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The underlying problems are energy-related
A few years ago, I analyzed the growth of world energy consumption, breaking it down into (a) the growth in energy consumption needed to support the growth in world population, and (b) the growth in energy consumption available to support higher standards of living. This analysis covered the period 1820 to 2020. I found that periods of low growth tended to coincide with wars, depressions, and collapses. This is not surprising in a world economy governed by the laws of physics. Every part of the economy requires adequate energy of appropriate kinds.
In this post, I analyze data for 5-year periods, ending in 2024, to obtain an updated view of recent energy consumption and population trends. My conclusion is that total energy consumption growth in recent years has not been sufficient to forestall major problems. A more detailed analysis reveals that growth in certain vital resources (the diesel+jet fuel part of oil supply, and critical minerals related to electricity production and usage) is particularly problematic.
These findings indicate that the economy is already beginning to hit energy limits. Because of energy-related shortages that are already being encountered, national economies are beginning to act like the players in a game of musical chairs, with one too few chairs. Leaders have taken to building up armies, cutting off exports of critical minerals, imposing tariffs, and bombing other countries, even though these actions might not make sense to peace-loving citizens.
[1] Figure 2 is a stacked bar chart showing similar indications to Figure 1.
The total of the red and blue segments is the average annual increase in world energy consumption over a particular 10-year period. The blue amounts (usually at the bottom) are those necessary to provide services at the same level as in the past, given the population increase. The red amounts (usually at the top) are determined by subtraction. Large red caps are good, while red caps below the zero line are very bad. They indicate that the per-capita energy supply is declining.
[2] The largest increases in Figure 2 correspond to favorable economic times.
The vertical text in Figure 1 provides examples of how low points in energy consumption have proven to be very bad. In this section, I show that the opposite is also true: High points tend to correspond to very good times economically.
One peak in Figures 1 and 2 coincides with the 1901 to 1910 period. This period corresponds to early electrification and advances in the mechanization of agriculture. It was before 1913 when the United Kingdom hit peak coal, limiting the amount of coal that could be profitably extracted. Germany hit peak hard coal shortly before World War II. After peak coal was reached, less coal was available per capita. Leaders felt the pressure of “not enough coal to go around” and opted for war.
In Figures 1 and 2, rapid energy growth occurred after World War II, during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The lower peak in the 2001-2010 period coincided with much greater use of coal after China was added to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in late 2001. High-wage countries started transferring their industry to China because costs would be lower in two ways: Wage costs were lower, and coal was an inexpensive fuel, reducing energy costs. Furthermore, by transferring industry, including manufacturing and mining, to China, high-wage countries could also lower their own CO2 emissions, as required by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
We would expect the patterns we are seeing in Figures 1 and 2 if the world economy is governed by the laws of physics. The availability of plenty of inexpensive energy, of kinds that match built infrastructure, is what is needed to allow the world economy to grow.
[3] Figure 3 shows more recent world energy data organized by 5-year periods. It shows how small the “red caps” of the types leading to favorable economic outcomes have been in the last decade.
The latest two 5-year periods comprise the years 2015 to 2024. The short red caps on these two 5-year periods mean that the economy is already being squeezed in the direction of not-enough-to go-around.
[4] Viewed on this same basis, diesel and jet fuel supplies are being squeezed even more than the overall supply of energy products.
Diesel and jet fuel are somewhat similar in composition. They are grouped together in some energy reports as “middle distillates.” They are relatively heavy oil products that come out of oil refineries. If there is a shortage of one, there likely is a shortage of the other as well.
Diesel and jet fuel are of concern because, since 2015, there has been an actual shrinkage in the amount of these fuels available relative to population. In fact, every five-year period since the 2000 to 2004 period has shown less growth in diesel and jet fuel than in the overall world energy supply. (Compare Figures 3 and 4.)
The low growth of diesel+jet fuel is particularly concerning because these fuels are essential for international transportation. With too little of these oil types, trade across the Atlantic and Pacific needs to shrink back. The physics of the situation makes tariffs look like an attractive solution for reducing trade.
Another concern is that diesel is essential for food production and transportation. Even if some other types of energy are available in plentiful supply, we cannot get along without food. While wind and solar are popular energy types today, they are not very useful for either international transport or for operating modern agricultural equipment.
[5] The underlying problem is that populations tend to outgrow their resource bases, including energy supplies.
The issue of the world not being able to support endlessly rising human population is an issue that no politician, auto maker, or economist wants to mention. The standard work-around is to show energy supplies without using an adjustment to a per-capita basis. This tends to make the energy situation look much better than it really is. Figure 6 is an example of such a chart.
Figure 6 emphasizes how modest the recent add-ons to the fossil fuel supply really are. These add-ons are made possible by fossil fuels; they would tend to disappear if fossil fuels were to disappear. Nuclear, which is the largest of the add-ons, requires both uranium and fossil fuels. The category “Wind+Solar” is the tiny green stripe at the top of Figure 6. In 2024, Wind+Solar amounted to 2.8% of world energy supply.
[6] It is easy to make electricity look like a growth area that can continue its pattern forever.
Figure 7 is a world electricity chart that, like Figure 6, is not on a per-capita basis.
There are a few details that are easy to miss:
(a) Current electricity production is quite small compared to the total energy supply. As counted by the Energy Institute, electricity amounts to only about 20% of total energy, varying by year and by part of the world. It is already incorporated in Figure 6.
(b) Almost all the non-fossil fuel part of the energy supply (“Add-Ons”) is electricity. In Figure 6, the only type of non-fossil energy shown that is not electricity is biofuels. These are mostly ethanol and biodiesel.
(c) Another detail that is easy to miss is the fact that the growth in the world’s electricity supply, as shown in Figure 7, has been almost exclusively outside the Advanced Economies–that is, members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Advanced Economies group includes the US, most of Europe, Japan, Australia, and several other countries.
Figure 8 shows the growth in electricity generation separately for the Advanced Economies and the Other Economies. The chart shows that generation of electricity by the Advanced Economies grew until 2007 but flattened after that date. Electricity generation by the Other Economies has grown the entire time since 1985. The rate of electricity production growth of Other Economies became noticeably more rapid after China joined the WTO in 2001.
Also, population growth since 1985 has disproportionately taken place in Other Economies, as contrasted with Advanced Economies.
[7] In the Advanced Economies, electricity production has recently been falling on a per capita basis, making a shift to greater electrification seem difficult.
A major issue is that the Advanced Economies are already seeing their electricity supplies per capita declining as shown on Figure 10 below. This is true for all five of the selected economies. Some of the lower consumption is due to efficiency improvements, but some is the result of the offshoring of jobs and industries to low-wage countries.
In comparison, electricity production per capita of other economies, with typically lower wages than Advanced Economies and often accompanied by more rapid population growth, has tended to rise, as shown on Figure 11.
The four “Other Economies” are less similar to each other than the five Advanced Economies. But what is striking is that they all have shown growth in per-capita electricity production since 1999. In 2024, Saudi Arabia’s electricity production had risen to about the per-capita level of the US’s electricity production. By 2024, China’s per-capita electricity production had surpassed that of both the EU and the UK. Russia was part of the Soviet Union before the latter collapsed in 1991. Once Russia’s economy had started recovering from the collapse, about 1999, its per-capita electricity production also began to rise.
[8] Other issues are also making a continued shift to electrification appear difficult, particularly for the Advanced Economies.
Trying to work around using fossil fuels leads to the need for more specialized minerals to produce high tech electrical goods and electricity transmission. The problem faced by Advanced Economies is that they produce practically none of these minerals; they must import them. The US has a long list of minerals it considers critical.
Some of these minerals aren’t rare in the earth’s crust. Part of the problem is the lack of industrial capacity in Advanced Economies today, as industry has been moved overseas to reduce costs and local CO2 emissions. For example, the US used to be a major producer of aluminum, but this production has dwindled; other countries, including China, can produce aluminum at lower cost.
Another issue is that China produces the majority of quite a few of these minerals. The US, and probably the other Advanced Economies, had planned to buy what they needed on the world market. Now, production is not keeping up with the amount the world could easily use. In 2025, China announced export restrictions on some minerals, including gallium, germanium and antimony. It has become clear that if Advanced Economies want to have adequate supplies of high-demand minerals (including silver, copper, platinum, rare earth minerals, and uranium, among others), they need to start producing them themselves.
Diesel is used in extracting many of these minerals. If diesel is in short supply, that adds another layer of problems. All these issues may lie behind President Trump’s interest in Greenland.
[9] We don’t hear about these issues partly because academic researchers live in ivory towers, and partly because politicians don’t dare explain the issues to voters.
Part of the problem is that economists don’t understand how tightly the various parts of the world economy are interconnected through the laws of physics. Economists tend to believe that if there is a shortage, prices will rise, and these higher prices will solve nearly all problems. This is not necessarily the case. Buyers cannot purchase more than they can afford. Prices may spike temporarily and then fall back. Production of fossil fuels or minerals may end because prices do not rise high enough, for long enough, for producers to depend upon the higher prices for the long term.
In the case of a shortage, most people assume that the only change the economy will make is in prices. However, the economy is tightly interconnected. It can move production to a different part of the world, where wages and energy costs are lower. An indirect result, in the country losing jobs, may be more wage and wealth disparity. The US seems to be experiencing this issue now, with fewer young people being able to find a job that pays well.
Needless to say, politicians aren’t willing to admit, “We have difficulties for which we can see no solution.” Even leaders of universities are reluctant to suggest that there might be major problems ahead. They don’t want to frighten students or their parents. University officials want all problems to be ones their students can work on, with the hope of solving them in the next few years.
[10] What is happening now is similar to the outcome of a game of musical chairs, when there is one fewer chair than the number of players.
In the game of musical chairs, players walk around a group of chairs until the music stops. At the end of each round, one chair is removed, leaving one fewer chair than the number of players. In the next round, the remaining players all scramble for the chairs available, which often leads to small fights over who gets a chair. This not-enough-to-go-around problem explains the poor relations we see today among countries and political parties. It is also the underlying reason for the interest in imposing tariffs and in bombing other countries.
Financial markets tend to perform well during periods of economic growth. However, if certain kinds of essential resources are in short supply, this will tend to hold back growth. Debt defaults and falling stock markets could result. For these reasons, problems in financial markets may be ahead.
Major governmental changes may be ahead. Representative governments require more energy than simpler types of organizations, such as dictatorships. Furthermore, citizens do not like disorder; they may want to overthrow leaders who seem to allow too much disorder. They may vote them out of office or even try to assassinate them. The problem of resource inadequacy is structural, however. Getting rid of a particular leader doesn’t necessarily help the situation.
Everywhere in the world, at least part of today’s problem is that there are not enough jobs available that pay well. Economists have told us to expect high prices if there are shortages. In a way, not having enough jobs that pay well is the opposite problem. But from a physics standpoint, the result is the same. Only a few people can afford many of the goods that are available. The economists’ misinterpretation of what is going wrong further confuses people’s understanding of our current situation.
Mainstream media needs to cater to advertisers. Because of this issue, we cannot expect them to tell us what is happening. That task seems to fall to bloggers, like me. I try to write an article approximately every month. I hope that the graphs and other figures I have presented in this article will help readers understand why we are currently seeing more types of disruptions, such as tariffs and bombings.
Gail, the 20-day is almost up. Since we live in exciting times, possible to just leave an open thread for people to post comments and updates? Thanks
Any place or country that relies on “service economy” where it is all consumption and not producing physical stuff are in serious problem. Any place that relies on imports of food, energy or water are in even worse shape. This war exposes this normalcy bias. There is no looking back anymore. Life as we know that existed in 2025 will not exist anymore. Facilities in the Middle East that were damaged will not be repaired or cannot be repaired in time for any meaning purposes. Be it the “Elders”, “Higher Power” or “The Elders”, I doubt anything can be done now. As I have said, weeks only. Not months or years.
It is all about the ownership of the means of production. Couples will not have kids until they and their kids own the means of production. My back of the envelope calculation is about one million dollars of ownership per person. So a family of two kid and two adults needs about four million dollars of ownership of the factories, farms, businesses. So when politicians talk about $5000 per kid they are off by orders of magnitude.
Yes it is time for socialism. Time for the people to own the means of production personally. Time to tax ownership above the needed per person million at say 100%. No need for the Trump inner circle to all be billionaires.
what are you talking about?
Bringing kids into this world now is like ” bringing dry wood to a burning house ” . I have not been invited to any weddings in my family or friends since 2015 when I started preaching this .
You da man, ravi.
Hah yes unfortunately we are shunned for being pessimistic while the machine rolls forward, and if we are proven right, none will be grateful for the warning. It’s human nature. I think the Book of Revelation talks about how mothers with small children are in the worst position.
lol
look at all the stick i was getting 10 years ago when i said what donnie was going to do…
when i kept saying ‘mid 2020s’ over and over again….
having 8 g/grandkids makes me think its time i was out of it…at 90 whats the point?
4M? give us all a break. and for a biological imperative. yes, I will not engage in intercourse unless someone pays me 4M. maybe westerners are self eliminating.
Tearing down the dangerous rich.
Spreading the mission of Jesus. Radical equality. The failed American city on a hill, the failed equality of the Chinese revolution, the successful work of Abraham Traore, the Christian church in Russia, the government of Mexico working for the people of Mexico.
It is time to deal with the vampires of Manhattan, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Beijing.
More likely, the good old days.
If you read Gregory Clark’s works, it becomes very clear that only those with the means of production reproduced, and the rest were given cold feet.
The way of things allowed for humanity.
Servants and domestics rarely reproduced, and in Norway the pastors forbid anyone they saw unfit from marrying, enduring that they still produced capable people despite of its small population.
short update by HT on jet fuel situation:
https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/component/content/article/jet-fuel-running-out-prices-doubled-airlines-cant-afford-it
Looks true based on a Brave search. Airlines will be the first to show their cards. That will make it real for those who have no idea what the near term future is going to look like.
Yes , airlines followed by shipping ( no cargo to carry , crew to be paid , port charges to be paid , bunker fuel to be paid , loan to be repaid ) . Then as the nursery rhyme says ” we all fall down ” .
One might expect the Ruble to strengthen due to rising oil prices, but it has fallen 10% on the week.
Strange!
At the same time the Iranian currency has strengthened 30% wrt to the ruble, so 20% to the dollar.
That tells us who is winning!
The Iranian rial is trading at 42,000 to the dollar. A 20% strengthening isn’t even a rounding error.
Thanks reante . Wasn’t following this angle .
Everything will fall right? Someone said gold is down 1000 today.
This exceptional dollar action is the reason I asked HHH if it’s what he essentially meant regarding his comment on dollar strength, which went unanswered because I don’t think that’s what he actually meant. it was a leading question, but still an earnest, and helpful one.
(Petro)dollar value historically (during the growth phase) has an inverse relationship with the barrel price because the lower the price the fewer dollars it takes to buy the barrel which means each dollar yields more energy, thus raising dollar value.
The exception to this Rule is what we are currently experiencing: structural supply shortages. Then the historical inversion flips to a positive correlation. Barrel price goes up, dollar value goes up. This is because when the music stops, the desperate scramble is on for both dollars and oil which overrides the Rule.
AI:
Yes, supply shocks can fundamentally change—and sometimes reverse—the “typical inverse relationship between the U.S. dollar value and the price of oil. While historically oil prices and the dollar move in opposite directions, negative supply shocks (such as production cuts or geopolitical conflicts) can trigger a positive correlation, where both the price of oil and the dollar rise simultaneously.
http://www.ecb.europa.eu
http://www.ecb.europa.eu
+4
How Supply Shocks Alter the Relationship
The Traditional Inverse Relationship: Normally, the U.S. dollar and oil are inversely related. When the dollar weakens, oil becomes cheaper for foreign buyers, boosting demand and prices. When the dollar strengthens, it makes oil more expensive for foreign buyers, reducing demand and lowering prices.
Impact of Supply Shocks (Positive Correlation): When a negative supply shock occurs (e.g., disruptions in oil supply), the price of a barrel rises due to scarcity. Concurrently, if the shock causes global instability, investors may flee to the US dollar as a “safe haven,” strengthening the dollar. This results in both high oil prices and a strong dollar.”
“if the shock causes global instability, investors may flee to the US dollar as a “safe haven,” strengthening the dollar. This results in both high oil prices and a strong dollar.”
This may be the issue.
I did mean what you just explained. But I also was pointing out a turn in the dollar. A reversal candlestick. The inside day that formed. Most of the components of the DXY index rallied hard against the dollar today. Which confirms the reversal.
The Euro and other currencies made a hard reversal in the face of all that happening in the Middle East. People are betting big. What do they know that would stop a screaming higher dollar?
Only thing that would stop the dollar is an easing of tensions in the Middle East.
“Around 200,000 immigrant truck drivers could lose their commercial driver’s licenses once they expire due to a new rule promoted by the Trump administration.”
https://lavocedinewyork.com/en/news/2026/03/17/new-crackdown-on-immigrant-truck-drivers-200000-will-lose-their-licenses/
Somebody send a copy of Alice Friedman ‘s ” When the trucks stop running ” to the orange man .
I agree. This could be a problem.
https://no01.substack.com/p/march-16-19-diplomatic-impunity
The people who could have stopped this have all been eliminated, one by one, on a nine-month schedule. Haniyeh. Shamkhani. The Doha negotiation team. The Oman breakthrough. Larijani now. What you’re watching is not a war that diplomacy failed to prevent. It is a war that was repeatedly kept alive by killing the diplomats.
There’s No1 left.
The IRGC commanders who fill the vacuum don’t take calls from Geneva. They have standing orders and they follow them. Araghchi said it as plainly as it can be said: “The presence or absence of one person doesn’t affect this structure”. He’s right. And that’s the problem. The structure continues. On autopilot. Without moderates. Without off-ramps.
Link to
Things Go Haywire as Israeli Escalation Throws Iran Conflict into Dangerous New Phase
SIMPLICIUS
MAR 19, 2026
Things really hit the fan earlier today after Iran’s largest natural gas field, the South Pars, was struck by Israel. This field reportedly accounts for 75% of Iran’s natural gas production and 80-85% of its electric grid.
Then:
South Pars and Qatar’s North Field are essentially the same geological reservoir. One reservoir, with a border running right through the middle. Iran calls its half South Pars. Qatar its North Field. They share the same rock. The same methane. When Israel struck South Pars phases, it struck the geological twin of the installation that supplies 20% of global LNG exports and keeps European households from freezing. Qatar called it “dangerous and irresponsible”. Qatar – which, according to Reuters, has privately been pressing Washington to “finish the job” on Iran – is now watching its own gas facility burn as a direct consequence of the escalation it was encouraging.
[It took 14 years to build.]
Some engineers are saying the damage may be irreparable. I don’t know if that’s true yet. But even partial damage to Ras Laffan on top of the production suspension since March 2 is not a problem you fix with a maintenance crew and three weeks. You fix it – if you even can – in years…
After showing Trump’s tweet, the blogger summarizes it as
Trump’s response on Truth Social was to simultaneously claim the US knew nothing about the South Pars strike, blame Israel for striking it, and then threaten to “blow up the entire South Pars” if Iran retaliates against Qatar again.
Also,
Axios’s Barak Ravid reported within hours that the US had given Israel the green light. Both things can’t be true, and neither is reassuring. Either the US has zero control over its ally, or it’s lying about having zero control. The distinction doesn’t help anyone.
Also,
The immediate structural damage is already historic. Oman crude hit $154 a barrel. Dubai crude $130. Brent $102. WTI $93. That $61 gap between Oman and US prices – 65% – is not a rounding error. It’s two oil markets. One for countries that can get physical delivery from the Gulf under Iranian transit permission. And another one for everyone else buying paper at discounted prices that don’t reflect physical scarcity.
Also,
This oil and gas shock is a supply shock, in a system with physically destroyed infrastructure, financed by a country with trillions in debt that cannot even afford the rates required to fight inflation. Let alone a war.
The Fed is trapped. Raise rates into a war-driven recession, or hold rates and watch inflation embed. There are no good options left.
Also,
Iran has thirty-plus speedboats patrolling the strait, boarding vessels, forcing unauthorised transits to turn back. “The Persian Gulf is now an Iranian lake”, as one analyst put it. That’s no exaggeration. It’s the geography, stupid.
Also,
The Gulf states who privately demanded escalation are now burning. Qatar expelled Iranian diplomats after Ras Laffan was struck. Qatar – which mediated between Iran and the West for years, which Iran supplied during the 2017 GCC isolation, which shares a gas field with Iran – is now in direct military confrontation with the country next door. The belt of states from Kuwait to Oman spent two weeks cheering the war on from behind their firewalls. Iran’s retaliation list was always going to include their infrastructure. They knew that. They did it anyway.
He ends:
God help us all.
“It is a war that was repeatedly kept alive by killing the diplomats”
Really? It then goes on to quote the very same and very much alive man(Araghchi) that led the negotiations for Iran. It also take his words out of context, to suit its own (western establishment)narrative building, which happily avoids Iran’s demands.
Araghchi is in fine form and even hinting at a way out for the “lackeys”.
“We’re only three weeks into this war of choice, imposed on both Iranians and Americans,”
“This $200b is the tip of the icerberg. Ordinary Americans can thank [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and his lackeys in Congress for the trillion-dollar “First Israel tax” that is about to hit US economy.”
https://english.masirahtv.net/post/54580/War-on-Iran-to-Impose-Trillion-Dollar-%98Israel-First-Tax-on-US-Citizens-Araghchi%C2%A0
“Oman crude hit $154 a barrel.”
“It’s two oil markets. One for countries that can get physical delivery from the Gulf under Iranian transit permission”
So Oman has the goods and that line of tankers going from Oman to Iran and back again was just a coincidence.
Then it comes out with this.
“The belt of states from Kuwait to Oman spent two weeks cheering the war on from behind their firewalls. Iran’s retaliation list was always going to include their infrastructure”
Misleading, as the Iranians have always been clear on the conditions.
I have seen no attacks on Omani oil infrastructure and the Iranians have mentioned their friends(that’s Oman, if anyone wants to let the author know), so why exactly has Oman been lumped in?
For those that don’t know, the attacks(yes, plural) on Saudi included Yanbu on the Red Sea, so no more pipeline cope(that’ll also receive a Shahed if needed).
https://www.tradewindsnews.com/tankers/drone-strikes-key-red-sea-tanker-port-amid-blitz-on-energy-assets/2-1-1962428
I think I see where we are going and we’ve been here before, recently 🙄
https://www.tradewindsnews.com/tankers/us-mulls-softer-iranian-oil-sanctions-after-easing-restrictions-on-russia-and-venezuela/2-1-1962871
Winning 😂
I hope someone convinces them to put “boots on the ground”.
There is something that no one wrote. The financial crisis in Middle East (ME). UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, perhaps to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are important financial hubs with billions of whatever currencies and gold bullion sloshing around. Imagine if the millionaires and billionaires decide to pull out all their money and investment in the banks in ME and only to be told “sorry we don’t have that money”. Liquidation of bank holdings or investments? sovereign funds liquidated? bank loans that cannot be paid back? It will definately ripple through.
It was said there are plenty of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi rich in Dubai.
I am afraid that this is not something I have insight into, except that eventually, banks everywhere will be stressed by loans that cannot be repaid.
“It was said there are plenty of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi rich in Dubai. ”
A joke : Q — Which is the best Indian city to live in ?
A— Dubai .
Yes…exactly! In one Swoop China is thermodynamically decapitated, and the Golf Monarchies are wiped out, destroying an Entire Pole of the multi-polar world, pre-empt their joining of BRICS, etc. No more gold for Yuan trades in the ME. No more ME trade, banking, finance hub.
Quick AI estimate for total Real Estate value of Middle East was 1.5-2 Trillion USD.
A regional war that destroys the totality of Middle East oil infrastructure takes this Real Estate portfolio to zero; Permanently! Now consider tertiary and quaternary reyhpothecation of that underlying collateral and you have a 300+ trillion dollar vapouraiztion of monetary equivalents.
Next, consider near 100% capital flight from the region.
Next, consider food and water crisis and its reversibility (or not), in light of oil infrastructure destruction.
Next, consider the financial situation of the golf monarchies. Their oil and gas income will tend to zero, and their sovereign wealth funds will be exhausted in rapid order.
It should be said that these kings were all hidden jews, and they largely carried water for the west. but one method to curb inflation is other people’s money destruction, and it is possible that many a trillion have been destroyed in dubai. they just were not jews enough, and those kisses to Putin proved expensive. UAe even joined BRICs.
I think from now on most russian oil will go to China, soon via pipeline only. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan ill be gently pushed in the eastern direction. Azerbajian, there will be action for sure. Thermodynamic decapitation is too strong a word for the #1 producer of coal and electricity, which also builds 80% of new nuclear power plants. The air will get a little dirtier over there.
India loses badly along with Pacific Us colonies and Europe, and several brics countries. Those kisses to Bibi proved expensive.
My thoughts: The world starts bifurcating, with the Americas by themselves. The periphery islands get pushed out first. Then Europe and India. Africa gets even less oil than today, also. I am guessing that China will continue to get oil from Iran, also. It won’t do as well as the recent past, but some manufacturing and parts of a modern society will exist. China may break into parts as the changes take place, just as other current groups break apart.
I concur with most of this. Canada and Brazil will be harder to conquer than Cuba though. India and Europe do have to go, they fulfill no role in the world economy.
Just cut off the diesel. Done.
India goes first . I have posted on the LNG crisis . India needs 4 LNG tankers a day . They received 1 in 3 weeks . With the current situation they will get zero . Next , luckily in India it is now harvesting season so no lines at fertilizer depots . Sowing starts in June-July ( monsoon rules ) that is when the havoc begins . India imports 40% urea , 100 % DAP and 100 % SSK . There is nothing in the pipeline . I have posted a video of lines for LPG cylinders , wait when I post video of lines at fertilizer depots .
SSK = Special Supplementary Korels . These are micro fertilizers in coral form that must be added to the fertilizer if the soil is damaged due to overuse of chemicals . This increases yield and nutrition . Without this the regular fertilizer is not activated . Oh , by the way this is the year of the El Nino . Temperatures were 40 degree Celsius in the last week of February . FUBAR .
Wales?
But what about the fine people in those nice valleys & hills of Wales?
Local bloke (look a like of mine -few kgs) solved part of the problem for ~now..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb5YufnpXrE
PS the sightseeing is in the latter half/part of the vid..
I don’t think you’re fully understanding the situation. It’s a four leg table and you’re talking one or two legs out. The whole system is going to crash no reorganization nothing the system stops working. The internet will go down food production gone etc.. we made those systems too complicated. It’s not going to be pretty
I am still waiting for someone to explain how, if China is “thermodynamically decapitated”, then how are not S. Korea, Taiwan and Japan “thermodynamically decapitated” at the same time.
That is China’s backyard and I suspect they can do fair job of dominating it.
If it comes to that…it is the end of our global economy.
A lot of presidents and prime ministers come across as not so intelligent but the complete moron Trump outshines the rest. What’s it like having such a thing as your president?
bear in mind jarle—-
that donnie made no secret of who and what he was, long before he got elected in 16….
70 million usa voters think exactly like he does—ie—driven by greed and godbothering, so they voted for what they wanted, and presumably got what they wanted…..
which is chaos, and the certainty that jesus will return and ‘fix things’ in their favour, of course.
a vast majority of the nation itself is as crazy as he is, coupled with the religious certainties of europe in the 13th c.
The self-organizing system seems to demand very stupid behavior. World Wars I and II made little sense. This is similar. The LNG that is being shipped is too expensive for buyers. The equipment to make it has little real value. Even the oil that is shipped does not have the value it had in the past.
The buying power of the world is falling, not rising. This is a huge problem. Adding more government debt attempts to conceal the problem, but it cannot do so.
I like that..blame the “self organizing system”…formerly know as the “invisible hand”. I demand it…a nice way to put it.
Forgive them, for they know not what they do…much better wording in my opinion..
If that’s the case, can there be a so called “judgement day”?
Asking for a friend at the Pearly Gates that was refused entrance.
Better to have a nice tune..Tre Song is Over
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rirdUb_4Pu0
The Who “The Song Is Over” live at the Hollywood Bowl (09/17/2025)
Mike … glad to see that you are finally coming to reality I believe several years ago when I was warning about Europe vulnerability you were touting how great it is in Spain. I believe you said your daughter lived there. I wonder if you still think that Europe is the”place” to be. Humans are actually acting as they have always done resources get tight and then they fight for what is left.
I was with a bunch of rich liberals last night and they are completely clueless… yes they are upset with Trump and the war but they think in the back of their minds that they are “safe” and still going to be able to take their trips all over the world. When they connect the dots and realize that the game is coming to an end then you will see panic! They complain about climate change and then brag about their trip to Costa Rica.
lol sam
i think we mix with the same bunch of people
I’m not the “Mike” you are thinking about..
Sorry Sam, and yes maybe some think of me as a “rich Liberal”…
Maybe I would have been a revolutionary back in the day
I don’t think that there can be a judgement day, in the way we think of it.
We should look at the near-death experiences of people. Most have had a very pleasant experience. A few have found it very distressing. I don’t know what kind of sorting out will take place.
But my question is why “God” didn’t do a better job, so there’s some blame there..
Oh, right, someone here put a funny line before,
“took Sunday off”
Blame is for “God” and small children
the formula is a very simple one—-
surplus energy (over and above our basic living requirements) allows us to buy and sell ‘stuff’ we do not really need….
that ‘buying and selling’ provides employment and wages to most of us.
as our ‘surplus’ shrinks, then so will the means by which most of us are employed.
this is not an ‘instant’, and has been taking place over the last century—in different form in different place….
looked at in specific terms, they appear different, but they are not…
each financial ‘crash’ is a bump in our downward slope into economic oblivion…
we are a smart vertebrate who learned to use fire, and then money—-which makes us unique, and intensely greedy.
no other animal has a ‘greed’ problem—-only us…
then add religion to fire and money, and the problem multiplies itself exponentially into an insanity which lets us believe that prayer will provide money and fire into infinity…
More, more, more is the cry of a mistaken soul
More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul; less than All cannot satisfy Man” is a profound aphorism from English poet and mystic William Blake. It implies that earthly, material desires (“more”) are insatiable and misguided, arguing that only spiritual fulfillment (“All” or infinity) can truly satisfy human nature, as seen in All Religions Are One by Dave’s Place and WordPress.com.
sounds like Blake was using all my best End of More lines
I think Trump, or rather his puppetmasters, got what they wanted.
Trump at the helm of civilization is how a person can easily know that the Hand exists. Keep it simple, Jarle. It’s not difficult. Remember the fake assassination attempt that propelled him into office. If JFK was killed by the CIA then King Lear was anointed by the Hand.
State of play after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas facilities. Iran has hit back with strikes on:
🔹Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex
🔹Saudi Arabia’s Samref refinery
🔹Kuwait’s Mina Abdullah & Mina al-Ahmadi refineries
🔹Abu Dhabi’s Habshan gas complex .
This is an update after what happened yesterday .
This pushes the possibility of going back to where we were before way down.
” Daractenus
For the record, the president of the United States is now simultaneously claiming that he has won the war, is currently winning the war, needs help to win the war, and needs no help to win the war. All to destroy the nuclear program he claims to have already destroyed last year.” ?
https://x.com/Daractenus/status/2034318349820191096?s=20
The bully state is creating confusion on purpose and with a thing as dumb as Donald as spokesperson the guys in charge don’t even need to write scripts …
Strange world. Related to TACO.
Repay the debt or buy fuel . Make a choice .
“Well, the way I see it… Many countries will be in the following predicament: either pay their external debt or buy oil to keep their economies running and feed their populations. There’s no other option… So they’ll choose the latter. This will generate a cascade of sovereign defaults that will spread throughout the world economy, in which many banks—being the transmission chains for debt—will suffer greatly. The crisis will begin in the periphery of the system and then reach the major economies. And then, Quark, they’ll print money like crazy again… And if they don’t print money, don’t be fooled; the stock markets could continue to rise, as the Venezuelan stock market did when the bolivar was devalued (it’s not even guaranteed that it will fall). In the end, everything depends on the countries’ balance of payments. Some will fare better, and others worse
By the way, the spot and futures markets are already broken. They say that in India they’re already paying up to $38 above the price indicated by futures contracts like Brent. No matter how they rig things, in the end countries will have to choose: debt or oil.”
Greetings
Copy/paste Quark ;
I think that this is one thing to keep in mind:
The crisis will begin in the periphery of the system and then reach the major economies.
The crisis will not be uniform. It will gradually spread. It will begin in the periphery of the system and then reach the major economies.
Only over a period of a week or so I’d say. Fast graduation.
Maybe and maybe not.
Australia is already at the edge of having enough jet fuel. Things always move more slowly than we expect.
I guess my definition of crisis in this context includes stock market collapse. Once periphery market collapses occur, it won’t take the core long to follow suit. And I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s the financial core that breaks first. It doesn’t require broken spokes for a wheel hub to catastrophically fail at the flange where the spokes attach. A few loose ones causing uneven tension while ridden hard and fast will do the job. Primary dealers.
I’ll just leave this here…
“Movie released in 1981 ..” About the problems we are seeing today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63GZdWrtvsg
Yes they use AI to produce graphics.
I find this detailed info fascinating. Who produces these videos is the question.
These videos are amazing. But fortunately, the narratives they are telling are not quite true. They have some truthful elements, regarding what might happen. It is hard to figure out where truth ends and imagination begins.
Maybe FE was on to something. Is it all fake?
These videos use lots of math which leads me to believe they are from the Han.
eddy assured his worshippers that the ukraine war was all staged by crisis actors—
as was the sandy hook school shooting—
and a raft of other nonsense, all believed implicitly by the flat earth cadre of ofw
So back to my earlier post of 20mbpd gone. So, it looks like it is gone. All Iran needs to do is to lob missles towards the Red Sea pipeline which is an easy task and Bravo, the entire middle east oil is gone. LNG is also gone..
Somewhat is next?
Gail, I suggest you have an open thread as the 20 days is almost up so that all of us here can still comment. Exciting end times indeed.
This post is apt becsuse you mention bombs
This is a link to one of your earlier posts regarding 20 mbpd.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2026/03/02/a-new-explanation-for-tariffs-and-bombings/comment-page-6/#comment-502801
I can search comments by the name of the commenter, so I can find posts easily.
Regarding an open thread, I perhaps will do something like that. The situation is very fluid, and we all want to stay “on top of it.”
Also, I find it difficult to write post that seem to be too depressing for the readers. Even if I can see things that are bad and getting worse, I don’t necessarily like being in a position of pointing this out too strongly.
RUSSIA’S NOVAK: WE ARE CURRENTLY WITNESSING THE WORST ENERGY CRISIS IN THE LAST 40 YEARS – TASS
https://x.com/FirstSquawk/status/2034305020880138552
I would agree. Most of the world population has not figured this out yet, however. It is both oil and gas, but the lack of these fuels spill over to coal and to electricity prices.
I wonder what will happen with electricity supply
A new proposed law may force New Yorkers to turn their outdoor lights off by 11pm
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/a-new-proposed-law-may-force-new-yorkers-to-turn-their-outdoor-lights-off-by-11pm-nightly-031626
Mamdani’s missile defense strategy.
Gas stations “running out” of gas.
Australia, Thailand, Japan, New Zealand.
https://x.com/AkimotoThn/status/2033959953908871629
https://x.com/TheFederal_News/status/2033573255282639352
https://x.com/ThaiEnquirer/status/2034119396051063206
https://x.com/dailytelegraph/status/2034359348781264917
So, as predicted here (numerous times) by the Owner, remote “Island” nations first?
Not by the Owner but Joseph Tainter in ” The collapse of complex societies ” . Just clarifying .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPhV5bc8d6Q
How the Iran War Will Cause a Global Financial Crisis (Yanis Varoufakis) | The Chris Hedges Report (46:18)
351,276 views Mar 16, 2026
Yanis Varoufakis says that even if the war in Iran ends soon — which it likely will not — the economic consequences will be devastating and prolonged.
There is a transcript available if you scroll down and click the link. I found the introduction by Chris Hedges somewhat over the top. Food prices will rise from the fertilizer shortage and oil prices “could easily jump to $300 per barrel” triggering a global depression.
Yanis Varoufakis says that the current situation is far worse than “Liberation Day,” when tariffs were first enacted. He says he thinks that the AI investment spree that saved the market the last year is going to peter out because it becomes so expensive to run and train. He think the AI bubble was what kept the economy going as well as it did last year. He says, “The [US] economy is already entering a serious vortex of pain.”
Sorry, I don’t have time to share more, now. Take a look at the video or transcript.
The world is still running for three weeks on oil that has already been shipped.
That is the situation we are in right now. Not real scarcity—at least not yet. Planes are still flying, trucks are still moving, refineries are still operating. But what we are seeing is not stability—it is inertia. A system still in motion, powered by decisions, cargoes, and contracts made before the flow was cut off.
Tankers that departed before the end of February are still arriving. Russian cargoes are still finding their way—rerouted, delayed, but still moving. Storage tanks at refineries are not yet empty. Strategic reserves remain largely untouched, or are being used sparingly. Taken together, this creates a brief period of apparent calm. A kind of extra time, as if the match has already ended but the clock keeps ticking.
That extra time is not a solution. It is overrun.
Because behind those last arriving cargoes, there is nothing. The pipeline is drying up. And once the final shipments are unloaded and the first shortages begin to appear in the logistics chain, the nature of the problem changes fundamentally. It is no longer about price, but about availability. No longer about markets, but about choices.
The first signals are already there. Aircraft are being grounded because jet fuel is either too expensive or simply unavailable. Energy-intensive industries in the Gulf—aluminium, petrochemicals—are shutting down. These are not marginal sectors; they are critical nodes in the industrial chain. When they stall, the effects spread quickly: into transport, agriculture, fertilizers, and ultimately food prices.
Strategic reserves can slow this process, but they cannot stop it. They are finite, difficult to mobilize quickly, and politically sensitive. Every barrel released brings the system closer to the moment when there is nothing left behind it. It buys time, nothing more.
If the situation continues for a few more weeks, the system will quietly shift into a new phase. Energy will no longer be allocated through price, but through priority. Agriculture first. Transport of food and medicine. Defense. What remains will be rationed—or simply shut down. Not because it is uneconomic, but because it is physically impossible to sustain.
That is the moment when apparent stability turns into visible disruption. Not as one single shock, but as a cascade of failing links. A factory here. An airport there. A distribution hub somewhere else. Each one just enough to keep the system from functioning as a whole.
What we are witnessing now is not the full crisis, but its prelude. A short window in which the system still behaves as if it works, because the last residual flows are still arriving. But that illusion has an expiration date.
And that date does not come from a model or a spreadsheet.
It is out at sea, in the last tankers still on their way.
Copy/paste Zip at C§E
Zip is using AI. Fuck that shit.
AI or not… it’s a good write-up. After Israel’s absolute BONE-HEAD move today… there is no way this is ending. I had a little hope this morning of a slowdown to a crawl so that cooler heads could work something out.
NOPE! Were done now. This will create so much disruption, that there is no coming back gracefully.
It is definitely AI. So it’s a ‘good’ write-up. Glad to see you see that the writing is on wall.
Parliament leader of Iran
“The Strait of Hormuz situation won’t return to its pre-war status.”
https://x.com/mb_ghalibaf/status/2033972126948937872
Paul Ehrlich died on Friday
“Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, who died March 13, 2026, in Palo Alto, California, was a scientific crusader whose dire predictions about population growth, world hunger and environmental collapse made headlines and sparked controversy for decades.”
https://theconversation.com/paul-ehrlich-often-called-alarmist-for-dire-warnings-about-human-harms-to-the-earth-believed-scientists-had-a-responsibility-to-speak-out-178492
On Sunday, I went to church in one of the neighbouring villages. A nice Sunday walk. I passed the man I know, smoking and with a belly, looking clearly unhealthy. He was working on the new house where agricultural land was before. He inherited the land and converted it into a cheap construction plot. Some weeks ago, I also spotted a woman there, probably living with him, as it was not his sister. His sister has some lifelong health problems and cares for his elderly mother.
I also passed the renovated and upgraded house where one of my uncles with his wife lived: they were childless. Now a young emaciated couple with 2 children lives there. The wife with a lot of makeup on her face and the house is surrounded by ornamental plants and elements. A heap of useless rubbish. My uncle and his wife had a plum orchard on a hill above. He sold it (probably to have money as a supplement to his pension after the death of his wife, anyway, he could not care for it anymore) and now a house that is still unfinished after many years of construction, occupies a part of this aged plum orchard.
The truth is clear.
Here 100 miles north of Manhattan we have settlers from Manhattan building beautiful large houses with lots of glass and outdoor architectural lighting. All very stylish all with high end cars, heavy duty farm equipment for yard care, most with in ground pools.
What I do not see are young people, 25 to 55. Seeing kids under 16 is a rare treat.
Went to the restaurant at the local golf course for Saint Patrick’s Day dinner. Most diners 55 and older, pleasantly there was one young child one year.
Lack of personnel for grocery stores here in Slovakia. They advertise jobs using stylish articles on the internet that create an image of a high value work.
https://tlacovespravy.sme.sk/c/23569522/17-milionov-dovodov-preco-sa-oplati-pracovat-v-kauflande.html
Recently, I was also a witness of the situation at the self-check in one of the most widespread Slovak food supermarkets, when the woman providing help for the customers was reprimanding them for “causing problems” with a loud voice. It was a true public humilation because of their incompetence. Obviously, the reason was that she was clearly stressed and could not handle too many customers having problems with self-checking issues.
Most everybody who works in grocery stores here are OLD OLD OLD.
what country do you come from mg?
Slovakia, or I would call it more precisely “West Carpathians”, i.e. Central European mountains.
Western Ukraine – me and MG easily understand each others dialects… Carpathians are (and always were) in Eastern Europe 😅
Thanks! I hadn’t read about Paul Elrich;s death elsewhere. He was 93 according to a link I found.
> BREAKING
Now Qatar’s vital Ras Laffan refinery has been struck by missiles
https://x.com/IranObserver0/status/2034339419721699474
> Incident updates are often posted on this feed: https://x.com/jacksonhinklle
Also on: https://x.com/WarMonitors
I have seen this issue mentioned elsewhere. I am having trouble with your links. This attack is another worry!
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/qatarenergy-reports-extensive-damage-after-missile-attacks-on-ras-laffan-industrial-city
Qatar’s state oil giant QatarEnergy said on March 18 that “extensive damage” has been caused after the Ras Laffan Industrial City was subjected to missile attacks, shortly after the country’s interior ministry reported a fire resulting from an Iranian attack on the area. . .
Iran earlier issued an evacuation warning for several oil facilities across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, including the Ras Laffan Refinery, saying they would be targeted by strikes “in the coming hours”, Iranian state media reported.
Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG installations are being evacuated, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on March 18, following Iran’s threat to attack Gulf energy facilities.
remember what Marion King Hubert said in a video that was played on YouTube in one of the scenes he says there is it possibility we will enter into technological decline and then population reduction will begin. The video is called health and education it is from the year 1976.I think we are at this stage now which means all other options have been exhausted the powers that be tried everything including the lockdowns but it failed now begins the real carnage.
Saudi Arabia’s natural gas plant was also hit:
https://www.timesnownews.com/world/middle-east/riyadh-attack-video-multiple-explosions-rock-saudi-arabia-capital-after-iran-launches-over-100-drones-article-153866542
Multiple explosions were reported over Riyadh as Saudi air defenses engaged a ballistic missile threat, following Iran’s warning to target oil and gas facilities in the Gulf. The strikes come amid escalating tensions after an Israeli attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field.
The attack on Riyadh came after Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency stated that five facilities would be targeted by Iran. These included Saudi Arabia’s SAMREF refinery and Jubail petrochemical complex, the UAE’s Al Hosn gasfield, and Qatar’s Ras Laffan refinery and Mesaieed petrochemical complex and holding company.
The strikes follow Iran’s reporting of attacks on its own South Pars natural gas facilities, signalling an escalation in the ongoing conflict linked to the United States-Israeli war with Iran.
Looks like the plan to put all middle east oilfields offline, as described in Paul Erdman’s 1977 novel, is going well.
End of abundance, end of prosperity in Asia, while Europe and USA will be more or less OK.
Before Chucky and the 200/400 scums of the earth from Worcestershires ‘did their duty’, humanity was much more sane and brutal.
https://youtu.be/2zMzyDXa990?si=5KLjqHEx09AVvppm
This painting by Gustave Dore in 1873 or so is said to be the most controversial painting in the internet. I was not aware of its existence until it began to show up in youtube shorts.
tl, dr, a child of acrobats, destined to be another acrobat, fell from a ring or something and his head is crushed so he would die (according to the painter it was a real event)
Acrobats were considered to be the lowest kind of people back then. The well dressed folks of Paris took the child’s death to be no more sad than the death of a uppy or a kitten, and probably less than that, since such kind of people were NOT considered to be humans.
However this cheapo painting apparently got the attention of the actress of Sarah bernhardt, who never had any children.
When Ms. Bernhardt came to USA, she attended a vaudeville show named the Keaton Family, whose start was a boy named Joseph.
Joseph Keaton did stunts from when he was about 12 months old, and was able to roll around a long staircase without falling by the age of 3.
Upon seeing Joseph Keaton’s performance, Bernhardt claimed child abuse, and Keaton’s show was forbidden, robbing the Keaton family its livelihood. They continued to perform in state borders and other places with ambiguous jurisdiction but could not draw as large crowds as before.
Dore’s sentimentalism, not common back then, caused a great harm to the Keaton Family.
Joseph Frank Keaton, much better known as Buster Keaton, later became well known for his slapstick comedy. But thanks to a sentimental painting and an actress who had too much time on her hands, his career almost ended before it began. he later said he was the happiest while performing, and although his parents were not the nicest people in the world (Keaton himself was a bit cranky too), he never claimed any abuse from them.
Such was how things were before Chucky and his scum of the earth did ‘their duty’, and where things are going back to after this destruction of excess hydrocarbon resources.
But USA shale is in decline … supposing our strategists aren’t just complete morons, I’m not sure where they expect our new energy supply to come from. Taking the Gulf offline just depletes everywhere else faster.
Which is why Venezuela was secured. There will be enough for Americans, not for others.
the oil business is a global business….
imagining the usa in its own cocoon of oil-plenty, with the rest of the world using horse and cart is naive at the fast eddy level, along with the flat earthers climate hoaxers and non-vaxxers…
What would the rest of world do? Attack USA?
Just another ¹845 in a global scale
you still miss the point
oil of itself has no value…
it only takes on value when it is converted into something else, and sold—the usa cannot sustain itself by selling its oil to itself….
donnie and his chums dont ”get it” either, so you are in good company…or is that bad company?
The Atlantic and Pacific and a large navy sure look like a cocoon. The Muslim navy, the Indian Navy, The European navy, the African Navy? Only possible contender Chinese Navy.
i wasnt talking about the military, i was talking about world economy—–
the military consumes energy, and produces nothing in economic terms…
no nation can go on supporting a military against the poverty of external forces.
We will see how quickly that ramps up. Right now they export less than 1mbpd.
Does the U.s get Venezuela oil free? And if not why is everyone acting as is it does? How much is the CO’s to the u. S? I feel like I’m in a bad 80’s movie
A sustained strike campaign on Iranian extraction infrastructure could alter pressure gradients, force production adjustments, or trigger precautionary shutdowns on the Qatari side. Physics does not recognize the border.
https://x.com/shanaka86/status/2034277338779893825
but it is a minor detail since the qatari infrastructure is going to go now.
From the link:
Qatar asked the United States to finish Iran. Israel struck South Pars. Qatar now condemns the strike as a threat to global energy security.
That is not hypocrisy. It is geology.
South Pars and Qatar’s North Field are the same reservoir. The largest gas deposit on Earth, split by a maritime border. Iran produces from one side. Qatar produces from the other. When Israeli bombs hit Phase 14 processing facilities on the Iranian side, they did not just damage Iranian gas production. They introduced risk to the reservoir pressure dynamics that govern Qatar’s $130 billion annual LNG export machine.
Qatar is the world’s largest LNG exporter. Its entire economic model rests on the North Field. The expansion to North Field East and North Field South, hundreds of billions in committed investment, depends on stable reservoir conditions across the shared geology. A sustained strike campaign on Iranian extraction infrastructure could alter pressure gradients, force production adjustments, or trigger precautionary shutdowns on the Qatari side. The physics does not recognise the border.
This is a big deal. Both the natural gas that Qatar pumps and the gas that Iran pumps will be compromised. The huge LNG exports from Qatar perhaps can never by restarted if the damage is great enough.
There is no plan. We have a bunch of sleep deprived old men trying to stay out of jail fumbling around killing people. Iran destroying KSA production maybe good for the world. Slow everything down.
Yeah, the planet needs a rest from the human horde stampede of the Gold Rush…
Neal Young.. After the Gold Rush
The self-organizing system has a plan. The return on a lot of these energy types is now way too low. Destroying LNG that has huge transportation costs may be part of this. Greatly reducing Middle Eastern oil production may also be part of the plan. A drop in urea and aluminum production can be expected at the same time LNG production drops.
Great point about LNG. It’s hard to see LNG existing post-capitalism.
Two things I notice:
Attack on Pars Natural Gas field in Iran this morning:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/futures-slump-erasing-overnight-gains-after-irans-giant-pars-field-attacked-fomc-looms
Stocks were set to extend gains into a third day as Iraq’s deal to reroute crude via Turkey, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, eased some supply concerns as Iranian strikes target Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and UAE, but it all unwound shortly after 7am ET, following an Iranian report that US and Israeli airstrikes hit its giant South Pars natural gas field and associated infrastructure; Oil and petrochemical facilities in nearby Asaluyeh also came under attack, it added rekindling fears about the impact of the war in the Middle East on inflation. Aa a result S&P futures erased all of their overnight gains, fading what was earlier a 0.6% rise, and trading in the red. Nasdaq also faded all of its gains, and was trading flat at last check.
All of this happens just hours before the Fed is expected to keep rates unchanged at 2pm ET today. Bond yields were down 1-2bp into the Fed meeting where the Fed is expected to hold rates steady with the dots potentially reflecting a hawkish outlook; the USD is flat. In commodities oil / natgas prices are lower but are off their overnight lows with Ags / Metals lower. Today’s macro data focus is on PPI and the Fed meeting.
Public is not interested in the Iran story in the US:
https://modernity.news/2026/03/17/what-has-the-iran-war-done-to-trumps-approval-rating/
Public apathy grows: Only 45% care ‘a lot,’ Google searches crash 84%, Oscars outpace conflict
Mainstream coverage of the ongoing Iran conflict has framed it as a potential turning point for the Trump administration, with endless speculation about political damage and shifting voter sentiment.
However, new data presented on CNN tells a far different story.
“The president’s overall approval rating is the same. It’s the same. It was 41% before the current war in Iran started, and it is 41% now,” he outlined.
This disconnect highlights a recurring pattern: elite media narratives often assume foreign policy crises will dominate voter priorities, only to confront data showing otherwise. In this case, the conflict has failed to move the needle on presidential approval or generate majority concern.
Israeli attack on Iran’s major South Pars gas field could trigger retaliation on Saudi oil fields.
I think the only alternative for Tehran now is ” scorched earth ” ; Blow up Dimona nuclear plant and destroy everything . Yes , we are going down but so are you .
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-intel-chief-killed-israel-grants-idf-free-hand-eliminate-leaders-trump-muses
This changes my interpretation of what the US desired end state is. It seems we want all the Gulf oil infrastructure destroyed. It might make sense geostrategically if it is coming under China’s influence and control, or simply to deny China’s hydrocarbon sources, but it is a huge gamble.
I find the Pars attack very disturbing, too.
It could be that the world economy badly needs to contract. Somehow, the system is giving us this outcome. We are using resources that are in some sense too difficult to extract–too low EROEI, or too poor return for the effort put in. Too many young people end up too financially poor. The economy needs to contract, and this is what we get.
I don’t think the world economy goes down all at once. It goes down in steps. Trump may be replaced as leader.
South Pars is not just any gas field. It supplies 25% of the WORLD’S liquefied natural gas. A quarter of the planet’s energy. Gone in one airstrike.
Let that sink in.
Here’s what happens next — step by step:
💀 STEP 1 — Iran previously warned that if their energy infrastructure was targeted, they would FLATTEN Qatar’s LNG complex — the LARGEST on Earth — into a parking lot.
💀 STEP 2 — If Qatar’s LNG complex is hit, Europe loses 20% of its gas imports OVERNIGHT. Gas prices don’t rise — they EXPLODE.
💀 STEP 3 — Oil shoots past $150/barrel. Every economy on Earth feels it within 48 hours. Inflation goes vertical. Markets BLEED.
💀 STEP 4 — The Strait of Hormuz gets shut down. 21% of the world’s daily oil passes through there. That’s 21 MILLION barrels PER DAY — GONE.
💀 STEP 5 — China, India, Japan, South Korea — ALL of them depend on that strait. This isn’t a Middle East problem anymore. This is a GLOBAL energy collapse.
⚠️ The U.S. bombed Iraq for 20 years over oil. Iran just had its energy lifeline attacked — a nation of 90 million people who believe in martyrdom.
⚠️ Their response won’t be proportional. It will be DISPROPORTIONATE.
They’re showing you “precision strikes” and “limited operations.”
They’re NOT showing you the chain reaction that’s about to unfold.
Every single escalation this month has been met with a BIGGER escalation. Not smaller. BIGGER.
This is not de-escalation. This is a countdown.
https://x.com/sungleeiq/status/2034273987270779201
No it’s Qatari north field providing those numbers not south pars. And south pars is just down by 3/8.
Is recent information on South Pars production really available?
Sorry thanks I really just meant that three of the eight facilities were hit, we could probably find out their total percentage of south pars production if we wanted to. Turkey political theater not going to be happy about it at all.
the situation we are in is very clear….
the planet has not been assembled or controlled by some ‘higher power’ to enable one specific vertebrate to assume dominance over all the others, and in so doing ignore the laws of physics and keep 1 million of us constantly in the air at all times…
we simply did not evolve to do that—and no amount of prayer is going to change our current situation, no matter how comfoting that might be.—neither is there going to be a tech-breakrough to enable our infinite profligacy….
humankind is unique—-yes…
but only in the sense that we are the only species motivated by greed… (we actially pray for more of everything)….
no other animal does that.—-only us.
our ability to move distances at will has been grinding to a halt since 1970—-so slowly that few people have noticed it….while politicians have been promising the opposite…
All things must pass, Norman.
Limited irreplaceable resources eventually run out.
And moreover, things that are unsustainable cannot continue forever.
They definitely can’t carry on indefinitely.
Even more eventually comes to an end.
At which point it’s game over.
For all these dimwitted alt-media types telling us how the BRICS is running rings around the West, strategically and technologically… this operation destroys local Israeli enemies, destroys the economies of many BRICS candidates or members, and cripples China’s economy, which prepared by storing, oh, maybe one year of oil. Likewise the Ukraine’s war forced Russia to kill a generation of Ukies, then spend lots of capital to rebuild a region full of ungrateful people. Remember, the whole Ukraine war was fought on Russia territory. Note that this will be very destructive for US colonies, except for Israel.
I think the only option available is for China to start throwing missiles at Louisiana refineries, and see who blinks first. this while fielding a multimillion army in the ME and sweep all US bases. but no, they will sit next to Russia and draw diagrams and calculate correlation of forces, or something. I told you I was afraid of Putin (and Xi) producing another Syria moment. This is probably worse.
I’m sort of in a state of cognitive dissonance between opposing ideas narratives. Is Iran/BRICS winning or USA+Israel? Do US elections and global oil prices really matter to the ruling powers or do they think they can retain power no matter elections and global chaos? Are they trying to tank the USA or reassert dominance?
>> alt-media types telling us how the BRICS is running rings around the West
Case in point:
https://x.com/RealPepeEscobar/status/2034206855824867455
Petroyuan is already in effect in the Strait of Hormuz toll booth.
Up next:
China suggests to GCC to sell all their energy in petroyuan.
They get free Hormuz passage.
China opens Shanghai Gold Exchange vaults, co-custody by Iran and GCC .
Iran and GCC are then able to convert their yuan surpluses in silver and gold.
Game, set, match.
US+Israel is losing less than other powers are losing. There is not going to be any toll booth in yuans IMHO as the destruction will proceed apace and there will not be cargo to motivate one to pay toll. Not only I am sick of Putin’s cowardice I am also sick of Xi playing stupid games that will come to fruition in 2034. The US understands that and acts accordingly.
At least Iran plays the game the right way. They want dedollarization and an end to all US middle Eastern bases. They also want everyone on the other side of the Gulf to not put another penny in US banks. at least they play the right game while it lasts. Whatever military help they got from China and Russia did not help. I have long held that they are the most civilized nation on Earth. and they have not disappointed in terms of courage and determination.
I am impressed the Iran continues to say it will stay away from using nuclear bombs. We hear the opposite from Israel.
I’m also impressed by the fairness of the Iranians.
Everybody in the world is watching US and Israel (Epstein coalition) and if they will succeed in destroying Iran, I think that everybody in the world will rejoice if US and Israel people will have any problem in the future, from Micro to Macro situations.
Everyone will be happy to see them suffering, in any little or big episode.
Everydoby in the world will be happy to see US people and Israeli people in difficulty and everybody will do nothing to help them, in any situation.
I have no hope for Israel at the moment, but I think that US people should think about this and decide if it will be a positive consequence for them to have this outcome in the future all over the world.
All the best to ourfiniteworld readers.
It seems like the world will quickly runs short of gold and silver to make this work.
Sorry , only headlines are 30 minutes old . Fire breaks out in Qatari gas field by Iranian attack . Al Jazeera .
https://aje.news/b8762y?update=4413833
Confirmed by Qatar . https://x.com/qatarenergy/status/2034338511311012171
Fuel shortages could trigger ‘lockdown-type scenario’ for Australia, top economist warns
“History shows that oil price shocks that extend for a while can have a significant negative impact on the economy because it’s effectively a tax on spending, whether it’s by businesses or households,” he said.
“And then if we go into an environment where we actually have a shortage of fuel, then you end up with a lockdown-type scenario where certain economic activity doesn’t occur.”
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/fuel-shortages-could-trigger-lockdowntype-scenario-for-australia-top-economist-warns/news-story/5ec13ae849cd7c35246beee29537fe96
I would think that people planning to take vacations in Australia or Tasmania would want to keep an eye on this.
anyone wanting to take vacations anywhere should keep an eye on it.
a absolutely agree mob
but we are locked into a wage and production system—if economic activity stops—or even drastically slows, then wages will cease to be paid…
Hyperinflation then takes off.
after that, looting of stores will begin…
when that energy source has been exhausted….
we will start to fight each other over whats left–assuming we can find anything.
after that phase is over, reality kicks in, that the planet cannot support 8bn people in their current lifestyle of infinite consumption…..
Keeping the Strait of Hormuz open requires a neutral actor who can resist all attempts by rebels to take advantage of the strategic blackmail situation. Such an actor is problematic when the international organizations lose importance.
This actor could be replaced by a calculated nuclear contamination of the coastal strip on the Strait of Hormuz. It would raise the technical requirements of rebels so high that they would not be able to take the risk. The contamination could be concealed by an accident or similar. The prerequisite would be that the USA, Russia and China agree, which they would probably be willing to do if this could end the endangerment of the global economy. It should also be a last option.
It’s not that I wanted to do this, but that what one can think, others can also think.
You are thinking that a single nuclear explosion, perhaps by accident, might keep everyone away from the land near the Straight of Hormuz. That could be.
It might be something people might try.
But perhaps people could soon find work arounds. I know that visitors to Chernobyl wore special suits to limit the effects of radiation, for example. And Iran has a long coast, and many hidden places from which it could attack tankers. It seems like attacks could still be made.
donnie will certainly go nuke if he can….
any general who disagrees with that will be fired
so nuking iran is maybe likely…
donnie cannot lose face or ”lose” any dispute—his past history confirms that…. nukes are is final card…….dont want to worry ofw’ers unduly, but you have someone mentally unstable with the nuclear codes.
OFW’ers are now talking about a ‘permanent exclusion zone’ so early in the operation as if it were not a far flung conclusion. This triggers an immediate red flag.
OFW has always been a natural ‘human’ based bio algorithm think tank. A very cheap one.
Thus your collective open rants, have for years been monitored/ tolerated within in a declining ‘inevitable envelope’ of time and resource, as if it were space remaining to move.
‘Often Feeding Wonderment’ the ‘thus squared’ delusional grandeur inter-breeder vs high actual intelligence insights that certainly exists on site, ‘Often functionally, work’ to uncover the architecture of the relevant ironically legit, ‘actual situation’
This conclusion tho has horrific cost, the cost would be in direct life and the free world’s self determination, essentially ‘sovereignly’
You disappoint if the collective ‘thinks’ this the only conclusion, refinement of the fluidity of the human dynamics for ‘the forces of good’ under stress is not to be overlooked or underestimated in these circumstances either
Think better.
https://rayonegro.substack.com/p/la-desconexion
I thought this was a good analogy of why oil prices remain low for the current situation. I’m not totally convinced by this but still chewing on it.
Please note . We are watching only the headlines . There are different types of oils and we have discussed that . Refineries use blends of oil . For example the Indian refineries are already paying $ 146 per barrel . This is the blend needed by the Indian refineries . See Indian basket in the listing . It was $ 108 per barrel in February . Up by 57 % .
https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/#prices
https://indianexpress.com/article/business/cea-anantha-nageswaran-crude-oil-prices-india-gdp-growth-inflation-forecast-10587372/#:~:text=Meanwhile%2C%20the%20average%20price%20of,Petroleum%20Planning%20%26%20Analysis%20Cell.
This is an article by Quark. In it, he says,
The disconnect between the paper market and the physical market is evident. There are two economies: the real one, where the scarcity of oil, derivatives, and other raw materials impacts consumers, and the Matrix economy, where paper prices reflect an alternative and wondrous reality.
How long can this disconnection last?
Well, a long time, if we’re being realistic.
I think that it takes a while for the physical shortage to be felt. And the degree that that physical shortage will be felt will vary throughout the world. So far, it is Asia that is hardest hit. Europe has to compete with Asia for exports, also.
The futures market price will perhaps become increasingly wrong, in different parts of the world, as the on-the-ground price rises in some areas, more than others. But the self-organizing system will make other changes, which we do not identify as rationing. Airlines will go out of business. Airport will close for lack of people to man security stations. Flights will be cancelled. Shelves in stores will become empty of goods requiring long supply chains, but shop owners will feature whatever they actually have available.
Futures markets may spike more, as time goes on. But layoffs may start, holding down demand. It is the integrated system that holds down demand.
Gail , the pitchforks come out . You forgot this .
Not necessarily we are increasingly moving towards a controlled society. Think AI monitoring everything you do. Step out of line and your bank account is temporarily frozen. Step way out of line and you disappear. These data centers might be built for controlling the sheep.
Control costs energy . How do we do that in an energy short world ? If the police can’t arrive at the scene of the crime because they have no gasoline then what use is the monitoring . Watching TV in real time ?
Think drones. There will not be a cop car sent. Just a deadly drone. It can easily disable your power. And you will comply. Unless the drone is not shotgun proof.
Perhaps. But the monitoring depends on electricity. The electricity goes out, and the monitoring doesn’t last long.
Heart attacks are on the rise among young people. Lack of sleep may be a contributing factor
Read more: https://www.sme.sk/podcasty/c/pribuda-infarktov-u-mladych-ludi-dovodom-moze-byt-aj-nedostatok-spanku
it certainly can not be long term damage from the vaxx, because it is safe and effective, despite the 1000+ papers to the contrary. Anedoctal evideence shows also a rise in cancer in the same segment. should also be due to lack of sleep.
don’t forget wildcard ‘genetic”.
What about the stress form the crumbling world of the rising energy poverty combined with rising complexity???
anecdotally, some of the well off italian 20 somethings that recently kicked the bucket may have been stressed by choices over which winter vacation to pick. once at the tropical island they could have been stressed by the lack of certain moet chandon years in the restaurant cellar. although data are poor, a messed up biochemistry is a solid pick.
False humility of the muscular (hunky?) Rromanian people, like MG. Them and their (mystery ancestry) younger descendants are clearly made for much, much bigger things there, in their current “Slovakia”…
Truth will always be censored and no one will know anything. Real or fake. Anyone knows if the oil facilities in the gulf are out of action? Will that 20mbp be completely offline forever? If that is the case, then civilization will have weeks left only.
So CTG if 20 million barrels is gone then in a few weeks everything collapses. But what if the powers that be have rigged the markets to never collapse drops occur but hey presto it goes back up inflation guaranteed interest rates start rising oil price’s keep on rising the middle class reverts back to poor class a loaf of bread doubles in price. But the good news is the financial system will never collapse just our standard of living goes right down.
20mbpd cannot be papered over.
Malaysia has until May the supply of oil. Thailand, Laos, Vietnam already 1-2 weeks away from “no oil at all”. So, it is not just a drop of quality of life. It is completely gone.
Search for news on Google with the term “XXX Fuel” where XXX is the country name. You will read more about it. However, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam are plugged into the world. Their collapse will affect all other countries.
I thought Malaysia has oil of its own. I also thought that much of the business fleeing Dubai would eventually relocate there. But you say no. Comments?
Malaysia’s higher-priced sweet light crude is exported, mainly to Japan I believe we import cheaper sour crude from Middle East. Problem is our refineries are designed for sour crude.
So Malaysia is actually trying to pass some resilience exam. Weather this storm (perhaps by making refineris more flexible), and nomad money is coming. Show shortcomings and you lose a pretty decent opportunity. The reputation is generally there as a good expat destination. Some people will also calculate what is the chance of it getting involved in a possible Malacca Straits war.
My post on Feb 5 2025 . See Malaysia .
Agree Jupiviv . Too optimistic . Let us do a countrywise analysis .
1. Philippines ; No domestic energy source . All imported . Largest dollar income source is inward remittances from workers overseas . Located in typhoon /hurricane zone . Floods are an annual disaster .
2. Japan : This has been discussed here to the bone . 100% import of energy , 60% food and the demographic issue and add the debt etc . Unsustainable .
3 . Korea , Vietnam in the same boat as Japan .
4 . Laos , Cambodia and Sri Lanka : Already deadbeats . In the hock to their gills in debt to China . No domestic energy source . Only dollar source is tourism .
5 . Thailand : Better than no: 4 but just marginally as it has other dollar sources [ besides sex tourism ] by exporting rice and several light engineering goods and also a portion of the drug money that it gets from ” the Golden Triangle ” . No domestic energy source .
6. Burma : The lesser said the better . Nothing here to see .
7 . Malaysia : Best placed . Self sufficient in energy and food .
8. Indonesia : It has the resources but it is in a massive , massive population overshoot . Population density /per sq km is high . Jakarta the capital is sinking and they have plans to build a new capital but how to shift 12 million people . Anyway the new capital is still in the planning stage , so in the meanwhile \?????
9. China : Again discussed to the bone here . Nothing to add .
10. India : Overrated , illiterates , overshoot –80% energy imported . It is another ” money order economy ” like Filipinas . ANNUAL inward remittance from overseas Indian is $ 99 billion , highest in the world . I have already posted the problems that are there , so will not repeat .
Best of luck .
Yes I am in the middle of the expat business. Yes Malaysia is a nice place to stay. The war in Straits of Malacca is not possible as it is just too long
It’s actually a great plan because demand is going to drop off a cliff soon anyways, so they’ll need massive cuts to production to stabilize the price. And now with all the chaos they can cut at will and blame on “whatever X” reason.
I think you might be right about this–a big demand drop is at hand. The self-organizing senses this, and finds a way to reduce the exported oil from the Middle East.
Some people want to cling to an outdated ideology because that is the only one they know and they do not want to change their paradigms
I cannot imagine that 20 million BPD (or worse yet 30 million BPD, if Yemen ramps up its attacks, as well) being taken off line, for any long period. Something would go wrong.
The rest of the world would object too much, in one way or another. The self-organizing system would fix the situation.
Already, Iran seems to be letting some oil through.
“The rest of the world would object too much, in one way or another. The self-organizing system would fix the situation.
Already, Iran seems to be letting some oil through.
Gail , the world can object . The ” orange man ” is nuts . Rationality is out of the door .
No Iran is not sending some oil thru . The daily going was 20 mpbd . Now under 5 mbpd and out of this 60% is Iranian oil .
And some is leaving in other directions. Saudi Arabia has a pipeline that they claim can more 70% of their production through. It lets production out in the Red Sea. And now Iraq is talking about sending some of its production through a pipeline north to Turkey.
Zerohedge is reporting:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/saudi-arabia-has-already-revived-more-half-its-oil-exports-hormuz-bypass
Saudi Arabia delivered some good news this morning, when it announced that it has already ramped up its oil exports to more than half of normal levels despite the disruptions from the Iran war, an early sign of success for the kingdom’s ambitious contingency plan to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, which as we reported two weeks ago involve bypassing the blockaded Strait of Hormuz via the East-West pipeline.
With Hormuz all but closed, Saudi Arabia has been rerouting oil through a 1,200 kilometer (746 mile) pipeline to the western port of Yanbu. At the same time, it’s quickly amassed a huge armada of tankers that have streamed toward the Red Sea to load the oil and are now piling up around the port.
The article cautions, however:
While the bounce in exports is welcome news, the risk remains that with every energy facility in the middle east now fair game for Iranian attacks, that a rocket or drone manages to take out the pipeline next, effectively stranding all Saudi exports for the foreseeable future.
And I amateurishly thought that all was about Jet A fuel shortages…
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-says-it-may-be-forced-shut-down-some-airports-over-funding-standoff-2026-03-17/
The Department of Homeland Security said overall absences among Transportation Security Administration airport security officers was 10.2% on Monday, close to the 10.1% who failed to show up for duty on Sunday.
But the absenteeism rate was much higher at some major airports on Monday including 30% at New York’s JFK, 37% at Atlanta, 35% at Houston Hobby and 39% at New Orleans, DHS said.
I see Atlanta has a real problem.
I agree that fuel shortages may be an issue, as well. My thought has been, fly now before things get really bad. But really bad may be closer at hand than I had thought.
Do you think there will b be flights by July?
I keep my fingers crossed. I booked a short trip for late April to visit my daughter and family, in the Boston area, as well as the trip to Bergen and Great Britain in late May.
I have been trying to beat the collapse in available flights. The longer the time, the fewer flights will be available. This will vary by area, however.
In the US, flights to small airports mostly disappeared quite a few years ago, but there has not been lot of information about this. Fifty years ago, it was possible to fly into small airports (like Hickory, NC or Waterloo, IA). It may also be possible today, but the prices are far higher than they were then. People are more likely to fly into bigger airports and drive the last miles.
https://no01.substack.com/p/everything-everywhere-all-at-once
Lots of good observations:
The generation that inflated every asset class for 40 years through automatic 401k contributions is, somewhere around now, flipping from net buyers to net sellers. Of course it’s impossible to say like “March, 17: boomers start to cash out their 401ks”… Nope, the tide just turns. The same passive machine that provided an inexorable, automatic bid for equities and bonds and real estate – every payday, every year, for four decades – begins to redeem. Quietly. Continuously. For the next twenty-some years. Every asset they inflated on the way up faces a headwind on the way out. Not a crash. A long, grinding, demographically-inevitable ratchet.
Also,
What the yuan-for-oil arrangement being implemented actually is, is an industrial policy dressed as currency diplomacy. You sell your oil into the permitted lane. You receive yuan. Now you’re sitting on yuan in a system with capital controls – you can’t just convert it and park it wherever you like. Your options are: buy Chinese goods, buy Chinese infrastructure contracts, invest in Chinese assets. That flow cycles straight back into Chinese factories and Chinese employment. China doesn’t have to stimulate its domestic consumption anymore. It exports the demand problem onto its trading partners and invoices it as a geopolitical arrangement. Three hundred million jobs – and unlike the US – no helicopter money required.
Those dollars that used to flow into Treasuries don’t just suddenly rush home. They just stop showing up at the next auction. Treasury needs to place roughly a trillion dollars every hundred days. Fewer buyers means higher yields. Higher yields mean the Fed is cornered. A cornered Fed means the printer runs. Same mechanism as demographics, same mechanism as the derivatives book, same direction.
Also,
But what does a draining [silver] vault have to do with your savings account?
More than most people think. The COMEX sets the global silver price. But if the COMEX increasingly doesn’t have the physical metal – and the run rate suggests it won’t for long – then the price it sets is a fiction. An unallocated silver account at your bank is a claim on that fiction. An ETF share is a claim on that fiction. When the fiction and the physical reality eventually converge, it won’t be because the paper comes up to meet the physical. It’ll be because the paper can no longer pretend.
Same mechanism as Dubai crude. Same mechanism as the derivatives book. Just a slower fuse.
When $68 trillion in US equity markets eventually moves – and it will – and the indiscriminate ETF selling hits everything, and the margin calls cascade through a derivatives book built on assumptions that no longer hold, and zombie companies start defaulting, and the boomer redemptions add their steady mechanical pressure, and 401k hardship withdrawals accelerate – the question of where capital goes becomes very concrete. Bonds? Already struggling to absorb a trillion per quarter. Cash? In which currency? Real estate? In a demographically challenged market with rising yields?
He says:
I’m buying the dips [gold and silver]. Have been. Will continue.
The idea that there will be no buyers of treasury debt is a little ill informed. The banks, can and will buy very bit of it. No matter how large it gets. And make a profit while doing it.
Banks have a dollar funding cost. What they pay for deposits. 2% or less in most cases. As little as 0.5 percent in some cases. They buy treasuries yielding 3-4% and pocket the difference. Pocketing 2-3% on trillions.
And the money comes from balance sheet expansion. No Federal Reserve required.
The higher yields go the more incentive there is for banks to buy the debt. Primary dealers are of course required by law to buy.
It goes further than that though. When you deposit money in a bank that bank is required by law to back you deposit with a dollar denominated asset. They buy treasury debt with your deposit. Usually short term debt.
The whole idea of no buyers is stupidity to be frank about it.
I am wondering what happens, however, as debt defaults start to skyrocket and many banks fail. Then we have fewer banks open, to buy the debt. If it is private credit with problems, it stops making new loans also. The remaining banks start making fewer loans, for fear that the new loans will fail to pay back well enough.
Admittedly, the Federal Government would like to bail out all banks and their depositors. They would also like to bail out pensions and the people depending on them. But, as a practical matter, it becomes difficult to do, in a world that starts producing fewer and fewer goods and services in total. Government can print money, but they cannot print resources.
From the following author: https://justdario.com/2026/03/the-incoming-shock-is-going-to-be-worse-than-the-covid-one/
If he is right, we’re in for massive trouble next week in the financial markets – unless Trump TACO’s again and Iranian leaders accept it. Brace for impact.
“(…) However, the nonstop message spread through social and mainstream media channels is “everything is fine,” “don’t worry, we’ve got it all under control,” “there is no need to panic.” Come on, let’s be serious. This is such an incredible mess, and the chances of a quick solution with normality being promptly reestablished are now objectively ZERO. Yet, financial markets are still cruising as if almost nothing happened. After a brief scare, stocks still remain near all-time highs. Oil, natural gas, and other commodity prices increased in the past two weeks, yes, but nowhere near the level where the bare laws of demand and supply equilibrium would dictate.
Isn’t what I just described already so eerily similar to the onset of the Covid crisis? Yes, but with one difference. The Covid crisis was an induced economic shutdown as a consequence of lockdowns, while this time around, the economy is facing a slowdown, if not a forced shutdown, in some of its most critical parts. The consequences of all I described aren’t yet visible to all those not living in the Middle East, especially with regard to oil, thanks to the release of SPRs and to the available amount of oil supply that was already sailing towards its destination after the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed. That amount of oil stock is going to be used up in about a week, according to the most reliable estimates. Afterwards, there will be a shortage of 10 million barrels of oil a day that cannot be compensated for with any other quick measure.
By the look of it, again similar to Covid, the market setup is bound to remain stable until the following OPEX since the economic shock triggered. The date this time is the 20th of March. Afterwards, we enter a very important week since the following one will be the end of the first quarter of the year, with a ton of window dressing at play. So far, investors have avoided shifting into a risk-off posture, paradoxically avoiding or even selling “safe haven” assets such as T-bills, cash, gold, or silver while relentlessly buying the dip in stocks, confident that, like last year and every time before, a quick solution for the benefit of preserving the biggest stock bubble in history could be found. What are the chances that the conflict with Iran ends by Friday? Virtually zero. As a consequence, it is logical to expect investors to start protecting their portfolios next week and prepare for the impact of a conflict, causing incredible damage to the global economy, to last longer than expected. Likely months, hopefully no longer than that, otherwise a repeat of the 1979 scenario with oil prices spiking 4 times in a few months, followed by a spike in gold, silver, and other commodity prices tied to strong inflation dynamics, becomes more and more probable.”
” ..should the markets tank severely, the after-wards (months-yrs) future wave of IPOs will be entering at severely discounted overall price levels.. ”
Obviously-seemingly another high-horse advice to majority of folks deep into various forms of debt (now entering such a horrible immediate reality), yet meant sincerely.
I think the timing of “Just Dario” is way too fast.
Back in late 2007, I could see that the economy was headed in a very bad direction. I wrote an article that went up on TheOilDrum.com in early 2008. Oil prices collapsed in July 2008, and Lehman Brothers collapse was in September 2008. Everything takes time.
I don’t think people are aware enough of what is going wrong to start a major shift in investments as soon as March 20. Investors don’t easily have a good different direction to go, elsewhere, for one thing. There is an awfully lot of investment today that is close to on “auto-pilot”, following a given index or some other approach.
Don’t you say…🤔
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSNDNtkqUtI
Largest US air base in ME is hit leaving 60 jets burning on the ground. Repair and fuel facilities destroyed.
Qatar LNG facilities are now open to destruction.
This is AI. We don’t know whether it is true or not.
print article saying same
https://voennoedelo.com/en/posts/id14124-iran-strike-disrupts-us-airbase-operations-in-qatar
Ed that article doesn’t say anything about 60 planes burning.
The moneyoverhistory AI channel on yootoob has disappeared without a trace. The videos I’ve watched have disappeared from my yootoob account history. Like reante comments at MOA and countless other places.There’s a moneyoverhistory2.0 now coming up but the videos are infrequent so I assume it is not the same entity behind it.
Paul Erdman, now mostly forgotten, wrote thrillers in the 1970s.
His perhaps most famous book was the Crash of ’79, written in 1977 when the Shah was still there. Tl, dr, the Shah launches a war against Middle East, and at the last page , as the Shah faced certain defeat, he launches cobalt bombs all over the oilfields, making the Middle East oilfields offline for the next century.
The book ends there; describing what would happen next was beyond his pay grade.
I think his prophesy might come true 49 years later.
Hegseth is dying to attack the Kharg island, where Iran’s oil export facilities are concentrated. One way or another it will become offline.
After that Iran’s rulers cannot earn any more revenue, so they will just attack whatever is remaining of the refining facilities in the Gulf.
So, one way or another, the gulf oil will become offline for the foreseeable future.
What would happen next? It was beyond Erdman’s pay grade, but I think that only the Core who can pay the higher prices will survive, and the rest returns to 1880s,
I am hoping the Maximum Power Principle will not let Middle East oil fall too quickly. Perhaps part of it will go off line at a time.
A bombshell resignation letter from Joe Kent who says that Iran posed NO imminent threat to the US and that Trump went to war with Iran because of Israel. He also said that the Media lied to the public to stoke the need to go to war on Israel’s behalf.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-appointed-nctc-director-joe-kent-resigns-protest-over-us-war-iran
and both CNN and ZH report it prominently. Th latter has become a thinly disguised MSM sewer.
Morse code y’all.
Joe Kent is Gabby’s right hand man. Green Beret. Wife killed by ISIS aka CIA proxy, in Syria. Nothing motivates aan more. I have said that the CIA is going down with the ship. Green Berets and Green Beret equivalents are always central to military coups.
Incoming!
Hand loves to telegraph and Inspector Morse is on the job.
You are right. It could be that Joe Kent has other plans. He no longer wants to follow the Trump direction. He could be involved with a coup.
Let’s state the bottom case though.
There are (always were) factions throughout various administrations and he was supposedly NOT briefed nor engaged on any Iran war planning or execution at all.
There are entire libraries with books and memoirs on this very topic, simply one group completely ignores or pushes aside another group within ~nominally “the same” administration. One would assume especially US based folks would understand this phenomenon well enough as it is less likely to proceed in such extensive fashion in other govs across RoW..
We’re all well aware of that Jr thank you. This time it’s different.
Kent was the trigger for the rollout of the coup narrative. Larry Wilkerson on Nima’s show already, and they jump right into talking about Gabbard.
https://www.youtube.com/live/bNFQ4a8JeE8
Boring video really after the opening on Gabbard.
I thought the video was interesting. Larry Wilkerson has a very low view of Trump. He says that if nuclear weapons were to be used by Israel against Iran, they would likely need about a dozen, suitable strategic locations. If they did that, it would open up the view that it is OK to use whatever nuclear weapons a country owns, wherever a country wants.
Thanks maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance, I’ve listened to a few of Larry’s interviews lately and was getting a bit bored after about 25mins and switched off. A dozen, boy.
Ruh roh reante. Gabbard comes out of hiding with a tweet today under her DNI account. Refers to Iran as a terrorist Islamist country, not a good look from the political dissident perspective, and she says Trump was elected to take responsibility for making military decisions based on Intel reports, and that that’s what he did. All of that is technically true if you count anti-imperial proxy forces killing civilians as terrorism, among other longstanding accusations.
If she’s secretly making war against the administration, she’s doing a good job of it, because the first art of war is deception. If she’s not, then goodbye reante. You live by the sword you die by the sword. Fun!
Glenn Greenwald was furious. (ZH has an article up on it.) The tweet:
“Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our President and Commander in Chief. As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions.
After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.”
Bibi: she is my b*tch. Good girl Tulsi. It is difficult to bet anything else in DC these days.
If you thought that my performative ‘self-doubt’ in that ruh roh comment was an opening for your political confirmation bias and misogyny, then you were mistaken. I was merely drumming up some theatrical tension. Fun. reante ain’t gonna be needing to go nowhere.
As I implied, Tulsi talking in her official capacity is not Tulsi talking in her personal capacity. That’s consummate professionalism; it exists in America every bit as much as your $4 espressos and frequent flyer miles, player.
In her hearings this morning, Tulsi was front and center, framed by two silverback generals in every shot of her. Get used to that look. Ratcliffe of the lowly CIA was off to the right, unframed. The hearing made very clear that the Intelligence Community and the military place all responsibility for King Lear’s decisions on King Lear himself. Because that’s the democratically-elected chain of command, as Tulsi reminded us in her tweet, and did so for a reason: Americans are going to have to beg for the Big Nuclear Scare to stop before democracy gets circumvented out of necessity.
This morning I saw some more of the future. The ZH article this morning on Russian operators evacuating the Bushehr NPP was accompanied by a map of the modeled fallout zone. The modeling couldn’t be more perfect. It flows southeasterly, straight over the Persian Gulf, across the straight, and out over the Gulf of Oman and across the Ocean. That prevailing pattern is not good for India but it couldn’t be more perfect for a do-nothing shutting down of ME production for some months without risking more upstream oil and gas destruction and minimizing fallout over the oil producing nations’ shorelines themselves. And it puts the world’s structural blame squarely on nuclear power. Zapporhyzia will probably pop off too and Dimona three. Because three is the magic number.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-evacuates-hundreds-its-specialists-irans-nuclear-bushehr-complex-after-missile
The latest update:
https://no01.substack.com/p/march-16-war-is-peace
An explanation of the latest fall in prices:
Treasury Secretary Bessent went on television Monday and announced that the United States is “allowing” Iranian oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. “The Iranian ships have been getting out already, and we’ve let that happen to supply the rest of the world”.
Iran has been controlling who enters and exits that waterway since day 5. Chinese tankers have sailed freely since day 1. . .
A Pakistani Aframax called the Karachi just carried Abu Dhabi crude through the Strait, paid for in yuan, on Iran’s terms, with Iran’s public thanks. The US didn’t allow anything. Iran allowed the Karachi. The US watched.
The markets didn’t care about the truth. Oil crashed 8% in 12 hours. WTI fell from $99 to $92. Brent dropped below $97. The machines read the headline, did what machines do, and moved the number. Problem solved.
War’s over. Bessent said so.
Also from the no01 link:
Pre-war Hormuz flow: 20 million barrels per day. Current: roughly 6.7 million. Iran exporting 1.2 million. UAE pushing 1 million through Fujairah. Saudi Arabia rerouting 4 million through Yanbu on the Red Sea. Everyone else – scraps.
This is a loss of 13.3 million barrels a day. In theory some additional oil can come through transport to a port at Fujairah, a port that is just South of the Straight of Hormuz. However, we read today:
Except Fujairah got hit. Again. Its pumping equipment was targeted. The port that was supposed to bypass the Strait is offline. The bypass needs a bypass now.
The WTI futures market appears to have concluded the Iran war ended yesterday while forgetting to inform the refined product market, which continues to tighten. And the real achievement of all this jawboning is a delay in the production response the world actually needs to offset the shortfall.
Later:
[Tweet from Newt Gingrich shown]
Newt Gingrich suggested solving the Hormuz problem with “12 thermonuclear explosions” to dig an alternative passage through “friendly territory”. Extra credits for creative use of nukes I’d give him that!
A huge invasion by Israel into Lebanon seems to be going very badly:
The ground invasion opened at breakfast. Peace feelers to Lebanese factions “open to engagement” went out at lunch. I don’t have to guess how things are devolving. Israel doesn’t “talk” unless it is an unmitigated disaster.
Regarding Israel’s largest airport:
Wave 55 of True Promise 4 landed with 357 alerts in a single salvo. Submunitions struck Lod and Shoham – essentially all impacts clustered around Ben Gurion Airport. The airport has been closed for 16 days. Economic starvation I’d assume.
The Israeli government now seems to be posting old videos of Netanyahu, claiming that he is now alive. Not a good sign!
Still absent from security briefings, definitely a red herring. Still absent from the military council, Netanyahu missing his favourite land-grab report? Impossible. . .
Ibrahim Karagul – Yeni Safak columnist and adviser to Erdogan – went further than anyone has in print: “If his death is real, the collapse of Israel has begun. This racial state can no longer survive in these lands. No country, including the US, will carry such a burden anymore”.
Also:
The US is evacuating 10,000 citizens from Israel. Yup, everything’s going swimmingly..
Later:
Dubai International Airport took a drone strike on the fuel depot. Fire at Terminal 3. British Airways, Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, Air France, KLM, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Finnair, Virgin Atlantic – all suspended Dubai flights. Emirates rerouted. The busiest international airport in the world, and every non-Emirati carrier pulled out in 1 morning.
Things aren’t going so well in the Far East:
China sent 26 military aircraft around Taiwan the same day, 16 entering the air defence identification zone, with 7 naval vessels.
Same day the Marines deployed to the Gulf.
China sent 26 military aircraft around Taiwan the same day, 16 entering the air defence identification zone, with 7 naval vessels.
Same day the Marines deployed to the Gulf.
Also:
Fertiliser prices hit their highest since October 2022. Up 35% year-on-year. A third of global fertiliser supply passes through Hormuz. Food price inflation is now baked in regardless of whether the war ends tomorrow.
Metals are not going well:
2,056 gold delivery notices hit COMEX on Friday. Morgan Stanley issued 464. RBC issued 891. On the silver side, Citigroup’s own house account issued 802 delivery notices – Citi is the short being forced to deliver physical metal. Possibly the last bullion bank standing on that side of the trade.
The London Metal Exchange suspended trading in key contracts. Again. Confidence in the metals markets is collapsing faster than the metals themselves.
This is the last of these day-by-day reports that will be made by this author. He offers three choices of what he will do next to commenters. He wants to go back to reporting about commodity markets and somehow automate this report. It will be much lower quality, however, if automation is tried.
https://www.france24.com/en/social-media-abuzz-with-viral-rumours-of-benjamin-netanyahu-s-death
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Let’s be real the “K.I.A.” scenario would have turned off Tehran’s grid or water system already. More reasonably, if you look at recent pic/vids that person evidently shows some [ signs of general frailty ] medical (pre-)condition. Most likely some kind of chemo, in/out of some other metabolic or cardiac related procedure taking place etc.
That would also turn off the Tel Aviv grid. I doubt that many feel a need to avenge Bibi. He was due in court after all.
Nothing to see here, Jr, just “a shadow in the crease of the hand.”
Bibi was just a Shadow in the crease of the Hand.
Everything’s going to be ok, friend.
Update, he met w. US Ambassador, both in suits, only he wore some kind of VERY specifically chosen un-obnoxious dark sneakers (Solomon?).
So, another case solved w. 99.9% probability. Given the frailty mentioned above, ask around if you have doc/nurses in the family. Basically, suggestions to flip fancy suit shoes for sneakers means medical condition to release pressure/pain. He is not a liquids-swallowed up guy, so likely some kind of blood pressure-cardiac, aneurysm in brain related, perhaps occasional neuro-pain in extremities etc.
Hence nothing burger vs other suggestions earlier.
Watch Huckabee’s hairline jump back a couple inches between :06 and:10 (h/t someone in the comments)
https://youtu.be/6CqZTuyoFU0
Could the Hand be going meta- on it and straight up playing games, or just temporarily playing games while Bibi’s injured? Sure.
What’s most likely? Seems to me that the missile strike probably happened so the Hand’s probably not going straight up meta- game playing.
One thing I do know is that your continuing MSM analysis of the Big Nuclear Scare is compromising your analytical reputation.
Fair enough, but clearly I devoted the least effort to this fake/un-fake melodrama of past few weeks of said “disappearance” in comparison to other seasoned commenters..
Simply, my brain triggered from the visuals (and past experience):
here kitty just another frailty aged person right there..
My aim was simply to cut that silly debate for ever (yes futile).
Bibi’s status is a fairly consequential drama and I’m a little disappointed to see him go so soon but the AI detour is pretty ”Collapse getting trippy” fun. Hilarious that Huckabee got roped into it.