Raúl Ilargi Meijer
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Rapier, in southern Europe, 50%+ youth job misery, it might yet happen.but it would need to be something Brussels can’t manipulate, and that’s an big added challenge, given how they put technocrats in charge all over the place.
But Grillo is of course dead on when he says it’s either us or worse.
Euan,
I doubt that we can say much about this in anything but very general terms. You’d have to know what costs and taxes, including hidden ones, are exactly in play. That said, I doubt even more that the world’s perhaps most politically empowered corporations pay high taxes; it would shatter a well-established pattern.
Here are some more estimates; they vary very widely:
Fossil Fuels With $550 Billion in Subsidy Hurt Renewables (Bloomberg)
Fossil fuels are reaping $550 billion a year in subsidies and holding back investment in cleaner forms of energy, the International Energy Agency said. Oil, coal and gas received more than four times the $120 billion paid out in subsidy for renewables including wind, solar and biofuels.
Energy Costs – Necessity, Not Folly
According to the SEEDS model, the total trend cost of energy this year should be of the order of $5 trillion.
Thorium is nonsense in the vein of the economic recovery: always just around the corner. The last thing we should do is rely on unproven technologies.
Zero motor cycles sure sounds like a way to save energy.
John Day, depicting deflation as even remotely positive (powering down) is not a good idea. It’s more like the bubonic plague of an economy, where fuel may well be saved, but is far from the first thing on people’s mind.
caith, I hear you
and it’s personal only up to a point, but it’s striking to me to what extent people feel disempowered, how people feel they just live in this world, but it’s not really theirs
polistra
the main difference between Greece and its neighbors is that one is in the eurozone, the others are not.
rapier, I’m not appealing to an empire, but to you: why do you let it happen? Why do we so easily let ourselves see this as something we have no control over? Because it feels easier that way? Because we have a get out of jail free card by pointing at ‘the elites’?
khiori,
A king in the past could declare a debt jubilee because in the end all debt was owed to him anyway, even if it was through a few middlemen (they owed him too). These days, such kings don’t exist, and debt is owed to many different parties. Plus, amounts of debt vary much more today than in days of old. The US owes China a lot more than vice versa. How do you solve that kind of problem. Your neighbor who’s underwater on a million dollar MacMansion owes much more than frugal you. But what’s more, his debt has been sold on to global markets in securities packages. Which raises the question why a Japanese investor would cancel your neighbor’s debt. The negotiations and litigation concerning a debt jubilee would take so long, if anyone even tried, that even if the issues could be resolved, it would be too late.
Carried over from yesterday’s Debt Rattle:
diogenes, there’s no such thing as a full width for youtube. you simple set the width on the clip page and then copy the embed code. 480px is fine here.
as for your other suggestions, I’m not sure I understand
diogenes, there’s no such thing as a full width for youtube. you simple set the width on the clip page. 480px is fine here.
Useful indeed, bluebird, it’s right up there in the banner menu. With platforms, and the specific themes developed for them, you get all kinds of things you wouldn’t choose, but are stuck with anyway.
When families feel threatened, insecure, and are barely able to stay on the treadmill, they’re not going to have more children.
Families have never been richer than they were in the exact same time the fertility rate plunged. Whether they would perhaps still have felt insecure for 40-odd years now? I don’t know.
On the one hand, anyone who falls for the Wealth Building Home Loan gets what they deserve. But given the average IQ in America these days, maybe the government should offer at least a minimum of protection. If not, you might as well make any and all breaking and entering legal.
Someone asked the other day if they could donate to TAE in bitcoin. This is our address:
1HYLLUR2JFs24X1zTS4XbNJidGo2XNHiTT
kibbinayye,
It’s not that easy, since not all countries issue truly short-term sovereign bonds. But the shortest term you can get, for sure.
kibbinayye
We’ve long held the point of view that short-term government bonds are the safest place for Americans. That hasn’t changed. Part of the system perhaps, but one the system can’t easily touch, since the government won’t default – not for now. Other than that, productive assets are obviously always good. Arable land, tools, skills.
koso,
It’s a three step move. Raising the dollar but not interest rates is very inefficient. The Fed views this from the perspective of the banks, not the real economy. They’ve given up on the latter, if they were ever even interested in it at all. Ergo, they’ve looked for the best ways to profit from the deflationary event.
My, you guys are negative; what’s up with that? I bring you all these happy tidings on a daily basis, and look at you!
The US is now checking on 80 people in the Dallas area alone whom the carrier has been in touch with. And that’s just the people they know of. The number could be 180, depending on what he’s done, did he go shopping, shake hands etc. It doesn’t include anyone who was at the Brussels airport where he had a stopover, and it doesn’t include many others either. The assumption is that one can only get contagious when symptoms appear, but no matter how fast the disease sets in, it can still take a day before the symptoms are recognized for what they are. So when you look at how lightly he was dismissed at one of more hospitals, while he was already exhibiting the symptoms (!), the grey area becomes a mile and a half wide. If I were a betting man, I’d venture there’s still a lot of complacency in the west.
Jeff, we live in a world where money is far more important than truth. That’s the pivotal point. It opens our doors to those for whom the truth is a hindrance to getting what they want. Since man is better at lying more than any other ‘quality’, perhaps that’s inevitable, but I still think trying to turn it around is the only hope we have. And no, I don’t think we can switch human behavior off or on by toying with circumstances. We are who we are, and it takes, as I wrote, 24/7 vigilance to keep us from falling into the trap we are by design.
zander, I hear you again, you and Euan and all my other Scotch buddies must be shaken still. I’m still going to stick with my viewpoints that I wrote about a lot, but then I ain’t Scotch.
And yes, I was thinking the same thing: why would Cameron stick with anything he said; he’s going to make him now?
Glennda,
… calling her “Grandma” is really too sexist. Would you have called her predecessor “Grandpa”?
Here’s what I said Sep 12:
The Fed is about perception. About trying to make people believe something, and make them act a certain way that they choose for them.
That’s why after the Oracle left they pushed first a bearded gnome and then a grandma forward as the public face. The kind of people nobody would perceive as a threat. Putting a guy who looks like second hand car salesman in charge of the Fed wouldn’t work.
So no, no sexism. Then again, how many female garden gnomes do you know, let alone bearded ones? I know, I kill me …
Euan,
I find it striking that 1) the Dutch report confidently states there were no planes anywhere near MH17, while the Russians have always said there was. The Dutch team undoubtedly knows this, but never addressed it, and 2) that the Dutch said the holes in the fuselage were consistent with a BUK rocket, while the Russians rule that out precisely because of those same holes.
Right now, I see Poroshenko addressing the US Congress, and he states as a fact that Russia and the rebels shot down MH17. All I want is facts, but I can’t get them.
I’m convinced they’re going to start shooting and bombing again soon, because nothing has been solved. East Ukraine will never volunteer to remain part of Ukraine. They’ll point to Scotland as an example of how people can choose to be their own boss.
Zander
For some reason I wonder why you’re so sure the Scots will put up with all the craziness you describe. And if they do, isn’t that what they deserve? BTW, Euan in Aberdeen has some sort of referendum special on Energy Matters. He must be feeling shaky today, like so many other Albionians.
Halva, I don’t really see Chossudovsky as a source, not in the sense that I meant to use the word. He’s an opinion man. Stopped reading him eons ago because there’s far too much loose cannon about him for me. What I meant was – major – news sources. They all have the same spin. Luckily, there are plenty other people who don’t buy into that.
Euan, touché, but that’s not what St. Onge meant to say, he was talking about wars etc.
John Day, yes, The Rupture should be obligatory reading for everyone.
Zander, as I said, I was living in Montréal in 1995, so I know just what you mean by ‘interesting times’.
Yeah, well, you want Salmond gone and Cameron gone …
I see a lot of people saying what a success the Union has been for 300 years, but when I think about the list of Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, I just get the shivers. What about that is worth preserving? It’s just going to keep getting worse, even though one might think that’s not possible. Next one up may be Boris Johnson …
Zander, I hear you, but separation never takes place under ideal circumstances. What I think is most important is that the centralized power structures are broken up, the UK and the EU. When’s the last time Britain had a decent government? I really couldn’t tell you. And that must backfire at some point. As for the EU, it must be cut to size ASAP. It has become a nasty power podium for psychopaths, and it’s a huge threat to everyone in EUrope who’s not part of some elite. That was of course already evident in southern Europe, and it is now in Ukraine as well. If Scotland can be the catalyst that rips apart more EU countries, and their increasingly technocrat governments, that would be a very good thing for all Europeans except the elites, and I don’t think it will turn out nearly as bad for the Scots as people try to make them believe. Salmond is merely the spark needed for the break-up, others will stand up to lead the independent country after that.
Euan, I’d say the UK hasn’t had a functional government for as long as I care to remember. And I can imagine why people get sick of that. I also think the UN charter on self-determination is respected awfully poorly. Spain won’t even allow the Catalans to vote. Same for the Donbass. There’s something wrong in that. Let people choose their own governments if they want to. It’s going to happen a lot anyway as wealth end energy dwindle. Better establish a civilized model for it, or there’ll be a lot of fights in Europe and elsewhere.
