a Reinsurance conference with Neil Howe in 2018.
I haven’t figured out who wrote the linked article, but it is not Strauss or Howe. I think it has valid insights.
Regarding digital currency, it also says:
Consider the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) agenda that’s advancing globally while most people remain blissfully unaware. This isn’t just digitizing money—it’s making money programmable, controllable, censorable. The Federal Reserve, Bank of England, and European Central Bank are all developing CBDCs, following China’s lead with the digital yuan. Imagine a world where your ability to buy gasoline depends on your carbon credit score, where your grocery purchases are limited by your BMI, where your savings can be “expired” to force spending. Money that can’t be used for disapproved purchases, that can be frozen instantly if you express wrongthink.
It’s not imagination — China is already doing it. Europe is launching trials. The Federal Reserve is “researching” it.
This is the ultimate fusion of monetary and social control.
Yes, and in sync with just the previous quotation on “The Darkest Hours Are Before the Dawn” it’s quite very sobering outlook. In effect, there could be a transition period of ~two decades of very nasty attempts to squelch disorderly panic via hard rationing schemes (e.g. well already applied within CHN). Obviously, regions, timelines, opportunities, and potential to immiserate varies greatly..
Transition to where? Either re-lapse into further deeper collapse sequencing or reaching some temp plateau of very diff. rulez applied anyway, .. , .
I have said this before and I will say it again.
People will not do actual, productive work in exchange for fake, digital “money” with all kinds of invisible strings attached. It will very quickly lead to a “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us” situation.
Now it is possible that government “entitlements” (Social Security, SNAP, disability, etc.) may be paid out with this sort of “money”, thereby creating a two-tiered, domestic monetary system.
Yes, correct in the sense this phenomenon have already occurred throughout the history during/at various notable episodes.
The main issue though it “merely” results in setting lower efficiency in production, innovation, lower living standards (for some sectors of pop drip by drip fashion) etc.., NOT in completely seizing of said activity in the near-mid term! Obviously after a while (decades) it could be ricocheting into substandard (as in not working at all) output per given sector/locale etc.
For example, the SKoreans must surely (industrially) outproduce JAP per the very same single barrel of oil imported, yet JAP is not imploding (yet!) even with their ~300-500-1000% debt levels. The ~same along that China vs US vector etc.
I know to stay away from anything related to Martin Armstrong.
The big question is what was in the inoculations. There are very different analyzes. The provisions are currently being destroyed, democracy and the rule of law do not want to know. About 70% are inoculated at least once in Europe, 100% in Asia and some Muslim countries. There is a wide range of damage potential, which is also statistically noticeable. It is possible that the natural death rate will only increase a little and the fertility rate will decrease. However, it is also possible that the damage increases exponentially. If this is the case, of course all economic speculation is obsolete. We must also not forget that, logistically and legitimately, the course has been set for another one.
Peanut protein, Jan. Turns out it’s just a peanut allergy. Hoocoodanode? I’d just caution you about sharing that publicly.
“Take the case of a central bank purchasing bad loans from banks at a book value {say, $100b}, although their market value is lower {say, only $20b}. It may superficially appear as if a loss of $80b is made.
This would be true in the case of agents other than the central bank. The central bank, however, in this case will make a profit of {at least} $20b {since it creates money at zero cost and obtains something worth $20b with it}. . . . ”?
See ‘New Paradigm in Macroeconomics’, by R.A.Werner, p374, note 2.
https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news-selections/world-news/metal-wall-going-up-around-mexico-presidential-palace
Real trouble is brewing down in Mexico; the kind of trouble that topples governments. Mexico’s (Oy Vey) President, Claudia Sheinbaum, got the word through Israel: She ordered a solid metal wall be immediately welded into place around the Presidential Palace.
Workers began URGENTLY installing the wall yesterday and have worked all through the night, welding the pieces together.
Word on the street in Mexico is that Sheinbaum was told the US is not merely going to strike Drug Cartels in Venzuela; they’re allegedly going to hit them in Mexico, too.
These cartels, like Venezuela, have some level of preparation. They have drones and know how to use them. Right now the last step of transporting drugs is done by drone and unstoppable. I tell the Hegseth idiot, FAFO.
Going the violent route will militarize the border which will further decrease the drug trade and sales. Violence against the US or border patrol is a losing strategy for them, so I doubt they’ll pursue it.
true. also the cartels have a much longer timeline so they will use their weapons tactically while they dig in for s long war.
I am afraid we are heading toward overthrown governments, and generally smaller governments, around the world.
Gail, the idea that civilians in the U.S. and most countries with strong federal governments (governments that have technologically advanced weapons that would make any any military confrontation with the government impossible) is a bit outdated. This isn’t the 1600s. An armed citizenry is not enough to overthrow most governments in most developed countries.
Perfect prison!
Trump in Trouble? If they can’t get him for a crime, how about for a cover-up?
The House of Representatives Oversight Committee as released a stash of over 20,000 documents from the Epstein estate and many of them are quite juicy and suggestive.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-committee-releases-additional-epstein-estate-documents/
Despite pressure being brought from the White House on several Republican members to block the release, reps Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Lauren Boebert all joined the Dems in signing the discharge petition on releasing the Epstein files.
Sabby Sabs has as exciting and balanced a report on this as we are likely to find on YouTube.
They would be released already if he wasn’t in trouble. Now the Don is shouting for investigations for ….WASHINGTON—President Trump said he would ask the Justice Department and the FBI to launch an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats.
Nice move, but that won’t save his ass. Pretty much he’s a lame duckies at the best…sad man…Third term….in sing sing
Are ” The Epstein Files ” similar to the ” Me Too ” movement ? Though short lived and now forgotten it did dig the graves of many big names .
Yeah pretty much ravi. Same thing but bipartisan and more consequential.
This video starts out by reading the email of the author of most of the writings about Epstein (Whitney Webb). It says:
My feeling is that now it is “safe” to release the info that Epstein was really a sex trafficker as a side gig and was mainly an intelligence asset of Israel and the US, a big-time financial criminal on behalf of transnational capital ( I would argue transnational organized crime disguised as transnational capital), and an arms trader because the people he was helping have stolen so much of America’s wealth and have taken control over so much of the government.
That is why even admitting the true breadth of the scandal and operation doesn’t even seem to move the needle. Criminals are in charge and they run both parties, they have created the infrastructure for neo-feudalism enforced by technology and are herding us into the corral.
Opt out of Al, digital ID and the surveillance state that Epstein associates built now because we still can.
It sounds like Epstein was working on behalf of The Powers that Be, who seem to run both parties. The planned new currency systems are part of this control mechanism. Jumping in with both feet is not a good idea.
If Epstein was really an agent, then we are not talking about teenagers of legal age who received generous gifts, so that they got into the smell of still for them illegal prostitution. A seventeen-year-old is allowed to sleep with a forty-year-old prince, in addition, the difference between 17.9 and 18.1 years can be poorly determined on an extortion photo. For the rest, 17-year-old playmates are not called Lolita.
However, the difference between 4 and 40 immediately catches the eye. These are real blackmail photos.
If we follow this consideration further and remember the list of guests on the Lolita Express, then we come to an American moral image, which may be hidden for reasons other than Trump’s involvement.
In Austria, at a diplomatic or commercial meeting, one would probably ask: “Yes, say once! What’s wrong with you Americans? You all ran against the wall?” (Whoever hits the wall hard loses his brain.)
A lost war is nothing! And if the organizer was then hired from Israel, there is another problem right away.
Just my 2 cents.
“Just my 2 cents.”
Not to nitpick but next time, you should try putting your 2 cents in English so we can understand.
Thomas Edison did pass on inventing the light bulb since that was not ptogitable.
https://youtube.com/shorts/OmyAoTQ5pPQ?si=XXJpTJ-w4SGjL2tN
Alexandr Lodygin of Russia, who invented the Light Bulb.
At least Edison was way smarter tgan the cornucopians here. He did not waste time and money on something which did not work.
Thomas Edison greatly improved on something that had been invented five years earlier by Alexander Lodygin of Russia. Major inventions usually take place in steps, with multiple people involved. Both deserve some credit.
The World’s $111 Trillion in Government Debt, in One Giant Chart
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/111-trillion-of-global-debt-in-2025/#google_vignette
“Gross public debt stands at $111 trillion globally in 2025, rising by $8.3 trillion since 2024.
Together, the U.S. and China hold 51.8% of the world’s government debt.
While global public debt is lower than pandemic highs in real terms, it remains stubbornly elevated at $111 trillion.
This graphic shows world debt by country in 2025, based on data from the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook.
America’s debt burden exceeds $38 trillion in 2025, standing at 125% of GDP.
Over the past five years, net interest payments on the national debt have nearly tripled. They are projected to double again by 2035 to reach $1.8 trillion per year.
With $18.7 trillion in debt, China ranks in second. In 2025, debt expanded by almost $2.2 trillion, driven by government stimulus and weaker land revenues given a struggling property market sector.
As we can see, Japan follows next with a $9.8 trillion debt pile, equal to 230% of GDP. Even though debt remains sky-high, the country’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, is proposing $92.2 billion in stimulus spending and subsidies.
The UK and France round out the top largest debt burdens, both hovering near $4 trillion. France, in particular, has experienced significant political instability amid contentious budget cut proposals, cycling through five prime ministers over the past two years.”
Can’t wait for AI to come and figure out how to dig ourselves out of this hole…
After all it’s only X’s and 0’s on a screen
This video says the US debt is really about 200 trillions. Cites Musk’s denunciation of unaccounted cash machines in the various DC departments and other things.
Suppose Chairman Mao’s has a smaller stink🦨….one thing for sure no body will be able to bail out anybody next time around..
So there…hold on
The US has made numerous guarantees. It will guarantee individual bank accounts up to $250,000 per account. Many of the debts associated with “green energy” have a government guarantee. If there is a major nuclear accident, the government will pay. These promises have do debt associated with them. This is a big reason why US debt is understated.
Of course, the US government is on a pay as you go basis. As long as the amounts aren’t actually paid, it doesn’t have to be accrued for.
Catherine Austin Fitts has been talking about FASAB 56 for years (the 2018 law allowing false reporting of financial accounts by US gov entities).
So 10 , 000 x 47 ,000 = $ ‘470 , 000 ,000 . This is only TSA there are still air traffic controllers . Printing to infinity .
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/noem-awards-tsa-staff-10000-bonuses-working-during-shutdown
Just an observation . Why do all the women on Trump’s team look like they have been under the plastic surgeon’s knife and full of botox and fillers ? Please correct me , if wrong .
God gave ugly men money and ugly women whiskey. Now God gives old men AND women plastic surgery.
They look like sex workers because they are.
Tulsi is natural.
Doesn’t even dye her hair.
And looks great.
She had to leave the Democratic Party because she wasn’t ugly enough to fit in.
She’s a natural alright….clutching her purse wide open…or something similar
I was annoyed when her last financial disclosure showed a when-in-rome investment in Nvidia and Apple stock.
On the other hand it could signal she just did on purpose park the money on regular horses – not the worst (speculative / gov-insider trading linked) extravaganza or mil. contractors as other politicos usually do..
Oh no for sure jak. She’s a squeaky clean girlscout. Just a 21st century one. Her other major investment with her Fox News salary was taking out a mortgage on 25-unit(?) apartment building the other year. All to get in with Trump presumably. If she knew she was the Chosen One maybe she wouldn’t have. I just don’t like my national socialists being rentiers lol
She left the Democratic Party, thinking that being a right-wing grifter would be more profitable.
That is certainly the monolithic Democratic Party narrative. How many other monolithic Party narratives do you share?
Well, we all have our own sniffing apparatus (% success rate) – mine telling me at that moment with her pedigree what a classic case of intel / deep gov reserve pool set aside for future top position (sen., foreign sec., potus, ..). Not unlikely how the other / diff. team prepped their future key candidates.. in the RECENT past.
That happens in every country with functioning hierarchy (so you can guess), while in ~EMPIRES (it’s oftentimes intentionally made VISIBLE) to signal everybody home+abroad, hands off.
Sure jak but the difference here is that with Tulsi she is, in my estimation, the Chosen One to shepherd the world through the cataclysmic Phase 2 (of 2) of the Hand’s Non-Public Degrowth Agenda. Not a garden variety appointment. And therefore what she is politically is what Phase 2 will be politically, otherwise she wouldn’t be the Chosen One.
If we have 3 more years before she HAS to be potus then she will be elected in 2028. If we have less than that then she will be installed in an interim basis via military coup presumably post- Epstein files release and then later voted in by election. These days i’m leaning towards the latter as more likely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnAP23UI_lk
Finished AI Data Centers Have No Electricity — AI Fraud Can’t Fake Reality
Eli the Computer Guy
@thomasrogers9146
2 days ago
THIS IS HOW WE DO BUSINESS IN AMERICA. CREATE A WHOLE NEW INDUSTRY BUT NO INVESTMENT IN THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO SUPPORT THIS NEW OVER HYPED OVER INVESTED SECTOR BUT NO ELECTRICITY INFRASTRUCTURE.. THIS IS NOT INCOMPETENCE LACK OF VISION BUT PURE STUPIDITY.
But it’s the future, like Starships
That sounds like what the French commenter “roc” was saying yesterday. This is a link to my Google translation of the article:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/10/31/a-lack-of-very-cheap-oil-is-leading-to-debt-problems/comment-page-4/#comment-495654
Same thing happened with the “new high tech” railroad expansion …lots of investors lost everything
“Railway Mania” in the UK (1840s): This stock market bubble reached its peak in 1846. Many middle-class families invested their entire savings into new, speculative railway companies. When the bubble inevitably collapsed, these individuals lost their investments, especially as many authorized lines were never built or were part of fraudulent schemes
The Panic of 1873 and its aftermath saw significant financial instability tied to the railroad industry, which was the basis of the expanding American financial system at the time.
Oh well, 😅 it feels good on the way up
China installed 178 GW of PV last year. US electric companies owned by foreigners have no interest in risking money on the US.
Good! aka lets the PV factories keep on churning their product for a while longer.. (till the last moment) as the great squeeze of ~2027-35 is approaching ever faster..
In fact, if the US wants to manufacture anything in quantity, it has this same problem with a lack of electricity in quantity. We can’t build all of our own vehicles. We can’t plug them all into the grid, either. There isn’t electricity to spare for any major undertaking.
Every time I go to YouTube, there is something about 3I/Atlas. I’m getting tired of it.
What do our resident pontificators make of it? Is it even real? Are the Elders planning an extraterrestrial false flag? Or what?
So many weird things are happening right now. And NP, our resident militant atheist, has even started praising the Bible. I can only conclude that he has been replaced by a Replicant. 🙁
““Many will appear to have lost their souls in these final days. So intense will the nature of the changes be that those who are weak in spiritual awareness will go insane, for we are nothing without spirit.”
– HOPI PROPECY
The hopi predictions are pretty scary but yeah insanity will probably take out the vast majority of us my sister attempted suicide a few weeks ago thanks to insanity but luckily she survived and is now on her way to a full recovery but medicated to the gills on antiphsychotic drugs but insanity is caused by lots of stress so imagine what will happen when big changes or economic losses cause massive amounts of stress to the world’s people they will suffer immensely and likely go insane just like the hopi predicted.
Spirit and energy in symbiosis, and in animism.
I don’t think so the masses would not believe it so realised the guy is just a false prophet
People get paid money if their videos are clicked on. END OF STORY
Um, they won’t get paid if someone decides to use Ad or Sponsor blockers in the web browser. If a person wants to avoid getting bombarded with certain types of Ads, then don’t sign in on the YT app. Use a web browser instead.
“Brave” browser is ad-free if you install it. You don’t then get constant interruptions when watching long videos on YouTube.
Will it clean up the mfing Zerohedge page too? It’s insane these days.
I do not understand this comment at all. Have you ever heard of adblock or similar plugins?
Wikipedia says:
3I/ATLAS, also known as C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and previously as A11pl3Z, is an interstellar comet[17][18] discovered on 1 July 2025 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) station. The comet follows an unbound, hyperbolic trajectory past the Sun.[6][c] It will not come closer than 1.8 AU (almost twice the distance of the Sun) from Earth, so it poses no threat. . .
A July 2025 study led by Matthew Hopkins and collaborators estimated with 68 percent confidence that 3I/ATLAS is between 7.6 and 14 billion years old, based on the typical ages of stars in the thick disk.[27][9]: 4 This means that 3I/ATLAS could be older than the Solar System (which is 4.6 billion years old) and may well be the oldest comet yet seen.[27][9]: 4 An independent analysis by Aster Taylor and Darryl Seligman in July 2025 estimated that 3I/ATLAS should be 3 to 11 billion years old, in broad agreement with Hopkins et al.’s estimate.[23][8]
It seems to be important because it could be older than the universe itself.
” Fitch Ratings and Moody’s, which provide financial health checks for most big companies, said in February that Ratcliffe’s chemicals business had racked up debts that were between five to six times larger than the company’s annual earnings. Its debts have since climbed to eight times their annual earnings, according to Fitch.”
This is interesting . I have visited their chemical plant in Antwerp . Wasn’t aware they were into car manufacturing.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/13/ineos-cut-jobs-carmaker-struggles-debts-jim-ratcliffe
A European company that is in financial difficulty and laying off workers. Not a huge surprise. I notice,
The company has accused Europe of carrying out “industrial suicide” by imposing green policies that Ineos claims raise the cost of energy. The group is also scrambling to file anti-dumping cases to block the import of cheap chemicals products into the EU in an attempt to protect its core petrochemicals business from further financial strain.
Green policies drive local companies out of business. It leads to lower standards of living in the long run because imports become difficult or impossible. But maybe leaders could see the inevitability of the loss of energy availability. Going with imports seemed to be the best of available alternatives.
Why import people?
Dennis L.
If everything manufactured needs to be imported, there is certainly less need for young workers.
To perform jobs where the local population are reluctant to perform. Many young people do not want to work in aged care or cleaning for example
According to ‘Bullshit Jobs’ many people in dead-end office jobs became so miserable, if not suicidal that they resigned in despair to become gardeners, cleaners or carers. Their salary may have fallen by 70-85 percent but at least the new job had some sense of purpose.
Wouldn’t that be a great irony if his core biz (petrochem empire) folded-restructured, while his niche car start-up eventually marched ahead..
Ravi, sir Ratcliffe and ~boyz “took over” the traditional LandRover concept and transformed it via current r&d + manuf. technologies into the ~best offroader out there.. Ineos Grenadier. Something the original company was not willing to bet on, or even remotely capable of.. For that effort only – should it fail eventually or not, he entered the realm of semi-gods in certain circles, justifiably so..
Compare contrast with say build-up of silly golf resorts by other entrepreneurs. Is he a saint, apparently no – more like an aggressive investor amassing ~20B.. but at least standing partially with one leg in the real world.
ps disclaimer – it has been always a manifestation of craziness buying British made vehicle in recent decades yet in this case it works/ed
Best? Maybe for the single testicle playboys. I’d take an old Chevy 4×4 with a sm465 any day. Had that tranny in my 2wd flatbed. Yootoob short:
https://youtube.com/shorts/imIQpvxdy0I?si=zl6qA8RSxa5_toSg
You have to take into account that great anti off-road
purge in EUR domain as of lately. Several models and brands axed on fuel-CO2 / pedestrian policy etc..
Obviously, INEOS above meant as in the sense of contemporary – oem production still alive, driven off the dealer lot .. say vs. JAP (great but) needing a lot of aftermarket add-on upgrades even for ~standard off road functionality..
Yours vid example/setup – yet another specific domain – more towards retro-oldtimer/DIY/aftermarket upgrade category.
ps on that single testicle angle (true story): it’s either genetics – disease phenomenon or (cat)fight-injury result..
Funny.. Yeah I know what you meant sorry I was just being a redneck. That legendary muncie 4-speed came stock on many many Chevy’s back in the day. I had the pleasure of owning one myself til last month. Dropped that tranny to change the clutch on it and that was a two person job. Heavy! The Chevy doesn’t have a snorkel but who really needs a snorkel (only playboys) especially if you’ve got a lift. And you need a lift if we’re talking actual off road. That Grenadier is gonna get hung up on all kinds of stuff. Never understood why the wealthy farmers in England all had Land Rovers.Si the dogs don’t get wet? A truck is ten times more useful and dogs don’t mind rain.
“A truck is ten times more useful and dogs don’t mind rain.”
Don Stewart has an old lifted Chevy in his barn just for joyriding with his hound Flash.
That’s a good point about the “one step” bigger platform in trucks being better.
I guess it’s the general difference in size/space/availability across the pond, as in smaller houses, apartments, carz, just smaller everything..
Well, there is a [country-side] community engaged in 4×4 lighter truck-buggy, but that’s more of a trial ~only for specific purpose off road track, not daily use on public roads..
Obviously, people managing larger fields/forests might have 4×4 truck in the fleet but it’s just used specifically for the work-task of the day (wood hauling, crops, fishtank, stone-masonry..), not a joyride.. platform.
I remember Don from from Morgan’s place. Too bad he doesn’t comment over here. I imagine the three of them have earned that simple pleasure and the truck needs exercising.
Yeah but small trucks exist too. Or used to. And you can stick a canopy on them for rain cover like I have in my Nissan Frontier. They could have had Ford Rangers over there with four and six cylinders. Or a euroversion.
Today though I’m gonna change tack a bit and say that people I know nothing about and have never met before can probably make good decisions for themselves within market constraints and I can see a farmer with a dirt bike, an ATV with a trailer, a tractor with a trailer and a carryall, and a land rover SUV for the family rig I guess if you wanna be bougie but I’d rather see a utilitarian downsizing to and old Defender 90 or a Suzuki Jimny. Can’t let the wife and kids get too comfy lol and who the heck needs a 4-liter engine just for moving people around?
That’s perhaps a misunderstanding (being of minimalist inkling of sorts) – in fact I was ready with the itchy finger on the proverbial [Enter] keyboard button to order that new 5dr Jimny (very compact-light off-roader), while it was finally banned under the enviro mandates. Tried to ask/arrange for grey import with other interested parties via 3rd country but not likely at the moment.., grr..
Actually, I was thinking about that earlier today, getting pretty worked up angry again – so likely my enervated brain waves reached you across the planet in no time to help form this argument of yours among similar lines..
Great minds think alike. They only have grey market import Jimnys here. Why not just get a used one?
Well, as mentioned you can’t get the new Jimny 5dr version on road-papers here.. nor used one.. The old ~classic 3dr (now dropped from dealerships for emissions as well) is still available used one. Yet the price is relatively elevated.. not so interesting even vs brand new ~cheap econobox 4wd/4×4 out there – say (FR-RO) production.
Also, the entry level 4×4 single cab agricultural lorry with tipper (IT) as brand new one from factory is then just ~2x the price of that old Jimny and so on.. ; then you could step up only for major 4×4 oems: Jeep Gladiator (well smallish cargo capacity but towing passable), Iveco Daily (rig too big can’t use private license), Benz 315 4×4 (cool and quality, expensive), Ineos *Quartermaster (just right tech specs – yet mucho$) ..
You see the market here is positioned in very adversarial stance against offroadish-cargo hauling setups.. for commoners..
—
* btw Ronny Dahl just released new YTvid today “10,000km AUS bush in Ineos Quartermaster” w. lot of diy – tweakish ideas presented..
https://www.youtube.com/@Ronny_Dahl/videos
update: this is highly embarrassing though, perhaps that rapid onset of aging strike, +too much naked Ineos vids, lolz..
I had to look at outbound mail folder, well, surprise, in fact I did contact – had a ride in ~lastgen doublecab Isuzu (automatic) previous winter, the brand being for yrs the #1 pre-selected top choice.. even asked to arrange for ~another day next round of the way preferred (ext. cab + manual combo) but slacked – have not followed up..
To recap basics, Isuzu best price / perf. ratio / quality, ~decent aftermarket upgrade support, shorter front overhang vs say Hilux etc.; extend cab ver. with ~spacious flat&deep!floor diameter-great for future diy short range BEV option.. etc.
Now recall.., their service-tech chap at the dealer’s mentioned best/largest pool of used lot (basic spec.) from [ FR/BE/NL – fewer DE/AT] – also possible eastern ClubMed (GR/TR) – but that’s running greater risk of UV compromised plastic-gum and or salty mist corrosion damage (island hoppers), ..not worth the distance etc..
Right on you guys got 1/2 ton truck options. Saw the Isuzu only has the diesel engine option. You not concerned about diesel becoming unavailable for personal use before gasoline?
The mission task is local hauling on good gr.clearance platform (perhaps also as partial backup for small tractor off-duty) so:
wood mulch bags, hop on/off gear on small pallets, tree seedlings, hauling fodder/water.. ; chiefly strictly improvised local miles in case of disruption (fallen old bridge), private & state road blockades in the area etc..
In terms of fuel as hinted previously:
1/ Yes given the war(+aftereffects), strict diesel allowances are expected/coming in ~PO scenario [99.9%] – now the Q: is when, next yr, 2027-35, later? ..
2/ Not highway flyer – hence assumed very drastic engine spec downgrade conversion options (w. older clunker scenario): innitialy natgas/lpg or now the way easier one: exBEV / e-motor on the oem Isuzu manual tranny + smallish batt pack.. reasonable ~two decades longevity..perhaps more as partially up/re-placeable on the go..
Then if I were you going with a new model Isuzu 1.9 diesel so you wouldn’t need to worry about a single new part on the truck for at least 125Kmiles, and getting an on-road diesel tank in your barn that can supply both the truck and tractor seems at a glance the way to go, and maybe an older gas rig for redundancy like you alluded to. The 3-liter diesel is total overkill since a 1/2 ton is never gonna be able to realistically tow more than about 8K lbs anyway
Yes, as lite single (cab/ext.) chassis bed will be plenty strong with just that 1.9l. – I don’t need the 3l engine application per se. Simply approaching (Ineos) as from the ~idealized best all-in-platform angle not necessarily its hp/torque/-towing real specs in need.
In terms of the advice – option – of buying new 1.9l with ~lifecycle high mileage advantage~ thanks true that would be rational choice in regular situation-outlook. I’m still not decided thought – again it’s probably another overkill for my needs anyway – I won’t be able to / don’t expect driving so much to accumulate that distance in the following crazy decade+ .. , the same with respect to ~tame towing needs, no plans for regularly tow-hauling large livestock anyway etc.
Most likely that used 1.9l pickup and 4wd econobox (gasoline) would be more than enough; apart from existing small <500cc ~ATV-like garden-meadow power tools.. efficient @ ha / 12sq yards per hour..
(all these app. can be now batt.electrified for gaining few more yrs extra..)
The new model recommendation by me was based on your expectation, on balance, that Collapse won’t come as soon as I think it will. If I was me in your situation (rather than if I was you) I’d get a used one with around 100-125K miles on it which is that price-to-remaining-lifespan sweet spot, for gasoline vehicles anyway. That’s what I did when I bought the 2014 Nissan Frontier at 118K. And I’d probably just set aside some cash dollars under the mattress and pick up that gasoline 4×4 as necessary after TSHTF for a killer price. And maybe consider a 125cc motorcycle with knobby tires cuz by the time diesel is unavailable to you, gasoline will be being rationed and 125mpg is a whole lot more than the 4×4 or the ATV will get you. Old bikers ride those little motorcycles til their 80 because they’re not gonna kill themselves doing it. I decided on the Honda Monkey (over the Trail 125) and I’m getting about 95mpg on a 3 mile round trip doing stop and go chores up the hill in first gear through 4 gates each way. Between it and the 450cc ATV I pretty much only use the Frontier for firewood deliveries with the trailer. And I can take it into town ten miles away on the back roads. Or the highway if I wanted to but I don’t want to. The 200-250cc bikes will get 75-80mpg and I’d much rather have the TW200 but I couldn’t bring myself to drop down to that mileage. But if you can convert your shit to electric which I have no interest in then maybe a mini motorcycle doesn’t make as much sense.
Yes, sound advice overall!
In terms of two wheel, well there have been three wheel (as in 2x front wheel, 1x rwd) 125/300cc scooters and motorcycles available even on second hand market or dealer-promo sales for say decade+ already. And as you alluded fitting a bit more all-year knobby tires makes wonders there boosting stability up even more. I’m apparently transitioning to mature-aged cat. so still ~elevated center gravity offroadish motobikes would be a bit dangerous for me into the future, but this 3x wheel thing good enough for sneaking around..
In terms of ~ATV – that was perhaps a lack of clear-description on my part – I meant that segment of “walk-behind” mower/implement-s for gardens/meadows/.. around frontyard toolz.. I guess in the US, that ” BCS ” brand is the most spoken for in that, there are 4-5x other major manufs in that sector as well.. but it’s mostly the same..
Anyways, the bottom line – way better to have some entry level Kubota + few PTO implements than “ATV” dedicated toyz. ; but it always depends on the scale of task, had to move manure from stables or large wood chunks around at all (Yes/No) etc.. I guess there are enough girlz with horse stables just managing ok with rudimentary ATVs after-all..
Addendum> always forget to underline this key megatrend – because of the war: [ 4×4 / 4wd / awd ] have mostly disappeared from the used car offerings on the continent.. Mostly, weird – unloved combinations and / or problematic specimen left sitting there unloved.. Hence, the grr! squared factor on CO2 scam axing these fantastic little Suzukis on top of that.., so basically the only brand remaining in the smaller sized sector are the french-romanian guyz..
And I’d not touch Chinese awd justly or un-justly.. probably irrational response of mine..
I make my hay and haylage on the BCS platform. And mow. Have a Kubota for the forestry work. Without a mortgage all my money goes into equipment in service of not needing all this equipment anymore and just rawdogging the farming but I probably have five more years til the place is at maximum grass productivity and a few more til I’m down to one big dog to feed. So in the meantime it’s all or nothing on the industrial diy. Things take on a life of their own. If I was single I’d be off-grid out living with the sheep and goats, as the livestock guardian, with a gun, a couple chainsaws, and the Kubota and the firewood trailer (which doubles as the stock trailer for transporting between properties) and that would be it. No car no truck no janitor job. I’d just get by on selling uhaul firewood or local deliveries of ricks with the carryall and bucket. I’d be gardening the fertile bowl around where I drink water from the creek instead of the well-watered extremely sandy convex area around the house that we refer to as the high desert.
Flying blind . No data excuse is the best when all indicators are in the southward direction .
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/11/13/data-fog-engulfing-october-due-to-government-shutdown-may-never-be-fully-lifted/
I don’t think anyone wants to know how bad things are.
You may neither know or care about Kabbalah Systems Theory…
But Kabbalah Systems Theory knows and cares about you.
The most consequential infrastructure now being built is not visible in skylines or satellite images. It lives in ledgers, indicators, identity schemes, conditional payment rails, and emergency protocols: a control stack that can bind global policy targets to individual transactions in real time. Its components are openly documented, framed as efficiency, inclusion, resilience, ‘better data’, ‘faster response’.
What is missing is a language precise enough to describe the architecture as a whole.
https://escapekey.substack.com/p/kabbalah-system-theory
Abstract
This paper reconstructs Kabbalah System Theory (KST), as developed by Burstein and Negoita (2011–2016), as a rigorous analytical framework for modern hierarchical control and programmable governance. It first restates KST in operational terms: a three-level, ten-position control architecture (ChaBaD / ChaGaT / NHY) organised by information frequency into standards and registries, monitoring and evaluation, and execution and settlement, with Da’at as internal model and Yesod as actuation layer. It then formalises a recursive holarchic algorithm in which each ‘holon’ (from international bodies to individual transactions) runs the same control loop, linked vertically by outbound commands (Netzach → Keter) and inbound outcomes (Malkuth → Hod). Using this lens, the paper maps historical and contemporary infrastructures — PPBS, Results-Based Management, the UN SDG system, and especially the BIS Innovation Hub’s unified-ledger/CBDC and tokenisation projects — and shows that, taken together, they progressively realise a structurally complete KST-style architecture: from macro-level planning and indicators to micro-level, point-of-use enforcement via digital identity, conditional access, and programmable money.
The analysis then introduces the qliphothic ‘emergency’ inversion of the same architecture, in which opaque models, expanded surveillance, automated gating, and underspecified ‘complex shock’ mechanisms (e.g. the proposed UN Emergency Platform) enable a state of exception to be instantiated as durable infrastructure rather than temporary deviation. The paper argues that this convergence does not require conspiracy or esoteric intent: KST captures a recurring control grammar that complex institutions independently rediscover. This grammar is normatively ambivalent. It can support accountable, evidence-based governance; it can also implement computational conditional sovereignty, infrastructural coercion, and permanent emergency.
The concluding section sketches eight structural interventions — around transparency, plurality, subsidiarity, execution rails, and emergency sunset constraints — as concrete design levers for bending an already-emerging KST architecture toward contestability rather than closure.
So, the Tree of Life System Theory? Wow , it made me laugh at first but hrmmmmmmm…….
Yup, you got it, not exactly something new. It seems a narrative.
Ah, nothing a cubic mile of Pt wouldn’t fix.
Dennis L.
Since there is no cubic mile of Pt in the reachable energy it is as relevant as a solution as unicorn excrements.
I suppose there is a need to talk about what is happening, in a way that can be used to justify actions by governments, without explaining that there are really too many people for resources. Furthermore, resources are becoming depleted.
When will we have forced emigration to lower the number of humans?
A person might argue that Trump’s approach is one of forced emigration. I would not be shocked if some European countries tried a similar approach with some of their immigrants.
omg, that’s an unusual futurologist claim as interesting link to attempted US policy..
That’s indeed a possibility under say mid-longer term scenario and more importantly – sadly at this advanced hist. stage – available then only to handful of perhaps newly re-formed up govs – speaking of the future European realm.
Many such cases.
Forced emigration is nothing new. Gentrification helps cities get rid of native, non-immigrant populations that consume too many resources relative to what they produce.
Then, there is covert activity by the international order designed to make the best cheap labor migrate from poor countries to rich countries.
[National Politics News]
Trump administration repealing protections for key swaths of Alaska petroleum reserve
The reserve, roughly the size of Indiana, was set aside more than a century ago as an emergency oil supply for the U.S. Navy. It’s been overseen by the Interior Department since the 1970s.
https://www.dailybreeze.com/2025/11/13/alaska-petroleum-reserve/
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/six-us-states-watch-rising-gas-prices-drive-coal-comeback-2025-11-13/
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/uk-selects-north-wales-site-first-mini-nuclear-power-station-2025-11-13/
If there really is oil in this area, oil companies want to find it.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPAK2&f=M
One of the big issues in Alaska is the fact that total oil extraction is falling below the level needed to keep the major pipeline operational. The problem is that the oil is quite heavy. It flows OK if there is a lot of oil, so that it can stay warm, as it makes its trip southward. But as the amount of extracted oil falls, we increasingly reach a situation where we will no longer be able to ship this heavy oil by pipeline.
The flow currently amounts to close to 400,000 barrels per day. This is a topic that was frequently discussed on TheOilDrum.com, years ago. At some point, a new flow of oil needs to be added, to keep the system going.
This is why it would be helpful if additional oil from this area, if there is any, could be found now. An early concern was that any petrochemicals from this area would only be natural gas. It would be too expensive to ship natural gas from this area, so they would be worthless.
In theory, Alaskan oil could be put on boat and shipped, so that production would not need to be stopped entirely. But this would be more expensive than using an already-built pipeline.
Can’t we just burn 10% of the oil to keep the remainder warm and low viscosity?
Burning a percentage of natural gas, to keep the pipeline flowing properly, is something that is regularly done. But burning 10% of oil doesn’t work as well, or it would be done.
A plan to slightly heat the pipeline was explored, IIRC. It was rejected as being too expensive. The energy for the heat might have come from burning oil, I would expect, because there isn’t much other energy source around up there.
Not entirely sure this appeared recently over here as well..
This link – discussion appeared at the Surplus commentariat site, several graphs on the topic of human’s over-abundance and especially “abnormality” vs presence of other species in that paper. Even if the scales / numbers are little bit tweaked for political-policy agenda (CO2 mandates etc.) as the critiques said – I found the depiction of these graphs (scroll down) very helpful in revealing the key overall “human” concept.
Figures A3, A4, A5..
https://www.zygonjournal.org/article/id/10885/#F1
I think that the fact that humans cook their food, and thus get the benefit of far more calories of energy relative to their body size than other animals, is what is causing this result.
Cooking our food seems to be what has made us human. It has allowed our brains to grow more complex, and our jaws and digestive apparatus smaller. We no longer have to spend literally half our day chewing our food.
>We have no idea of what riches await us in space. We need a culture which values people and has a solid moral base. Con men and women need not apply.
And right above this quote a link showing a con man’s claim.
People? What kind of people? Two legged animals? Inbred cultists?
> Social values count, it takes a team and that takes time tested values which allow for human frailty.
Time tested values do not count in the new world. They might have worked when people rode horses and night was lit by whale oil, but not now
>We will not mine space with oil, it will be fusion from the original source, the sun. It is going to be bumpy but one can’t win if one doesn’t play.
I have listed the example of Mr. Hideki Tojo. He played and the result was not so good.
I could go on and on but no need to waste too much time with someone in la-la land.
no riches await in space
wealth accrues by taking one energy form and converting it into another.
that requires ___
A—intense heat
B— people to do the buying and selling…
we here on earth are the only beings able to buy and sell—this facility is not infinfinite—we cannot sell stuff to people on planetary systems we cannot reach.—that is BS territoty however much you daydream..
there is no ”new world”
just the old one we are currently trashing.
Time will tell, mine is a guess no more no less.
Dennis L.
let’s take a step into left field for a minute… Assume the space dream of riches is real, and we have the energy and technology always improving to go out there, colonise the solar system and make use of all these resources.
Of course the further we go the more we find, from the asteroid belt, to the Kuiper belt, then to the Oort cloud, over time, then to the nearest stars and their planets and asteroid belts, and give or take another million or 2 to 10 years the entire Galaxy. Then after that, we eventually get to the next galaxy and the one after that
How long before we inhabit the entire known universe?
Step back to reality… if it was possible, and given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy, plus the fact we are finding planets around most stars, then the Fermi paradox comes clearly into play. Where are they?
As life developed here on Earth, then it’s highly likely it’s a process that can happen everywhere else wherever the conditions are ‘right’. Given the sheer numbers of likely host planets for life, then the odds of billions of planets with ‘life’ are really high.
A much smaller subset would have developed intelligent life that could drastically use the resources of their planets the way we do. Given the age of the galaxy and the universe, then the odds of us being the first intelligent life is extremely low. So if it was possible at all, then where are they??
Occam’s Razor, the simplest answer is that it’s not possible and all intelligent life that uses the resources to the extent we do, in some way collapses ending their technical ability, all in a relatively short period of time, hence no radio signals or signs of intelligent life elsewhere as we had to be detecting them in the short period we have the technology to do so.
They are so deep in their delusions that logic , reason or facts do not affect tgem . Tupical true believers.
Edison never invented anything. Light bulb eas invented by Alexandre Ladogyn, a Riussian. Edison was a good businessman, that’s all
The last paragraph could be seen as narrative more than an explanation of what is. It is appearing there is more than one universe and some very large, old galaxies are not where they are supposed to be in our universe, i.e. essentially a galaxy which is older than the part of the universe it inhabits, bummer.
If Edison had followed some here he would have skipped inventing the light bulb.
Previous experiemces are good predictors and those who bet the farm on a roll of roulette wheel on a guess deserve to die homeless.
An interesting video from Australia. A massive lithium ion battery that is a major part of a $1 billion battery installation has already failed, only two months after installation. The video also explains how there is short period at the beginning of wind and solar installation where costs appear to be low. Once local saturation is hit, it is necessary to move the electricity elsewhere, store electricity in batteries (or by some other means), or simply waste the electricity generated. We are now seeing how expensive and unreliable storage can be.
Well, what’s new — island areas without their own fossil fuels have “spoken with their hands” & abondoned attempts to “transition” their power grids to such as wind/solar, hitting the obstacle of storage with intermittancy.
From the obituaries
This is sad! She would have been about 10 years old when he was walking on the moon.
Buzz Aldrin’s Wife Anca Faur Dead at 66
Famed astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s wife Anca Faur has died at the age of 66 after battling an undisclosed form of cancer. According to a statement shared on Facebook by the Faur and Aldrin families on Wednesday, Oct. 29, Faur passed away “peacefully” on the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 28 “with her husband and her son, Vlad Ghenciu, by her side.” “Mrs. Aldrin, an accomplished chemical engineer with a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, served as the treasurer for the California Hydrogen Business Council and as Executive Vice President of Buzz Aldrin Ventures LLC,” the statement said of her accomplishments. “I am so fortunate to have found and married the love of my life,” Aldrin, 95, added. “She brought joy to everything we did together. I will miss her dearly.”
https://www.newsbreak.com/share/4321052145607-buzz-aldrin-s-wife-anca-faur-dead-at-66
did not have to exert himself much either to land her. just a few days ensconced, and reappearing in the middle of the Pacific.
Yes. They had a private wedding ceremony on the Moon. Except Buzz Aldrin never actually went to the Moon. The only “Buzz” who ever did that was the great AI hero, Buzz Lightyear. 😉
I just scrolled through Wikipedia’s “Moon landing conspiracy theories” — did the anti-conspiracy people fake that?
I saw something on X showing that India took pictures of the lander. So, if they didn’t really land on the moon, everyone’s in on it. It’s also possible that the post on X was fake and India published no such photos.
Yes, I’m sure it was much easier to send a lander with no people in it.
looks like serious eyerolling time again
After the years I just find it all disgusting, kind of bad aftertaste really.. The Egyptians, Mayans, Romans produced and left at least some “honest” material structures.. What a silly generation..
Although, that’s often contra argued, it helped at least mobilize tons of young tech novices into “the trade” – hence “we got enjoy the dividends later” in GPS, high speed global net, weather sats, astronomy, etc..
Nevertheless, as posted in the opening above, the utterly bad aftertaste from this “race against USSR” caprice remains for ever!
We will leave tons of nuclear waste that cannot be controlled in any way.
This over-here was more of [a Moon thing] thread..
–
Nevertheless to your point on nuclear waste there are some nuances to be aware of..
For starters every type of radioactivity using device means a bit different chemistry – isotopes domain and different hardware-tech.. involved.
So, the prevailing type of reactors in power plants are leaving spent waste fuel pellets as well as various components from the reactors and its access. (after plant decommissioning).
These ~spent pellets go after while either into longer term storage or could be used in the so-called breeder reactor for next use as there is significant energy potential remaining in them. Albeit I guess only one country in the world has it running on industrial scale today.
In terms of the molten salt-thorium reactors there is comparatively with the above example relatively few/none waste remaining.. throughout the process, hence that large part of interest in them as well..
(apart from the chief one in abundant fuel reserves out there and inherent safety).
—
Nevertheless in case of expedient further drop into collapsing phase, the default rule you mentioned applies, it will be abandoned. Although, there are likely standing plans in effect should some fast enviro/planetary crisis intervene – the authorities would set last remaining resources to dump it in some old deep mining shaft within pre-selected inert geology area etc..
Russia is, of course, the country with commercially operating breeder reactors in operation. They are not about to give their secrets about how they do it away to the West.
Oh brother another thorium guy. I think ofw gets these about once a year…. Thorium the Superman of energy!!!
Maybe someone will eventually work out the details. China seems to have something working with thorium, but we aren’t mining it.
“dump it in some old deep mining shaft within pre-selected inert geology area etc..”
This actuelly does work pretty well. The consequences for doing this will be something like a short peak of 100-200% increase of background radiation in the vicinity of the mining shaft on the ground. Most of the time it will be much less than that.
The typical directives for handling the spent waste is to guarantee a containment of below around 1 % increase in background radiation. This is silly, some inhabited areas on the earth are already 5000%+ above normal background radiation.
Christopher> that old mine shaft last resort dump site was seriously meant argument – not just forum could-should be small talk.. Yes, it’s actually a standing gov policy across several states (of the NPP club) – not much advertised around obviously..
Every evening and every morning when I go out for a walk and I’m in with a fighting chance, I try to look for or at the moon.
In this respect, I am aa bit of an eccentric, because most people I know have no idea of when the moon is supposed to rise tomorrow or what phase it’s in or how far north or south of the celestial equator it is at present. That sort of thing is the preserve of astronomy nurds and other assorted loonies. Normies only notice the moon when they happen to be looking up and they see it staring them in the face.
And whenever I see it, after checking it’s location in my bit of sky and the shape of it’s illuminated surface, I always ask myself, “Did Buzz and his mates really walk up there?”
In line with my current thinking, I would say, “Probably not, but who knows?”
It seems to me there were far too many imponderables on those missions; far too much could have gone catastrophically wrong. A slight problem with the lunar module’s ascending stage capsule and they would miss their rendezvous with the command module. Approach earth at a slightly too acute angle and get burned up during re-entry. Not acute enough and bounce off. Accidentally put a hole through a tinfoil wall and experience rapid depressurization as all your oxygen disappears into the vastness of space……
Just thinking about it gives me the creeps. But then again, I could never relax on airplanes or even roller coasters. A trip to Disneyland would be traumatic for me. As for parachuting or bunji jumping—FORGET IT! Because unlike Buzz and the rest of the Apollo astronauts, I have The Wrong Stuff!
Additionally, since the Apollo program, we have learned about issues that were not addressed in the Apollo missions.
Two standouts are cold welding and off or out gassing. There is no such thing as a liquid in space.
Oil leaks clearly visible on the moon buggy would not have existed. Resealable pliable gaskets cannot exist. It would have meant impossible to open and close again hatches.
Solar flares, even minor ones, would have cooked everything. The record has many solar flares occurring during the missions.
For a primer as to what things are wrong, Dave McGowan with Center for an Informed American provided us Wagging the Moon Doggie in text, and then someone voiced it.
Also the excellent “American Moon”, which you can use Yandex to find.
For detail about the things I mention above, Apollo Detectives on Youtube are first rate.
Thanks, Java. Good points! I hadn’t heard about resealable pliable gaskets.
Our old comrade Fast Eddy was a fan of both Wagging the Moon Doggie and American Moon.
But there is at least one diehard psyop investigator who insists that the Apollo program was legit—Petra Liverani. She thinks Apollo 13 and the Challenger disaster were both faked, but the six moon landings were not.
https://petraliverani.substack.com
To her credit, though, she does tolerate dissenters, and she draws them in like a honeypot attracts bees.
yup
i know for certain, that all the NASA folks involved, —around 4000—plus the hollywood set builders used to fake the moon surface— knew that the moon landings were fake.
and such was their oath of secrecy, not a single one of them has come forward to tell the gullible public, how it was all ”fixed”—especially over 6 moon missions, not just one….
moonloonies evolved into maganuts….the same mindset..the same people…the same daftness..—-they just “know” they are right, despite being force fed reality and common sense.
How would you “know,” Norman?
Can you even tell a real blonde from a fake?
This is how you deal with moon landing hoaxers
But Buzz didn’t get punched? !
Demi> IAM evidently failed grasp the basic context there, in fact Buzz punched that trickster chiefly for such unsport ambush and harassment at the bldg entrance.. Not because of the factual argument also presented.
As the others of the crew/s said on the affair: ~ “..we were just passengers ask the NASA/..”
It’s the “understood” other side of the elevated mil. hero status contract – dealing with erratic public, it’s similar to pro-sports / gladiators situation known for ages..
..
.
Curiouser and curiouser, Duq. Humans and their motives. No wonder I prefer dogs. They’re much easier to get along with.
I find some of such talk condescending; sounds like resentment. Aldrin was able to get a woman 29 years his junior and have three children by his first wife. Like it or not, this is biology and I suspect none here have been to the moon.
Always enjoy the comments here, nice way to start the AM.
Dennis L.
Chevron CEO on @SquawkCNBC Chevron’s view that need to add oil supply equal to 5 Saudi Arabias over the next decade ie. add 50 mmb/d of new oil supply
Chevron “Oil and gas demand is at an all-time high. It will set another record this year. And it’s expected to do so again next year. And again, the year after that. And beyond. Due simply to field decline, there’s a need for significant investment to close the oil supply gap – equivalent to five Saudi Arabias – that would otherwise appear over just the next decade.”
https://x.com/Energy_Tidbits/status/1988578955818094778
“Collapse is the spectre that haunts the victors of history.”
-Goliath’s Curse, 2025
Suppose we just need to balance supply with demand…
Hmm, how do we go about that equation?
Any ideas out there?
Are they still providing Covid boosters…?
Restrict Medicare and make it more unaffordable.
Actually, make just about everything unaffordable..
Housing, automobile ownership, eating out…sure why not..eating in too.
Education, finding a job…any job😂.
The list goes on…
As Gail says..the self regulating system will find a way..
But we may not like it
Unfortunately!
Education has many areas; one needs to be useful which may not be the dream job. Narrative jobs don’t seem to pay well, physical jobs are hard on the body.
It has never been easy.
It’s a moving target 🎯 to say the least..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqOkaawyczk&t=902
America’s Job Crisis Is Quietly Getting Worse
Now the WSJ is saying
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/2026-graduates-job-market-7928bcd7
Companies Predict 2026 Will Be the Worst College Grad Job Market in Five Years
Hires from the Class of 2026 will stay largely flat, employers project, as layoffs rise and AI is able to do more entry-level tasks
A chart shows that the next worst job market was in the spring of 2021, when the economy was only partly reopened.
Stories like this which roll into view every five years or so, are usually followed with humblebrags “well, at least my me or my offspring went to an elite school and is making six figures. ”
I’m not sure what these stories are even discussed anymore since most people care only about if they or people on their team are winning the competition for Good Jobs.
People only want to hear from the winners, the losers are told they lost because they are deficient.
Very high oil prices would allow some difficult to extract oil (heavy oil and tight oil from shale) to be extracted. Of course, the problem is that prices don’t stay high enough for long enough for this to happen.
Over the years, we have developed a luxurious spending structure to manage society. Only a hundred and fifty years ago this was not necessary, and people also had a good life. Instead of investing in government consultants and dubious expenses, one could save and shift to oil production. Reduce the government quota and prioritize spending well. The standard of living remains the same due to cheap oil.
Jan
You long for the days when we go back to the land and basics, like a generic hallmark movie. As charming as that sounds, that’s not how these things are usually worked out.
Our movie is a tragedy the reason is evolution doesn’t go backwards. It goes forward or goes down. We’re literally a jumbo jet filled to the max flying @ Mach speeds.
I think the opposite, we push it forward as fast as possible. And the victors write history books.
“Once life evolves, it tends to cover its tracks,”
-James Watson (R.I.P. recently)
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”
― Sylvia Plat
Sylvia Plath—do you think Prozac would have helped her?
Probably not. Her big brain was working overtime obsessing over all sorts of stuff.
“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
“I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.”
“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that – I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much – so very much to learn.”
“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of “parties” with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship – but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
“Is there no way out of the mind?”
Although in the end she couldn’t save herself, I’m sure that over the years her writing has helped untold thousands of fellow sufferers, depressives, and “neurotics” to deal with their mental issues.
Jan
I can assure you that 150 years ago the basic standard of living in any industrialised society for the average worker was absymal,.
their working week. was 72 hours—terrible nutrition, harsh repressive laws. slum housing.
Yes, the priveleged few had a good life, but they were a comparative rarity…
I strongly suggest you read up your industrial living history, with no rose tinted spectacles …
…
and be careful what you wish for…
(and oil is useless unless you convert it into something else btw)
We had it tough, aye Norman?
In response to Trump’s 50 year mortgages I propose Trump start the Trump slave market in which prospective home owners can sell their children into life long slavery. If they have enough children they can raise enough money to buy a house.
We are reaching an un-imagined levels of evil. Nuclear war may be God’s only solution. Best wished for Mary and Jose in the high Andes.
Trump request a full pardon for Bibi. Thank God we in New York have elected a hero who will arrest Bibi if he shows up.
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/11/11/a-50-year-mortgage-does-nothing-for-affordability-is-a-terrible-deal-for-homeowners-and-a-superb-deal-for-banks-investors/
Making a huge downpayment and paying off the loan quickly is the best strategy. This can most easily be done if the home is low in price, relative to a person’s financial situation. But with current wage disparity, few people can do this.
A spreadsheet on that might be interesting. A guess is over the life time of the mortgage one might well come out ahead. Inflation is not deductible, interest is. Insurance is now an issue as are RE taxes.
Dennis L.
I learn from this site:
Given the US deficit is hyperinflation likely and if so give it a percental probability.
With a fifty year mortgage, assume it can be assumed by your children, will the house be worth more or less relative to the mortgage.
No matter what if one can purchase something which one can cashflow, there is always rent somewhere, that is an after tax expense. A mortgage helps in that with inflation the principal is paid by inflation.
The trick is cashflow. How many years before the wealth breaks even? Interesting spreadsheet problem.
Dennis L.
AI is getting interesting. Microsoft say let’s focus on narrow AI that we can control and stop work on general AI. OpenAI says the only way to beat the commies is to have the federal government throw unlimited money to the AI companies owned and controlled by the Ash ken azi.
EU says the war against Russia must continue and grow larger. It is almost as if the EU is run by a group with a deep abiding hate of the Russians and want to see the Russians exterminated.
China is making continuing progress in AI across the frontiers spiking neural networks that promise 10x lower power need, robots with full human flexibility. Not sure we have seen the Chinese address continuous learning yet. Maybe simply coping Googles multiple nested loops of learning?
China does better on robotics; the US does better on AI software, according to Eric Shmidt.
I think that both the US and China are constrained by both lack of energy and lack of materials. They also need jobs for workers; AI and robots will tend to take jobs away from workers. I am doubtful either side wins in the long run.
It seems like China’s lower power needs will be extremely important in the long run. I am doubtful that the huge energy needs of US AI can actually be met.
https://brunobertez.com/2025/11/13/intelligence-artificielle-de-la-rarete-des-puces-a-la-rarete-de-lenergie-en-passant-par-les-questions-de-sincerite-comptable/
This is a very good article, which Google translated from French.
Artificial Intelligence: from chip scarcity to energy scarcity, including questions of accounting honesty.
The AI boom has taken a fundamental turn in the technological ecosystem: we have moved from a bottleneck centered on the availability of chips (like NVIDIA’s GPUs) to another structural constraint, energy.
The initial obstacle: NVIDIA chips were the “queens” of AI. At the beginning of the decade, AI was indeed limited by the production of advanced semiconductors. NVIDIA dominated with its architectures like the H100 and Blackwell, capable of handling massive training and inference workloads. The waiting lists for these chips were legendary, and their scarcity held back the hyperscalers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon).
But today, as Microsoft’s Satya Nadella notes , thousands of GPUs remain ” on technical unemployment ” in warehouses, due to a lack of infrastructure to power them.
It’s a paradoxical triumph for NVIDIA: they produce faster than the world can deploy them.
The real obstacle is no longer silicon. The new obstacle is energy.
AI is an energy monster: training a model like GPT-4 consumes the equivalent of 463,000 MWh per year, or the electricity for 35,000 American homes. Global data centers could double their consumption by 2030 (945 TWh according to the IEA), and the United States risks losing the race to China, which has 400 GW of excess capacity thanks to its massive investments in renewables (356 GW added last year, including 277 GW of solar).
Jensen Huang of NVIDIA emphasized: “Energy is the main bottleneck.” In the US, electricity prices have jumped 267% near data center hubs, and projects like the OpenAI-NVIDIA project (10 GW, equivalent to 10 nuclear reactors) cost hundreds of billions, with delays due to overloaded power grids.
It’s physics, not technology: you can’t “scale” AI without watts.
Unused chips represent a symbolic and financial waste
This part is painful and true, but it is rarely discussed despite having terrible negative accounting consequences. Brand new data centers remain empty in Santa Clara (home of NVIDIA) awaiting electrical connections.
These unsold or underused GPUs – often amortized over 5 years but energy inefficient – do indeed lose value.
Analyst Beth Kindig explains it well: without power, these billion-dollar systems “sleep on the shelves”.
This evokes a speculative bubble: investment funds overbought chips as “hot” assets, sometimes using them as collateral for loans. But when energy becomes scarce, these assets become a liability. We’re shifting from an economy of chip scarcity to an economy of electron scarcity.
There will, at some point, be truth operations in the accounting.
This explains why the current AI bubble cannot continue. Energy supply is already a huge bottleneck. It is also not clear that there really will be buyers who can afford to purchase AI service at the prices that would be needed to allow the system to make a profit. The question, of course, is how long the AI bubble will last.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkq-O-ANUi4
PENSION FUNDS AND INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE TRAPPED IN A $TRILLION OF PRIVATE EQUITY WITH ZERO RETURN (15:52)
8,428 views Nov 12, 2025
“The failed business model of private equity funds investing in bankrupt, zombie companies is now coming to light. Investors (pensions, insurers, sovereign wealth) are now trapped in a trillion dollars of nonperforming assets. They were expecting 25% returns and they are getting zero. Hold time is now 5+ years and will end up with liquidation and massive losses ahead. The skeletons are surfacing.”
Is this credible, or just “Chicken Little”?
How Many tens/hundreds of $BILLIONS in Commercial Mortgages which are now non-performing were packaged as CMBS and sold to pension funds and insurance companies?
Someone is going to have to eat those losses.
pensions were introduced when capital growth was thought to be infinite
all pensions now are dependent on infinite growth of capital assets.
which cannot happen.
go figure
Economics is dependent on biology, without biology there is no economics. The growth is not stuff, it is people in particular children. The US had resources before the pilgrims, it was not used, a different culture with different values which were part of biology displaced the old. It was not pretty nor fun for the old, but it seems to be life.
We are building a new future, it will be different; it has always been thus.
Dennis L.
sorry dennis
a herd of cattle is ”biology”—in the wild they remain ”biology”….
they only become economics when they are domesticated and the farmer sells their meat or milk for money.—or their hide for shoes or handbags
No norm,
I am thinking of relationships which involve a medium of exchange. A heard of cattle does not to my knowledge have mediums of exchange.
That also involves trust, the medium of exchange will have value in the future.
Dennis L.
i made the silly assumption that you would understand that changing cattle into an economic entity involved the intervention of human beings.
I am afraid the speaker may be right, especially if the economy is going downhill, as it seems to be.
There is a CNBC article on this subject published today:
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/12/why-private-equity-is-stuck-with-zombie-companies-it-cant-sell.html
The CNBC article requires registration, to read it.
This is an article published in May, pointing to the same issue:
https://www.msci.com/research-and-insights/blog-post/night-of-the-living-fund-the-rise-of-zombie-private-equity
Night of the Living Fund: The Rise of Zombie Private Equity
It has several graphs, and headings such as, “Distribution rates are not only low, but falling”
Also Eurodollar University is talking about this.
Depends on where you look.
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/elon-musk-building-backbone-americas-high-tech-2030s-economy-and-numbers-prove-it
We have no idea of what riches await us in space. We need a culture which values people and has a solid moral base. Con men and women need not apply. Social values count, it takes a team and that takes time tested values which allow for human frailty.
We will not mine space with oil, it will be fusion from the original source, the sun.
It is going to be bumpy but one can’t win if one doesn’t play.
Dennis L.
Dennis …. “We have no idea of what riches await us in space.”
You keep going on about this, with pretty much zero knowledge of the processes that concentrate all the metals and minerals we mine here on Earth.
The processes of geologic concentration have involved volcanic activity, plate tectonics, atmosphere, rain , erosion and life, over billions of years.
On Mars some of those factors might have been involved, for the asteroids no, not at all.
If there are no mechanisms of concentration of metals going on, then why expect anything to be concentrated??
It would be far easier, cheaper and less energy intense to concentrate the ppm and ppb range of useful elements in basalts and granites here on Earth than anything in space, but no-one does that, as it’s way too expensive in money, energy and material terms.
Space mining is in the same fantasy category as Aliens will save us, or God will save me while walking off a 1,000 ft cliff, or the genie in the bottle will just conjure out of thin air anything we wish.
We can only conjure man made constructs like money out of thin air, everything ‘real’ takes energy here on Earth and everywhere else..
Two UBS Hedge funds just blew up:
I ran across a WSJ article this morning talking about the huge investments of life insurance companies into private equity.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/u-s-insurers-are-binging-on-private-credit-moodys-says-ee10a41e
U.S. Insurers Are Binging on Private Credit, Moody’s Says
A handful of insurers are buying much of the investments, which are hard to trade and have relatively low credit ratings
The article says that Security Benefit and Delaware Life have over 50% of their debt holdings in private equity. Mass Mutual is not too far behind.
The article says:
Illiquid investments accounted for $685 billion—about 18%—of the $3.8 trillion in fixed-income investments insurers held at the end of 2024. The pace of purchases seems to be increasing, with less-liquid private debt comprising about 23% of the $522 billion of bonds insurance companies bought in the first half of 2025, the report said.
The penalty for adultery is stoning to death. Where will the NYC stoning grounds be?
Does Lindsey Graham having sex with every male prostitute count as adultery? Should he be stoned? Better than the current “justice” system.
Should he be stoned?
I can’t imaging him doing that kind of thing sober.
Also, lending money at interest (otherwise known as “usury”) is strictly forbidden, so there will have to be dispensations given.
What is the penalty under Sharia Law for usury. The law is the law no exceptions.
The AI seem to protect Islam as strong as it does info on declining fertility rates.
All it can say is in the after life those who enrich themselves with usury will be beat down.
In Iran google says
Punishment may include 6 months to 3 years of imprisonment and up to 74 lashes, depending on the offender’s role (lender, intermediary, or document writer). The principal must be returned to the rightful owner, and usurious assets are non-recoverable.
The Iranians are quite liberal when it comes to sexual escapades, but of course usury is a far bigger crime.
You would have to find an acceptable form across all Muslim people before you could ask for a “sharia law”.
Sharia basically means “the path” or “the way” and all different peoples find their own path.
https://www.quran.is/topics/sharia_law.php
Usury(riba) is very clear and well covered, as it was with Jesus, but don’t tell the Christians, as they took the devil’s deal long ago, but renamed riba(financial slavery) as progress and worse still, believed it.
https://quran.com/2?startingVerse=275
The white man’s algorithms are not protecting Islam.
The white man’s algorithms are protecting the algorithms owners from the peasants ever finding out the truth. Can’t have the peasants pointing the finger of blame in the correct direction for once.
At the hanging tree.
Thanks Gail, by and large I agree, but I have some problems to understand how 100 dollars per barrel could constitute such an enormous drag on the economy. According to this link https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/oil-intensity-curiously-steady-decline-oil-gdp/ oil intensity of the economy has gone down and is now less than half a barrel per 1000 dollars (of course, fossil gas has probably an increasing share?) – half the quantity compared to the 1970s. Considering how much “work” that can be extracted from a barrel of oil it is hard to understand the mechanism by which a cost of 100 dollars would lead to recession. I assume there must be some effects that are cascading and multiply throughout the economy. Any further clarifications.
How much does air cost? How important is it to the continued existence of humans?
I am afraid the problem is similar with oil. It may not be big, but it is essential to growing food and to transporting most goods (including food). Without food, we are dead.
In the US we sell a lot of services, including financial services. But the population still needs to eat, even if we import food from elsewhere and sell our services around the world.
A guess is the services is a hollow sector, effectively a cc on real wealth. Not a doomer, but that game might be up and a stock trader may not have many salable skills.
Dennis L.
Gunnar that GDP-based analysis is inflation-adjusted but it is not notionally adjusted WRT the vast contribution of notionally valued assets to GDP. Mature financialization is bubblenomics, and it happened post-1970. Bubblenomics leverages more debt with pre-existing debt in order to maximize the pulling of future demand into the present, with purely notional valuations. Boomers bought their houses for $250K and now their notional value is 1M, and so even aside from the financialized real estate valuations’ outsized contributions to GDP, these boomers contribute to GDP via their spending habits more like they’re millionaires than middle class. And we know that the rich don’t have oil consumption proportional to their expenditures as compared to regular folk. And regular folks’ consumption has been in decline since 1970.
Then there’s marginal demand destruction. The marginal global oil consumer is getting poorer in real terms because of inflation. So his or her energy consumption goes down relative to his or her income because of increases in other areas. And demand destruction lowers prices. $100 barrels are way above what the marginal consumer can afford which makes that price unaffordable by definition for any duration beyond a brief spike due to an economic dislocation.
Then of course there’s increased urbanization since 1970 which is structurally more oil efficient. Ditto the impact of the internet on lifestyles.
Davidina’s contention that current barrel prices are historically low based on inflation comes from the same place as the analysis you shared. There’s a level of systems analysis deeper than that.
“Then of course there’s increased urbanization since 1970 which is structurally more oil efficient. Ditto the impact of the internet on lifestyles.”
Aka that newly acquired “sedentary & net searching-experiencing ~fake led screen hours lifestyle” bought us some extra REAL time in general PO-wise time profile shape correct ??
Although, it could be “all of the above” also in the sense of Gail’s no.9 graph as we are now transitioning from late stage phase of Stagflation into the early Crisis period – hence the overall train of malaise and econ sub-performance in every respect.
That was a cool insight, GPU’s keep us static and entertained, so cheep, oil saving strategy…. I’m a baby feed me feed me.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2LIKOKBeO4
Thanks. But this was merely an add./follow up to reante’s master piece.. I DID print that out into hard copy along side his co-securities edu posts on that emerging-attempted stable- e-coin dollar ~scam / BAU extension phenomenon..
That video got really fucking good at about the 4.15 mark.
There is a big dispute in econometrics about how large the share of energy costs in the cost of production is. I am afraid that these assessments will not get us any further.
There are indeed efficiency gains in our civilization, plus substitution of energy sources, think how all the old oil heaters in homes changed to gas heaters back in the ’70’s and 80’s.
Then the biggest source of making the world look less energy/oil intensive…. cooking the books. Excluding asset price gains from inflation numbers is of course one of the easiest ways to make the economy look less energy reliant.
Continually changing how you measure inflation of items, like discounting real inflation for ‘improvements’ in products (always downwards), helps a lot as well. For example a new fridge with lots of tech bells and whistles, that only lasts 5 years is considered to lower price in ‘inflation terms’ because of the extra usefulness of the bells and whistles, compared to the ’80’s model that lasted 30 plus years…
Basically lies, dammed lies and statistics…
Good point!
Yeah good one. And efficiency and dependency are two entirely different things besides. We’re no less dependent on oil than we were in 1970 that’s for sure.
Let us also add to keep changing the definition of oil . Crude to C+C to all liquids . Include 45 API shale also in crude . Next will be used cooking oil to inflate production .Basically lies, dammed lies and statistics…
Hideaway , your thoughts on the new peak ?
So, what you’re saying is that tech bells and whistles make refrigerators more efficient from the manufacturers point of view because it allows them to make more money off of each refrigerator. The reduced lifespan that new refrigerators have is not acknowledged or is offset by the market value of the bells and whistles. Data collection, subscription for services must be counted as efficiency gains by the manufacturers and governments.
It seems like the upper classes and governments think services are a form of wealth that is more valuable than more tangible forms of wealth. If they really think services are superior to durable goods then they aren’t really cooking the books, they are just promoting what they believe. In that case, economic development might just mean higher economic rents and more debt slaves because to them debt=wealth.
The bells and whistles are supposedly not inflationary, because of their supposed added value to the customer. The short lifespans of the new “efficient” devices never seem to be considered.
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/11/actualizacion-nuevos-proyectos-de.html?m=1
Will the real oil numbers please stand up😅
This report tries to look at changes during 2025 in future oil extraction development plans, by country. The US seems to have the biggest future plans (totaling 410,000 barrels per day of new production) to offset declines elsewhere.
Its conclusion says:
Of the total, I would highlight the large number of approvals in the USA and the expansions in the UAE. Of the rest, very little new.
Guyana has several developments planned beyond 2030, and Brazil is finishing its major push.
Taking into account the global decline rate of 5.6%, and the annual production of around 85 million b/d, 85 x 5.6% = 4.76 million b/d must be replenished each year.
Apart from the projects, we have the organic development of the Canadian tar sands, with 300,000-500,000 b/d until 2030 and what the US shale oil industry and also in Argentina can achieve.
Current projects through 2030 (five years) total around 5.5-6 million barrels per day (b/d), and all projects pending approval through 2030 total almost 2.4 million b/d, a very small amount to replace declining oil production (almost 5 million b/d per year, 24 million b/d in 5 years). We cannot rely indefinitely on shale oil growth to compensate for the shortfall in new projects.
And the worst part is that after the projects in Brazil-Guyana-Gulf of Mexico were completed, nothing at all was visible.
Sea Lion in the Falkland Islands, Namibia by 2040, some small isolated projects in mature areas and little else, while the decline is accelerating and by the next decade, the megafields will enter their terminal phase, with the accumulated loss that this implies.
Perhaps we should look at these prospective oil field numbers and timelines as *[needed transition buffer] “only”..
With the [MSR-Thorium] electricity generation now ~solved and in conjunction of cheap/er longer cycle life Sodium batts for EVs/PHEVs (+also PVs overproduction, and off peak nightly grid charge) .. gasoline way less/not needed.
Obviously, in such scenario the near-mid term horizon focus should be on securing diesel supplies for AG and various extractive-heavy, cargo industries along the transition path.
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provided both the ~Google and CHN boyz deliver after these tests also their truly industrial scaled ~10-100MW MSR units in early-mid 2030s as suggested
With the [MSR-Thorium] electricity generation now ~solved and in conjunction of cheap/er longer cycle life Sodium batts for EVs/PHEVs (+also PVs overproduction, and off peak nightly grid charge) .. gasoline way less/not needed.
Do you have actual evidence and proof of this!? Please provide evidence if you do. I ain’t seeing this but I heard a lot of greenies telling me they this for years!
Please clarify-narrow your question a bit.
Evidence and proof of what exactly?
The following are facts reported numerous times already via msm / and ongoing discussions here at OFW and other related sites :
– next gen cheap lithium batt. (based on Sodium chemistry) are entering mass production now, you need only ~20-40kWh for PHEV pack, i.e. fraction of full EV size..
– CHN unveiled working prototype of MSR – thorium reactor and govs green-lighted mass adoption (smaller sized but less concrete – so more units vs LWR NPP capacity setup), the ~Google boyz stateside are probably a bit behind CHN but very ~same tech..
– hybrids are now mass produced across the whole spectrum from econoboxes to luxury car segment, upgrade to ~20-40kWh PHEVs is obvious with cheap batteries now available..
– mostly night/-ly off peak grid charging has been already studied-estimated to cover entire passenger car fleet, obviously there are seasonal-regional variations (summer+southern states with household AirCon etc.) in the grid load, some scheduled time management needed, but doable..
..
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ps are you serious anyway? as this is certainly not greenie stuff actually to the contrary – this mega trend is prolonging our techno sphere period.. albeit on a bit different pathway with less direct pollution..
sorry, meant [next gen cheap sodium-ion batt.] replacing today’s lithium ..
The thorium comment. It definitely is not a silver bullet. It has yet to be proven as a cheaper alternative than natural gas for electric generation. I wonder if you were taken up with the Chinese shipping container ship. If you read further it’s much more expensive than traditional ships. I have heard people extolling thorium for 15 years. The question is where is your evidence that thorium is profitable to produce enough energy to replace depletion of oil and how will it replace?
I did not use the term itself nor within context of silver bullet solution. The “thorium powered” ship is quite different to grid based generation capacity mode, that’s why I did not mentioned it at all.. There are several posts on thorium based SMRs to grid just few pages back in this comment section-forum..
Gail, reante and others posted just very recently nice summaries here of the compressed consumer demand at this stage of no longer accelerating – growth of the economy. I did not argue for 1:1 feasible replacement of oil, and certainly not in its past pre ~1970s accelerated boom profile.
Are today’s NPPs profitable? And by which measure? SMRs use way less parts and overall sunken (safety/cooling) infrastructure, but the current gen of tech (<2040) will be limited for deployment in dozens of MWs per unit, hence the power plant would sport several units in series to get the fractional GW rating per site out of it.. CHN govs is now ordering these units for chiefly outlier – distant sites for several reasons, it's a new thing after-all.
I tried to provide sound estimate how large part of gasoline fleet consumption could be replaced by charging these new batts in PHEV/EVs .. irrespective of the grid source ; also made the distinction about the problem of keeping enough diesel for the heavy industry and AG/food.
Natgas to electric grid is in today's world a joke (e.g. ft. sabotaged long distance transit infrastructure), at least in some industrialized areas of the world. Besides, even the natgas ship delivery as such with ~spot pricing contracts regiment is also detrimental for smooth econ development.
My response has not been posted..
So, lets try briefly again.
The natgas route for reliable / cost effective grid has been compromised by the pipelines (sabotage) blow up in the Baltics. Moreover, even the sea vessel – shipped natgas option is usually based partly on ~spot pricing..
So, the cost of thorium based grid power plant battles with phantom competition to begin with. The CHN version will be scaled up from the existing test kit of ~10-20MW into <100MW units before <2035 (already ordered several units), less complex – few/way smaller concrete cooling contraptions make it cheaper vs. traditional NPPs .. burns also that "old" spent fuel with no or token reprocessing..
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The container ship application example is very tangential – hence off the table in this (grid-tied) debate.
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The mining for Th is less demanding, cheaper (usually byproduct from other key elements mining), more sites globally avail. as well as yearly output ..
I'm not claiming – silver bullet – or representing full 1:1ratio replacement for the past oil bonanza, fast scale up etc. It's just good enough route to solve most of the energy issues as phasing in along side the oil final legs of depletion..
There are several sources for the CHN- leg/ver development progress, hence issuing correction:
The functioning reactor prototype TODAY seems rather “only” fractional MW in potential electric output. That serious final design test 10MW unit is under construction and scheduled to operate way before 2030. The grid tied units ~100MW planned to be constructed ~2030-5-40..
I suspect that the growing adoption of the American lifestyle by 4 billion Asians will increase demand.
Rich and naive
https://nypost.com/2025/11/11/world-news/russian-crypto-scammer-and-wife-dismembered-after-fleeing-investors/
You steal millions of dollars from hundreds of people. You then flaunt it in on line videos from Dubai. You have to expect you will die.
The dismemberment well our Arab brother know how to party.
She’s a nice-looking chick, and he works out and keeps himself fit.
After the couple was lured to a villa in the town of Hatta, they were held while their kidnappers demanded the password to Novak’s crypto wallet, authorities said.
But when they discovered the wallet was empty, the criminals allegedly killed the couple, dismembered their bodies and scattered the body parts, leaving some of them in trash cans at a shopping mall, the Russian outlet Fontanka said.
It’s not clear whether any of the pair’s remains have been recovered.
“According to preliminary information, Novak and his wife were kidnapped for ransom. When the criminals realized they wouldn’t get the money, they killed both of them,” a source told Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Allegedly?
Not clear whether any remains have been discovered?
Unnamed source told Pravda?
It might be true, of course, but on the other hand it might be a ruse for them to disappear from the radar with their 500 million in ill-gotten gains.
Stay tuned for further bulletins!
The things some people will do for money, I don’t know.
The entertainment industry depends on a large supply of people who would do anything for money.
Adjacent fields like law and finance also thrive on a stready supply of young people from the upper classes who are also “competitive”.
The way of the world, I guess.