Category Archives: Financial Implications

A lack of very cheap oil is leading to debt problems

The economy needs a strong middle class to maintain the buying power needed to purchase goods such as vehicles, motorcycles, and new homes, to keep the price of oil up. Prices must be both high enough for producers and low enough for consumers. Continue reading

Posted in Financial Implications, Introductory Post, PDFs Available | Tagged , , , , | 1,521 Comments

What has gone wrong with the economy? Can it be fixed?

I don’t believe that the situation is hopeless. At the end, I discuss where we are now, relative to historical patterns, and some reasons to be optimistic about the future. Continue reading

Posted in Energy policy, Financial Implications, oil shortages | Tagged , , , | 1,621 Comments

Why oil prices don’t rise to consistently high levels

The supply and demand model of economists suggests that oil prices might rise to consistently high levels, but this has not happened yet: In my view, the economists’ model of supply and demand is overly simple; its usefulness is limited … Continue reading

Posted in Energy policy, Financial Implications | Tagged , , | 1,589 Comments

Worrying indications in recently updated world energy data

The Energy Institute recently published its updated energy report, the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy, showing data through the year 2024. In this post, I identify trends in the new data that I consider worrying. These trends help explain the strange behaviors that we have been seeing from governments recently. Continue reading

Posted in Alternatives to Oil, Energy policy, Financial Implications | Tagged , , | 1,300 Comments

What should individuals do in a world filled with conflict?

Regardless of how things play out, it is the physics of the self-organizing system that determines what happens next. No matter how offended we as individuals may feel regarding what some political party or politician has done or has not done, individuals are not able to fix the system, except to the extent that available inexpensive energy supply allows such a fix. Continue reading

Posted in Financial Implications, News Related Post, Planning for the Future | Tagged , , | 1,547 Comments