John Day
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Germany blinked on Greek Debt:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-07/dax-surges-after-germany-unexpectedly-opens-door-greek-debt-negotiationsCharles Hugh Smith has an ideal companion piece on Assymetric Warfare in oil markets.
(I got the first comment on ZH, addressing the Large number of June $30 puts, which I got from an article about $20 puts, posted here.)
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan15/oil-war1-15.html@Rapier
The US diplomat in the Wikipedia link is named as “John Day”, which s a relatively common name, though I was previously unaware of this person bearing “my” name, before reading it.Here is an equalizing partial-solution to the odious Greek debt.
Odious debt can be legally repudiated under international law, such as when a dictator runs up a big bill, is deposed, and the people of the country rightfully refuse to pay what was never their choice to begin with.
What if something like $68 billion of Greek military weapons purchases, half from Germany, and half from other countries, for dry-docked submarines and useless tanks, were bought with borrowed money, due to billions of dollars in bribes to Greek officials involved in purchasing decisions?
Yeah, it sounds plausible, because it happened.
(Now, let’s get back to the argument that Greece was never really a member of financial union since it joined under false pretenses when Goldman cooked the books.)Matt Taibbi looks at the NYPD work slowdown, which stops ticketing people for things like urinating in public, and only arrests people “when it is necessary”.
This lifting of the boot is what people want, and it seems to be the right thing, for wrong reasons, hitting NYC in the pocketbook with reduced fine-income from “zero-tolerancing” poor black folks.
What a tangled web, when the solution is instituted as a political attack.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-nypds-work-stoppage-is-surreal-20141231Budget constrained Notre Dame in Paris couldn’t afford a huge Christmas tree, because the price went up to 80k Euros. “Isolated” Russia provided one, transported it to Paris, as a sign of lasting friendship. 🙂
https://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2014/12/01/joyeux-noel-from-russia-with-love@ Pollistra,
That educational toy from 1983 USSR is a very well designed modular “breadboard”.
Every electronic tinkerer has to “breadboard” (yep, noun and verb) circuits, and as that goes on you develop systematic breadboard setups to speed your process. This is the result of that kind of activity. It is a direct gateway to electronic circuit design and revision.
I enjoyed your link. My creative energies have migrated out of analog electronics in recent years. Living efficiently in human, ecological, energetic, and resource terms really engages me these days. I still love vacuum tube electronics, but don’t spend my time there, like I used to.William,
Thoughtful content there, Amigo.
Dmitry Orlov absolutely nails a character and behavioral analysis of essential traits of Anglo-American Imperialism. This may be the best piece of Orlov’s that I’ve seen.
It casts things in a clarifying historical context.
https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-imperial-collapse-playbook.html
Here is food for thought about “how to shrink the economy without crashing it”, by Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute. Food for thought, cud to chew…How to Shrink the Economy without Crashing It: A Ten-Point Plan
Here is a good article looking at what the new Greek left, Syriza, may actually do if elected. There are lots of moving parts and historical precedents to consider.
https://truth-out.org/news/item/28263-syriza-from-radicalism-to-pragmatism-the-state-of-the-left-in-greece
I have to wonder if Greece will be jettisoned and publicly punished for what is inevitable, to teach the rest of the debt slaves a lesson.Hi Koso_man,
It seems that all that money sitting idly in the accounts of big banks is cushion for the next collapse.
The bankers must be defended against consequences, and they do hold everybody’s money, so there’s a gun to every head.
Maybe I’m wrong… Happy New YearMr Market says 66% chance of Greek default. (“100% if you wait long enough”, says logic.)
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-31/greek-default-risk-soars-66-morgan-stanley-warns-ecb-may-be-unable-launch-qe#comment-5610220Thanks for another year of good information, analysis and stylish presentation Ilargi and Stoneleigh.
I do miss the old days (reading since 2008) when the likes of El Gallinazo and Greenpa populated the comments section.
Sigh…
Manners and scholarship have declined in the comments sections everywhere.
I was too shy to enter a comment for years, for fear of seeming uninformed.
I guess that’s all over.
Happy New Year, Y’all!Hi Statzman.
You might look through Zero Hedge to catch the latest MH-17 news.
I think you’ve been missing out since it happened, an alternate reality.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-24/russia-says-it-has-evidence-ukraine-military-defector-kiev-was-responsible-mh-17-craT.Boone Pickins says that Peak Oil WAS in 2005, and that the drop in oil prices is due to loss of global demand, as CNBC dittohead interviewer (younger, stronger) shouts him down, until Pickins tells him who the “expert” is.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-23/t-boone-pickens-rages-cnbc-i-am-expert-not-you-says-oil-down-due-weak-demandAlso: An airport-worker witness in the MH-17 shoot down says a Ukrainian fighter jet did it, leaving with air to air missiles, returning without them, names the pilot and quotes him.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-24/russia-says-it-has-evidence-ukraine-military-defector-kiev-was-responsible-mh-17-craOh, Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has a very good complimentary (shorter) piece to this today.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/12/saudis-tell-shale-industry-will-break-plans-keep-pumping-even-20-barrel.htmlThank You Euan,
Even if each of us does not have the identical viewpoint, due to our different roles and expertise, we should value the analysis you have given, which is broadly applicable outside the UK.
In Texas, where I live, a lot of electric load comes from running air conditioning in the summer, when the sun shines, so solar helps match production and load.
There are lots of specific regional differences that have to be considered in reducing buffer and swing capacity expenses.
To some degree, load needs to learn to follow supply better, too.
Global warming may already have is baked to a crisp. Models diverge widely based on analysis of positive feedback loops.
This will be a hard transition, and I don’t know how hard, but I’m looking at the back yard turned into kitchen=garden, and I will bike 14 miles to work in a little while.
I’m seeking to adapt in anticipation of events now beginning to unfold.Ellen Brown teases out that Trojan Horse to TBTF Bankers for their derivatives losses, in the CROmnibus bill, which is now law. It’s just this little 5% of derivatives exposure, nothing really, and all in the commodities arena, things like crude oil, mostly.
There’s about $16 trillion in backing to banks on those price hedges they sold so many of to drillers and oil companies, which are fabulously out-of-the-money now.
Whew! Just in time…Russian Roulette: Taxpayers Could Be on the Hook for Trillions in Oil Derivatives
Here are a couple of good articles about that Sony hack. The FBI was really late to the party with its secon-round-unfounded-accusations, sorta’ like Iraqi WMDs.
American Everyman takes a good look at it with references and snippets, Ilargi-style.
https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2014/12/20/the-fbis-new-statement-on-the-sony-hack-is-bunk-here-is-the-real-story-of-the-sony-hack/
North Korea says it can PROVE it didn’t do the hack (a hard thing to do), and without resorting to CIA-style torture.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-20/defiant-north-korea-says-can-prove-it-not-behind-hack-without-resorting-torture-ciaThanks V.Arnold. Pepe is good, for sure, and does his homework.
I had actually put that link in the comments on 12/18/14.
I too, keep an eye out for Pepe’s stuff.Pepe Escobar has a good article today on how Russia/Putin are NOT checkmated by recent economic sanctions and currency/financial attacks (including the covert ones).
What Putin is not Telling Us: The Raid on the Ruble was supposed to be a Checkmate. It’s Not
Hi Diogenes,
You should always shrug at the ZH comments section, really.
The stars are just the aggregate of what individuals signed on give, and it changes quickly at first. You can set up the comments section to read in various orders, too.
Here is something excellent from Pepe Escobar on the implications of that “New Silk Road” Eurasian integration project. The first 1800 mile train line is up and running, and about to shift the global power structure.
It may be a lot of why the “Empire of Chaos” is behaving so desperately lately. Wars, economic sanctions, bullying, Secretly negotiated trade agreements where global multinationals rule… Russia is a lynchpin in all this, and seemingly easier to attack overtly than China. It looks like the days of the empire are waning, but opening up with Tommy-guns in the casino is still an options. …sigh…
https://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-171214.htmlThe Global Recession is dropping the bubbled-up market-value of liquid fuel.
The bankers are itchy to make their move, as are the militarists, and military capitalists, and powerful transnational criminals with tentacles in everything.
All of that hate, greed and fear has very itchy trigger-fingers.
Grow a kitchen garden. Ride a bike. Love.Maybe Bush and Cheney won’t be able to travel to Spain, huh?
I already think it’s not on their lists.
Disorderly “Grexit” in 2005?
The global crisis, part-2 may already be in full bloom by then.
Oil has been down for awhile, despite financial shenanigans. That portends contraction.
Time for the US to start topping-off the strategic petroleum reserves again, isn’t it?David Stockman presents the “shale bubble”, supported by the Fed “in plain sight” (and having a heart attack while choking on steak and Jack Daniels).
This Time Is The Same: Like The Housing Bubble, The Fed Is Ignoring The Shale Bubble In Plain Sight
Ugo Bardi’s model of oil investment and production gives Seneca’s Cliff for production.
The Baltic Dry Index has lowest December since 2008, indicating again that it’s overproduction of oil that is resulting in the current price drop, right?
😮
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-08/baltic-dry-plunges-back-below-1000-lowest-december-2008It’s a bit late for Pearl Harbor Day news, but FDR took 8 steps, beginning a year before the event, to force Japan into war with the US, and was completely aware of the day, hour and nature of the impending Japanese attack, monitored radio communications of their fleet (not radio-silence), and got the aircraft carriers and other modern ships out of Pearl before the attack, specifically to get the US into the European war. The “McColum Memo” was the blueprint he followed. It’s declassified. This book is definitive, written by a WW-2 vet on a mission. The reviews of the book lay it out succinctly.
I’m sure nothing like this is going on these days…What’s the historical value of water in California?
It depends upon which historical epoch. A couple of fairly recent ones were basically too dry to support life and lasted a couple of hundred years each. (That’s what got the Anasazi, same droughts.) https://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24993601/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more
So there is more than just oil to focus on in the Double Jeopardy category of Black-Swan-Leavings.@Ilargi: More fine work, sir.
@Huckleberryfinn: Something is eating you, amigo, eating you from inside.
You will know no peace as long as you keep pointing the finger at others.
Peace, Brother.Cognitive Dissonance; that’s the form of suffering which is causing such irate and “illogical”, as Mr Spock would say, responses as regard the workings of deflation.
The implication that something very harsh is already happening, and will overtake all that we know, even when gas gets cheaper and the problem looks solved, is very hard to accept.
It’s easier to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”.
Guy McPherson gets a much harder time with the cognitive dissonance he engenders with his extrapolation of global warming of 10 degrees F, 6 degrees C by something like 2030, yeah, 15 years from now.
This is worse than most say, and it’s at the bad end of the spectrum of bad.
He’s a sincere and respectable man, not trying to sell anything, and with proper academic credentials.
https://truth-out.org/news/item/27714-are-humans-going-extinctThanks Ilargi,
It is very hard for some people’s minds to look at causality.
It’s all just phenomena…
You can learn some stuff, but most people aren’t born to see beneath surfaces.Point-of-Order, Danny B and Raleigh.
Stockman, and Z.H., and now Ilargi have posted Charles Hugh Smith’s “Oil Drenched Black Swan” article.If Oil Can Drop 40%, What’s Texas Farmland Going to Do?
That’s a question I’m actually a bit MORE interested in seeing answered in the next few years.
🙂Fellow students of history.
I remember the oil price drop in the mid 1980s. I was in med school in Houston, and houses were selling at auction for 20-25 cents on the dollar at auction weekly. Our landlord came by to pick up the check in person one day, in his Corvette.
We’d heard he had financial problems. We never sent him another check.
A bank in Louisiana contacted us half a year later, and said to end them the rent.
We told them about the rats. They didn’t know I’d killed the rats and plugged the hole they got in. We lowered our rent by 20% and they just cashed the checks.
That half year rent free was never questioned.
Your Mileage May Vary.Thanks Ilargi,
Happy Thanksgiving.
Commenters are having a hard time understanding deflation/depression, not having lived through it.
I was the best listener to my Grandfather, who was a radio operator and observer-gunner in a Spad in WW-1, raised a family and built them a house from local wood and stone during the depression, then was in OSS counter-intelligence in WW-2.
I always, and still, feel that I’ll have to assume his cloak, and relatively soon.
We all have our roles to play in life. No spook stuff for me, though.Thanks Euan and Roger for the really revealing graphic analysis unraveling of complex data sets, to reveal temporal relationships, which we can link to known macroeconomic events.
It looks like China and the US agreeing to burn less fuel is within what they may be expecting anyway.It’s all still up in the air. The military certainly defends against EMP, and has that non-nuclear EMP weapon aboard drones. A large metal warship is much easier to defend against EMP than a fighter plane.
Interestingly, the Russian persistence of using vacuum tubes, when the US had switched to solid state, made Russian fighters far more resistant to EMP damage. this is dated information. I don’t know their current electronics.
Russian tubes are pretty good, though.@Nassim,
It’s an open question what was going on when the Russian fighter made all those passes over the AEGIS missile cruiser.
This is what every military does when it wants to test the targeting radar of an adversary, but I don’t know exactly what was going on, and RT doesn’t say the ship was blinded during this. It’s an unsubstantiated allegation, as far as I can tell.
https://rt.com/news/pentagon-destroyer-russian-jet-428/OH Shit!
3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater has been pumped into California aquifers.
Drink Coors!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-17/3-billion-gallons-fracking-wastewater-pumped-clean-california-aquifiers-errors-were-@ Jef Jelten, Thanks for the wheat-glyphosate article. It has a mechanism to explain the real, documented phenomenon of increasing wheat intolerance.
Here are a couple of articles about the G-20 meeting that go beyond the chest-thumpng we see in the Anglophone press, one from Deutsche Welle, and the other from a rather obscure Russian political-news website.
https://www.dw.de/merkel-putin-talk-as-g20-debates-ukraine/a-18067417
https://vestnikkavkaza.net/news/politics/62255.html
