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For the most part Ukraine seems like a blunder, a stupendous one. I’m almost positive that it is now seeming to be such in the White House but that feckless crowd are mostly bystanders as the wheels of the permanent government, world domination division, goes about its business. I believe that business is to create a fortress America and fostering chaos and collapse elsewhere serves that purpose.
Sorry un Christian, decadent,socialist Europe,
Neither here nor there nor on topic but here in Michigan employment agencies are advertising during the evening local news casts. Mostly to fill light industrial positions I think. $9 to $13/hr one said. This had never ever happened. First off it shows the auto industry is going good. Secondly it shows that there is a large segment of the unemployed who are, by semi choice I suppose, not seen fit for hiring due to,and I am guessing: unable to pass a drug screening, criminal record, very bad resumes indicating poor attendance.
I suspect we are at the good as it gets point for jobs. The semi unemployable had nothing to do with taking us into the as bad as it gets for jobs period of 6 years ago. That was caused by something else and that in turn was causal in a significant spike in the unemployable today. Be prepared however to start hearing how it’s the people who are at fault for the looming slowdown.
As I said, all neither here nor there.
The point is the rhetoric and the stoking of emotions and nationalism. The whole thing is a process we have seen played out in Rowanda and Yugoslavia where politicians and politics stoke ethnic division for all sorts of bad reasons.
I was clueless about the ethnic makeup and divide of Ukraine until this all started and only just now am coming to grips with what it means. What it means is death and destruction. Already any settlement along a Ukrainian Federation seem impossible.
Did our Great Global Strategic Thinkers, Victoria ‘fuck the EU’ Nuland, anticipate this? Who knows. Did Obama? Probably not but the Pandora’s Box of war has opened as it did in Syria and blood is on his hands to the extent we encouraged instead of discouraging violence for the purpose or regime change.
RE:The links were from a site that I think is Ukrainian, though I don’t know which ‘side’ in Ukraine, since I can’t read either the Cyrillic or the Roman contents.
It’s becoming vital to understand which side because the situation has quickly dissolved into the stoking of old ethnic divisions which is now open hatred. Dimiry Orlov has been sinking into spasms of anti Ukrainian prejudice. The entire situation there now fully polarized along ethic lines. I am sure by now you have seen the internet TV station journalist saying 1.5 million in the Donbass region are superfluous and need to be eliminated. I won’t link.
The Pandora’s Box has been opened.
RE jal
From yesterday, a link,
Where Money Goes to Die: How Fracking Blows Up Balance Sheets of Oil and Gas Companies
This has been known sort of intuitively for several years but now we have numbers. The shortfall is made up with borrowed money or out of capital, mostly the former. The $110bn doesn’t go up in smoke as long as they can borrow more to keep old debt current. The same situation as Greece, Spain, now Ukraine and so many others.
It strikes me that if Russian flows to Europe slow that prices especially of US crude and to a lesser extent NG will rise and above maybe$150/bbl will put the frackers in the green. I think this plays some part in the gambles going on with Russia. In addition a price spike would be the perfect excuse for recession, falling markets or most anything the elite might get blamed for. Much better to blame Putin.
There is a huge settlement of Treasury auctions today, over $70bn worth, so there is a temporary liquidity squeeze. This is the first month since 11/12 when this round of QE started that Fed buying was exceeded by Treasury borrowing. That will reverse again,despite the taper in August and September. Then the taper will start to really bite.
Few people remember that post 911 Greenspan made a couple of dozen trips to the White House. A much higher frequency than pre W. People are still scratching their over the ultra low Fed controlled short rates right through most of 2004. Well figure it out. Sheesh. He was under tremendous pressure to help in the War On Terrorism, by helping people shop. Which you may recall was Bush’s main advice to Americans post 911.
I mention this because with more indistinct wars here now,how will Yellen stand up to the pressure that will come when the stock market dip comes as QE ends. Keeping asset bubbles floating high is the best defense against the worlds big corporations from ‘siding’ with Russia. The best defense and offense we have in the economic war now being launched.
Then too, with all sorts of trouble brewing in the EU who would be against Dragi pulling out all the stops? Nobody smart I would guess. It’s probably just me at this moment but I can forsee central bank money printing on a vast scale in order to help the (economic) war effort. Principals be damned. This will be sold as an existential threat to our nations and their way of life. I suppose the word freedom will be thrown about as well.
The acerbic Pepe Escobar’s take on matters.
https://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-230714.html
The “policy” of the Empire of Chaos is clear, and multi-pronged; diversify the “pivot to Asia” by establishing a beachhead in Ukraine to sabotage trade between Europe and Russia; expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Ukraine; break the Russia-China strategic partnership; prevent by all means the trade/economic integration of Eurasia, from the Russia-Germany partnership to the New Silk Roads converging from China to the Ruhr; keep Europe under US hegemony.
and
” in his latest book, Strategic Vision (2012), Dr Zbig ( Zbigniew Brzezinski) was in favor of an enlarged “West” annexing Turkey and Russia, with the Empire of Chaos posing as “promoter” and “guarantor” of broader unity in the West, and a “balancer” and “conciliator” between the major powers in the East. A quick look at the record since 2012 – Libya, Syria, Ukraine, encirclement of China – reveals the Empire of Chaos only as fomenter of, what else, chaos.
Now compare a fearful Dr Zbig with Immanuel Wallerstein – who was a huge influence in my 2007 warped geopolitical travel book Globalistan. In this piece (in Spanish) Wallerstein argues that the Empire of Chaos simply can’t accept its geopolitical decadence – and that’s why it has become so dangerous. Restoring its hegemony in the world-system has become the supreme obsession; and that’s where the whole “policy” that is an essential background to the MH17 tragedy reveals Ukraine as the definitive do or die battleground. ”I’m not necessarily buying it all but it seems pretty clear some grand strategy is being introduced. The thing is I can’t figure out who would be in charge of it. Obama? The neo cons salted all through the intelligence and military bureaucracy and somehow the financial giants of the West?
It’s 10PM EST and neither the NY Times or Washington Post online front pages mention the resignation of PM Yatsenyuk. Not that I can find anyway. I suppose his statement is just too difficult to spin. As much as the separatists in the east have a pretend country the same can be said about the east, the Kaganate of the Nulands. (An inside joke coined by a Pepe Escobar commentator)
Here I figured with the billions flowing in they could pay the army and keep some semblance of a country, at least until winter. How wrong I was. The real story on the ground there is increasingly tragic but the story about the story, or should I say the lack of it,is entertaining in a sick way.
The incompetence of the administration is astounding. The worst part being I don’t even think they think they are failing since success for them seems to be who is winning the PR war. If ever there was a time where fate delivered some massive blow to the deluded this would be a prime time for it as the whole thing seems like peak stupidity.
Here in the US there is a bizarre dynamic where conservative political rhetoric which dominates all media, by volume, amount and decibels, hates the government but loves the nation. One inch past our borders and the government is only criticized for being too weak, too timid. Where there is literally no amount of violence we can unleash upon others that would be too much. No amount of our government meddling and intruding into other nations is too much. No amount of money spent meddling, intruding, inaviding other countries is too much.
To wit recently they managed to cut $6bn from food stamps the next few years. A political victory met with almost orgasmic glee. Then we just sent $5bn to Ukraine and guaranteed another billion in their bonds, and not a peep was heard.
It’s Europe that had better figure out who their friends are. Not that it makes much difference as in punishing or not punishing Putin because as Victoria Nuland said, “fuck the EU”. I’m thinking ‘we’ are willing to sacrifice Europe to the cold of massive NG shortages to try and get to Putin.
Maybe not this year or next but soon enough.
The NY Times is again cartoon like, just as it was pre Iraq invasion and during the war on Clinton. When the Times is 100% on a story then there is no other story to be told. If the ‘liberal’ NY Times is good with Saddam’s vast threat to the world, Clinton’s cover up of a massive fraud cover up and Putin ordering the shoot down of a commercial jet for the sheer fun of it then it has to be true.
The BRIC meeting last week meant economic war is on. I suspect that means more Fed printing as is needed, to support the war. Few remember Greenspan made 26 visits to the White House post 911, and kept rates ultra low for 3 extra years.
Bernanke and Yellen may not look so bad when a future Fed simply drops purchasing bonds and putting them on a fuddy duddy old fashioned balance sheet. Instead just printing the money and dropping it. Not on citizens from helicopters of course, heaven forbid. Maybe on the Treasury but more likely the banks.
The Fed follows the law of the instrument.
If the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like it needs pounding. For the Fed all they have is money, or ways they hope will lead to the creation of more of it by credit via low interest rates, so everything seems to need more money and more credit..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument
The belief is so total,so all consuming, that there is no possible way to break its grip on people. People powerful and people small. Arguing against it is a futile as shooting rubber bands at the moon.
Nobody within two degrees of separation from power can possibly say anything which will hurt confidence. Certainly a majority of those really believe all confidence about future growth is warranted. Such beliefs are what allows one entre’ into the halls of power.
Which is why, not famously enough, no member of the FOMC was predicting recession in the spring of 08 despite the fact it was already happening. Well at least for public consumption they all submitted forecasts that predicted GDP growth. They know enough about confidence that a negative opinion of the future by an FOMC member would hurt it, making a self fulfilling prophesy. Perhaps to the point of being blamed for the absence of growth because they hurt confidence. No, better the rosy scenario that everyone who is anyone supports. The institutional man is safe in consensus. The independent individual is a loose cannon, not a team player. The non conforming independent thinker who rejects consensus is anathema to any institutional hierarchy. Which is why when one slips through and gets within the halls of power and speaks out they are persecuted and prosecuted to the max degree. The whistle blower is the most reviled person in the system now.
Asset prices are rising because of extravagant amounts of liquidity in the financial sphere. The Taper will this month leave the Treasury selling more bills and notes than the amount of QE but then in Aug and Sept there should be a positive balance again. After that again the QE liquidity will fail to meet all the Treasuries needs. Then we may begin to see something. You can talk about worry and fear till the end of time but those don’t move the markets, money does.
Then too the BOJ is still printing. At any rate I will bet that when a correction comes the Fed will throw the QE window open wide again. I suppose I could be wrong because after all such a move will prove they are weak. The ZH theory that they will risk a correction which could slip out of control is I am guessing wrong. Nobody in power has the balls anymore to take such a risk. Unless that is if they see more QE risks causing rates to rise, buy that seems impossible.
When the day comes, this cycle or the next or the one after that when interest rates rise no matter how much they print then you will know change has finally happened.
People almost always use the near past as the basis for their predicted future. When your a member of a favored group and all the other members are on your side the lure of extrapolating their own wealth and power into the future is even more overwhelming.
There is no reason to believe or disbelieve him or most all people seen and heard because they are flacks. They are taking the company line. What he actually believes is unknowable, perhaps even to himself. The company man, the party man, the organization man edits his words always, except among other company men and perhaps his wife, maybe. (or vise versa all this man stuff, women too. In fact women are becoming the most effective and go to organizational voices)
I’m attempting to use cash more but there seems little point when dealing with large corporate entities. For small local businesses, retail and restaurants and especially services I almost always use cash.
Cultural or social behavior is human behavior because human are social. How we act and organize as groups with hierarchies is universal.
Pre European invasion North America was stone age,pre technical, no mathematics, no written word, and perhaps would have remained such for thousands of more years, in theory. In practice the stone age ended in places and technical societies then wiped out most tribal ones easily. Human genetics determined the ability to harness energy and technology but did not guarantee those would happen. When they did happen human social organizational determined they would sweep stone age cultures aside.
Now in such a short summary there are probably books full of semantic quibbles to be had and maybe the whole genetic thing in the article is over reach as is the idea of any sort of determinism. Who can however quibble with the human will to power and those who have it rise to power within groups and nations. Especially now as the modern business corporation has risen as the new dominant human organizational model and it has moved from strength to more strength and the organization man has rendered the individual marginal,at best. The genetic/cultural thing is interesting but beside the point functionally.
I am still puzzling over why increased withholding taxes from jobs, meaning gross wages are rising even if it’s all part time jobs, can coincide with falling GDP. Admittedly I shamefully have no clue how GDP is calculated but still,,,,,,,how is that possible?
Knowing nothing allows me to think that wages themselves are now a negative for GDP calculation. If this is not quite quantitatively correct it seems to be correct in a real politic sort of way. Hell, maybe it is right quantitatively. I’m old enough to remember when businessmen thought that any wage above some bare subsistence was theft and perhaps the Commerce Department, maker and keeper of the GDP numbers, has finally codified that.
Ken is missing the point but such ideas are not that easy to become comfortable with. It isn’t that debt diminished growth, not at all. Firstly it’s better to discuss this in terms of the expansion of credit, credit being the obverse of debt.
Credit expansion has defined the business cycle since perhaps, ever. Expanding credit is,or at least has always been, not synonymous with ‘growth’ it is a determinate of growth.
The issue is the amount of growth each dollar of credit produces. This chart is only up to 08.
https://www.tradingfloor.com/images/article/max608w/50f66bc3-ef54-4a24-b89c-765ad8978d98.pngI don’t accept this as the final word but the trend is what counts. There can be no possible question that each unit of credit is producing less growth. Now in the US credit is expanding smartly at well over $2TN a year. Let’s say at 10% of GDP. With growth negative again, as in 08 the curve goes negative.
It isn’t just here
“The rise in Chinese debt from 130% to 220% of GDP in only five years shows that debt has risen by 18% of GDP per annum beyond the increase in GDP during that period. However, Chinese growth has averaged only 8.9% in those five years. It therefore follows that growth in debt during the period was double growth in real GDP. In other words, net of the increase in debt, Chinese GDP in 2008-13 shrank substantially.”
https://www.prudentbear.com/2014/06/the-bears-lair-china-may-soon-take.htmlHow is debt supposed to be paid back if there is no growth?
I am sometimes sympathetic to the ‘all that’s needed is more money’ crowd because the alternative it too terrible to imagine. Not that it actually would have to be terrible but most of the worlds peoples, cultures, societies and nations are organized around money and absent more and more of it there is no alternative but collapse. The result of which would lead to terrible suffering.
I am not aware of any history of human society beyond tribal groups (perhaps some?) that have offered an environment allowing most their basic needs that is free of a lot of physical hardship and suffering and violence and coercion and ignorance and the opportunity for let’s call it maximizing their potential before the current age of economics, and money. We do not live in some hell on earth and in fact there is probably less absolute privation and violence now than ever before in history.
It’s hard to lose sight of that when one becomes immersed in what might and probably will be going forward. Nicole always points out that the root of things is energy and that finance and economics is just part of the field on that ground. The more money/debt crowd have no cognizance of that so their views make some sense within the limits of a world of money. The dead hidden debt isn’t so bad compared to a world that would devolve into privation and violence without more and more money. (I am not sure this makes much sense)
The Modern Monetary Theory movement, which is putting lipstick on the idea that honest accounting of debt as an asset serves no good purpose, is sort of working. Still it’s good to study debt and I recommend Margret Atwood’s ‘Payback’ and David Graeber’s ‘Debt, The First 5000 Years’ to try and get a handle on how sooner or later the debts will have to be accounted for. In some sense I take the explosion of debt/money as an attempt to create a substitute for energy. The sad thing being this has lead to the insane project of burning as much as quickly as possible leading to an almost chicken or egg first dilemma in trying to find the cause of the coming troubles. Don’t be confused, it’s energy first. Money/debt is just making it worse, faster.
There is really only one market event that matters and that is loss of liquidity. News of events not related to the market liquidity is just noise. I suspect the driver of this unfocused fear of an ‘event’ is related to the taper but as of now the tapering has coincided almost perfectly with rising tax receipts and thus less Treasury borrowing. In other words no loss of liquidity.
By fall however that will probably change. That is if the taper continues. I would expect some sort of stock swoon before them and the Fed ending taper and even an re acceleration of QE.
This whole meme of fear of an ‘event’ smells of setup. They never ring a bell at the top.
It is not a lie if you know everyone knows your lying. If Yellen had said stocks are in a bubble or that current inflation is a concern the world would have tilted on its axis.
In these instances I suppose her answers might be considered true on some very specific technical or quantitative basis but even if not her job is to say such things, lie or not. Everyone knows how she has to answer it’s her job. The truth or a lie has nothing to do with it. The answers were the truth because they have to be true, for the general good, according to everyone who is given authority to serve the general good.
I always go back to this to demonstrate the principal but not by those serving the general good but those serving some commercial good.
Note the congressman helped out by framing the question in terms of belief which instantly removed the already impossible chance of perjury. Nobody can prove what someone believes. Still if the question had been asked without the “believe” preface they would have answered the same way. They had to it was their job. While everyone knew they were lying most except the naive actually thought the lie was a lie, or something like that. (It is very difficult to describe the let’s call them psychological transactions involved in understanding the statements of people in authority)
To restate. They knew everyone knew they were lying with their denial so was it really a lie? Yellin’s case is a bit different as the objective truth can be sliced and diced and obscured so it isn’t as blatant but the principal is the same. Part of the problem is the questions themselves. The query, it’s framing, invites the lie, even demands it. Can you possibly imagine being asked if stocks are “inflated” instead of in a bubble?
There can’t be hyper inflation of goods because there is not very much currency around. Access to cash equivalent accounts is not assured.
Some monetary reset seems inevitable but I have never heard what it would be. Besides it seems impossible such a thing could simply be imposed from above.
A weak yen is no panacea for a place that has to import all its energy. Currency values being so sort of cure end up being full of the old economics bugaboo, the old on the other hand.
In America what does not inflate, deflates. Detroit being an extreme example.
There is a particular history rarely mentioned about Detroit. When it’s auto industry and population exploded in the 1915 to 1930 period many of the people flocking there were poor southern, whites. Detroit’s growth came later than Chicago’s or Cleveland’s or other smaller industrial cities where European immigrants contributed most of the new workers for industry. The period of Detroit’s explosive growth was in the WW I to depression period which coincided with restrictive immigration numbers and so internal immigration to Detroit filled the factories.
Blacks came too and while segregation ruled all Midwest major cities there was a particularly virulent aspect to it in Detroit which I think is explained by the transference of white Southern attitudes to Detroit.
Of course the unique aspects of the rise of the auto industry, unions and the rest all played their part in its fall but the unique dysfunction of Detroit is inseparable from it’s extreme racial dysfunction.
Most major US cities of the East and Midwest to a large extent actively participated in their own decline by embracing defacto segregation as policy. Policies designed to produce an underclass. And still, behind it all is my contention that what does no inflate in America, deflates. Americans embrace of ‘growth’ via inflation is total. Which is why as AE’s scenarios come to pass they will probably come last to America and with that will come the end of America too. Without inflation there cannot be an America. There may always be a France or an England but not an America.
The financial markets are so well managed now it’s difficult to discern what could upset them on any short term. Say till the end of this year. Not that I have a theory about later besides the end of the Treasury purchase side of QE. (The MBS purchases probably won’t end and we can assume the Fed will continue to redeploy the money from their maturing bonds) A traders sense says when everyone is all in and things look like blue skies forever, beware.
Related to well managed markets is this article which fits into a broad theory about the convergence of interests among the worlds 1% which transcends nationality. My crackpot idea is nations are becoming obsolete as corporations are now becoming the dominant model of human organization. Those controlling corporations thus having the most power, and wealth of course, as corporation now function mainly to funnel wealth to their leaders and friends. Then corporations Co Opt and/or replacing government in most areas.
It was about 10 years ago Bernanke delivered a speech to some banker confab in Europe where he started off by saying the Fed does not consider money or credit when deciding policy. That’s monetary policy of course. (I Google occasionally to try and find this but always fail) With such a statement it is perfectly evident that common sense long ago left the scene in macro economics. I mean how can one blithely state if not brag that monetary policy is made without considering money without a trace of irony or embarrassment.
One of the terrible things about monetary matters is that money is so important to people that it has for them an almost mystical quality. A tiny fraction can even say what money is now and a tiny fraction of them really get it. Really know down to their bones that money is credit. So most just leave consideration of such things to the high priests of money. Then we have a high priest reveal that they don’t really care what money is. All that they want is for it to keep moving and/or a lot more of it. In a nutshell Bernanke said policy is all about keeping markets liquid.
Money is now more a process than a thing. As long as the processes of the financial markets work then nothing else matters to the high priests. I think they are shedding crocodile tears about the lack of volatility because it’s really a dream come true for them. It might be a damn shame about all those unemployed but only because they do have to keep in mind they need political support. Well they have that in spades from government policy makers but then the policy makers who are appointed by politicians who need votes in what passes for democracy now in the West. Anyone likely to gain political power through the vote is going to defer to the policy makers and high priests. It’s impossible to imagine 6 years out from the crisis when politicians might begin to feel a little pressure and so put pressure on the priests and their servants.
No shale gas worth recovering? Drill anyway, with borrowed money. This will net out as growth for the British economy. Lot’s of jobs, leases, etc. etc.
The deficit has declined mostly due to increased tax receipts which had been rising strongly until just a month ago. The stupendous deficits 08 through 11, more than 12% of GDP on an annualized basis some months. were due mainly to decreased tax collections.
The odd thing is why did 1st quarter GDP decline even as withholding’s were rising right through the period? Well I don’t pretend to know much of anything about the GDP calculation but the disconnect is still pretty stunning. It’s almost like what’s good for households, that is rising gross wages that can be taxed, is bad for GDP. I think this is now essentially true. From this many dark scenarios of the future can be written. I suppose there are limits to how bad it could get for half the US population or more before GDP might actually suffer too. We are probably not that far from it but who knows?
What does the economy have to do with the stock market Joe Granville asked rhetorically. Nothing he answered. That said withholding tax receipt have only just turned down after a strong rising trend Lee Adler reports. Which all seems odd given the Gap numbers. Apparently people actually making wages to withhold from no longer much pertains to GDP.
Inhofe represents the broad streak of theological determinism in American Christian fundamentalism. Such determinism is a de facto rejection of science. Christian fundamentalists in modern times have usually fallen back on implicit rejection of science but now the rejection is becoming explicit.
It should be mentioned especially to non Americans that included in this American brand of theological determinism is the belief that God has chosen America and the people just like themselves as his own special anointed nation and people. Nobody else matters. Their potential or real suffering either barely worth considering or actually embraced as natural and just.
Not that the Inhofe or his like will ever get close to actual power over policy. Yes he is a US Senator but the legislative branch in America is a sideshow. Its power mainly symbolic words and rhetoric with the very occasional minor methods of rejection. These sorts of ‘conservatives’ are always useful idiots for those or real power and wealth. They are willing fools for those seeking money and power.
Well there is one good thing you can say about Michigan, particularly the shoreline. Water. From a climate standpoint but nothing else, using bad to worst case scenarios, I can hardly imagine a better spot climate wise the next few hundred years particularly the Lake Michigan shoreline. In a northern clime anyway. The long mostly sunless winters do present a sustainability problem.
Of course that’s a long time frame, particularly for me.
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fdwZkUNylV8/TBI5xy6LmvI/AAAAAAAAGPU/HP24ievHQmM/s1600/DSC_6767.JPG
So things have spiraled out of control in Ukraine. The wars of the 21st century have begun. Doubtful it will be hot war now but the battleground is monetary and financial anyway.
Off the top of my head, because it has spun out of control a price must be paid and Old Europe, as the neo cons used to call it, will be paying the price perhaps. As in it might be very cold there next winter. Could it really come to that? Well that’s the way to really hurt Russia, cut off the gas spigot to Europe. It is an extreme play, for them, but for establishing America as the undisputed world leader for the 21st centruy it’s a strategy which make some sense. Not that it will work.
A calculation could made that economic and political dislocation in the EU will have terrible economic consequences but if terrible economic consequences are in the cards anyway then blaming Russia seems like a great way for those in power to keep it and continue to expand it.
None of which probably makes sense to anyone but this old crackpot. So it goes. I’m just thinking the road to AE’s predicted future might start to be played out as an old fashioned geo political struggle. Or that’s the story people will hear and believe. Not connecting it to the credit and energy crisis.
Tax withholding’s are still strong. Up in the 7% YOY range as I recall Lee Adler reporting. The various jobs numbers, the real ones not the seasonally adjusted ones, are still rising at about a 1.6% annual rate. Just saying the real people economy is not turning down, yet anyway. Of course that isn’t the economy which counts, as the GDP numbers speak for themselves. What good are more jobs and taxes withheld from them if GDP doesn’t grow? What the source of the disconnect is I am not sure but will have to guess. Maybe it’s those damn wages and taxes collected holding it down.
On another topic of interest but not a direct part of AE’s view one could do a lot worse than seeing what Pepe Escobar says about Ukraine. Unfortunately he is now publishing via RT I see and I don’t like it. It makes it extremely difficult to challenge the mainstream when the best sources can be painted as ‘pro Putin’ or pro Russian.
https://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-080514.html
I saw some screed by Wynn maybe 4 years ago where he was cursing the Federal deficit around the time it was peaking at near 15% of GDP on an annualized basis.. He seemed oblivious to the fact that if there was no deficit at that time which I recall he seemed to think was a good idea the GDP would have been down some significant portion of that 15%. The result would have most probably been rolling debt default and systematic deflationary collapse.
Now don’t get me wrong, in the big scheme of things this whole Federal deficit is integral with the overall credit bubble and a part of the systematic dysfunction and I am not here to defend it on some grand basis. However anyone who has skin in the game can’t just harp on Fed policies and actions and ignore the whole picture. While he lays some claim to purity by admitting he wins with Fed policy he isn’t really so pure. Fed policy and the Federal deficit are at root part of the same thing. The marginal source of liquidity which keeps the system from collapsing. Any half measures 4 years ago slash the deficit or end activist Federal Reserve policies would have wiped out Mr. Wynn and most all what we know of the political economy and it’s leaders. At least that’s my take.
The likes of Wynn pretend there is some middle ground but there isn’t. It’s all or nothing. Now maybe it’s my prejudice against Vegas moguls but looking for wisdom from the likes of them seems to be a fools errand.
I think Illargi is missing an important point. Life is absolutely fine for let’s say the top 50% of Americans. Or how about Romney’s 53%? They mostly only lost mark to market wealth in the crash and now that’s back, recovered.
It’s ironic in a way that Romney 47% thing sort of ended any slim chance he had because as a point of fact the top 53% are willing if not often eager to see the rest in the likes of that barry picker shack. All these photos of near destitution we see here are of America in the good old days. Well not so good economiclly if they are from the 30’s but the days when people knew their place and didn’t complain about it or if they did nobody listened or cared.
America can function politically with a much larger underclass. It is in the process of writing them off. Especially because they will be predominantly non ‘white’. (I use quotes because race isn’t real)
This is to revisit the EIA report and energy independence discussed here.
I went to look at it because I’ve seen the projections referenced a lot lately. Or at least the now widespread idea that it’s up up and away for another generation for oil and NG supplies.
Here is the report
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/AEO/section_issues.cfm#tight_oil
It turns out they have 3 projections. The high, the reference and the low one. The absurd rosy one is what everyone is talking about. The one that set Illargi off, with good reason. One can suppose this absurd projection was forced onto the agency by political pressure.
Whatever the motive examining the reference or low projections is what we should be interested in. In both cases they predict peak US production is still a couple of years away and then a slow decline to 2040. In either case predicting the need to import only 30% or 40% of our needs out to 2040. We are now approaching imports of only 25% of consumption down from around 60% in the mid 00’s. This has been a huge deal systematically and has played a major role in the ‘recovery’. Well let’s say avoiding collapse. In part because the huge boom in credit funded drilling has provided a significant and much needed credit expansion and the drilling is now accounting for virtually all the increases, such as they are, in the Industrial Production numbers.
Point being, I guess, that on the oil/ng production front and the credit expansion front in the short term a shock here seems unlikely. I am speaking of the US only. If the fracking mania goes global then even more generally a systematic sudden shock is less likely from the energy arena.
Since this is the Age Of Economics economists must be our priests. One follows the other. If and when this age ends so will economists, as priests. One can imagine in centuries to come students pouring over their words and judging them as strange incantations to a forgotten god.
Off topic, back to fracking, but I have to link from Blogging Heads TV, you may be familiar. Wherein mainstream bloggers, left and right as we measure these things, discuss stuff. Here a right blogger discusses America’s coming era of abundance.
The neo cons are self appointed Grand Global Strategic Thinkers who hate government but love The Nation. The Nation, a grand abstraction that has nothing to do with people, ordinary citizens. Neo Cons hate anything that smacks of the collective then spend their lives trying to figure out how to advance the collective thing called America, The Nation.
While corporations are becoming the primary human organizational model, in the West anyway, and governments are falling all over themselves to grant large corporations virtual sovereignty, there is a catch. Corporations don’t care about The Nation. So the seamless transfer of sovereignty hits a snag when the powerful forces intent on ‘protecting’ The Nation and expanding its power enter the picture. The power and money in the Capitals don’t want to cede all to corporations. Spooks and military men and Secretaries and under Secretaries of this and that are fighting a bigger war, for The Nation, and corporations are simply not up to the job.
Laying in the wings all these years the grand protectors of the nation are chomping at the bit to retake the initiative. Obviously starting a near hot war or worse over Syria or Ukraine and threatening energy supplies and balance an is about the stupidest economic plan extant. Throw in financial currency wars to the ugly mix. CEO’s have no means, no voice, no language even to discourage such however, or so it seems. They want to be patriotic, as much as their job allows after all.
The hand off of power from governments to corporations is always destined to meet a roadblock in the Grand Global Strategic Thinkers. Who think, somehow, they are actually working for the good of corporations and even more absurdly ‘the people’.
I won’t be surprised if someday the great monetary/credit bubble and neo liberal dream of growth dies or dislocates because of war. Of course then the bankers can avoid the blame. It sure would be better to blame Putin after all.
