Raúl Ilargi Meijer
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Not so fast on the back pedalling:
Ukraine Says Russian Officer Pushed The Button To Shoot Down MH17
Did a Russian fire the missile that downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17? That depends on who you ask. A top Ukrainian official says he has no doubt. Vitaly Nayda, Ukraine’s director of informational security, told CNN the person who shot down the flight was “absolutely” a Russian. “A Russian-trained, well-equipped, well-educated officer … pushed that button deliberately,” he said.
“We taped conversations” between a Russian officer and his office in Moscow, Nayda said. “We know for sure that several minutes before the missile was launched, there was a report” to a Russian officer that the plane was coming, he said. “They knew the plane was coming with constant speed, in constant direction,” and should have known it was not a fighter jet but “a big civilian plane,” he said.
There are tons of existing, often great, initiatives, some of which work well, some don’t. There are also still enormous amounts of farmers and potential clients who are not connecting to each other. What OFN is trying to do is provide a blueprint that can connect local projects globally, and thus make the success rate higher, for instance by preventing different people from making and repeating the same mistakes in different locations. Plus, of course, encourage more people in more locations to set up new projects, which they now won’t have to start from absolute zero.
Well, John, the offer stands; there is of course much more to say about a process like this, you can describe each step, you can talk about what you learned each step, and why you make the decisisons you make, why you choose what you do, and not what you don’t.
We swallow FF industry propaganda whole, which I’m guessing shows in the fact that I call them zombies?! And the blessings of renewables must be proven through a Citigroup report, who of course have no interests in the huge investment booms in solar or, for that matter, shale?! Sure ….
John, great write up of the other 800 pound underlying beastie: storage, buffering. If ever you feel like expanding on this and turning it into an article, I’m game.
Cutting energy use is the big one, Nicole cut her family’s by 90% in 2000, and only then got solar, battery bank etc. But of course, if we all would do this, the grid wouldn’t survive. It’s that grid, the centralized system, that will haunt us all the way to doomsville. The last thing we want at this point is mass and/or centralized investment into anything. We want small investments, home by home. But we will need to give up certain services no matter what. Then again, who needs an electric dryer? And ovens, there are tons of different options that don’t use electricity.
Diablo,
Very good points. I have a lot more respect for a small pacific nation banning fishing in its sphere than for Obama doing some top-down thing. And a lot more suspicion of the latter.
Snuff,
Always happy to see you! Your presence here never fails to make me think there is still hope for this world. Please convey Nicole’s and my warmest greetings to Mrs Queen Bee.;-) And please call back in soon.
Variable, in 1979 no-one had a clue how crazy things could or would get debt wise.
Boogaloo, forget about hyperinflation. Not going to happen. Biggest money supply increase in history by a mile and a half, but consumer spending aka velocity of money is one on one dependent on borrowing.
That’s a very good rant, diablo, well written, true, real, the lot. Compliments. Stay angry. Write me an article like that.
We can lead very wonderful and fulfilling lives without economic growth, people have done it for 100,000 years and more.
raul, you are a tad naive.
No, I’m not. We did live those lives, or our ancestors did. What comes now is a different story. And I have zero naive or rosy ideas about that.
The Maximum Power Principle (Lotka, Odum) provides a useful point of view, albeit one that casts grave doubt on our ability to reason our way out of our more primitive brain segments. It comes very close to a definition of life itself.
In Human And Natural Systems Oppose The 2nd Law Of Thermodynamics By Importing Inputs For Replacement And Maintenance, Jay Hanson gives this definition:
The Maximum Power Principle states that all open systems (Bernard cells, ecosystems, people, societies, etc.) evolve to degrade as much energy as possible while allowing for the continued existence of the larger systems they are part of.
In 1991, Kay and Schneider explained Lotka’s (1922) suggestion that living systems will maximize their energy flow, H. T. Odum’s (1955) Maximum Power Principle for ecosystems, and Lieth’s (1976) maximum energy conductivity. https://merkury.orconhosting.net.nz/lifeas.pdf . Energy efficiency is tuned for maximum power. Energy conservation leads to more power production. https://www.uh.edu/admin/engines/epi984.htm
Odum’s Emergy principles are also important in this regard.
As for the three day work week ecosocialism seems to think is enough, I have to question that. Maybe they think imports will still be continued “as usual”. If we have to do everything ourselves, and that’s as inevitable as diminishing oil supplies, and we have these hugely larger population numbers, 7 days may not suffice. Which is probably why Jay’s newer site is called warsocialism, not ecosocialism.
Gold is not like copper, guys. Even if when it comes to rehypothecation you can do a lot of the same things with it. Zero Hedge is stuck in the gold bug mode, and though that must be a tough spot to be in with gold at $1250, I don’t see them getting out of it anytime soon. Which in turn makes objective analysis a hard thing to do. I don’t see any reason to doubt that rehypothecation, using assets as collateral, is widespread and a fully accepted business model in China. I wonder how many of the empty apartments have been put up as collateral at an $x value to procure loans for more empty apartment development. And what that will mean when prices fall to $x-1.
Raleigh, it’s the sheer size of it. For reasons of credibility, Beijing needed to raise reserve ratios and cut some forms of lending, but behind the curtain the shadow banks filled in the gaps. Profitable for everyone until the double digit growth stats vanished. Then it easily turns to cats in a sack. And consequences Beijing certainly never intended: they find their control is far less strong than they thought, since running an economy based on unbridled growth is very different from a communist total control one. To get that growth, they had to give up part of the control, and they never thought that through. Now they find that cracking down is only possible at the severe risk of halting growth. There have undoubtedly been gold schemes too, and a lot of false demand, but I’d look more at actual commodities, metals obviously, but also timber, palm oil etc.
Degringolade
My guess is not necessarily, though it’s hard to predict what happens once deleveraging and deflation take off. While many people will say that when stocks plummet, everyone will move into gold, they’d still need to have something left to purchase it with. As for PM being suppressed, it looks that way, but where I differ from gold bugs is I don’t see why it wouldn’t continue to be going forward.
E.S.,
I think the article explains the writer’s point of view quite well. US gasoline usage hasn’t dropped 75%, but if you focus on certain metrics, it has. It’s about the ways data are being distorted by the US government more than anything else, I’d say.
“the government chooses to measure U.S. gasoline consumption in a very odd manner: by measuring the amount of gasoline entering the domestic supply-chain rather than by measuring actual consumption at the other end of the supply-chain – i.e. “at the pump”.”
Boogaloo, you largely answer your own question. Aside from that, QE must of necessity start feeding on itself, Japan today is a good example. Soaring prices combine with plunging consumer spending. Like in the asset markets, bonds and stocks rise at the same time.
I like this headline too:
EU Elections: Dinosaurs Duck First Meteorite
The latest European elections ought to mark a turning point in the increasingly unaccountable European project but outgoing President Van Rompuy has already made it clear the misgivings of the Euroskeptic minority will be ignored. Thus the two faces of the EU are apparent – democratic platitudes on one side while on the other: dictating an outmoded big government top down approach (which is clearly failing the people).
The EU is now the preserve of the 21st century’s DINOsaurs: Brussels’ oligarchs who are ‘Democrats in Name Only’, with a distinctly archaic approach to growth, as demonstrated by their desire to expand the ‘empire’ east (into Ukraine and beyond), despite being unable to deliver coherent prosperity in their own back yard. Thus the European People’s Party (EPP) alongside the Socialist and Democrat (S&D) parties will maintain their longstanding grand coalition agreement despite the upsurge in Euroskeptic votes. Their ‘grand coalition’ is a variant of electoral dictatorship: ramming through more regulations and above all, ‘more Europe’, at every turn.
That the people of Europe are clearly losing their enthusiasm for the EU is irrelevant to the rather archaic structure of the European politburo, busy dictating daft centralized approaches to tractor production while competing economies are driven by high tech innovation. (In a marvelously absurd outburst last week at a Brussels conference, President Barroso gave a speech on the topic of developing a more entrepreneurial Europe, wondering aloud why so many Europeans emigrants are developing new technology in silicon valley, without bothering to consider that his Jurassic Park of central planning cannot replicate the dynamic freedom from bottom up technological innovation dominant around Palo Alto.)
Adding insult to injury in their contempt for European voters’ concerns, the DINOsaurs will soon further endorse their self-imposed democratic deficit. After lavish dinners’ at taxpayers’ expense, EU leaders’ summits will fudge candidates for the various presidencies and commissioner posts. Voters will, as always, be an afterthought in a process where only those pledging blind allegiance to the Europhile mania can be considered for high office.
Diogenes,
Two years ago, when Nicole and I were lecture-touring Australia, the tour organizers set up a meeting for us in Melbourne with Michael Reynolds from New Mexico, the father of the earthship and a very interesting man, who was also doing lectures. Michael noted that often when he and his team are asked to build an earthship for someone, they want basement space of some kind. And when he asks them what for, the answer always has to do with guns. He thinks that’s the silliest idea: what are you going to do, shoot your neighbors? His solution is to build lots of earthships and establish a community that way, so your neighbors are your protection. I tend to agree, I’m not so sure guns are a great way to protect yourself.
As for bitcoins, they seem to me to be nice as an experiment, but I don’t see how in a world where everything is manipulated from people’s unconscious to stocks to gold markets, bitcoins would be the exception to the rule. You already have companies that claim million worth of them go missing without a trace. I’d want to see the safety aspect tested much more vigorously, and until then I won’t put my trust in bitcoins.
I still don’t see why you say you are ‘horribly’ wrong. You got rid of the risk of ow(n)ing a long term mortgage on a home, and that risk is high. That has little to do with a few years left or right. Nothing that brings words like ‘horrible’ or horror’ to mind. And I’m not sure if this is you speaking or people around you, who you are obviously letting you put under a lot of pressure. You seem to seek for Nicole to take the blame for your ‘horror’ onto herself and away from you, in order to relieve that pressure, without recognizing that Nicole doesn’t see it as a horror. Taking choice bits from what we have said through the years without acknowledging the big picture is of course never either a good nor a fair approach. And perhaps Nicole could have been more careful, or more vague, in her choice of words, but in the big picture that makes no difference: you still got rid of a big risk. Unless perhaps people think the US is actually recovering and they’ll have the time to pay off another 15 years on their loans.
Cory,
“Horribly wrong”? Isn’t that perhaps a bit much? Where is the horror?
Nicole directed several comments directly at you in the Atamai thread, still you say her answer was silence. I don’t quite follow that.
As for your continuing questions, I think I tried to respond to them at some length.
Cory,
Who is to say it cannot last that long?
And at the same time who is to say it can? It would seem to be a good idea to get the guessing part out of this as much as possible. Risk assessment.
All US asset markets are seriously bubbling right now due to QE, a situation that cannot last because public debt would get too high. It already is. That means either we will achieve escape velocity and a real recovery in the real economy, or asset prices must fall. Since all that seems to go up does so to a large extent on the back of QE, I have no idea where a real recovery could possibly come from. There’s simply nothing there.
The articles on the Zillow report that I referenced in my article above show that 20 million American mortgage holders can’t sell their homes, because they have too little or even negative equity. At 3 persons per household, that means 60 million, or 20% of the population, are stuck. They cannot move. Had they rented, they wouldn’t have had that problem. When asset prices begin to fall again, which I think is inevitable given that QE is the sole factor out there that has pushed them upward, the number of people stuck will rise, and not by a little bit.
Mortgages are already a noose around the necks of 60 million Americans, according to Zillow, and with new home sales and mortgage originations falling as much as they are, which means markets are shrinking because there are far fewer buyers, how can prices not fall and hang more nooses around more necks? There is no functioning real economy out there, in the sense that it exhibits a “healthy” growth rate, and without such a rate things can only get worse, there’s no such thing as a stable economy without growth in our system.
It all makes having a large mortgage debt, or any other kind of debt, a big risk. If you rent, you pay someone to take that risk for you. You don’t get the profit of rising home prices either, but how can prices rise when sales are plummeting (new homes -14.5%) and the economy is artificially kept alive through borrowing from our children?
Khiori
Buying a house if you can pay it off without getting into debt is fine, but a 30-year mortgage is a huge gamble. It’s not unlike getting into a casino betting you can beat the house. If people think this is really a recovering economy, it might make sense to them, but since Q1 GDP growth was negative, and that is with an ongoing QE, I wonder where they would see that recovery. China is struggling, Japan is worse, Europe is an increasingly divided experiment gone awry.
And the US has bad numbers everywhere but in stock markets and assets available only to the rich – who are getting richer -. This means your “if you have the income” is also an added risk factor. What is you lose – part of – it? If for instance a substantial drop in the S&P drains a few trillion out of the market, or China sells a good chunk of its US Treasuries, events that are not at all unlikely, volatility and risk will surge. Running an economy on borrowed virtual money is inherently unstable. But it’s all we got right now, and I can’t see myself recommending people dive into debt in that situation. There’s too much out there that is entirely fake, not grounded in people working with their hands so to speak, and too much that can go ‘poof’ in an instant. But if you think central banks will keep this up for years to come, or even if you think they’re able to, I guess your risk assessment might be different.
But Cory, what is really important in all this, in what you quote, in where we are, in where we think this will lead us? Do you yourself see a way available to our ‘leaders’ to lead ‘us’ out of the gutter? Assuming even that they would want to? And if you don’t, then what are the options? In what fashion can we, given that we don’t have a crystal ball, do anything else than to tell our readers to get out because the risk is so high? Do you feel that risk has gotten smaller, on anything but a temporary basis? I sure don’t.
Well, both Nicole and I popped that dream lots of times here, and we”re to going to be found wrong: shale is a land speculation scheme. How can you be an energy source with depletion rates of 80%+ for the average well? It’s ridiculous. But of course you do get all these lofty predictions from the EIA, that’s their job, to make things look sunny and great and all.
Cory,
Everything we said, including the timing, would have already come to fruition if not for the absolute insanity unleashed by the Fed and its peers, and the propaganda that accompanied it. We have said multiple times in the intervening years that we did not see that coming. But what could we be accused of in that regard, that we didn’t accurately predict insane behavior? I think unpredictability tends to be an inherent trait in that sort of behavior.
What counts now is being aware of what has lifted asset markets, including housing, over the past 5 years, and realizing that it will bring these markets down even further than they would have before every American man woman and child bought $25,000 or so worth of profit for the financial system courtesy of Ben Bernanke.
For us the prime take away from this is, as it was 5 years ago, that people need to cut their exposure to risk. And for us it’s not such a big deal that a few dollars here or there might have been theoretically lost at any given fixed point in time. We try to identify trends and the risks inherent in them, and both the trends and the risks have gotten a lot worse since 2009, even if the financial system and media have successfully fooled people into thinking otherwise.
That’s what I would tell your spouse. Not that I’m convinced he would listen. The insanity that worldwide totals $30-40 trillion is a giant bet that people will believe way too much debt can actually be fought with even more debt, and spend and borrow accordingly. As I wrote last week, if you present people with just the principle, they tend to understand. If you tell them this is what’s happening in their own lives today, not so much.
There are undoubtedly plenty people who feel certain we’re on our way back to normal ‘as it ever was’. They are the ones walking into the trap set with their own money.
“…we prefer this propaganda illusion to the harsh reality.
Why? Because half of us are getting a direct check, benefit or payment from the state.
Eh, no. And honestly, not close.
Optimism bias is a deeply embedded part of the human mind, which has nothing to do with a government or what it hands out. It goes back way before there were governments.
The clinch is in defining reality as ‘harsh’. If we could convince people that the new reality is not as bad as they think, they would be much more likely to jump in. But people want what they have, not what they could have, and the longer they cling on to the illusion that what they have now can be maintained, the harder the new reality will be, both in perception and in reality.
Our brains are “organized” in such a way that they become self-defeating if not self-destroying. And maybe that’s an evolutionary thing. Maybe that’s the one trait that will keep our numbers in check. Still, though that has a whiff of optimism in it, it would be a huge threat too to those alive now, so it won’t wash. The best thing for the planet would be for you to leave, it’s not a popular theme.
Diogenes,
It’s not possible to have an actual conversation with someone who says even 10,000 ppm CO2 levels wouldn’t matter because the stuff is ‘clear and colorless’, or that the tides alone make sea levels shift more than CO2 ever could. What kind of argument is that anyway? Isn’t that like saying warming doesn’t matter because it’s hot in the Sahara? Climate scientists would need to use tarot cards to predict where sea levels might be in 86 years, but you can do without them and claim that if they rise, it will be because of the sun? Sorry buddy, but let’s get serious, shall we? And I’m still waiting for you to tell me who has been paying all those thousands of scientists to keep lying about their findings for all these years. And why.
Variable
Phasing out of lecturing; is it that the results you’re getting from your lectures are starting to fall below expectations, or perhaps it has just “run its course” and now you are looking for something new?
Lectures are simply much less in demand. People have been sucked – back – into the great dream. This is very poignant in Europe, but evident all over.
Moving from Canada; I suppose you’re cashing out of the housing bubble while it is at its peak here, but curious what your longer-term view for Canada is at this point? Also, I believe you have family… does this transition across the Pacific impact them greatly?
No cashing out; The Automatic Earth really, I wasn’t lying, possesses nothing. Which is part, as I said, by design, we can’t very well do what we tell others they should not, but at this point it’s become a hindrance to doing something as basic as our work. The idea was to have just enough to do that work. Also, no family coming along, except for perhaps Nicole’s youngest daughter, who’s 18.
I’ll let Nicole provide other answers.
I don’t know why or how people read into my “the work for Atamai also means that you see less of her here at The Automatic Earth” that she will be even less present here. That would be hard to do, if you ask me. What I meant is that she has been less present in the past while, but she’ll certainly be back and write more once the transition phase to NZ is done. Nicole is working on the final part of her food security piece, and preparing a video file on that topic at the same time. So no need to worry about Nicole at TAE.
The real people economy has been turning down for many years, a development creatively hidden behind a veil of massaged numbers. I haven’t read Pepe on Ukraine and been impressed by it. Same with Whitney and Paul Craig Roberts. Mostly scraping up some truth and blowing it out of proportion.
I’m as much Canadian as Dutch, that’s why, and the Dutch being all that great at languages is a gross exaggeration based on the fact that the rest are so poor. Great story about your nana, it’s all we need to know about what we lost, why that is important, and how the emptiness implicit in that makes us so destructive.
Well, that’s not an answer, is it? Not very convincing. I get the feeling the conspiracy is not where you think it is. Do all these scientists get paid to issue reports they know are not true, or do they get fed false information while training? Or maybe I should ask: who pays the deniers? Or: if there are no changes in the climate, why is Arctic ice vanishing (or is that all trick photography)?
Deadcat, the article deals not with the first time CO2 has reached 400 ppm, but with the first time it has remained over 400 ppm for an entire month.
Diogenes, that’s a lot of scam detection. Do they pay all the scientists, are they all part of the scam, or do they start teaching them false science in high school?
Diogenes,
Treasuries will be less, not more, risky for the near future. Other than that, it’s increasingly what you expect a physical as opposed to a financial return from, i.e. a farm, arable land. I’m still not a gold or silver guy, other than at the other side of the crash, years from now. Gold is for those who can sit on it for 10-20 years, not for those who have to sell it in that timeframe just to survive. And that is 99% of people.
“Do you (and I include Nicole here) honestly still think that preparing for a deflation with the same strategy you outlined since 2008 is still valid? Please be honest, because it is “only” a matter of survival.”
I don’t at all like suggestions that I wouldn’t be honest. Who do you think you are? And apart from that, p, I posted that graph twice. Which part of it you don’t you understand?
LEAP2020 is not anti-American, it’s a European view. Tons of university degrees and all that, but as I said it works for and against them at the same time. The world will never have one government, so you can shove that notion aside and engage in more fruitful thinking. Or maybe I should say that as soon as there is a one world government, all hell’s going to break loose all over the globe; that we already effectively have such a government is a whole other issue. And it is the worst possible way, not the only, to address “the big problems”.
Fair enough, chettt, but maybe the question is: what other “analysis” could be taken more seriously than this one? I can’t think of any, other than my own. And that”s not me tooting my own horn, I simply see all sorts of people jumping to all sorts of conclusions, likely because they’re all out of their league, while I only ask questions.
Tabernac,
You made me wonder whether anyone has ever checked if all individual bacteria and yeast maintain their fertility rates throughout the tragic cycle of the consumption of surplus energy. I don’t know of any such research, but neither do I see any reason to assume falling fertility rates are not a ‘natural’ part of any such cycle in any organism, be it yeast, mice, or people.
The underlying question would be if any such falling rate in any of these cases could arrest the drive towards more consumption, for the group, not the individual, until the inevitable.
TAE Summary,
Good to see you back. Been far too long. As always.
You sure that God will get the credit, though? Why not the blame?
And doesn’t life beget energy, instead of vice versa? Or is that the chicken and the egg all over again for Easter?
Hemingway! It’s been ages. How’s ma ville? Very true, what you picked out. We’ve gotten stuck in and fooled by planning 50-odd years ahead through pension plans and the like, but that’s such an aberration from anything and everything all our 1000s of generations of ancestors thought of, there was never any way that would work. It’s like some kind of delusionary time travel that don’t mean no-one no good. Living for today, and the fulfillment that day can bring, and making it so, is what we do best. So why did we stop?
