Raúl Ilargi Meijer
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AutoMan,
You have an absolutely great point. Would you consider writing a guest post about the topic?
Guys, first of all of course thanks for your kind donations, do keep them coming, cause we’re not there yet by a long shot, and as per the Mac vs PC thing, I’ve only ever worked with Mac, and converted many who would never ever go back, and the best price for your buck discussion is up for grabs and by no means decided. Macs tend to last longer, and all of TAE’s history is Mac, and transferring all of it to PC would be a nightmare, so all in all, I don’t see Mac as elitist or anything at all, they’re simply a tool, and a tool that so far has given me no reason to doubt it’s up for the job. The Mac that died went all over the world, and I should have replaced it sooner, but our present financial situation makes that hard, so I waited. Until I no longer could….
It’s funny, in light of the thread above, that Nicole addresses the same topic today in her “Crash on Demand?” article:
It is our view at TAE that for a time energy limits are not likely to manifest, as lack of money will be the limiting factor in a major financial crisis. At the present time, with modestly increasing energy supply, the delusion of far greater increases to come, and falling demand, energy is already ceasing to be a pressing concern. As liquidity dries up, and demand falls much further as a result of both lack of purchasing power and plummeting economic activity, this will be even more the case.
No respect for Nicole, either, then, Frank?!
But it’s even funnier that our old young friend VK disagrees from the other side of the spectrum:
You can’t write the same things you did in 2008!
“It is our view at TAE that for a time energy limits are not likely to manifest, as lack of money will be the limiting factor in a major financial crisis”
In 6 years we lose 35 Mn bpd without new investments. TAE has to shift from the 2007-2008 mindset.
And to be realistic you have to talk about self defence & guns.
As for that crunch, being skeptical of a crunch is what we do, all the time, day after day after day. But all I see is a crunch that grows in size day by day, because people let themselves get fooled into thinking that not only can debt be paid off with more debt, but that they will actually profit from this being executed in their name, and with their money. Look, the S&P breaks another record! Well, you certainly earned that look, because you’re paying for it.
If people still think we were wrong, and are wrong, about that crunch, let’s talk, but they need something better to bring to the table than S&P records or home prices. Because we can’t have that conversation without looking at debt levels. And I think that’s where the turning point still is, whether in conversations or in real life. You think things are looking up? Okidoke, so what happened to the debt that caused the 2007/8 crisis? Well, personal debt went down a tad (foreclosures), though plastic is all the rage again, bank debt (by far the largest) has been hidden behind a too big to fail wall, and federal debt is on its way out of the ballpark, going going but by no means gone.
But hey, everything seems normal right? Well, unless you’re in Greece, or Italy, or Spain, or Detroit, or you’re in that fast growing American army that just lost your foodstamps and your unemployment benefits. So maybe things seem normal for you because they no longer do for other people? If it looks like what it was before, that must be real, right?, that couldn’t be an temporary illusion bought with debt, like getting a new credit card and use it to pay the mortgage and the kids’ school fees and dentist bills till it’s maxed out after a few weeks or months? How many people do you think went routes just like that? And where are they now?
Does anyone think that the debt pays off itself? And even if you do, please note that it hasn’t so far: it’s only grown. How do you think that will end? How could it possibly end?
Honestly, I lost serious respect for Ilargi when he claimed that Peak Oil has not happened because we have reached a non-catastrophic equilibrium based on demand destruction rather than supply increase.
Really, I said that? In those exact words, or is it paraphrased? Non-catastrophic equilibrium? I wonder. What year was that?
I doubt the same power relationship exists between the PBoC and Chinese banks as the ones in (formerly) rich nations. It will eventually, but for now the PBoC looks like a tool for the government, not the banks.
The fight between governments and corporations was decided long ago. The outcome became inevitable the money corporate money was allowed to enter politics.
But inflation there is not. If you can’t figure out how prices can rise without inflation, you’re not going to understand what happens. No chance.
Merry Christmas to you all, in Grace and in Light.
rheba,
And all you say about Mauldin is why The Automatic Earth is here, and needs to be, and deserves everyone’ support. Just about every single finance site has something to peddle, especially gold. If Nicole and I held gold, or stocks, or you name it, our views and writings about it would be influenced by that, and we don’t see that as a positive thing. And of course we realize that we limit our potential audience that way, and risk the very existence of TAE, something that’s very obvious to us right now, but we’re simply not interested in helping people make money, we want to help who have little, not lose it. And that’s a huge difference from John Mauldin, who in order to make you money dares not speak the truth.
So fair to say we’re in a “no-win” solution?
First item on the list: define “win”. You want to change things around here, might as well start off in the right direction.
So: what do you mean when you say “win”? Same old same old and then some? And “no-win” is the opposite of that? Is it possible that the first step towards winning is to stop defining it in a way you never gave much thought to begin with?
Nothing personal, don’t get me wrong, more like something everyone should stop and think about. Along the same lines as why we equate “successful” with making lots of money. Why do we do that? Where’s the success in it?
still happening, oh lord?
It’s great for me now. I did clear the cache. since we moved host two days ago, that might have an effect. and we’re on a real fast server now, performance has gone up a lot
sorry, no going back
jal, I don’t know what that is, no-one else has complained today
I changed the settings for your order, it should be good now
BTW, the email I have on file for you bounces, if you send me a good mail address at TheAutomaticEarth • gmail • com, we can have these talks off the comments section
jal,
@ ilargi
I went to the purchase of the download and the price is coming up as $39.95 US, with paypal. Is that correct?Yes, that’s correct. My big red numbers are not big enough yet? 😉
Does Nicole show us her Ontario compound?
No. That was made impossible years ago by the attacks on TAE.
Lord B, we left Blogger because we had to, spammer and idiot attacks were insane and Google wouldn’t do anything about that. Our comment moderation box became inaccessible to ourselves, and comments got stuck in it. Joomla was never ideal, and WP will take a bit of work apparently. We simply have no money to pay people to do this stuff for us.
Apologies for the mishaps in publishing an earlier version of this article. We’re working hard to correct a number of errors that occurred during the conversion from Joomla to WordPress.
Won’t disturb stork baby deliveries, cuz most babes are over 5 lbs.
Bit of a shame, that, it would have been nice to have the Humane Society on our side too.
let’s see
Hmm, definitely will go on the to do list. 1 pic didn’t work, 2 pics did. Then I got to choose between detach and delete, picked detach, and the 2nd pic is gone. Thanks for pointing this out, jal.
BTW, pipefit, you back among the chosen few? 😉
Ted, I’m not Nicole, and I wasn’t name calling. Just trying to say that the government doesn’t give money away to people, and hence there’s not inflationary impulses coming from that direction.
pipefit, the spam system bounced you, not us. I cleared your IP, you should be good to go now. The system has 11,600 bad IPs cached and stopped 14.500 spammers in 10 days. Both numbers doubled over night Sunday morning. Of those 14,500, many are good for over 1000 attempts each (system stops counting at 1000), so we’re talking millions of attempts. Pretty crazy.
Ted, the government takes money away from people, that’s what it does. It doesn’t give it to them, you commie.
Ted, I’m the first to call the political system beyond repair, and I’ve done just that 1000 times, so I hope people will understand that if I suggest something as “outrageous” as this, I don’t mean we should try and vote for it in Congress, or any parliament. But I still think the questions and suggestions are legit and valuable. Just because the system is dead doesn’t mean we all are dead too. I plan to continue to come up with thoughts about our societies whether or not they may or may not fit what our political systems have descended into. The role of peak oil in all of this is a whole other issue.
Well, Ted and PLL, I never presented anything as an easy solution, but why not try an alternative to what demonstrably doesn’t work? What we have is the Fed paying $85 billion/month to banks, same amount to us would be a nice experiment. Just see what happens. For the people, the present process is murder, so why not? And how that would lead to inflation, Prof, really, for people like you if we were mired indeep deflation, you’d see that as a sign inflation is coming.
“check the links that you provide, (more good reads), on the left of the front page. Some don’t take you where you want us to go.”
Like which?
So here’s my question: would rising consumer prices every year for, say, 10 years in succession, mean anything? Anything at all? That is, they may be a lagging indicator, but still an indicator (after a lag), right? If that is true, then what do they indicate? If anything.
10 years seems a good time frame, as long as you don’t try arguing the past 10 prove anything towards your notion. See ya in 10.
Stock market crash by xmas? Maybe. But predicting market crashes is dangerous business …
So I didn’t. My exact words:
I’m not saying things will happen in this order and timeframe. Just that they’re going to if central banks and treasury departments don’t up the ante. But they will.
And may I add to prove my point:
Enter stage left Janet Yellen ….
You know, if only just to avoid a repeat of all the times when we said things MIGHT happen, and then be accused ad nauseum by the less literate of saying they WILL happen. Because that gets old fast.
Perhaps I should add that unlike Nadeem (even though he re-publishes our articles all the time), Nicole and I don’t focus on markets, which is maybe why this site is not called The Automatic Market. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with trying to be as rich as you possibly can in 2 weeks time, it’s just that it’s not what we do. We try to look a few inches beyond that.
Why not just use y-o-y consumer prices
Because they say nothing about inflation or deflation, other than as a lagging indicator. Why look at prices when you can use much more accurate and immediate indicators? Whether prices fall today or in 6 months or 18 doesn’t tell you much about where an economy is moving. M and V are far superior signs.
For instance, deflation makes people poorer (reflected today in wages, profits), and of course they will try to make up for what’s lost by raising prices wherever they can. Until they can’t. So at least some prices can very well rise during early phases of deflation, but you get to misinterpret that if you look only at prices.
First, you can’t have inflation in one segment of an economy and deflation in another. That’s not how it works. You don’t need to look at food prices to know where you are either, though Dave does an admirable job. That velocity of money graph is really all you need, because it says the money supply would have to explode just to keep up with the downward pull caused by money flowing through the economy at the slowest pace in 60 years. It isn’t. At that pace, increasing the money supply makes hardly any sense, because people are not spending anyway, so it wouldn’t flow. You would also have to see increasing wages, and that too is not happening. There will be no inflation unless people can be forced to spend, and that is near impossible when their debts are so high. On the other hand, there are huge amounts of debt that have yet to be written down, restructured or defaulted on, and all that means more deflationary pressure. Food prices are not a factor in that, certainly at local levels. There is no such thing as food inflation.
Please note that since we are now actively in transfer to the new site, things added in the meantime may temporarily end up in limbo. Like this post….
Ted,
I haven’t heard the Puplava thing, and, after reading it several times, I don’t understand this last bit:
” ………Maybe this is pandering to the mainstream. Who would have thought that questioning the economic system after 2008 would have to sugar coat everything so much so that people can absorb the message!?
yassine
looks good
why not write me a proper article on this?
theautomaticearth •at• gmail •dot• com
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch- Changes
Dear all,
We’re about to move to WordPress. Things will change, look different etc. Too much for me to oversee, so do please add your constructive criticism once we arrive in the promised land. I hope the Comments, Forum etc. will be nice and easy to use, and if they’re not, that I’ll be able to find where you’re going to tell me how and why ;_). AND of course that you will support The Automatic Earth in all possible waysm not least of all financially. Because we need that. Badly. We’ll make available Nicole’s World of Change lectures the moment we move over, and there’s more in the pipeline. We very much appreciate your presence here.
Those of us who never expected these promises to be kept got a head start; the rest had better adopt a serious sense of urgency….
Not going to happen, mate, people will stick with what they like to believe, with what looks more promising, what makes them feel better/best, only the outcast village idiots are going to pay attention.
Porkpie,
I see why that could be misconstrued. What I meant to say is simply that while in Holland prices for both houses and energy are falling, in Britain they’re both going up.
Perhaps a good moment to check M2/M3 numbers, or even just household debt.
I am a little confused by your statement that where fuel goes, housing will follow.
Where and when did I say that?
