Harris & Ewing Young boy with bucket and pole on the Potomac Jun 1929 A lot of people will be paying attention today to the open letter published in his own paper by Gabor Steingart, the publisher of Germany’s leading financial newspaper Handelsblatt. And it’s admittedly not an everyday occurrence when a man like Steingart writes a letter like that. But the content is not that big a deal. He doesn’t call out any lies. Mind you, the Handelsblatt is
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Dorothea Lange Family of 4 from Taos Junction, resettled at Bosque Farms, NM Dec 1935 The Nikkei lost 2.98% overnight, European exchanges continue their fall, hundreds of trucks carrying European produce are turned back at the Russian border, and high yield bond funds saw record high outflows in the past week. And in that world, China reports it highest trade balance surplus ever, a ‘fact’ that’s duly parroted by ‘news’ services around the globe. Meanwhile, the WHO declares the Ebola
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Jack Delano Men outside beer parlor in Jewett City, Connecticut. Nov 1940 What did I call yesterday’s article again? Oh, that’s right, I called it Europe’s Tumbling, Who’s To Blame?. Well, I’m not a seer, or clairvoyant, but I might as well have used that exact same title again today. Because the same theme plays out again. In an piece initially called Europe’s Recovery Menaced by Putin as Ukraine Crisis Bites, later renamed Draghi Outlook Menaced by Putin as Ukraine
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Natl Photo Mailman with “The Flying Merkel” motorcycle 1915 I don’t want to make it a habit to talk about other people’s writing, I don’t find that terribly interesting, but after yesterday’s In The Lie Of The Beholder, please forgive me for doing one more. This morning, two reports came out of Europe that look pretty bad. Germany’s June manufacturing data fell 3.2% month-on-month (4.1% on exports), and Italy fell back into a recession. So you would think that finance
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Jack Delano Thirst Stops Here: Durham, North Carolina May 1940 I should maybe start off by saying that we’ve seen so many blatant lies lately we might want to be careful what we label a ‘lie’ and what not. I want to point out a bunch of things that are perhaps more misinterpretations, or just different interpretations, than blatant lies. But the difference between the two is often paper thin and slippery. I just simply noticed a few issues on
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Russell Lee Magazines for sale in Taylor, Texas Oct 1939 The Automatic Earth’s Nicole Foss did an interview with national Australian radio channel ABC, which aired earlier today. I don’t know why ABC doesn’t simply have an embedded MP3 available (the Listen Now button had my Mac look for RealPlayer, which I’m pretty sure it must have left behind in the last century), but I would go for the download option if I were you, which gives you an MP3
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Jack Delano Migratory farm worker from Florida in her Sunday clothes July 1940 I know I’ve talked about it more than once lately, but at least for now I don’t think it can be said enough. The world energy situation is much worse than you have been, and are being, led to believe. Even if you do understand the principle that underlies peak oil (by no means a given). I’ve also repeatedly made the point that the real energy predicament
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Harris & Ewing The Fall of Washington: Smokestacks on the Mall Sep 17 1935 And now for something completely different. Occasionally, I go through analytical stats for The Automatic Earth, to see who links to us. A few days ago, there were a bunch of links to my July 27 article US and EU Lose Major Energy Battle in Ukraine (I find it hard to believe nobody else has jumped on the ‘heart’ of that article: the Ukraine parliament voting
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DPC Majestic Building from Detroit Opera House 1909 Oil prices are dropping as Exxon announces a -5.7% plunge in output. And as Shell, as I said yesterday, can think of nothing better to do with its remaining funds than to spend it on share buybacks and dividends. Perhaps shareholders should take the money and run. Because what sort of future can they expect for a company that acts like that? Western oil companies have tens of billions invested in Russian
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