gurusid
Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
gurusidParticipant
In reply to Alan:
Sorry, Sid, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
Yes, of course solar PV is a small percentage of the renewable total. It always is, except maybe on the equator.
I concur!
Predictably, the conservative/reactionary forces, along with the oil and nuclear industries, oppose the move to renewables, while more enlightened minds wish to see humanity move forward.
Clearly, Neubacher represents the conservatives, and perhaps is even employed by some sort of right-wing political action group, charged with grinding out anti-renewables and anti-solar screeds.
All articles purporting to expose the “failure” of Germany’s renewables program should be held in high suspicion until VERY carefully vetted and proven to be from a non-reptilian source. Or to put it more plainly: such articles are very likely to be packs of lies.
VERY carefully vetted and proven to be from a non-reptilian source Huh?
I’m sorry? I didn’t know you were an Ickian…?
At least we can agree on some things:
There are really no energy or resource problems. Only human and political problems.
… the only problems are human. The fact that we use so much energy (being human) is the problem. The fact that energy itself has become a political football obscuring the real problems which I mention above, along with peoples (humans) refusal for what ever reason to discuss them. Again, if solar was such a great bet for grid connectivity, then why with panel costs going throught the floor and a current glut of panels on the market is it not being adopted? Nothing to do with the fact that panel costs still have to fall:
From NYT (owned by lizards?):
the fact is that fossil fuels are also subsidized, as this article points out:
The Truth About Solar Energy
by Rosana Francescato at the the energy collective (definitely no lizards)
Posted March 26, 2013Coal also gets more subsidies than renewables. It can be hard to calculate the actual amounts coal and other fossil fuels benefit from when you consider all the tax credits, tax breaks, and indirect subsidies — not to mention externalities. When you add those, a 2011 Harvard study estimated the real cost of U.S. coal subsidies at $345 billion up to that time.
The U.S. trend is mirrored globally: in 2008, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, fossil fuels received $557 billion in global subsidies, compared to $43 billion for renewable energy.
And if solar got the same treatment? Keeping in mind that One Block Off the Grid created this graphic in 2010 and by now more of the U.S. can support solar without subsidies, this is still a nice illustration of what we’d be looking at:So why are we even asking if solar can thrive without subsidies? The fossil-fuel industry has been around for a long time and is still benefiting from that help. The newer renewables industries should be getting more of a boost, shouldn’t they? Whatever your opinion on that, they’re not. In fact, during the first 15 years of subsidies for the respective industries, oil and gas subsidies represented half a percent of the federal budget, about $1.8 billion a year, and all renewables only about a tenth of a percent, or $0.5 billion.
However she argues the greater fossil fuel subsidy from a historical perspective note the dates. Also the fact that nuclear power plants wre ‘factories’ for nuclear weapons material adn so the ‘subsidy’ could be said to be for more than energy.
But given that renewables currently contibuted 13.2% in the US in 2012 while receiving $0.5 billion in subsidy that works out at 21.7% of the fed total energy subsidy proves the ‘big renewables subsidy’ argument (excluding other externalities which aren’t that great for PV manufacture either), especially when about half of the renewable energy (60.2% in 2010) came from Hydro, most of which is established plant and not new build).
But as this post from the same website points out, the economics of grid tied solar do not add up (he quotes the Neubacher article so maybe he’s a lizard infiltrator):
Germany and the Solar Energy Revolution
Michael Lind, Posted March 10, 2013.Until now, Merkel had consistently touted the environmental sector’s “opportunities for exports, development, technology and jobs.” But now even members of her own staff are calling it a massive money pit.
New numbers issued by the pro-industry Rhine-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research (RWI) will only add fuel to the fire. The experts calculated the additional costs to consumers after more solar systems were connected to the grid than in any other previous month in December. Under Germany’s Renewable Energy Law, each new system qualifies for 20 years of subsidies. A mountain of future payment obligations is beginning to take shape in front of consumers’ eyes….
The RWI also expects the green energy surcharge on electricity bills to go up again soon. It is currently 3.59 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, a number the German government had actually pledged to cap at 3.5 cents. But because of the most recent developments, RWI expert Frondel predicts that the surcharge will soon increase to 4.7 cents per kilowatt hour. For the average family, this would amount to an additional charge of about €200 a year, in addition to the actual cost of electricity. Solar energy has the potential to become the most expensive mistake in German environmental policy.As of this writing, the euro:dollar exchange rate is 1:1.30. So if Frondel’s estimates are correct, German households would be paying more than $230 dollars extra a year in electricity bills to subsidize corporate solar power providers, who, like too-big-to-fail banks, would keep the profits while socializing the costs.
Another utopia turns out to have been a mirage. But true believers in a short-term, painless transition to a world run mostly by renewable energy will not be discouraged. No doubt Germany, the supposed center of the world solar power revolution, will soon be replaced by some other supposed national demonstration project for renewable energy—Brazil and biomass, maybe, or Britain and wind?IMHO this is how the Realpolitik will play out, regardless of left/right/lizard ideologies – you just cannot change the existing system. This is why I said, and say again if your going to go for solar (or for that matter wind or hydro), go for a standalone home based system with storage, BUT first reduce your electrical energy requirements to the absolute minimum as future grid reliability will get worse not better, exactly as Stoneleigh has said here and above in this very article.
Besides, for most right wing libertarians, surely your own ‘non public’ electricity supply (like private cars vs. public transport) should be right up their street; so why are they not arguing for it right now with panels as cheap as chips?
Idealism aside and above all else we need to reduce, by at least a factor of ten if not more, then as I think you point out Alan, renewables might stand a chance, albeit with sparing use of fossil fuels to build and implement them. Learn to live lightly upon the earth…
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantIn reply to Alan:
Sorry, Sid, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
Yes, of course solar PV is a small percentage of the renewable total. It always is, except maybe on the equator.
I concur!
Predictably, the conservative/reactionary forces, along with the oil and nuclear industries, oppose the move to renewables, while more enlightened minds wish to see humanity move forward.
Clearly, Neubacher represents the conservatives, and perhaps is even employed by some sort of right-wing political action group, charged with grinding out anti-renewables and anti-solar screeds.
All articles purporting to expose the “failure” of Germany’s renewables program should be held in high suspicion until VERY carefully vetted and proven to be from a non-reptilian source. Or to put it more plainly: such articles are very likely to be packs of lies.
VERY carefully vetted and proven to be from a non-reptilian source Huh?
I’m sorry? I didn’t know you were an Ickian…?
At least we can agree on some things:
There are really no energy or resource problems. Only human and political problems.
… the only problems are human. The fact that we use so much energy (being human) is the problem. The fact that energy itself has become a political football obscuring the real problems which I mention above, along with peoples (humans) refusal for what ever reason to discuss them. Again, if solar was such a great bet for grid connectivity, then why with panel costs going throught the floor and a current glut of panels on the market is it not being adopted? Nothing to do with the fact that panel costs still have to fall:
From NYT (owned by lizards?):
the fact is that fossil fuels are also subsidized, as this article points out:
The Truth About Solar Energy
Like it?
by Rosana Francescato at the the energy collective (definitely no lizards)
Posted March 26, 2013Coal also gets more subsidies than renewables. It can be hard to calculate the actual amounts coal and other fossil fuels benefit from when you consider all the tax credits, tax breaks, and indirect subsidies — not to mention externalities. When you add those, a 2011 Harvard study estimated the real cost of U.S. coal subsidies at $345 billion up to that time.
The U.S. trend is mirrored globally: in 2008, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, fossil fuels received $557 billion in global subsidies, compared to $43 billion for renewable energy.
And if solar got the same treatment? Keeping in mind that One Block Off the Grid created this graphic in 2010 and by now more of the U.S. can support solar without subsidies, this is still a nice illustration of what we’d be looking at:So why are we even asking if solar can thrive without subsidies? The fossil-fuel industry has been around for a long time and is still benefiting from that help. The newer renewables industries should be getting more of a boost, shouldn’t they? Whatever your opinion on that, they’re not. In fact, during the first 15 years of subsidies for the respective industries, oil and gas subsidies represented half a percent of the federal budget, about $1.8 billion a year, and all renewables only about a tenth of a percent, or $0.5 billion.
However, given that renewables contibuted 13.2% in the US in 2012 the $0.5 billion is 21.7% of the federal energy subsidy and so proves the ‘big subsidy’ argument, especially when about half (60.2% in 2010) came from Hydro, most of which is established plant and not new build)
But as this post from the same website points out, the economics of grid tied solar do not add up (he quotes the Neubacher article so maybe he’s a lizard infiltrator):
Germany and the Solar Energy Revolution
Michael Lind, Posted March 10, 2013.IMHO this is how the Realpolitik will play out, regardless of left/right/lizard ideaologies – you just cannot change the existing system. This is why I said, and say again if your going to go for solar (or for that matter wind or hydro), go for a standalone home based system with storage, BUT first reduce your electrical energy requirements to the absolute minimum as future grid reliability will get worse not better, exactly as Stoneleigh has said [url=https://www.theautomaticearth.com/Energy/india-power-outage-the-shape-of-things-to-come.html]here[/url and above in this very article.
Besides, for most right wing libertarians, surely your own ‘non public’ electricity supply (like private cars vs. public transport) should be right up their street; so why are they not arguing for it right now with panels as cheap as chips?
Idealism aside and above all else we need to reduce, by at least a factor of ten if not more, then as I think you point out Alan, renewables might stand a chance, albeit with sparing use of fossil fuels to build and implement them. Learn to live lightly upon the earth…L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Illarghi,
Ha! I was just about to add this when I saw your reply:
Alexander Neubacher of Der Spiegel
Solar Subsidy Sinkhole: Re-Evaluating Germany’s Blind Faith in the Sun
…The only thing that’s missing at the moment is sunshine. For weeks now, the 1.1 million solar power systems in Germany have generated almost no electricity. The days are short, the weather is bad and the sky is overcast.
As is so often the case in winter, all solar panels more or less stopped generating electricity at the same time. To avert power shortages, Germany currently has to import large amounts of electricity generated at nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. To offset the temporary loss of solar power, grid operator Tennet resorted to an emergency backup plan, powering up an old oil-fired plant in the Austrian city of Graz.
Solar energy has gone from being the great white hope, to an impediment, to a reliable energy supply. Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels on their roofs collected more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but the electricity they generated made up only about 3 percent of the total power supply, and that at unpredictable times.
(bold added)
And from Frank Dohmen and Alexander Jung also at the Spiegel:
Stress on the High Seas: Germany’s Wind Power Revolution in the DoldrumsThe generation of electricity from wind is usually a completely odorless affair. After all, the avoidance of emissions is one of the unique charms of this particular energy source.
But when work is completed on the Nordsee Ost wind farm, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of the island of Helgoland in the North Sea, the sea air will be filled with a strong smell of fumes: diesel fumes.
The reason is as simple as it is surprising. The wind farm operator, German utility RWE, has to keep the sensitive equipment — the drives, hubs and rotor blades — in constant motion, and for now that requires diesel-powered generators. Because although the wind farm will soon be ready to generate electricity, it won’t be able to start doing so because of a lack of infrastructure to transport the electricity to the mainland and feed it into the grid. The necessary connections and cabling won’t be ready on time and the delay could last up to a year.
In other words, before Germany can launch itself into the renewable energy era Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen so frequently hails, the country must first burn massive amounts of fossil fuels out in the middle of the North Sea — a paradox as the country embarks on its energy revolution.
One of the central projects of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition government, the scrapping of atomic energy and the switch to renewable energy, has hit a major obstacle. Nine months after the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, Berlin’s multi-billion-euro project is facing increasing difficulties. And the expansion of the country’s offshore wind farms in particular, which Minister Röttgen considers of paramount importance, is constantly beset by new problems.
Problems of which the biggest is the unpredictability; ‘grid’ tied systems must match the voltage and frequency of that system, which itself must keep up that voltage and frequency depending upon demand, which is a miraculous technical feat never talked of in its own right. Wiki does a good job in describing it here). Its a bit like getting a very large orchestra to all play in tune at the right time – anyone goes out of tune and you could crash the whole band! This is difficult enough with predictable on-demand (it delivers when asked) power stations such as fossil fuel, nuclear and hydro plants, but becomes very difficult with unpredictable (oops there’s cloud/wind gust) solar/wind plants. They only currently work exactly because they are a relatively small component of the overall generating capacity mix compared with the grid supply as a whole, meaning that they can be accommodated within current margins of normal grid power fluctuations. Make them a much larger part of the supply mix and you will have serious problems keeping everything singing form the same song sheet let alone in tune.
The reason that the absence of nuclear has made such a difference to the stability mentioned in the original article that Alan referenced, was because of its size, most nukes are ‘old’ plants, and I guess fail pretty regularly, for example as does Sizewell ‘B’ in the UK with over 2% of grid supply. But at least when that fails it is a complete failure and not a half failure or a sudden drop to half capacity or 3/4 or 4/5 or what ever the weather decides to do at that moment. Predictable unpredictable failure is well predictable; non-predictable unpredictable failure is unworkable. What are you going do? Have a 100% back up supply for the long winter nights without any wind?
That’s why I said they are great for stand alone supply, where voltage and frequency fluctuations are less critical and you have (hopefully) adequate local storage capacity to cover ‘brown outs’ and non-generating hours (black outs).
At the end of the day, it is going to be a case of understanding the problem of using less (a lot less) and not generating more that needs to be addressed.
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Alan,
Here’s another dose of renewable energy reality — an interesting story about Germany’s energy transition. Interesting for several reasons — among them, the fact that high-latitude Germany was not supposed to be able to benefit so much from solar. Another, that the U.S. is so ignorant of what is going on over there; see the section on “Propaganda and energy illiteracy”. Methinks the fossil fuel propagandists over here have done their job well.
Oh really? You think?
Share of Primary energy consumption % (Germany) for 2011:
Hydro = 0.5
Wind = 1.3
Photovoltaics = 0.5
Biomass = 7.6Total all renewables (including others such as solarthermal & geothermal) = 11%
(I know startling facts eh? I had to dig into those figures to double check but that is how ‘small’ PV is, as a total of all energy consumed, its a bit more if you take it as a percentage of energy produced in Germany, as they import roughly half of their energy requirements according to the data, and if you then boosted it further by taking it as a percentage of electricity – which is an energy ‘carrier’ you can get close to the nuclear contribution for all renewables, but certainly not PV on its own)That source is here, table 6 the same source used by the article that you posted that states:
Talk about propaganda… :dry:
Maybe they ought to buy up some of the glut of Chinese panels but they had better watch out for the ‘defective’ ones failing after two years instead of twenty five… :ohmy:
I’m not against PV if used as a standalone system with battery (large submarine type) storage, but grid tied systems just don’t work – especially at night at about 6pm in winter. 😆
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Looks like it might be too late:
“In the wake of news that a strain developed by biotech giant Monsanto Co (MON.N) had been found in an Oregon field late last month, major buyer Japan cancelled plans to buy U.S. wheat while the Europe Union said it would step up testing. Worried U.S. farmers wondered if their own fields had been contaminated.
Even after weeks of investigation, experts are baffled as to how the seed survived for years after Monsanto had ceased all field tests of the product. It was found in a field growing a different type of wheat than Monsanto’s strain, far from areas used for field tests, according to an Oregon State University wheat researcher who tested the strain.
Nine Department of Agriculture investigators are now on the ground in and around Oregon, collecting evidence including witness statements, records and samples, USDA spokesman Ed Curlett said. There is no timeline for concluding the enquiry, said wheat industry sources who were briefed on Wednesday.
“We have increased the number of investigators throughout this month to work quickly and carefully to cover as much ground each day to determine what we are dealing with, how it got there, and where it might have gone,” Curlett said.
The USDA said the GM wheat found in Oregon posed no threat to human health, and also said there was no evidence that the grain had entered the commercial supply chain.
But the discovery threatens to stoke consumer outcry over the possible risk of cross-contaminating natural products with genetically altered foods, and may embolden critics who say U.S. regulation of GMO products is lax.
It is all the more alarming because the wheat strain was thought to have been eliminated after test trials ended in 2005, as Monsanto abandoned efforts to secure regulatory approval due to worldwide opposition. While there have been more than 20 majors violations of U.S. regulations on handling or co-mingling biotechnology crops, none have ever involved wheat before.
…
…Bob Zemetra, the Oregon State researcher, said a local farmer contacted the university in late April after noticing that some wheat plants survived an application of herbicide that was being used to kill off unwanted plants in the fallow field.Most plants died, but a few wheat plants unexpectedly emerged after the spraying. Researchers determined the wheat is a strain of Roundup-Ready tested by Monsanto in Oregon fields from 1999 to 2001.
etc.
While a few countries still reserve the right no to have this stuff foisted upon them, thanks to the all pervasive lobbyists of these companies, it won’t be long before approval is ushered in via the back door, especially if world hunger ramps up, something that they claim they can cure and which has been a favourite [strike]lie[/strike] argument put forward in favour of these ‘technologies’…
Update:
Monsanto Sued on Behalf of Farmers Over Modified Wheat
By Karen Gullo – Jun 7, 2013 5:38 PM GMT
“Monsanto Co. (MON), the world’s largest seed company, was sued by an environmental group and a Washington farm over claims it failed to take steps to prevent genetically altered wheat from contaminating regular wheat. “etc.
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHI Illarghi,
When Abe – and the rest of the world – find out that the Bank of Japan does not really set interest rates, which happens when those rates rise beyond what bank and government want, the cost to Japan of servicing its debt can quickly grow beyond its grasp. Even before Abenomics that debt was second to none in the developed world; if and when JGB yields rise and values plummet, the squeeze can have only a further deflationary influence on the economy (and suffocate the government). The recent rise from 0.32% to nearly 1% in 10-year JGB is merely a first sign on the wall (and is temporarily manageable because rates are extremely low). Another near tripling could see that same wall crumble to pieces. Even a doubling would shake its very foundations.
Even if they get what they want – interest rates at a paltry 2.2% will take away all gov’t income:
From Things That Make You Go Hmmm… article on “Bizarro World” where everything is backwards:
Must be the Esenapaj government version of Ukuppes… :dry:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Its all been tried before anyway, as Mizuho’s Securities chief economist simply explains.
He states they need 6% pay rises – average forecasts are for 1.8-1.9% – i.e. to get real money into the hands of people so they can spend it. Instead as energy prices rise as the Yen falls, people will end up paying more for energy and a whole load of other things, thus having the exact opposite effect on the real economy by drawing even more money out of the discretionary spend and into the essential only – if they can even afford those items, thus actually increasing deflation. Thus in the short term people will end up putting what little cash they have left into the energy price increase due to currency devaluation. Way to go Abe! :woohoo:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantFor the PIIGSC or SICPIG, what country is the ‘C’?
China, Cyprus, ?Cyprus = 77.5 % of GDP, China = 16.1% of GDP (percent total public debt). China has other problems…
Besides, I don’t think China is in the EU (well it wasn’t last time I looked but who knows eh?), more likely to be in NAFTA. 😆
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
This at ZH reminds me of an old advert for an airline where the hostess asks if the boarding passenger would like smoking or non-smoking; flying to the EU will now entail a request for ‘performing or non-performing?’:
It is not surprising that the periphery is exhibiting a rising pattern in terms of NPL ratios. What is worrying is the speed of increase, at 2.5% per year. Within the periphery, Greece is the outlier with a NPL ratio of 25%, and no signs of abating yet. Ireland follows with a NPL ratio of 19%. Italy (at 13.4%) is above Spain and Portugal (at close to 10%)…
The German divergence is making the task of the ECB very difficult both in terms of setting monetary policy for the whole region, but also in terms of dealing with an impaired transmission outside Germany. Draghi clarified in its latest press conference that it is not the ECB’s role to clean up banks’ balance sheets, meaning that the ECB is unlikely to deal itself with the €500bn large non-performing loan problem in periphery.
Two Tier Euro here we go… :ohmy:
Though when the rest of the worlds debt also starts to ‘non-perform’ what choices will there be then?
Check here for The Economist’s World debt comparison – The global debt clock especially the ‘public debt as % of GDP’. :unsure:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Whip-flation anyone? It looks like the ‘deflation’ might be rapid and brutal followed by a sudden inflation as governments panic and do all sorts of silly things causing people to suffer the equivalent of “financial” whiplash:
Will It Be Inflation Or Deflation? The Answer May Surprise You
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/23/2013 22:33 -0400
From: Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
“The next major financial panic will cause a substantial deflationary wave first, and after that we will see unprecedented inflation as the central bankers and our politicians respond to the financial crisis. This will happen so quickly that many will get “financial whiplash” as they try to figure out what to do with their money. We are moving toward a time of extreme financial instability, and different strategies will be called for at different times.
…
…Right now, we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world. When a debt bubble bursts, fear and panic typically cause the flow of money and the flow of credit to really tighten up. We saw that happen at the beginning of the Great Depression of the 1930s, we saw that happen back in 2008, and we will see it happen again. Deleveraging is deflationary by nature, and it can cause economic activity to grind to a standstill very rapidly.During the next major wave of the economic collapse, there will be times when it will seem like hardly anyone has any money. The “easy credit” of the past will be long gone, and large numbers of individuals and small businesses will find it very difficult to get loans.
When the debt bubble bursts, cash will be king – at least for a short period of time. Those that do not have any savings at all will really be hurting.
And some of the financial elite seem to be positioning themselves for what is coming. For example, even though he has been making public statements about how great stocks are right now, the truth is that Warren Buffett is currently sitting on $49 billion in cash. That is the most that he has ever had sitting in cash.
Does he know something?
Of course there will be a tremendous amount of pressure on the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve to do something once a financial crash happens. The response by the federal government and the Federal Reserve will likely be extremely inflationary as they try to resuscitate the system. It will probably be far more dramatic than anything we have seen so far.
So cash will not be king for long. In fact, eventually cash will be trash. The actions of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve in response to the coming financial crisis will greatly upset much of the rest of the world and cause the death of the U.S. dollar.”
etc.
That is of course assuming that anything resembling politicians and central bankers actually survives the ‘crash’. Here is how a previous ‘problem’ was resolved… and we all know how well that went. :dry:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Ted,
It might be Japan that goes down first – Abenomics seems to be causing some of the darker swans to take flight… As Stoneleigh has pointed out earlier this year, things are starting to happen. I might add that when they do happen they are likely to happen very fast, literally in the blink of an eye as the phenomenon of flash crashes proves. :blink:
The can kicking has been more like the can-can in that it has provided an entertaining distraction, where as the reality is all the more dire for it.
As for people freezing, I think they are going to be doing that both psychologically and physically. Those that take the view of “you can have too much information” (that’s what a respectable business man said at a meeting the other evening) and those still banking on techno-saviorism like solar panels (a proposal for a ‘sustainable’ local power generation project) to provide ‘growth’ and or some semblance of a sustainable/utopian BAU are in for a big shock, and are as much the problem as anything else. Like the Rapa Nui, all they want to do is to continue carving big giant heads. :dry:
Return of the Big Giant Head – again
Reality is looking more and more like some cult sci-fi sit com… 😆L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
It all started with the ‘unification’ of of the coal and steel industries primarily of Germany and France, but then also as the nukes came on the scene it was seen as a way to develop Europe’s nuclear resources peacefully – and also of course to form a united ‘barrier’ against the soviet union – (but we don’t talk about that). Given that coal and steel have been ‘off-shored’, the soviet union has gone and Germany has disowned its nukes (like to see France try that!) just what is there to devolve to? Given that the wealthy landowning elite who run the show are creaming off vast sums (€50 billion) through the common agricultural policy (which Cameron has opposed the capping of) things are unlikely to change.
Not to mention the rising population:
With zero growth on the horizon for [strike]ever[/strike] the near future what is there going to be for them to do?As for the SICPIG good luck to them – is that bacon I smell cooking? :sick:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Of course the 2Widely Visisble Symbols (and ‘symptoms’) of Human Folly” are everywhere:
Submitted by Chris Martenson @ ZeroHedge:
An even more honest statement would continue by noting that such periods of irrational exuberance are quite often found during bubbles, and that bubbles have a bad habit of destroying wealth.
As is common in life, such justifications merely expose the ‘human factor’ of bubbles. Bubbles require a belief system to be installed in the beholder, and two things that beliefs are exceptionally good at are gathering supporting data and rejecting contradictory data (if such data is even seen in the first place).
The human mind does this all the time with respect to our own level of ability, our luck, our good looks, our children’s performance – you name it – this is just part of our innate mental programming.
The really odd part in this story is that once upon a time, bubbles were separated by a generation or more, so that the lessons (and pain) of the prior one could be culturally forgotten before the next one could take hold. Yet here we are, working on our third bubble in a row – larger than the prior two that just happened within the past 15 years. (Of course, with a wide enough lens, we might say that each bubble was just a subset of the largest credit bubble in all of history that began building some 40 years ago).
For some reason, we are forgetting the lessons of the past faster than ever before. Such willful ignorance invites a series of reality-based reversions more punishing than ever before, too.
“Such willful ignorance invites a series of reality-based reversions more punishing than ever before”. Of all the traits that humans posses this is perhaps one of the most curious and the most deadly, that we can be so willfully ignorant. Its a good job nature is forgiving, radioactivity is after all natural, its the concentrations that are problematic, but even that is not unusual in nature. The natural deposits of uranium that are mined were formed by erosion and natural concentration, (uranium is 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more abundant than gold) and naturally occurring radiation from this element is found all over the world from granite in rocks and buildings to more concentrated sedimentary rocks, and in some places had in the past become so concentrated that a natural nuclear reactor had formed.
No, our biggest problem for us is our own wilful ignorance of our own self made bubbles. While these are entirely unnatural in the sense that they are products of the human mind and do not occur in rocks, fish, mammals or even our close relatives the apes, they do seem to be a ‘natural’ part of human behaviour. These ephemeral bubbles in such things as stocks, bonds, commodities, houses and everything else industrial humanity dreams up as having some sort of value will in the end like all dreams, end. When that happens we are going to find ourselves in a very strange world indeed, one without any Ponzis, one called Reality…
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Maybe the Real Reason for QE: they’re scared of turning Japanese… in terms of a deflationary liquidity trap (so no its not a bailout):
Bill Dudley speech:
Lessons at the Zero Bound: The Japanese and U.S. ExperienceRemarks at the Japan Society, New York City
“…Fifth, at the zero lower bound, risk management becomes extremely important. In particular, because the costs of getting stuck in a liquidity trap with chronic deflation are high, a central bank should put substantial weight on avoiding this outcome.
…
…With deflation intensifying, the Bank of Japan embarked on a quantitative easing (QE) program in 2001 designed to increase the size of the monetary base. The Bank of Japan engaged in purchases of JGBs that were large in scale, but confined to short-dated maturities. This reflected a view that such purchases primarily acted through the liabilities side of the central bank’s balance sheet—pushing up the amount of reserves in the banking system. Because the growth of the monetary base was deemed the goal of policy, it was logical to purchase short-dated assets, which could be allowed to run off once a sustainable recovery was in place.
…
…More than a decade after Japan’s bubble burst, the U.S. housing bubble burst. This exposed extensive vulnerabilities in our financial system and triggered a global financial crisis.6 Unlike Japan, we had the advantage of being able to learn from another nation’s recent experience. We applied what we understood to be the lessons from Japan, though with hindsight, perhaps not in every respect as completely as we could have.In particular, Japan’s experience reinforced the lessons of the Great Depression here in the U.S. and made us sensitive to the disinflationary force of an asset price bust and financial crisis. We recognized that we had to be very aggressive to prevent deflation and deflation expectations from becoming well entrenched.”
(bold in excerpt added)
Way to go, don’t end up like Japan by doing exactly what Japan did. :huh:
(A little history lesson here for those with short memories!)
The problem they have of course is that there is not going to be a sustainable recovery, as they are sitting on a foam of bursting bubbles and blowing bigger ones all the time just to fall behind at a slower rate (– IMHO they are no longer doing the ‘Red Queen’ stunt of running to stand still, they are instead just sinking into the foam.) They say you can’t fight the FED, well the FED is about to find out it can’t fight the laws of thermodynamics (energy) and the ‘law’ of diminishing returns (environment), or continue to inflate the biggest debt bubble ever (economy)… 🙁
Heads up to TAE for telling it how it now is way back when.
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipant$1 Trillion of which is in ‘foreign’ banks (can there be such a thing in a ‘global’ economy?)
…And just to prove that ALL the unsterilized cash from both QE2 and QEternity has essentially gone to support offshore banks, here is the conclusive chart showing the change in Fed reserves and cash held by foreign banks:
Well it is the global ‘reserve’ currency after all… :whistle:
As for QE curing deflation good luck with that!
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Its a ponzi: statement of predicted stock rises ‘proves’ it in my mind, it is just the sort of hyperbole that catches the last empty bag-hoders in any ponzi scheme (I should know I’ve seen a few… ahem!).
From Tyler Durden @ ZeroHedge:
Goldman Goes Uberhyper-Bullish, Hikes S&P500 Target To 1750 By Year End, Sees 2100 By 2015
…To wit: “Our earnings estimates remain unchanged but we raise our dividend estimates and index return forecasts for 2013 through 2015. We expect S&P 500 will rise by 5% to 1750 by year-end 2013, advance by 9% to 1900 in 2014, and climb by 10% to 2100 in 2015. Our 2013 return implies a year-end P/E of 15.0x, a one multiple point premium to our fair-value estimate. We forecast dividends will rise by 30% during next two years. Dividend yield is likely to stay around 2%, in line with the 20-year average.”
5%, 9%,10% with 30% on dividends! What’s not to like! Joe SP (Sucker Punch) will eat it up, hell he’ll take out some re-fi now that the housing [strike]ponzi[/strike] boom is back on track. As ZH point out:
Lets not forget that ZIRP has effectively boosted future earnings on companies balance sheets:
As well as lessening the debt repayments of course.
One small QE for the FED, one giant Ponzi for mankind… :dry:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Here is a definitive description of how inflation/deflation is linked directly to credit expansion and contraction:
From:
Inflation: an Expansion of Counterfeit Credit
© Jan 3, 2012 Keith Weiner“…Now let’s look at counterfeit credit. By the criteria I offered above, it is counterfeit because there is no one who has produced more than he has consumed, or he does not knowingly or willing forego the use of his savings to extend credit.
First, is the example where no one has produced a surplus. A good example of this is when the Federal Reserve creates currency to buy a Treasury bond. On their books, they create a liability for the currency issued and an asset for the corresponding bond purchase. Fed monetization of bonds is counterfeit credit, by its very nature. Every time the Fed expands its balance sheet, it is inflation.
It is no exaggeration to say that the very purpose of the Fed is to create inflation. When real capital becomes more scarce, and thus its owners become more reluctant to lend it (especially at low interest rates), the Fed’s official role is to be the “lender of last resort”. Their goal is to continue to expand credit against the ever-increasing market forces that demand credit contraction.
And of course, all counterfeit credit would go to default, unless the creditor has strong collateral or another lever to force the debtor to repay. Thus the Fed must act to continue to extend and pretend. Counterfeit credit must never end up where it’s “pay or else”. It must be “rolled”. Debtors must be able to borrow anew to repay the old debts—forever. The job of the Fed is to make this possible (for as long as possible).”
(bold added)
And:
……I repeat my definition of inflation and add my definition of deflation:
Inflation is an expansion of counterfeit credit.
Deflation is a forcible contraction of counterfeit credit.
Inflation is only possible by the initiation of the use of physical force or fraud by the government, the central bank, and the privileged banks they enfranchise. Deflation is only possible from, and is indeed the inevitable outcome of, inflation. Whenever credit is extended with no means or ability to repay, that credit is certain to eventually become a crisis that threatens to harm the creditor. That the creditor may have collateral or other means to force the debtor to take the pain and hold the creditor harmless does not change the nature of deflation.
Unless I am much mistaken this is similar (with the exception of the ‘force’) to what Illarghi and Stoneleigh have been saying since the inception of this site… a long time ago in a galaxy far far away… 😆
Default and crash is inevitable, with concomitant deflation. :woohoo:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Illarghi,
It hasn’t hit us full on yet because of the empty credit measures (QE et al) central bankers try on, but it has zero chance of reversing the debt deleveraging. It will just make it worse. I wrote this particular article 7 months a go, buy Nicole and I have been writing about this for 6-7 years now.
I hear ya:
Now, which web site has been banging on about this for years already…
Aka TAE. :cheer:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHI Folks,
Desperation leads to desperate choices:
Crushed By Soaring Energy Costs, Japan Prepares To Reactivate Its Nuclear Power Plants
:whistle:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipant@ Jal,
This would also require that a stable, social, economic society would be built to keep it “safe”.
If such a place was found, why would you want to pollute it with nuclear active waste?Save the children!
Keep those areas free of nuclear waste.
Or:
Save the animals!
Dump it there and keep the children OUT:
Life after Chernobyl: Sergei Gaschak’s photography from inside ‘the zone’
Sergei Gaschak’s photography captured a wolf, a lynx and a white-tailed eagle in the region around the nuclear plant
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Russia under President Putin has become the nuclear power in the world . They are building more reactors than anyone supplying south east Asia with their burgeoning power requirements, and with a life time contract to supply fuel to go as Russia controls forty percent of world uranium, as well as being the key player in ‘down-blending’ of old nuclear warheads into fuel for power stations:
Putin’s Power Play – How It Will Change the Uranium Sector
Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 11:03AMFrom the Testosterone Pit, Contributed by Casey Research:
…It’s hard to overstate Russia’s dominance of the world’s capacity to process uranium. Australia, Kazakhstan, and Canada rely on Russia to enrich the uranium they mine, while for the last 18 years the United States has relied on Russia’s downblending capability. The Megatons-to-Megawatts agreement provides fully half of the uranium fueling America’s nuclear reactors, or 10% of its electricity.
The agreement is scheduled to end in December 2013, at the same time as global demand for uranium is rising. The US will have to go on the hunt for new uranium suppliers just as the race to secure those supplies heats up… and Putin knows it.
Not only will he not renew Megatons, he will encourage the world’s uranium-needy nations – China, India, the US, France, South Korea, and Japan – to outbid each other for the opportunity to secure stable supplies of Russian uranium.
We’ve said it before: Putin is working to corner the global uranium market. He already has a strong grip over Europe’s gas needs and holds considerable sway over the continent’s oil supply. Why wouldn’t he want to also control the world’s supply of nuclear reactor fuel?
Uranium – a Hot Commodity
Today there are no fewer than 60 nuclear plants under construction in 14 countries, with another 163 planned and 329 proposed.
Many countries without nuclear power are on the cusp of building their first reactors, including Vietnam, Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, and several among the Gulf emirates. And while many countries with nuclear reactors took a moment to pause and reassess safety standards in light of the Fukushima disaster, almost all have reasserted their support for nuclear power as a major component of their energy strategies.
Uranium is simply the only fuel right now that can reliably produce large amounts of electricity without the release of greenhouse gases and other hydrocarbon pollutants.
Demand is clearly ramping up, and the world is already short on uranium. In 2011, world industry consumed 165 million pounds of U3O8 but produced only 143 million pounds.
Its ironic that the these modern nuclear ‘arrow tips’ unlike their ‘Paleolithic’ counterparts will leave a very interesting legacy indeed. And it is important to remember the origins of the ‘nuclear power industry’ was in the nuclear arms race. Given the paradigm that gave birth to this technology saw the possibility of no more children at all due to all out nuclear confrontation, it shows the perverse pervasiveness of the arms race that continued to manufacture these devices with ample fissile material provided by the [strike]output[/strike] waste of the nuclear [strike]bomb making[/strike] power plants. If anyone has any doubt as to this ‘dubious’ history, they should read this report in the Telegraph on the 50th anniversary (2007) of the then named ‘Windscale’ fire in 1957 at the ‘plutonium plant’ (plutonium was then the primary ‘ignition’ source for nukes) that consisted of ‘channels’ filled with ‘rods’ of uranium in a large lump of graphite. This was all ‘naturally’ vented via a chimney. No surprise it caught fire then, causing the West’s biggest and most hushed up nuclear ‘incident’. Its no wonder they sought to contain it better in the form of a nice friendly nuclear power station. Calder Hall the ‘free energy for everyone’ first UK nuke power plant had been built next door.
Even more ironically, Russia’s involuntary experiment in ‘decommissioning’ of the Chernobil plant has turned the area into the continents largest animal sanctuary.
In terms of paradigms its interesting to note that the Amerindians have a totally different language system. It seems that as humans once we grasp a concept, the mind soon fixes upon this reality as an independent existence and before long we have a paradigm, or as TAE might put it a ‘bubble’ which becomes our reality. The question is, is it possible to venture outside of the paradox of the paradigm? In “Blackfoot Physics”*, David Peat explores the nature of Native American languages, and notes the lack of object/subject dualism and the more almost Zen like process fluidity that they express. Instead of phrases such as “I am walking in the woods” there is instead a focus on the process as “woods walking” pointing to the eventual reality of the process itself as opposed to the fragmentation of a hypothetical subject doing something to or with an object. This form of linguistic structure is much more whole and inclusive.
As the indigenous in habitants of the Americas also recognised – everything that comes into manifestation is part of a cycle: “There may also be a time when the people acknowledge that their society is approaching its end and they should not enter into a further period of renewal.”* Perhaps our own culture needs that more than anything else…
*F. David Peat, 1996, “Blackfoot Physics”, Fourth Estate, London, UK. p.215
However like all humans it appears they too were a warrior people:
Blackfoot Return from a Raid – Frederick RemingtonUntil we all confront the turmoil in our own hearts, how will we ever find peace with the world.
L,
SidgurusidParticipantHi Folks,
To my previous comment on the absence of the use of the word ‘deflation’, we now have “disinflation”:
From Zero Hedge:
Submitted by Lance Roberts of Street Talk Live,
While I have no doubt that at some point down the road that inflation will become an issue, interest rates will rise and the dollar will strengthen – it just won’t be anytime soon. A wave of “disinflation” is currently engulfing the globe as the Eurozone economy slips back into recession, China is slowing down and the U.S. is grinding into much slower rates of growth. Even Japan, despite their best efforts through a massive QE program, cannot seem to break the back of the deflationary pressures on their economy. This is a problem that has yet to be recognized by the financial markets.
The recent inflation reports (both the Producer and Consumer Price Indexes) show deflationary forces at work. Wages continue to wane, economic production is stalling and price pressures are falling. More importantly, there are downward pressures on the most economically sensitive commodities such as oil, copper and lumber all indicating weaker levels of economic output. The battle against deflationary economic pressures has been what the Federal Reserve has been forced to fight since the financial crisis. The problem has been that, much like “Humpty-Dumpty”, the broken financial transmission system, as represented by the velocity of money, can’t be put back together again…
The weak level of economic growth, global deflationary pressures, demographic trends and excess indebtedness which derails productive investment are keeping inflationary pressures suppressed.
(bold in orig)
The real concern for investors, and individuals, is the actual economy. We are likely experiencing more than just a “soft patch” currently despite the mainstream analysts rhetoric to the contrary. There is clearly something amiss within the economic landscape and the recent decline in rates, the dollar and inflation are telling us that.
“There is clearly something amiss within the economic landscape and the recent decline in rates, the dollar and inflation are telling us that.” Erm I wonder what that could be? Nothing to do with a humungus debt bubble and the peaking of energy supplies obviously. Maybe it’s just the ‘New Normal’. :unsure:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Very interesting piece by ‘Eric. A.’ from ‘OfTwoMinds blogspot via ZeroHedge on the slowly turning wheels of history – very relevant in terms of ‘what do we want to grow into’ and the much more likely outcome of ‘look what we have become’:
…So why didn’t war break out in 1932, 1936, or for the U.S., in 1940? It wasn’t as if people didn’t see it coming, just as we see our own war and challenges now.
Because it wasn’t time. What I mean by that is, no matter how far seeing, History, as Hari Seldon would say, is made up of the aggregate, not the individual. No individual– not even Churchill chafing under Chamberlain in 1938—could change it.
It only happens slowly, when one by one the great mass of the population have changed their minds and their behavior. Only then can history unfold. You, me, even Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, or George Soros cannot push the great Wheel of History around because it is made of all 6 Billion of us, the whole planet, the whole market, and the sum of human understanding.
To me, this the cardinal sin of the blogosphere, or indeed of the times: that we know what is best for everyone, as writers, pundits, politicians. That we need to make the other guy “wake up.” We need to make them see as we do, act as ourselves, obey our will. Isn’t this the very defect we attribute to our enemies? That they’re always galumping around telling everybody what to do and how to live?
“They”—your family, your neighbors, your country–need to wake up? Let me ask you: “How did YOU wake up?” I can answer that without knowing you: a little at first, then all at once, in your own time. Neither is the journey for any of our “waking up” complete.
Telling people what is going on is one thing, it’s free speech, expressing our opinions on where we are and how the world works. Forcing others to believe something, become something, act in a way we believe they should is the first step to violence. If you believe in and value Liberty and the free exchange of ideas as I do, don’t do it. Changing the other guy is not your job.
…
…What we as bloggers and far-seers have been trying to do is to change the aggregate, which cannot be done. The aggregate WILL change, but it can only change in its own schedule. We can continue to tell the truth, but after decades of status quo, we should not expect our words to change the world, our nation, or to some extent even our community. The only thing we can realistically change is ourselves with our own actions, and that is where all real change comes from, one person: one action at a time. 6 billion tiny events, tiny tipping points, changing minds who realize themselves one by one.So what revolutionary act can you make today? If you read OfTwoMinds.com, PeakProsperity.com or similar sites, you already know the direction of history and what may be needed by you and the nation in the years ahead. What can you do to fill those gaps and prepare in your own life? Because the Wheels of History, although grinding exceeding slow, do get there in the end, made up of the decisions of billions of human actors. You may not be able to change your nation or the desperate situation we find ourselves in, but each of you can change yourself. You can make your own lifeboat in the midst of our own national challenge or “collapse.” Only through that individual preparation could we find a million safety nets which prevent collapse.
And if that is all that’s asked of you, it’s good, for that’s all that’s possible.
Start today. It’s time.
by Eric A.
etc.
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Rapala,
Regarding the ‘QEuriouser’ Article above, it states that loans are are increasing at 4% since 2011(before this, it was negative).
I’m confused how this ties in with decreasing money velocity which as I understood is key to the whole deflation argument. If loans are increasing, surely this means money is increasingly being used to ‘buy stuff’ which would increase money velocity?
The way I read it was the article was stating that loan growth was matching what ever economic growth (GDP) there was of the order of a few percent. But given that most of these new loans are still going into big ticket items such as homes and autos, which means that most of the ‘loan’ just moves from one bank balance to another. Real wages are falling, and so is credit. The real money that goes around between the butcher the baker and the candlestick maker is dwindling at an increasing rate, where as zombie money given to bail out banks via QE is just floating in their ballooning deposits, so they’re ‘investing’ it in all sorts of things including stocks and all manner of dubious items to make a bit on the side instead of just loaning it out, though to be fair when the economy is just not growing like it used to, coupled with people paying down debt and becoming risk averse, where is the demand as stated above. Again check out Zero Hedge – they have some up to the minute detail on what’s happening as it all unfolds.
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHI Folks,
There is a dangerous infection called QE that is going around, causing painful swellings in all sorts of asset prices; for a recent in depth analysis go here:
QEuriouser and QEuriouser… is this how the QE story ends?
Interesting piece from the [url=https://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/2/21/the-fed-is-blowing-a-dangerous-bank-deposit-bubble.html]Testosteron Pit
on how the QE experiment might end. It highlights the huge deposit bubble that has arisen as cash has failed to make it to the broader ‘economy’ and how this is being used to blow all sorts of bubbles apart from the deposit bubble itself…[/url]
Check out this from Zero Hedge too regarding a complete loss of trust in the system:
Sorry
What I can say with absolute certainty is that I have lost a lot of faith and trust in the system. And I am not the only one. This sentiment is running at all-time highs amongst business leaders (their collective in-actions prove it) and guys on the street. It is both sides of the barbell and middle that are upset. Often it’s one or the other, but not all three. This time it’s not at an external state, it’s directed inwards. That is a tough problem to solve. Jingoism is not the answer either as we already tried that.
If there is no faith in the system, it has a really hard time working. And I mean real underlying faith and trust in the system, as opposed to the confidence born from economic steroid injections or entitlements. These are valid notions, but as a point of clarity I am talking about a something different. There also is a subtle but important distinction between faith and trust versus confidence. Faith and trust are longer term and more powerful concepts.
…
Mr Greenspan we have seen where valuing assets solely on the basis of current rates got us. If we should do that, baseball cards and chewing gum would also be great investments today. My suspicion is from here baseball cards and chewing gum will hold their value over time better than the typical company trading at 15x earnings derived from profit margins that are twice its average levels.
…
The important similarity to both profit cycles is that they were driven by credit growth that supported corporate revenues above what consumer income alone would have.(bold in orig)
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Great video on why we need a ‘reset’:
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmFMlYtrnyM[/video]
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog to ZeroHedge as a Guest Post: Degrowth, Anti-Consumerism And Peak Consumption
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/10/2013 10:19 -0400.L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Skip,
Barnstormin! Which country did you move to? Also for those interested, here is an example of what you can do in your own back yard (if you have one)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx5lxN1pdGX3UTdwNktwNVY0RW8/edit?usp=sharing
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Interesting “Aftershock” ‘book’ promotion video – but their take on the inflationary pressure from all the QE does make some sense – they predict inflation (but not hyper) in the range of 10-100% in terms of interest rates due to dollar devaluation :huh: that will then cause massive asset price deflation in housing, stocks and bonds. At least I think that is what they are saying. They also predicted the 2008 crash and a lot of what they say sounds similar to Stoneleigh.
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Skip & others,
I am also in total, diametric, polar opposition to the argument that we no longer have work to do. On the contrary, we have avoided real productive work so long now that there is more work (as in true sweat-on-the-brow labour) than we will ever be able to accomplish in our lifetime. And as long as we just exhaust ourselves pushing needless paper around, that real work will remain un-finished (let alone started).
Under the ‘current’ system where one does not have access to the ‘resources’ to make ones own livelihood but has to work effectively as a wage slave in every sense of that phrase. You might want to meet Peter the Carpenter – listen out for his ‘ally cat’ analogy.
Now, in both body and spirit, I long for the physical, mental and communal satisfaction of the real work we abandoned a long time ago. I know I’d be happier building a barn AND being able to eat. Question is, going forward, how many of us will be able to do both, once the real work starts.
So what’s stopping you? Got a garden? Go grow some veg. No land/not enough land? Go beg borrow or steal – as in guerrillagardening. I’m sure you will find plenty of real work fighting off nature and inquisitive humans…
As for the cost of living (a.k.a. energy)/prices going through the roof, well actually some are still going through the floor such as laptops, while prices for actual essentials such as food are being or are about to be restored to their historical norms:
Good luck farming your 0.2 hectares:
:whistle:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Illarghi,
We have a name for them in the UK – NEETS Not in Employment, Education or Training. (hence all the ‘make-work’ training schemes in how to tie your own shoelaces etc to ‘[strike]massage[/strike] recovery message the figures)
This is also typical of a Systemantics type response; we have a problem with unemployment, lets make more people unemployed.
There is also a structural problem no one is addressing, not only are there are no jobs, but there is no work to be done – not under the current system. Granted if society radically changed there might be something to do that one could maybe call work to keep oneself occupied, but even then this would be in short supply simply due to the numbers of people. We do not have a desperate need to make more stuff, or rebuild say a whole country as was often the case after the second world war, and which was achieved with a much smaller population. What is more worrying is how difficult it is to make a living of any sort, having a livelihood these days is fraught with low returns and high costs; low returns from competing with everyone else who is trying to do the same thing, and fraught with costs of ridiculous small business legislation and bureaucracy. Unless they are all tending their own cattle and crops, what exactly is there to do for all these people? Build more ‘stuff’? That’s all the feudal corporatocracy does, and you have to be a certified serf with proven loyalty to your masters, not some unemployed Ronin whose only other choice apart from banditry is sepeku (ritualistic suicide). Even if energy supplies stopped tomorrow, (which they won’t, as they will be rationed for use by the corporate military under marshal law) what are the bulk of people going to do? Project manage their garden veg plot? (if they even have a garden) co-ordinate personnel in the line for the soup kitchen? Most of the so called ‘work’ currently done as pointed out is just ‘make-work’ with made up pseudo skills to go with it. If anything ‘big’ did go down to radically change the situation, it would definitely puncture the current evolutionary equilibrium. :dry:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Its not just Gold either, its everything else too:
Rolling Stone, By Matt Taibbi April 25, 2013 1:00 PM ET
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There’s no price the big banks can’t fix
…
The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.
“It’s a double conspiracy,” says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. “It’s the height of criminality.”
The bad news didn’t stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. “Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry,” CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.
…
All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation’s GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it’s increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.
If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it’s no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz2SEih36ji
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Which brings us back to values, and also how a ‘community’ can be very ‘resilient’, it just so happens that this community has proved very resilient at screwing everybody else over. When the value of everything is ‘made up’, where does true value lie? Welcome to the company store… :unsure:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Pipefit,
Governments will not shut down oil fields to protect the environment. More likely, they will require cleaner burning gasoline, which will add greatly to the retail price, and they will require higher mileage, more expensive cars. The high cost per barrel fields will be shut down by the market place, not the government.
This fits in perfectly with Joseph Tainter’s reducing marginal return on complexity:
As well as the laws of thermodynamics as pointed out here. Also the cycle actually returns to zero:
While that is the result of a model, as far as ‘human’ society is going, that prediction IMHO is entirely feasible. :dry:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi p01,
The “D”-word has reappeared in the news. And it’s not related only to Japan this time.
It’s not only ‘D’ but ‘D-D’ :blink: as seen here for instance:
“The danger is when deflation combines with high debt and deleveraging and becomes toxic. That raises the risk of a debt-deflation spiral. There are already signs of this in southern Europe.”
.
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantActually it seems that Ambrose has a crush on the ‘d’ word, has he been reading TAE?:
Telegraph, By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 7:40PM BST 30 Apr 2013
Eurozone risks Japan-style trap as deflation grinds closer
The eurozone is one shock away from a Japan-style deflation crisis after a key measure of prices fell to the lowest since the launch of the single currency.The region’s core inflation rate – which strips out food and energy – fell to 1pc in March. This is far below expectations and leaves monetary union with a diminishing safety buffer.
“The eurozone is tracking the experience in Japan in mid-1990s. there is a very high risk of a slide into deflation,” said Lars Christensen, a monetary theorist at Danske Bank.
While eurozone core inflation was slightly lower in the aftermath of the Lehman crisis, the current figure is distorted by the one-off effects of VAT increases and levies linked to austerity. Adjusting for these taxes, the rate is now running at 0.4pc.
“The European Central Bank [ECB] should be concerned. If there is another severe shock, the eurozone faces a much bigger risk of falling into a deflationary trap,” said Julian Callow, global strategist at Barclays. “The danger is when deflation combines with high debt and deleveraging and becomes toxic. That raises the risk of a debt-deflation spiral. There are already signs of this in southern Europe.”
Mr Callow said nominal GDP – tracked by monetarists as the key indicator in sovereign debt crises – fell 1.8pc in Spain and 1.2pc in Italy last year. This means that the debt burden is rising fast on a contracting base.
David Owen, from Jefferies Fixed Income, said the mix of falling inflation and an ageing population risks pulling the eurozone into a “liquidity trap” where the self-correcting mechanisms of the economy break down. “This looks strikingly similar to Japan 15 or so years ago,” he said.Mr Owen said the ECB cannot just “sit back and do nothing this week” at its meeting on Thursday, and may ultimately have to launch full-blown quantitative easing.
Most analysts expect the ECB to cut rates a quarter point to 0.5pc but there is broad consent that this will do little to alleviate the credit crunch for smaller firms in Spain, Italy and Portugal, where borrowing costs are two to three times higher than costs for North European rivals.
Data from the ECB show that the eurozone’s “broad” M3 money supply contracted in March, while private loans fell by 0.8pc. “The growth of money over the last three months has been very weak. The imbalance within EMU between Germany and the rest is intensifying,” said Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research.
Hell they even mention such scary monsters as “liquidity trap”s: “This means that the debt burden is rising fast on a contracting base.” Wow, who’da thought it… :dry:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
What’s this, a case of Dutch [strike]Elm[/strike] Debt disease? :ohmy: :
The Telegraph,
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 6:49PM BST 01 May 2013Debt-crippled Holland falls victim to EMU blunders as property slump deepens
The eurozone’s slow suffocation is going Dutch. Each extra month of slump caused by Europe’s negligent authorities is pushing Holland closer to a debt-deflation trap.The coalition of Mark Rutte has belatedly woken up to the danger. Last month it retreated from pro-cyclical tightening, delaying €4.3bn in budget austerity. By then Mr Rutte’s totemic worship of EU deficit targets had invited the ridicule of the official Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), which said Dutch leaders did not seem to understand how private credit busts interact with fiscal cuts to create havoc.
“The Dutch government’s inability to acknowledge the damage done by austerity despite mounting evidence is a case of ‘cognitive dissonance’,” it told the Financial Times.
Yet this is not at root a case of botched fiscal policy. It is a case of misaligned monetary policy. The Netherlands offers a salutary lesson of what can happen to a rich sophisticated economy caught in a post-bubble crunch once it has lost control of its currency, central bank and monetary levers. This would have happened to Britain without the Bank of England, and the US without the Fed.
The Dutch crisis has crept up quietly, though hedge funds have been nibbling for months. Most people lump the Netherlands together with Germany, Finland and Austria, the hardline AAA fist-thumpers who dictate terms to others.
Unemployment was very low until the dam broke. It is now soaring as fast as in Cyprus. The rate has doubled over the past two years, jumping from 7.7pc to 8.1pc in the single month of March. The economy has been in recession since early 2011.
…
As in Britain – or Japan when it buckled in 1990 – there is a long-term housing shortage. Rabobank says the overhang of unsold homes is 228,000. That is bad but not disastrous. The crisis stems from rampant credit, not rampant building.
…
Instead, the ECB has engineered a Japan-style liquidity trap. Broad M3 money growth has slowed to 2.6pc. It contracted in March. Core inflation has fallen to a record low of 0.4pc, once austerity taxes are stripped out. This is one shock away from debt-deflation.
etc.
While they use it as an excuse to denounce federalisation (ironic they do not mention US states going bankrupt!), they at least mention the words ‘debt-deflation’. Not surprising given the debt level and private consumption figures:
Now, which web site has been banging on about this for years already… :whistle:
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Jal,
Tax Havens ‘Open Doors’ To HMRC
By (c) Sky News 2013 | Sky News – 2/5/13More so-called ‘tax havens’ have agreed to disclose the bank details of British taxpayers as part of the crackdown on evasion.
The deal signed today commits Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands to automatically share information with the UK.
The British Overseas Territories will pass on names, addresses, dates of birth, account numbers, account balances and payment details and the move also extends to some accounts held by trusts.
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi John,
Yes, I was thinking that maybe this years late spring and overall cold winter would retard the advancement of the pine beetle, which is according to the film you posted part of a natural oscillation. That and natural fires, which humans have a habit of playing with; many native peoples used to use fireto manage their ecosystem to improve it for game wild crops as well as pest control. Due to the focus on ‘timber’ extraction, fire is now seen as the enemy, though it was ironic to see them try and use it in the film in a botched attempt at halting the beetle. However its a good example of an ‘unburnable carbon’ due to its greater ‘value’ as timber for such things as toilet paper. Still the timber is still viable for up to 12 years and is also a possible source of biofuel. Problem is if you remove the material off site, all the nutrients go with it.
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi Folks,
Interesting synchronicity – James H. Kunstler has written about an Atlantic Magazine article with a ‘cover’ title of “ “We Will Never Run Out of Oil”, and an article title of “What If We Never Run Out of Oil?”, which has led to numerous comments on the conspiratorial agenda. Both titles are dubious as the guts refer to the Japanese attempts to extract methane from frozen methane hydrate deep in the ocean. Its an obvious choice for Japan as if successful there is plentiful energy for a an energy poor country (now that their nuclear program is off-line) possibly for a hundred or so years. But of course the detractors are also having afield day, with leaks and landslides and all manner of scary beasties. But the latest is that they have had some success: check out the video.
Remains to be seen if there is any money left to build the infrastructure of course, or whether this too will be left where it is. But then as Matt Taibbi points out they make the rules up as they go along…
L,
Sid.gurusidParticipantHi John,
Yes interesting how nature plays the ‘one-upmanship’ game.
Humans: “Look at how we deforest such vast areas, surely this must be wrong, the forests will never recover!”
Nature: “Deforestation? Ha, watch this! Pine beetles – attack!”As for warmer/cooler winters, check out the latest ‘observed’ facts:
https://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=04&fd=28&fy=2008&sm=04&sd=23&sy=2013
Sure is cold out there…
L,
Sid. -
AuthorPosts