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We Are the Pea

by James Howard Kunstler

     The political air lies thick and heavy upon us, like the subtropical wedge of atmospheric sludge that has bogged down the northeast USA for weeks of soupy gray days when there is nothing to do but wonder when things will become unstuck. If the world is an organism, something is wrong with its blood. That blood is money, which allows the “developed” nations to run their advanced techno-industrial economies. Only the “money” is not exactly what we suppose it is, that is, colored paper coupons representing claims on future work or tangible collateral. The “money” is a matrix of counterparty entanglements so abstruse and impenetrable that all the vicars of Christendom (plus the mullahs of Islam, the monks of  Mahayana, and the Op-Ed flunkies at The New York Times) would not avail to describe its metaphysical substance. Rather, a cosmic shell game is being played and we are the pea.

     Unlike other commentators, I don’t see this as a conspiracy of one-percenters, Rothschilds, Bilderbergers, and United Nations intriguers. Rather, it is just a sticky pass in world history. Things have gone a certain way for us for a long time, and now they can’t, and the inertia from all those decades of doing and being what we were persists in the illusion of motion, like the sound of a truck that still rings in your ears after it has passed by. So we, the pea, sit in the dark under our cosmic walnut shell, waiting to see what happens next.

     When the Great Bernanke spoke not long ago, an ominous rattling was heard throughout the banking system as of things shaking loose. Even if nobody quite understood exactly what money was anymore, an intimation wafted on the still, muggy air that there was liable to be less of it, at least in the form that The Wall Street Journal pretended to understand — a particular digital carry-trade between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Markets puked at Bernanke’s mild utterances as though he was Thor flinging a thunderous hammer at them. The gold market, already punch-drunk, went reeling into the roadside weeds, covered indecorously in its own vomit — leading many to suppose that gold would soon be as precious as sheetrock. Then, the Great Bernanke, via subordinates, tapered his tapering talk and a nervous, tentative, march forward resumed into the summer pea soup of events. Here we are, waiting, waiting in the murk, for the sound of shoes dropping.

     If you listen carefully enough, you can hear a few things in motion distantly. The mobs roistering in surprising places — Sweden, Turkey, Brazil — ought to unnerve even the quants immersed in their charts and auguries. Something wicked this way emanates from Japan. It has the outline of a political death-wish and is being played out with the sharp instruments of capital. The Japanese, I suspect, have at least had enough of uncertainty and have elected to move toward resolution, whatever that may hold. One thing it will mean is that the hands of bankers elsewhere around the world will be forced by what Japan does. Interest rates, for example, do not exist in exquisite isolation but only in relation to other things, most particularly that money earlier alluded to, of which nobody knows the value. The answer to that may lie in the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma known as derivatives.

     My own guess is that we’ll discover the value of gold is not equivalent to its weight in sheetrock. The third quarter of 2013 might go down in history as the great moment of price re-discovery in a world that thought — for a while — that the price of things can be whatever you say it is. Historians of the future, squatting in the plastic and silicon midden-heaps of bygone technocracy, may note that FASB Rule 157 provoked a four-year psychotic episode of worldwide accounting fraud in which anything could mean anything. That only goes on so long until civilizations shudder and fall. The pea under the walnut shell can’t see much outside, but it can certainly feel the earth tremble

 


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About James Howard Kunstler

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James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

255 Responses to “We Are the Pea”

  1. Leibowitz Society July 1, 2013 at 8:20 am #

    The impending demise of our civilization doesn’t seem to be a conspiracy, but a convergence of bad ideas, poor planning, and a lack of vision, something that will effect everyone who lives in it. We can either acknowledge the reality or be the victim of it, because there is not enough time or energy left to untangle the problem.

    Visit the Leibowitz Society at http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com/2013/07/culture-shock.html for more information and discussion about the coming Dark Age.

  2. James Gautreau July 1, 2013 at 8:22 am #

    Veni,Vidi,Pepedi

    • Neon Vincent July 1, 2013 at 8:43 am #

      “I came, I saw, I farted.” I hope that’s right, as I had to look up pepedi, having never taken Latin. If so, that’s the most erudite brain fart I’ve ever read, and I’ve read lots.

      I can’t top that for sheer intellectual silliness, so I’ll ask a straightforwardly silly question with serious implications, Is it literally hot enough to fry an egg where you are? After all, Phoenix hit a record high of 119F yesterday. Let’s see the global warming deniers shoot their keyboards off today.

      • Neon Vincent July 1, 2013 at 8:45 am #

        The link to Crazy Eddie’s Motie News didn’t work. Time to try again.

        http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/06/hot-enough-to-fry-egg-in-desert.html

        I know not to be so fancy from now on.

      • Lance Sjogren July 1, 2013 at 8:54 am #

        Good grief. No better way to undermine the very legitimate concern about anthropomorphic global warming by using the same half-witted weather-based argument that skeptics use when we have a record cold snap.

      • lyttonmike July 1, 2013 at 9:18 am #

        Hot enough to fry an egg? Maybe. I put some cooking thermometers outside on the deck the other day and they registered about 150. Not quite enough to make the proteins in an egg come together, but close. In the shade, it was 109 here in Texas, south of Austin.

        The population of central Texas is booming even while the water supply dries up. The aging electrical grid is creaking under the load. Seven of the past eight years have been crazy hot and dry. Long term prognosis not good.

        In the future, one may suppose, this place will be suitable for winter-time migrations in a small way but, beyond that, it will be mostly uninhabitable.

        • ccm989 July 1, 2013 at 11:43 am #

          Used to live in Austin, TX (30 years ago). It always seemed green and lush. Now I live at the Jersey Shore. It is raining like mad here. Broke some kind of wettest June in Jersey ever record. Trade you some sunshine and drought for some rain.

          • lyttonmike July 1, 2013 at 12:45 pm #

            It’s a deal. Rain we could use. Too much sun. (I think it exploded) Lake Travis is fifty feet below full. Lake Buchanan is likewise way down. The Barton Springs aquifer is in critical condition. The burgeoning population is sucking it up faster than it can be replenished. Our only hope is a good wet hurricane right up the alley here.

  3. Philip Backus July 1, 2013 at 8:39 am #

    Perhaps God will provide the bailouts and Superman will squeeze the Earth …really hard until the cheap oil starts flowing again and all will be well again in Delusionville.

  4. malthus July 1, 2013 at 9:10 am #

    Oh god please let the fantasy continue. I need those Sunday barbecues and that smell of burning flesh. Those 5 or 6 days I slave for it. And I can’t wait to take some of those fun tickets (money) and buy something I don’t need just because the neighbors don’t have one yet. Living under a walnut shell isn’t so bad if you ignore all the crap the corporations, the politicians, the big banks and every miserable scum bag business person trying constantly to sell you something. Walking through the malls and shops with a smile pasted on my face just like the actors in all the ads living the fantasy of plenty. Wow the great American dream.

  5. Greg Knepp July 1, 2013 at 9:14 am #

    Ben Bernanke occupies a curious position in the national hierarchy. He’s an accountant, and like most in his profession – at least the ones I’ve known – he’s a rather pleasant, unpretentious sort. He seems mystified by the elevated position he holds. Like a reluctant emperor, he rules tentatively using the tools at his beck as best he can.

    As long as Americans can be lulled into believing that the nation’s economic problems are essentially accounting incongruities, Bernanke – or someone like him – will reign supreme.

    I find no fault in him, other than the fact that he’s human. He knows, I’m sure, that things can’t continue as they are. “The dawn will be chilly, but the dawn will come.”*

    *from Kaddish by Leonard Bernstein 1964

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  6. And so it goes July 1, 2013 at 9:18 am #

    Jim,

    Excellent message.

    Thanks

  7. Neon Vincent July 1, 2013 at 9:23 am #

    That’s something the smarter people in the Occupy movement would write, which means it’s probably on target.

    Speaking of Occupy, Occupy Detroit is doing its part fight two of the pernicious effects of Peak (Conventional) Oil–foreclosures and tar sands, both of which were the results of oil prices going over a critical price threshold. I have their latest video on educating people about the dangers of petroleum coke, processed from tar sands, at the link.

    http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/06/occupy-detroit-and-others-campaign.html

  8. George July 1, 2013 at 9:28 am #

    James: As you’re fond of reminding us, events, not people, are in charge now. And while no single conspiracy of the one percent or their accompanying entourage may be central to the state of the present, given their power and influence, the systematic measures they collectively take to maintain their status and wealth must certainly serve to exacerbate things. After all, if you’ve got an umbrella and it’s raining, why not use it?

  9. Repent July 1, 2013 at 9:28 am #

    Bush and his deputies have been convicted of war crimes in absentia:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rrTeBDetcfw#t=0s

    (This should stir the pot a bit)

  10. Smoky Joe July 1, 2013 at 9:30 am #

    The eruption in Turkey is very troubling. It’s a nation I’ve visited several times. To paint it as “soon-to-be Islamic state” is a simplistic American idea. The situation is far more complex, with secularism and Western diversions strong in the big cities, the rural areas conservative and, well, backward in every way. Turks have amazing work ethics and are not afraid to finish a fight if someone picks on with them. They are also turning away from union with the EU.

    Erdogan is not popular because he’s an autocrat, and the young people are more Westernized than in other nations to the south of Turkey. But at the same time, a lot of young people from the villages who move to the cities bring village ideas with them. It’s not a smooth mixture.

    Turkey’s economy is hopping, the growth rate higher than China’s in several years recently. If you have a pulse, you can find work in Bursa, Ankara, Istanbul, the coastal resorts, or any of the Anatolian industrial cities.

    So if Turkey slips into some sort of civil war, the whole region will explode. One wishes for the old stolid days of life after Ataturk: you act up, the Army moves in to defend secularism.

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    • BackRowHeckler July 1, 2013 at 11:09 am #

      Maybe the Christians can get back Constantinople.

    • fallout11 July 1, 2013 at 12:07 pm #

      Because traditionally it is the most stable nation state in the region, and the turks once administered much of the middle east. If the strong can fall, what hope do the weak have?

  11. ozone July 1, 2013 at 9:32 am #

    James, you sez:

    “The gold market, already punch-drunk, went reeling into the roadside weeds, covered indecorously in its own vomit — leading many to suppose that gold would soon be as precious as sheetrock. Then, the Great Bernanke, via subordinates, tapered his tapering talk and a nervous, tentative, march forward resumed into the summer pea soup of events. Here we are, waiting, waiting in the murk, for the sound of shoes dropping.”

    Now, as a lover of literary stylings, you can see why I like me some Kunstlerisms! 😀
    (The Great Bernanke is really good too; the image of him as prestidigitator is pitch-perfect. White gloves, cape, cane and top hat wouldn’t be out of place with his perfectly clipped mask of facial hair.)

    I think it’s important that we understand your outlook to be that the pickle we happen to be in is a result of “the psychology of previous investment” (in time, ‘money’, talent, and wishin’ and a-hopin’ delusions of endless luxury and pampering). While I do believe that there are always conspiracies afoot to take unfair advantage of any given loophole in the disintegrating fabric of ‘legality’, I also see the quite reasonable position that the current clusterfuck is a culmination of our not paying attention while there was a circus and a magic show going on that we mistook for a calculated betterment of the commons.

    As for ‘roistering’, the Egyptians have donned their riot gear yet again, and a strange and deadly clash of mob and counter-mob is developing.
    I’ve got to look further into it, but on the face of it, it appears that a couple million of the common folk of Cairo don’t like the idea of being ruled by Sharia law (and thus religious despots and autocrats, who I’m sure can get that code to mean whatever they feel like, when they like.) Of course, that’s the ‘Murkin MSM spin on it, so I’m not quite as trusting in that surface analysis as I once was… 😉

    Are the peas afraid of the dark under the walnut shell? Can what they don’t know hurt them? ….Yes, oh yes; that’s been proven time and time again.

    • UFIA July 1, 2013 at 10:19 am #

      Excellent differentiation and extension of the discourse, ‘Zone! Quite a skill for phrase turnin’ you got there yourself, my man.

    • Eleuthero July 1, 2013 at 10:47 am #

      Being There,

      I wrote JHK a private email because my name has been hijacked as well. Thus, this blog is now effectively unusable until this problem is fixed.

      I’m surprised JHK’s programmer didn’t test the “improvement”. The blog was never broke but they “fixed” it.

      I’m writing no more serious posts until it’s fixed, if ever.

      E.

      • ZrCrypDiK July 1, 2013 at 12:58 pm #

        I’m in agreement (formerly ‘ix’). I actually attempted “real time” debate with this schmuck last weekend, but his 4:1 poast flooding shut me down (and resulted in an order of magnitude moar ‘ix’ aliases).

        It’s really unfortunate that someone else can use my *EXACT SAME ALIAS,* with no recourse… (Shouldn’t the alias be linked to email, *IP ADDRESS* [hint,hint], or some similar tangible source?)

        There’s still going to be abuse, regardless – and this *ONE* (as “they” *ALL* do) will exploit any loophole to make things even worse. Anything to ruin someone else’s experience (or to get that DHS paycheck)…

  12. James Howard Kunstler July 1, 2013 at 9:43 am #

    Attention Commentors: I have new tools for controlling what has been an unruly mob scene here for a long time, and I will be using them.
    –Jim Kunstler

    • Goat1080 July 1, 2013 at 10:00 am #

      Thanks Jim, appreciate that!

    • Linda Longoria July 1, 2013 at 10:08 am #

      Bout time.

    • Eleuthero July 1, 2013 at 10:50 am #

      Being there is correct. This blog has been hacked and my username attached to posts I never made. This has nothing to do with the trolls that have always plagued the blog. The blog is technically kaput and now we can NEVER be sure that the poster represents the real person.

      E.

    • Piltdown Man July 1, 2013 at 11:14 am #

      Jim –

      Great! The comments had become a bog not worth the slog! Glad to hear that, perhaps, the rotters will be sent packing!

      Pilt

  13. BackRowHeckler July 1, 2013 at 9:44 am #

    Meanwhile, in the Northeast, State Governments endeavor to stave off armageddon by pouring concrete everywhere there’s still a little bit of green yet remaining. Yes, those big Cement Trucks are rolling, giving the impression big things are happening. So far its working.

    • ozone July 1, 2013 at 11:07 am #

      Yes, I also noted some very strange/absolutely unnecessary fund and resource ‘mis-allocation’ too.
      Did you notice what transpired in Riverton? Brandy-new, sexy granite curbing, brick-work sidewalks, and Italianate fake-wrought-iron streetlights for a town that’s lost its’ only industry, the late great Hitchcock Furniture factory. Making promises against future fantasies of herds of tourists is not sound ‘economic policy’, just so your brother-in-law’s lifestyle and construction company can continue in the style to which it’s become accustomed.

      • BackRowHeckler July 1, 2013 at 11:13 am #

        Oz haven’t been to Riverton lately, river too high for trout fishing, rainiest June in 75 years.

  14. K-Dog July 1, 2013 at 9:55 am #

    According to contract help watching Clusterfuck Nation to keep us safe. It is the Bilderbergers who are behind it all. You’d think they’d get it right since they see everything but I think they’re wrong too.

    The Bilderbergers aren’t running the show. They only they think they are.

    K-Dog

  15. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 9:58 am #

    Smoky Joe, if you haven’t seen it yet, you may want to catch Once Upon a Time In Anatolia. It’s a cinematic masterpiece replete with aesthetic metaphor and allusion. It’s not for everyone; it’s deep, bleak and despondent. It’s the human condition and an example of a stop along the way to the excruciatingly slow-to-arrive World Made By Hand. For the enlightened, such a world, and the stops along the way, can be, and will be, a very lonely existence, as though one has lost a lover.

    http://mubi.com/films/once-upon-a-time-in-anatolia

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  16. K-Dog July 1, 2013 at 10:01 am #

    I wrote something Friday as long as the piece Jim wrote here today. It may not be as good but it is as long.

    You be the judge.

    K-Dog

  17. Mike Hunt July 1, 2013 at 10:08 am #

    Jim – I’m not sure what your webpage upgrade was supposed to have accomplished. Like other upgrades in the digital realm there is only a change and no discernible improvement. Your old webpage had character, especially with the whimsical Happy Motoring themed pictures. I do like the rotating quotes at the top. That’s about it. And, if you do monitor the comments and control the one idiot in particular who has no life except to clutter up the comments section seven days a week, that would be the best improvement possible.

    Mike Hunt.

    • aka_ces July 1, 2013 at 1:00 pm #

      yep, the new site has dispensed with the charm of the old site.

  18. ront July 1, 2013 at 10:11 am #

    If money is the blood running through the veins of this world, it us certainly time to check on whether we succumb to leukemia. We may require a bone marrow transplant. Replacing the false and ephemeral values with true and lasting values might well be the operation required. Where shall we find a match?

  19. UFIA July 1, 2013 at 10:11 am #

    Sorry, JHK, I think you’ve missed the mark with this week’s post. On one hand, I think you do well to avoid associating with the mentally unstable fruitcake conspiracy wacko’s like Jones and whomever else of the alternate media-scape who neurotically twist every factoid into a vast tale of flamboyant nonsense for their own profit. But on the other, to think there isn’t a set of competing Oligarchies engaged in well-organized and legally sanctified theft from the citizens of countries worldwide is about as naive as sounding a note to peasants to go on ‘head and return to subsistence farming, as though a complete return to feudalism without a confrontation were in order now.

    In that sense, I think Dr. PCR, who sadly sometimes associates with the conspiracy nutters, has produced a much better read for this week:

    http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

    I mean don’t we need a showdown of some sort before we let “them” simply collapse the nation into a series of decadent enclaves while the rest of the people merely conform themselves to a series of out-land industry hubs that will undoubtedly be forced to service the elite techno-society? Sorry JHK, before the country re-organizes into a localized network of supply lines feeding the walled-off class that wishes to continue living exactly as they currently do upon the backs of “We The Laborers” doesn’t there need to be a reckoning?

    I partly do agree that shit will just naturally continue to deteriorate as entropy runs its course, but if I’ve learned anything from reading guys like you this past year or two is that “they’ll” stop at nothing to continue a certain way of life for a small set of people. Stratification isn’t going away anytime soon, and it’s my guess that the stairs are only becoming steeper. Whether people have the balls to resist either becoming a simple lapdog allowed to live amid the elite or a noble and nonetheless powerless serf living beyond the gates is another question, but it’s one we should be asking ourselves, no?

    “Unlike other commentators, I don’t see this as a conspiracy of one-percenters, Rothschilds, Bilderbergers, and United Nations intriguers. Rather, it is just a sticky pass in world history. Things have gone a certain way for us for a long time, and now they can’t, and the inertia from all those decades of doing and being what we were persists in the illusion of motion, like the sound of a truck that still rings in your ears after it has passed by. So we, the pea, sit in the dark under our cosmic walnut shell, waiting to see what happens next.” -JHK

    The mixed metaphors here, JHK, just don’t work this week. I hope your continued recovery from your more recent ailments is going well, because I know there is better writing from you that I can learn from in the future. I know you’re more ornery and capable of measured civil disobedience than this. Take care.

    UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject

  20. Seayoung July 1, 2013 at 10:14 am #

    Quote of the past few Decades:

    We have the right to free speech.

    Are our pockets deep enough to be heard?

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  21. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 10:14 am #

    Some things I’m looking for that indicate a hastening of the imminent, yet stubborn, contraction.

    1.) Greatly reduced air traffic.

    2.) Greatly reduced auto traffic

    3.) Gasoline to $8-10/gallon with shortages.

    4.) Official unemployment to 30-40%.

    5.) Delivery times for products and or services doubled and/or tripled.

    6.) Empty spaces on shelves for businesses still in operation.

    7.) 70% of restaurant chains go bankrupt.

    8.) 50% of a family of eight children with ages ranging from 60 to 44 that were formerly solid middle class are now on the precipice of poverty with no relief in sight or ever forthcoming.

    Hopefully you see where I’m going with this. We’re not anywhere near there yet, or if we are, there are no readily identifiable indicators that the Sword of Damocles is positioned directly over top our collective heads. Everyone, and I mean everyone in my family of origin is doing fantastic. I no longer care to talk to them because it’s always about their latest accomplishments. Even their children are doing great. Some of them are concentrating their wealth at record pace, attending weddings of friend’s children in places like the Turks and Caicos Islands. I read JHK and hear what he’s saying and then I look at them, those in my sphere of influence, and I can’t connect these two seemingly disparate dots. I’m flummoxed. Should I stay, or should I go now? If I stay there will be trouble. If I go it will be double. Rock and a hard place, anyone?

    • Mike Hunt July 1, 2013 at 10:26 am #

      You should go. Take the week off. No, why not make it the whole fucking month.

      Mike Hunt

    • ozone July 1, 2013 at 11:34 am #

      Methinks you should go hang with the swells and try to get an ‘in’ with them; after all, they are your “sphere of influence. Go… be influenced. That way, you’ll never again have to worry your head about us pathetic, dirty, slovenly peons e’er again!

      “But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch him suffer?”

      See there? An actual FAMOUS PERSON said that, so you might do well to adopt that sort of attitude!

      • ozone July 1, 2013 at 11:57 am #

        Quite so! And this is why I gave the fine, unsolicited advice that I did! (I have discharged my ‘helpful person’ obligations for the day.)

  22. George July 1, 2013 at 10:15 am #

    “a todos los pueblos en lucha” http://www.thesisa.org

  23. SticksInMyCraw July 1, 2013 at 10:24 am #

    I like JHK’s writing, but he hasn’t said anything that is, at its core, anything new or different for about three years now. Even his ‘Dow will end the year at 4500’ has been recycled so many times that it makes the movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ look fresh and original. Yawn. The world will implode within the next month or two. I get it. Hooray, JHK, for correctly predicting seventeen of the last two recessions.

  24. BruceTT July 1, 2013 at 10:27 am #

    JHK. thank you for not falling for the world wide conspiracy crap! Actually, I think the Rothschilds, Bilderbergers, et al. are real and undoubtedly have a better view than the rest of us. They may have even once had aspirations to conspiracy. If their hand is still on the steering wheel at all, the brakes have gone out and the gas pedal is getting sketchy, too.

    Do you know about the Chinese Ghost Cities? If you don’t you should Google them. If you do, how do you think they fit? I think they are important. Chinese people haven’t been allowed to invest their saving for about three generations. A while back their government decided to lift the lid on personal investment but there was no place for it to go. It went into real estate. There are entire towns and urban districts that are empty. Giant shopping malls with no tenants. Row after row of high rise condos waiting for a middle class that wont exist for decades, if ever. Of course, there are peasants moving from the country side but they can’t afford food much less a luxury apartment. From what I’ve read, the Chinese real estate bubble makes the one in the US look like a Saturday night nickle poker game.

    • Martin July 1, 2013 at 12:32 pm #

      We in the US have our own Bilderbergers it is called the “Bohemian Club”.

    • ZrCrypDiK July 1, 2013 at 1:25 pm #

      “Chinese Ghost Cities?”

      Definite candidates for *EYESORE OF THE MONTH* – especially the copy of Paris…

    • Eleuthero July 2, 2013 at 4:10 am #

      I agree with the gist of your post, Bruce. I myself stated last week that the paranoids on CFN who fantasize about the NSA intercepting our dreams is absurd. It’s reminiscent of Marvin Minsky telling the world in 1975 that computers would use people as house pets by 1990. Now, Artificial Intelligence is all but dead although the goofy “Big Data” people are trying to revive it.

      The point is that the entire world has problems that are coming at the speed of a mag-lev train well within a decade and likely less than half that time. A decade is being conservative. In a half-dozen years, most of the world is going to be wondering how to find more potable water and how to keep goosing exhausted soil with more and more expensive petrochemical fertilizers. The sci-fi scenarios that mandarins muse about it some foggy future won’t happen because we don’t have a future.

      E.

  25. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 10:30 am #

    Bush and his deputies have been convicted of war crimes in absentia:

    I assume this means he’ll be incarcerated any day now. Will it be the death penalty or a presidential library? I think the verdict’s already in. It’s always the library, until the library is abandoned in twenty years to become a shelter for the benighted masses like that scene in Soylent Green with the throngs of sick and dying piled on top of each other in a church with a priest and several nuns, on the verge of physical and psychical collapse, tending to them in a desperate act of futility.

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  26. Piper Michael July 1, 2013 at 10:46 am #

    Good morning James,
    And a happy July 4th to you and yours. Hope you are recovering well…
    I have noticed a similarity to you and Ayn Rand… GASP! Sorry… but, she and you equilibrate evil to stupid. There is evil in the world my friend, and they are not stupid. Even though stupid is easily deceived by the truly evil, do not let the minions fool you, they are not in charge, merely renting vassals for the owners of the money. Anybody who rents capital is the village idiot, and that includes most of wall st.
    Evil profits from misery James, it profits from destruction, ordo ab chao. Even the destruction of its own village idiot.

    There is evil in the world, a powerful evil, ancient, sneaky and manipulative. Evil has fooled us all into thinking it doesn’t exist, because the ancients knew it as a force of darkness, not some horned entity. World leaders have spoken of it, and I suspect, we will not know who they are until it all collapses, then they will rise to power and you will see them openly. They will be the ones who want the Georgia Guide stones as policy. They want your ‘sacrifice’ and ‘service’, but we fail to understand, where there is sacrifice there are those receiving the offering, where there is service there are usually slavemasters. Learn the results of altruism as ideology, and you will see the truth. See the destruction of greed as ideology, and know that the centralized ideologies of men and man, end up the same way; a few guys owning everything and pronouncing themselves to be BOSS.

    Obama’s lies, Bush’s lies, lies are lies. It is not about parties or ideologies, it is about the Haves vs the Have Nots… always has been…
    Don’t listen to them, prepare to kill them… for you are the hands of justice.

  27. UFIA July 1, 2013 at 11:42 am #

    Millions hitting the streets in Egypt to get rid of Morsi! Germany about to file charges against the US and UK for spying? Lots of great Monday writing found on my growing list of links…

    Wow, it’s getting thicker and thicker out there. Oh, and it looks like Snowden is having difficulty finding the asylum he might have hoped for. He’s too much of a bargaining chip for whomever wishes to squeeze his tomatoes, yet he’s a bit of a liability as well. What a clusterfuck indeed.

    The freak show is well underway my friends.

    -UFIA

  28. ozone July 1, 2013 at 11:53 am #

    Here’s a preview of coming attractions in the FUSA:

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35449.htm

    We might do well to think about why Camden was once the home of one of the world’s largest shipyards, and stop thinking about its’ very limited [to say the least] value as a tourist destination.

    (It’s already “happening here”, so protestations of “it can’t happen here” are moot. The levee has been breached.)

    • UFIA July 1, 2013 at 12:06 pm #

      Hey ‘Zone, “you” posted this bit last night, and I’ve never known you to post the same thing twice, so you might not be ‘Zone at all.

      So, JHK, this might be the perfect opportunity to check email addresses to see if they match between posts under the same handle and then decide if the commentator is in fact the authentic personality of reference.

      If it is you, ‘Zone, sorry for the suspicion; as E says, we can’t entirely be sure, save the lengthier posts where the “voice” becomes unmistakable. Anyhow, I’ve been following the Camden tale ever since I first heard Chris Hedges mention it awhile back. It seems several other cities support the same narrative about what is to come of the cities that continue to collapse into mini-failed states, if that makes sense. Scary.

      Oh, and BT, once the innuendo was introduced in that earlier remark, we knew instantly it wasn’t you. There are only two parasitic writers here who constantly flaunt their oddball sexuality on this blog. No harm done. The real discussion always gets through, at least on my own end as I get to sift through the links that serve my own interests.

      UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject

      • ozone July 1, 2013 at 12:20 pm #

        ‘Twas I (on the double-posting of said link).
        With the topsy-turvy mix up of postings and times (at least on MY end), I wasn’t sure anyone had seen it.
        As I think it has relevance to the financial tricks and pretending going on, I thought it worth a repeat.
        Sorry for the confusion. (And, yes, I think all this confusion is quite deliberate and that some seem to think JHK’s observations are dangerous to the status quo. Horrors, people might get actual IDEAS!)

        Thanks for posting your own observations and links, BTW; always appreciated.

        • ZrCrypDiK July 1, 2013 at 2:00 pm #

          I read it last night – quite the hoot – Django’s response was *SO UNEXPECTED*!!! What they say, “It’s coming soon, to a town near *U*!!!”

          NE 101 business class will teach you, as well, the massive benefits of trading local labor for slaves&petrol…

  29. James Gautreau July 1, 2013 at 11:57 am #

    America is under a spell, a magical spell conjured by ancient magicians, whose sole purpose is the exercise of power. The spell is cast but is ineffective unless it is reinforcing. So when Catholics go to church and take communion, they reinforce the spell by celebrating human sacrifice and cannibalism. When we watch war porn movies like “Full Metal Jacket” or :Black Hawk Down,” we reinforce the bankers power to send us to useless and imperialist wars for their own material gain. When we spend dollars, we transfer their symbolism laden paper facsimilies of real money i.e. gold and silver, for goods and services and reinforce their illusion of money. When we listen to songs like “Hotel California,” we celebrate Satanism and the Manson Murders. We are tricked into doing the bidding of the bankers through entertainment, and we justify it by not being bored. Bread and circus.

  30. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 12:03 pm #

    We might do well to think about why Camden was once the home of one of the world’s largest shipyards

    Okay, let’s think about it. You start. Why was Camden once the home of one of the world’s largest shipyards and isn’t any longer? The real story, not the myth, please.

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    • BackRowHeckler July 1, 2013 at 12:42 pm #

      Pretty sure Walt Whitman was born in Camden, NJ. I don’t think Walt would be welcome in Camden 2013 tho. He might not recognize his hometown. Its not a very welcoming place.

      • ZrCrypDiK July 1, 2013 at 2:07 pm #

        I’m sure there’s room for 1 more *sockie* to reply to *URSELF*… (sigh [yes vlad and soker are *1 IN THE SAME* {checking IP Addresses now}])

    • malthus July 1, 2013 at 4:07 pm #

      Where in the hell is Camden? I never know where you easterners are talking about. Luckily I live out here in the dry west. Pretty soon to be dryer and hotter. Some fun. Although the Pacific ocean is pretty big. I will say though it is always a pleasure to read your posts Carol. As far as a real story it will probably be just that. A story.

  31. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 12:08 pm #

    Millions hitting the streets in Egypt to get rid of Morsi!

    And to think, just a couple of years prior, it was millions hitting the streets in Egypt to get rid of Mubarak. So much for hitting the streets.

  32. Martin July 1, 2013 at 12:24 pm #

    “Markets puked at Bernanke’s mild utterances as though he was Thor flinging a thunderous hammer at them. ”

    Are you making a reference to “Hidden Order” Brad Thor’s new fiction book about the Fed that is coming out next week?

  33. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 12:39 pm #

    ‘Twas I (on the double-posting of said link).

    Why don’t you do us all a favor and quit spamming the board with nonsensical links, especially to racist websites like ICH. That site is nothing more than a horde of anti-semites.

  34. ozone July 1, 2013 at 12:46 pm #

    No, you fool. We should be thinking about building watercraft again in places conducive to doing so!
    Jeeezuz, you are impenetrably unimaginative for a goddamn troll. Reassignment is in order.

  35. aka_ces July 1, 2013 at 12:48 pm #

    Always a pleasure to read the phrase turnings of JHK, especially today. What a first paragraph !

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  36. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 1:14 pm #

    No, you fool. We should be thinking about building watercraft again in places conducive to doing so!

    Watercraft for what purposes? In a world of diminishing and quickly disappearing resources, is it wise to continue to build watercraft to transport goods that use any remaining resources unwisely? When Camden was booming as a shipbuilding city, resources were not diminishing, or at least not at any noticeably appreciable rate, but the very fact that Camden was in shipbuilding helped lead to the situation we have today; an increasing dearth of resources to sustain growth.

  37. sevenmmm July 1, 2013 at 1:17 pm #

    My intuition is borrowing FeRNs (Federal Reserve Notes) at 1% and buying Gold with the fiat. Could be the best financial move of the decade. Maybe the century even.

    I just might do it on a small scale so I can have bragging rights of borrowing the FeRNs at little interest cost, then after the blow-up, using the Gold to buy 40 acres of land per ounce and paying off the loan with one day’s food production.

    Might happen.

  38. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 1:17 pm #

    Pretty sure Walt Whitman was born in Camden, NJ. I don’t think Walt would be welcome in Camden 2013 tho. He might not recognize his hometown. Its not a very welcoming place.

    In your view, how did it get to the point it is now? Was Camden once upon a time a welcoming place for any and all? Can you prove that assessment beyond the shadow of a doubt by pointing to multiple, balanced historical references?

  39. Laura Weisberg July 1, 2013 at 1:21 pm #

    Simply brilliant, not to mention hilarious in a morbidly ludicrous way. I’m sending it on to all my friends, and posting it on facebook. This needs to be read by everyone.

    The Body Politic is going down for the third time.

    Thanks again, brave James.

  40. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 1:38 pm #

    This needs to be read by everyone.

    Including the NSA if they find the time; they have quite a backlog. It could take them a generation just to get through Jaego’s encrypted nonsense and make sense of it.

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  41. James Howard Kunstler July 1, 2013 at 1:39 pm #

    Jaego is banned for his inflammatory racism.
    “Carol Newquist” is warned to behave his/her/itself.
    –Jim Kunstler

    • Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 1:49 pm #

      Jim,

      What have I done wrong? I will conform so long as I know to what I’m conforming. As far as I can tell, thus far in this thread my character has been attacked rather than posters dealing with what I’ve written. Mike Hunt and ozone in particular have called me names and attacked my character rather than dealing with my questions and or comments. Please point me to something I did that was misbehavior and I will correct it going forward.

      Thank you,

      Carol Newquist

      • James Howard Kunstler July 1, 2013 at 2:15 pm #

        I’ve had complaints about you.
        –JHK

        • Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 2:48 pm #

          What does that even mean? If I complain about a handful of posters here, does that mean they get put on notice for misbehaving? Are you sure you know what you’re dealing with when some of these people complain? Have you seen some of the things that have been said about me in past threads, and yet people have complained about me? Seriously? And what’s up with putting the screen name Carol Newquist in quotes. Look around. Most everyone who posts to this site does not use their real-life name. Should they all put quotes around their screen names. How are we to know whether they are a she/he/it? Don’t go to war with me, Jim, I am not your enemy, but if you want to make me your enemy, I’ll become it. The choice is your choice. What will it be? If you choose to make me your enemy, then you’ll have to answer for the all the abusive things that have been said about me at this site. That’s your responsibility, and it’s inexcusable. Are their flies around my rotting twat, Jim? That’s a disgusting statement, isn’t it Jim? Yet that’s a statement one of your darling posters on another thread made to me, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So-called women who post to your site have cheered this type of behavior, namely Being There who is a frequent poster. Can she really be a woman and let that kind of behavior go unchecked? What kind of woman would allow women to be humiliated in such a way? I could go on and on, but I know you get the point, and it’s up to you to choose to ignore or, or validate it.

          • James Howard Kunstler July 1, 2013 at 3:38 pm #

            Newquest asks: What does that even mean?

            It means if you misbehave or call people names or act trollish, I will ban you. There is some question that you may be hacking other peoples’ identities. If that turns out to be true, you’re also banned.

            –Jim Kunstler

          • Howard Skillington July 1, 2013 at 4:18 pm #

            Carol, I have not complained about you to Mr. Kunstler, but I do so now. You have completely lost track of any subject matter even vaguely related to today’s topic and gotten bogged down in personal quarrels about which the rest of us don’t give a damn.

            If you become Jim’s “enemy now” that will be to his credit. Please be mine, too.

          • Eleuthero July 2, 2013 at 4:19 am #

            Please, “Carol”. Spare us the histrionics. First, you act as if this blog is totally dispensable to you. Really? How come the number of your posts dominates the board week in, week out? Moreover, the vast majority of your posts don’t cite any viable statistics but rather acridly crap all over the data that other sensible participants glean.

            There are several posters like me who post economic and energy data from reputable sources as a matter of course … unless YOU segue us into some pissing contest. If you “don’t care fuck all” about this board then why don’t you just split since your net contributions of hard data or imaginative conjectures is near nil anyway?

            Prove to us that you don’t need CFN by leaving. It would go a long way toward restoring some sanity to the place.

            E.

          • Eleuthero July 2, 2013 at 4:36 am #

            I’d also like to add, “Carol” that your ordinary tactics include making comments about people’s sex lives based on a political comment or hypothesizing that they’re wife beaters just because they find you heinous.

            This is your modus operandi.

            E.

        • Mike Hunt July 1, 2013 at 5:28 pm #

          Indeed. Carol is asoka and uses many other posting names. And now, Carol, you are whining like an old mule. Perhaps if you had something productive to do with your life you wouldn’t have to post your relentlessly self absorbed drivel here. As I have suggested numerous times – make some friends, cut your internet use time by at least 75% (You’ll be 75% happier), get a hobby, etc.
          Mike

      • ZrCrypDiK July 1, 2013 at 2:43 pm #

        For starters, if’n you’s gunna reply to your own poast, keep it within that same thread, rather than creating an entirely new one (and quit the *sockie* routine)…

        • ZrCrypDiK July 1, 2013 at 8:53 pm #

          HACK! Nice *bot*, tho (it “talks”) – hahahaha!!!

  42. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject July 1, 2013 at 3:44 pm #

    Here goes a weird piece from the NYT, which makes the case that Vladamir Putin 1) won’t consider Snowden’s appeal for political asylum in Russia UNTIL he stops releasing material that’s damaging to the the government and 2) there is nevertheless no chance that Russia will fork over Snowden to American authorities. Not sure of what to make of this awkward bit of reporting. Seems like a bit of PR strategy/tactical maneuvering in every sense, as I’m sure Russia would like to have every morsel of information Snowden has to offer; meanwhile, it seems highly unlikely that they (Putin and the gang) give half a shit about how damaged the US gubbamint’s overall image and international relationships become. What a mess, what a comical mess at that. Any prognostications much appreciated.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/world/europe/snowden-applies-for-asylum-in-russia.html?ref=world&_r=0

    -UFIA

  43. WSHancock1864 July 1, 2013 at 3:48 pm #

    To JHK,

    First off, “Huzzah!” for you personally addressing the sociopath who has been variously asoka, carol, and in this new format, likely a dozen others. Singlehandedly this lunatic has been responsible for a serious majority of suppressing intelligent conversation and postings…driving honest people away in droves.

    Don’t let that nutjob play his/her/it’s guilting games on you. Stay the course and don’t back down from their puscillanimous threats, which are almost certainly wholly hot air.

    Consider me another poster and long-time reader who is both cheering you on at your taking on that sociopath, and at the same time concerned that your new site design has a loophole one could drive a truck through that even the previous site didn’t have…

    …which is to say the ability of sociopaths, trolls and whatever to now steal the names of legitimate posters, even further muddying the waters of a comments section already running with it before you changed the design.

    As people have stated above, that one thing itself makes the new blog potentially a much less pleasant and reliable a place to converse even than the last one.

    We can’t even know who is speaking or if it’s a sociopath hijacking someone’s monniker.

    The new design actually seems to make it EASIER for sociopaths to muddy the waters with multiple monnikers spewing nonsense, and to echo others, that in itself is unacceptable.

    Ironic on a site devoted, among other things, to the growing distrust of The System, that the one safeguard (i.e. the hassle of registering a monniker) which slightly retarded the sociopaths, be they paid trolls or just for free lunatics, even a little bit, is now gone and threatens to drive the last few honest “regulars” out the door.

    And who could blame them/us? The very idea that one’s monniker can be hijacked and anything said with it, so that no one knows who’s really taking, that’s an Internet Discussion Board 101 no-no.

    Maybe you can fix it by becoming a comment thread policeman, but I doubt you want to waste time doing that. Plus, if you haven’t noticed, sociopathy confers a certain indefatigability.

    Bottom line: unless you can restore some semblence of trust that a monniker cannot be hijacked by anyone anytime, no regular would want to post here knwoing that if they step away from the site for a day or two, all kinds of things could be said in their name, made even worse if they miss the posts and therefore can’t rush back in to say, “It wasn’t me!” so that people think it WAS them.

    Count me with Eleuthero and others who have said they won’t post again until some kind of fix can be made so that we don’t have to worry about having our monniker hijacked.

    Please let us all know if you do so and what the fix is, so that some trust can be restored.

    Thanks.

    P.S. At least for the next few days, I won’t be posting. So anyone who speaks using my monniker is not me.

    • ZrCrypDiK July 1, 2013 at 9:12 pm #

      Don’t let *THEM* get the *BEST* of *U*!!! No need for *quiescence*…

  44. alfetta July 1, 2013 at 3:48 pm #

    well Jim what is money? is it intrinsic value? Perhaps it is just rules, and the rules are written by certain people

  45. ShabbaRanks July 1, 2013 at 4:23 pm #

    Jim call it correct about looming unrest in other developing economies. See the link from today’s news on Yahoo Finance.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mexico-india-show-high-potential-143700313.html

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  46. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject July 1, 2013 at 4:29 pm #

    This from Archie D. last Wednesday:

    “The twilight of “Helicopter Ben” and his spin-the-presses policies also marks the end of the line for a coterie of economists and bankers, most of them associated with Goldman Sachs, who came to power after the 2008 crisis insisting that they knew how to fix the broken economy. They didn’t, and they are now in the process of discovering—as the neoconservatives found out before them—that while the American political class has almost limitless patience with corruption and venality, it has no tolerance at all for failure. I expect to see a fair number of prominent figures in the nation’s financial bureaucracies headed back to the same genteel obscurity that swallowed the neocons, and it’s by no means unlikely that Goldman Sachs or some other big financial firm may be allowed to crash and burn as part of the payback.” TADR

    Honestly, I’d really like to understand why somehow we’re supposed to believe that after 8 years of Democrat rule, if the Repubs win in 2016, we won’t just simply see a shift in the slants and vitriole expressed in the so called mainstream political discourse as the temporarily dormant Neocon class reawakens. That is to say that FOX will simply become the bullhorn of the government again just like MSNBC is now, as Fox itself was before that and on and on. There really is little light between the two agencies anyhow.

    What I mean is I’d like to better understand what exactly it is that some of the bloggers I mostly identify with see in the broader scope of things that I cannot, with regard to a tipping point in the American public’s frustration with the CFN at large.

    What evidence do we have the the American public doesn’t also have limitless tolerance for failure alongside corruption and venality? Aren’t those things one in the same? And what evidence do we have that the same public doesn’t also have limitless tolerance for white collar crime and its criminals too? Just askin’. I’m getting tired of the tireless build up to nothing; what am I missing?

    When are the millions of conscious Americans gonna finally hit Time (Tahrir) Square to oust the supposed unwanted perpetrators? Maybe it is just ’round the corner and I’ll have to eat my shoe.

    Afterall, yesterday I had no evidence that Jaego would suddenly be banned. Much thanks, JHK! Carol next… ?

    http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

    -UFIA

  47. robert moorhead July 1, 2013 at 5:00 pm #

    I wonder if there are any other people who only bookmarked your old blog and had no idea that the whole website was updated… an updater at the top of the old blog might be a good idea. A deserted old page is not.

  48. Beantownbill July 1, 2013 at 5:39 pm #

    Everyone be patient. If society is fated to collapse, it will. Who says it’s imminent, anyway? The same people that have a system that can predict the course of the market? If they did, they wouldn’t be writing about it, they’d be sailing the oceans in their 200 foot yacht.

    Patience, grasshoppers. Just be grateful breakdown hasn’t occurred yet, for if and when it happens, it will be more terrible than you believe possible. Close your eyes and turn your face to the sun. Enjoy it’s warmth, for tomorrow it or you may not be there.

    • B L July 1, 2013 at 11:36 pm #

      If we do collapse it’s going to be long and slow and we may be seeing the early bits but I am certain that we won’t see the result. That will be probably happening in 50 – 100 years or more. We are just seeing the first step down from our energygasm that we have had for the last 100 years. We will be the first generation to see again how much work is required to actually do stuff.
      Good Luck

      • The Griz July 2, 2013 at 2:04 am #

        Climate will get us long before this time. We know not what we are messing with.

        Recent IPCC projections show ice free Arctic in 2075, but they took a dime-store ruler and drew a straight line. Climate physics, and their effects on “Gaia,” are not nice and neat and linear, and if you model the OBSERVED data, fitting a line to them for September ice extent in the Arctic Ocean, it is not a stretch to find 2015 being ice free. That is untold amounts of heat added to the ocean that used to reflect it. It’s all about the Arctic, with it’s heat amplifying effects. I hope Kunstler is paying close attention to what is happening here…it’s not about sea level rise…it’s all about methane. I’d like to see another blog on this.

        • Dr. George W. Oprisko July 2, 2013 at 6:56 am #

          You, seemingly alone, in all the drivel posted here, mention the elephant beneath the carpet.

          Yes, the Arctic should be Ice Free in just a few years, and yes, the Greenland Ice Cap should be covered with water in the Summer (absorbing great amounts of heat)

          Yes, current CO2 levels are sufficient to acidify the oceans to the point shellfish and corals die world wide, not to mention phytoplankton.

          Yes, the O2 level in several cities is borderline RIGHT NOW!

          AND

          Yes, conversion of all housing to PassivHaus Standard(the original one, not the fraud proposed by the US Institute[captured by Levitt, or some other])

          Emplacement of 6 kwe of PV on every house in the US

          Conversion of US Commercial Buildings to no more than twice the energy consumption of the Bullit Building in Seattle

          Emplacement of 1.2 Twe of PV on the roofs/ parking lots of US commercial buildings

          Emplacement of a 100 Kwe wind turbine and 50 Kwe PV array on each US farm

          Shift to 95% of all ton-miles/Pass-miles to rail

          Conversion from plastic containers back to glass/paper

          Could reduce US oil consumption to 1 million barrels per day or less.

          AND

          If we got that fuel from Doty’s WindFuels process, using atmospheric CO2 and water and surplus renewable power

          We could stop the carnage.

          INDY

  49. Bob July 1, 2013 at 6:16 pm #

    The shell game being a game is all about winning. So the most cunning player wins really really big. Pea Pod you’re under the shell in the dark ,don’t have clue how the game is won ,except the longer the game is played the bigger the loser you become. In the game Pea Pod you are the loser,doubtful you will ever crawl out from under your shell. It must be fun being a good player shooting those shells around so Pea Pod is more mixed up than ever. A lot of the Pea Pods are officially out of the game , but since we are in the end game it’s time to take out the rest.

    • Dr. George W. Oprisko July 2, 2013 at 6:58 am #

      Wins what?

      A sterile planet?

      Sea level 200 meters above current levels????

      Which means 90% of all US housing underwater????

      Including the Hamptons?????

      Exactly, what is being won???

      INDY

      • Bob July 2, 2013 at 11:48 am #

        Dr. You are right on,but then again you are rational and analytical.
        The game is short sighted and it’s rules are outside of the reality of environment resource depletion sustainability etc.

  50. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 6:52 pm #

    Sure, you are.

    I don’t think the comma is necessary. Remember that next time.

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  51. danogenes July 1, 2013 at 8:01 pm #

    Ho boy Jim

    don’t tell the true believers that the Bilderberg conspiracy isn’t real. You become the poster child for AIPAC. I guess the cognascenti here don’t understand that Rothschild created a model that has been followed by other banking houses. But it doesn’t make them Rothschild banks. Its merely the power to perform fractional reserve lending in a world where the Constitution demands we repay the loans from the banks. If we could repudiate those loans and start issuing government currencies (greenbacks) we could get out from under the slavery of the banks. But we would have to repudiate part of the Constitution. The brain dead acolytes to the empire can’t get their minds around that need. So we merely spin our wheels as the swamp waters close around us.

    • Progress4Nothing July 3, 2013 at 7:55 pm #

      OK –
      Glad you finally posted that message at the top of the “old” CFN, James – I’ve been well and truly thinking you were badly ill, or dead, or just too disgusted to write, anymore.

      Nice weeks’ work, by the way. Thank you!

      But this comment thread is a worse ClusterFuck than the old comment thread was. Is that deliberate. That seems unlikely.
      At least the “Chinese spammer” is gone, although that is sure to be temporary – as there seems to be no reasonable limit on posts.

      Ok – let’s see if this posts, and where it posts.
      And then let’s see if I can find it.
      And then let’s see if someone will hijack my identity, as asoka…did with ProgressOrConserve and Eleutheorro, last week.

      • Progress4Nothing July 3, 2013 at 8:01 pm #

        Well, that worked, anyway – to make my first post in this series post as near as possible to the top of the thread.

        I don’t believe a threaded discussion format is going to be a good choice for this discussion, btw, JHK.

        Also, the formatting and wraps in the posted text do not seem to closely match the formatting actually observed while typing.

    • James Howard Kunstler should ban Carol and the Carol Clones July 3, 2013 at 8:06 pm #

      Just another test of the new software.
      Although Carol…asoka IS destroying any chance of anything worthwhile coming from CFN, James.

    • Elmendorf July 6, 2013 at 3:50 am #

      This is me, Eleuthero. Kunstler kicked me off because I had the audacity to call “Carol Newquist” a “fucking retard” which is really a terrible insult to the intellectually challenged. Do you believe this shit? He gives “Carol” a WARNING and simply makes my password fail.

      Something SMELLS to high heaven with this guy, Kunstler. As everyone here knows, outside of directly taking on the cretin “Carol”, I usually post DATA. Well, after I bitched about getting kicked off, Kunstler writes me a terse email with the above mentioned quote of mine. Un-fucking-believable. Carol, who has spent YEARS talking about our penis sizes, calling us “bitchez”, and engaging in little more than relentless character assassination gets to stay and I *could* stay if I GROVELED but I told Kunstler to go fuck himself and his site.

      The ONLY person whose character I assassinate is the “Carol”. I think Jaego got kicked off because he’s got the unmitigated gall to defend white people, decry the massive reverse racism in the USA, and take on the Zionist Juggernaut in the USA.

      Well, I spend far, far more time OFF this site than on it and I had been talking about a permanent vacation because Kunstler’s moronic tech team didn’t even notice that anybody could log in as anybody. I want to say “goodbye” to Being There, K-Dog, Ozone, ProgressorConserve, and all those who appreciate sane reasoning, the nature of evidence, and being truthful even when it’s not convenient.

      Kunstler? The guy’s a hypocrite from the get-go because he flies jets to every part of the country to talk about sustainable lifestyles. I told him that years ago in an email. Using the most wasteful form of transportation to talk about Peak Oil is like promiscuous fucking to support the cause of chastity. Frankly, I think Kunstler is now seen as a 3rd rate hack who starting losing it after his justly-praised “Geography of Nowhere” but then he wrote “Long Emergency” … a book with no references and no index.

      So, to my friends, good health and prosperity to you all. To “Carol” and her buddies … LATER BITCHEZ!!! :~)

      E.

  52. K-Dog July 1, 2013 at 10:26 pm #


    In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

    Edward Joseph Snowden

    Monday 1st July 2013

    K-Dog

    • K-Dog July 1, 2013 at 11:58 pm #

      A 2011 Gallup poll determined that the US Congress is less popular than King George was in the colonial days.

      This according to Demitri Orlov. Today, Communities that Abide – Part One

      K-Dog

    • Carolyn Damon July 2, 2013 at 12:00 pm #

      Whistleblowers, to my mind are heroes. Imagine, the fourth amendment to the constitution of the United States has been erased! I have wondered why there has not been an outcry from the citizens of this muddled country, and I now realize why. No one today seems to know what is in that mysterious document called the constitution, and I now begin to believe it isn’t studied in the classrooms of this country’s schools. I am 73 years old, and this is not the country I grew up in. I feel like an alien on another planet. Heaven help us!. If I were 20 years younger I would imigrate to the country of my grandparents origin–Finland. I am sick of this country’s toxic politics.

      • bearfoot July 3, 2013 at 5:33 pm #

        finland has it’s own toxins, as does the planet! no way out…

  53. Carol Newquist July 1, 2013 at 11:14 pm #

    Just…just don’t ban me.

    I thought I would go along with the ruse. Some people think it’s the real thing. Jaego’s playing it up, too. How long can he hold out pretending to be banned? In all fairness, I think it’s time to shed a static name anyway. Names promote cliquish and clannish behavior. Consistently changing one;s screen name allows for greater objectivity. There’s no reputation to uphold. It keeps the focus on ideas rather than personalities. Most people can’t hack (pun intended) that, though. It’s called conditioning, and they’re blind to it.

    • K-Dog July 1, 2013 at 11:37 pm #

      Objectivity hah, more like sociopathology you mean. Changing names is meant to deceive. – K-Dog

      • ZrCrypDiK July 2, 2013 at 4:40 am #

        Soker gunna continue his *ROLL*…

  54. B L July 1, 2013 at 11:30 pm #

    Today my bank, a division of PNB Paribas was computer illiterate all day. I went in at 4:50pm and they were only letting one person in at a time and writing deposits and receipts by hand. I didn’t need any cash and was afraid to ask. They blamed it on a new computer system. I will find out tomorrow if it’s not a ‘Bank Holiday’.
    Cheers!

  55. Cargill July 2, 2013 at 3:58 am #

    I have a good friend in New York (we left his place only yesterday) – he believes that the US will be gas/oil/energy independent for decades to come. In fact, the US will be a major exporter. This person is a partner in a very large firm in NYC that makes a lot of money being economic rationalists.

    I pointed out to him gently three factors he could consider, prior to drinking the shale-oil kool-aid: (1) these wells decline very rapidly indeed, (2) they are only economic while the price of real oil is very high, and (3) lots of people do not like the environmental costs of the shale oil and tight oil recovery model.

    Of course he said I was a doomer. He’s almost certainly right on that.

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    • Dr. George W. Oprisko July 2, 2013 at 7:08 am #

      Since, you recently visited NYC, may I point out a few things.. .

      From the point of view of one who has lived here for a year, after living in the West Indies.

      NYC’s economy is the direct beneficiary of the Trillions created out of nothing by the FED, and handed out at Zero% interest, because that money(as documented by Jim) flowed into derivatives, shares, commodities, and all else controlled by the financial wizards of NYC, who take a percentage for themselves.

      Most of this is for the benefit of insurance companies/pension funds, who find it necessary to use the services of NYC finance wizards, because the US Treasury has abrogated it’s franking privilege and does not issue high interest bearing bonds to them directly.

      Wall Street, created and inculcated the Frack til you drop paradigm for the express purpose of making money on the fees.

      Because renewable power has a marginal cost of zero and is in a perfect concurrency market, the wall street wizards are not interested in fighting the FERC to emplace utility scale renewable power plants.

      Because they cannot make a killing with them.

      AND

      The points you made are correct.

      Tight oil production should peak in 2016, with tight gas shortly after.

      INDY

    • BackRowHeckler July 3, 2013 at 3:12 pm #

      Your good friend is repeating a common mantra printed in the NYT, WSJ and IBD, as well as the Financial Times of London, every single day. Its as good as orthodoxy now.

  56. James Howard Kunstler July 2, 2013 at 4:39 am #

    This is just me, Eleuthero, proving that all you have to do to assume someone else’s moniker is to edit the name field above your email address before submitting the comment. It’s way, way too easy to the point that the board is destroyed. If you’re there, Jim … you can see that a fix is necessary to keep the board alive.

    E.

    • Eleuthero July 2, 2013 at 5:49 am #

      It’s 3:40 in the morning, Captain. I think it’s obvious that the baddies have ALREADY discovered how to be anybody they want to be so my demo, if anything, is so exposing that if nothing is done to change the login method, the site is DONE, DONE, DONE.

      I’m helping the cause here, not hurting it.

      E.

  57. Howard Skillington July 2, 2013 at 7:57 am #

    To those of you who aren’t jerks and fools:

    The frightening thing is that this sort of self-centered, puerile behavior is what most Americans can expect from each other after the collapse. Those will be dark days, indeed.

    If any further messages should appear this week with my name over them, they will not be from me.

  58. Carol Newquist July 2, 2013 at 8:22 am #

    Objectivity hah, more like sociopathology you mean. Changing names is meant to deceive.

    Not at all, but if that’s your perception, then I’d say you’re the one with the problem. I’d prefer no names and just let the words themselves stand on their own merit. No personalities, to the extent that’s possible. Sure, we’d be able to identify a certain style, but there is no personality, i.e. name to attach it to, so the ideas and the message become paramount. You must respond to the words, and not the person and/or personality. Truthfully, I don’t give a shit who any of you are and I don’t care whether or not you have a name. I respond to what you say, not who says it. I don’t care who says it, and as we’ve established, and I’ve contended here for quite some time and now you bozos have adopted my assertion, five or six people occupy the majority of the screen names here, so we might as well not identify with one name any longer considering what I’ve just laid out. FYI, I am not asoka and I have never posted as another established poster’s name here. Believe what you want, but that much is true, I tell you. I may go underground for good, perhaps starting today, or maybe tomorrow or the next day. Some of you, the very few intelligent ones who appreciate passionate and witty prose, will recognize me by my style, but there will never again be a name to attach to me because it will change with every post. Names only serve to obfuscate and mitigate ideas and discussion surrounding those ideas. This is also why I capture the words/ideas to which I want to respond and put them in italics in a separate post; because I don’t care who said it, I only care what was said.

  59. Carol Newquist July 2, 2013 at 8:27 am #

    It’s 3:40 in the morning, Captain. I think it’s obvious that the baddies have ALREADY discovered how to be anybody they want to be so my demo, if anything, is so exposing that if nothing is done to change the login method, the site is DONE, DONE, DONE.

    I’m helping the cause here, not hurting it.

    And yet you so adamantly proclaimed earlier today you were refusing to post until things worked themselves out in the comments section. Promises, promises.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Q83DPZy6E

    • Eleuthero July 2, 2013 at 12:26 pm #

      This coming from a person who just posted SIX consecutive posts. You are the pox of this board. I’ll go when I’m damned good and ready which might be right now or in a couple days but not when an infantile imbecile like you taunts me into going.

      Capiche, you fucking retard?

      E.

    • Brent Eamer July 3, 2013 at 10:43 am #

      Love that song…

      • Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 4:21 pm #

        Same here. Brings back memories.

  60. Carol Newquist July 2, 2013 at 8:38 am #

    For those who are wondering who’s at the center of the comments reshuffle clusterfuck, we now have our answer. Notice K-Dog’s post is bookending the shuffle so it’s always showing as the last post. It’s K- Dog. K-Dog doesn’t like ideas and discussion. K Dog only likes validation of his disturbed and convoluted theories concerning the state of worldly and domestic affairs. When the conversation presents him with disconfirming information, he feels compelled to end it by any means at his disposal. You’re a coward, K-Dog, and you’ve been outed as the culprit. I’m stronger than you, K-Dog. You know it. I’ve taken you and pinned you numerous times, but like the coward you are, you can’t accept the multiple defeats you’ve been dealt. Go home now, you’re not a worthwhile foe. You’re not a foe at all. You’re merely a pestilence….like a mosquito is a pestilence. Your underground shelter awaits, but please, don’t kidnap and kiddies before you descend into the glory of your well-fortified bunker. Go now into the gentle night while it’s still gentle. The world no longer needs your services. In fact, it never really needed your services, although you have always felt compelled to render them in futility nonetheless. It’s sad and tragic, really, but there it is. The Truth. Sometimes it must be told, if for no other reason than for the sake of posterity.

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    • K-Dog July 3, 2013 at 3:30 pm #

      Oh, I’ve no doubt your stronger than I, and you even have minions. I know.

      As to coward come on. Lets step out side go over to my blog and settle things there you pissant.

      Or are you afraid someone might see your I.P. address.

      You going and insulting me here when you know I have my own blog you can leave comments on. Bravery that’s not.

      If I wasn’t in the mood to do some shameless self promotion I would not not have even see what you were whispering behind my back. I don’t drop in here every day.

      But really what would you do without project Osho. Work a real job?

      Go now into the gentle night while it’s still gentle.

      Always the veiled DoD stooge threat. You guys need new material.

      🙁

      K-Dog

  61. Carol Newquist July 2, 2013 at 8:48 am #

    you can see that a fix is necessary to keep the board alive.

    The fix is to have it to where everyone is labeled anonymous when they post. Any post that attempts to attach a name in the body of it is deleted. Readers of the comments will then be forced to focus on the words and ideas and the schoolyard cliquishness is eliminated. It’s amazing how so many carry the conditioning of school with them every where they go, including the comments sections of various blogs, and yet many of the same people are the first ones to decry the awful state of affairs. Cognitive dissonance, anyone? They fail to see the disconnect, and since they can’t see it, they can’t reconcile it. They end up chasing their own tail, or being led around by the nose by flunkies like Snowden.

    • Eleuthero July 3, 2013 at 12:45 am #

      Oh yes, let’s make the Internet even more anonymous than it already is. What a maroon. In real life, people get to see the body language and other subtleties emanating from a person along with their words so I think it is VITAL to associate a body of ideas WITH A PERSON. After a while, we get to know that person and their facets. Your idea eliminates personhood from the Internet entirely. Why don’t you join the NSA ’cause your idea sounds like it came from an intelligence agency as a directive to all of its employees.

      E.

  62. Carol Newquist July 2, 2013 at 8:59 am #

    A 2011 Gallup poll determined that the US Congress is less popular than King George was in the colonial days.

    This according to Demitri Orlov. Today, Communities that Abide – Part One

    Yeah, but now “the people” have i-phones instead of pitchforks. You have to admit the brilliance of that. It is pure genius. With i-phones, there don’t have to be any scoops when the crowds get unruly because the i-phone is like opium and no one will ever get unruly. They may be starving, disease-ridden and near-death, but so long as they have their i-phone, none of that matters, so powerful is its effect.

    Also, if you’re going to link to the author of Barefoot and Pregnant Revisited, perhaps you could extend the fellow misogynist the courtesy of spelling his name correctly. Have you ever considered that Dmitry may very well be a Russian psy-ops to aid in the unraveling and fragmentation of “American” society, or is your skull too thick for such a byzantine consideration? If he is a provocateur, he’s paid well for his services. He is, materially at least, very comfortable. In fact, I’d say much more comfortable than many of his readers. Funny, that.

  63. Carol Newquist July 2, 2013 at 10:57 am #

    Required viewing for all CFN readers. A bird’s eye view of the unbelievable corruption of the US financial system. Clusterfuck, anyone?

    http://usawatchdog.com/treasury-bond-greatest-asset-bubble-in-history-jim-willie/

  64. Carol Newquist July 2, 2013 at 10:59 am #

    If you “don’t care fuck all” about this board then why don’t you just split since your net contributions of hard data or imaginative conjectures is near nil anyway?

    I care very much about this board. I came to this board within the past year and couldn’t believe my eyes. A band and/or cabal of obvious, and not so clever, racist white supremacists had set up shop and camp in the comments section and were doing a huge disservice to JHK and his fine writing. What I saw was a farce……a satire, if you will. My tact has been to meet that satirical and farcical fire with my own brand of farcical and satirical fire. I mix that with serious posts every now and then, but I have no respect for you racist fools and I show that disrespect via farcical satire……because that’s what you all are….a farcical satire. I won’t quit until all of you go back to Stormfront. JHK has made it clear on numerous occasions that he is is not a right-wing, racist zealot and yet you freaks feel compelled to camp out at this site and try to usurp and control JHK’s message and sentiment. Now, be true to your word and do as you said you were going to do and don’t post here anymore until the buggery in the comments section is worked out. One of you hijacked my screen name long ago as triple dot and I never let it affect me. I’m better than you. Someone does it to you and you whine and cry like the cowardly little baby you are. Deal with it, you pansy.

    • Joe Blob July 2, 2013 at 11:10 am #

      You’re whining again asoka, like the tired old mule that you are. I enjoyed your Jim Willie post, though. Nice contribution!

      • Joe Blob July 2, 2013 at 11:17 am #

        By the way, you’re lying again. By your own admission as asoka you came to this board over seven years ago. A liar and a compulsive one at that.

    • Eleuthero July 3, 2013 at 12:51 am #

      You, like most liberals, never deal with the issue of race HONESTLY. Liberals are terrific at living in lily white neighborhoods and going to lily white establishments and sending their kids to private schools while demanding that everyone else should mix into the melting pot. This kind of duplicity started with the execrable Kennedys and continues to this day. Their kids went to lily white prep schools in Hyannisport, MA while demanding that suburban families bus their kids to ghetto schools.

      Of course, you, like many liberals, don’t introspect about your own duplicity, your own ethnocentrism in your social and business life, and how NONE of you talk is backed by walking the walk. Also, you don’t deal with the ambient racism present in ALL cultures. You just pick on Whitey as if blacks, Asians, and Jews weren’t ethnocentric and racist.

      This is ORWELLIAN “liberalism” where people groom their social image with pretty sounding slogans which don’t apply to their lives but rather the lives of everyone else. They are the ultimate NIMBYs.

      E.

  65. Kevin Abbey, Sr. July 2, 2013 at 6:30 pm #

    James…..I like how you leave critical comments like those made by rube-i-con on your site. Shows you have the nads to tolerate not only reasoned criticism of your points…….but your willingness to invite thoughts that further and expand the dialogue. Thanks for your work!

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  66. Schwerpunkter July 2, 2013 at 10:57 pm #

    Good looking change to all this. I have been away, but now have updated my link and will again turn to this particular doom area in order to read JHK’s weekly thoughts. Oh… and give the government something to read by posting here…. Too…

  67. Pucker July 3, 2013 at 3:02 am #

    Rather than releasing all of the information at once, it looks like Sn ow den is going to shawshank it.

    From the movie Shawshank Redemption. Tim Robbins’ character, Andy Dufresne, secretly digs a tunnel in his prison cell, and hides the dirt and cement from the wall in his pants legs. To get rid of it without anyone knowing, he takes a stroll out in the yard every day, and with every step shakes a little bit out at a time.

    Definition: verb

    When you have to fart, the action of walking around an area and dispersing a little bit at a time so no one notices.
    Suddenly feeling the urge to fart, I quickly got up from my desk and shawshanked it around the office.

    • K-Dog July 3, 2013 at 6:18 pm #

      Those who have learned an uncomfortable truth know a slow deliberate unveiling is the best path. too much at once merely labels one as a lunatic.

      “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”

      Arthur Schopenhauer

      And while he Shawshanks there will be many who won’t be able to stand up and Shawshank about the desk in time.

      Me, no worries. Dogs are silent and I’ll slip away away when nobody’s looking.

      K-Dog

  68. Eleuthero July 3, 2013 at 5:47 am #

    In overnight futures oil leapfrogged $100 and is now at $101. And the futures markets are basically saying that THIS time the price is a reasonably objective price and not kited up by speculation. If it were, there would be a contango in the futures … distant futures would be MUCH higher than nearby futures.

    Instead we have the biggest BACKWARDATION IN MANY YEARS with futures a year out almost ten dollars cheaper than the spot price. This means that there is a supply problem!!

    Backwardation inevitably means the commodity is going higher in price and given the futures chart, it’s going a LOT higher. This ought to be a lesson to the pollyannas in the media, especially the financial media and the pollyannas on this blog. The shale oil “bonanza” is turning out to be a an enormous investment of money and energy that’s already burning out to nothing.

    The enormous amount of mini-wells in ND, MT, CO, WY, TX, and CA is only an indicator of the incredible desperation likely mandated and financed by none other than the Department of Energy as ordered by a soberly informed Mr. Obama.

    People who know about futures prices should regard the current price coupled with the backwardation of futures should be duly alarmed because this means the long emergency is MUCH closer than any of us dared to fear.

    E.

    • UFIA July 3, 2013 at 10:56 am #

      Hey, E.

      I was wondering if you might speculate for us about fuel prices now that per barrel cost is hovering at $100 plus and what types of fluctuation at the pump you foresee in coming months and years? I’ve never understood how price per barrel translates to price per gallon; the futures markets are beyond me.

      I travel round trip for school about 120 to 140 miles per class day in addition to my work commute, which is about to increase again. I have some ignorant hunches of my own and fully expect $5 per gallon fuel within a year, which would be barely manageable. So, barring major international catastrophes, and aside from the continued misdirection and deceptions regarding the sur-realities of fracking and PO, what are some of the price tweaking/spiking influences someone with no experience in these matters can look for? Would you say that if all the manipulation continues as it has for some time the speculators will manage a steady but relatively predictable increase in costs, or is it an inevitability that they’ll lose control?

      I might not be asking the right types of questions but thanks for the reply in advance.

      -UFIA

  69. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 7:07 am #

    People who know about futures prices should regard the current price coupled with the backwardation of futures should be duly alarmed because this means the long emergency is MUCH closer than any of us dared to fear.

    People who know about futures know that the prices of commodity futures are rigged, so the price is not reflective of supply and/or demand. The price of oil is nothing more than a reflection of price fixing by insiders. The price of oil will not be an indicator of the timing of the arrival of any form of collapse. The availability of oil will be, and last time I checked, there’s still plenty of it available.

    • Eleuthero July 3, 2013 at 9:24 am #

      The prices of options are rigged, stock prices are rigged, bond prices are rigged, home prices are rigged by hedge funds but if there’s one area of the market that is the LEAST rigged it’s non-gold commodities. Gold has been manipulated by central banks. But agricultural commodities, oil, and natural gas futures are almost NEVER in price backwardation unless there’s a supply bottleneck in the here and now.

      E.

  70. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 7:16 am #

    EVERY country is falling apart … Brazil, China, USA, Spain, …

    I’m surprised the person who posted this didn’t point to a town in California as living proof that the USA is “falling apart.” The USA has been falling apart since its inception based on such subjectively anecdotal evidence. But gosh darn golly gee, what do we have here? Why, Mobile Alabama is booming. Zero sum rearing its ugly head. California declines, Mobile, Alabama soars.

    http://www.economist.com/node/14140365

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  71. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 7:27 am #

    A very small portion of the workforce telecommutes to work.

    That doesn’t preclude the very basic fact that the majority of the workforce, say 80% or more, could and should telecommute if only the sadistically tyrannical corporate executives would slacken up the leashes. As the Long Emergency makes its way to the appointment time only it knows, and the world reaches a point where the rule of law no longer applies to anyone, keeping in mind of course that it’s never applied to our finest, one would hope there is a particular nasty brand of justice that will be meted out to these corporate overlords. Somehow, I don’t think it was the kind of hope Obama was offering, but as the saying goes, there can be no freedom without justice. True justice and reconciliation was never achieved in the South subsequent to the Civil War and as a result of that gross negligence, we have the likes of Paula Deen and her unseemly and unsightly current unraveling. She represents the product of not meting out true justice. The South lost the war, and they should have been put asunder and justice meted out properly so the racist Frankensteins like Paula Deen could walk this earth no more.

  72. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 7:42 am #

    You just pick on Whitey as if blacks, Asians, and Jews weren’t ethnocentric and racist.

    A clear sign this author is a Stormfronter. Notice how it doesn’t capitalize the “b” in “black.” That is very deliberate, and a sure sign this fruitcake is a racist bigot. Go back to Stormfront where they don’t capitalize black. I don’t either, but then again, I don’t capitalize asian or jewish or white. I don’t give such arbitrary characterizations much emphasis, whereas such characterizations are central to your views on just about everything. You are pedantic and myopic; a signal that your brain cannot expand beyond the size of a pea. Yes, you are a the pea. You have lived up to the title of this post. Good job. Keep up the good work. There’s another pile of dogshit right over there….go step in it, please. It seems to be your forte.

    • Eleuthero July 3, 2013 at 9:55 am #

      This is the sort of ad hominem garbage the site has come to expect from you. In your own uniquely liberal way, you stifle dialog more than Jaego ever did. You don’t address any of the issues I put forth such as YOUR lifestyle, YOUR friends, YOUR choice of living location, YOUR recreational locales.

      You criticize me for not capitalizing black but then fail to capitalize Jewish as required by the English language. Sometimes I capitalize black, sometimes I don’t. What of it, Whitey?

      Once again we all log into to see “Carol Newquist” as the poster of sixty percent of the posts of the day thus far. You have no life. You’re just a mandarin who has no life which is why everyone knows you’re Asoka.

      Either address the issues I put forth or STFU, you flaming idiot.

      E.

      • Joe Blob July 3, 2013 at 11:11 am #

        Dear E.

        Carol/Asoka has no friends which is why s/he is here all the time.

        Joe

    • James Howard Kunstler July 3, 2013 at 11:17 am #

      Anymore of this bullshit from you Newquest and you will be banned. You’re far worse than any so-called Stormfronter here.

  73. Marsha July 3, 2013 at 10:31 am #

    Getting my shell ready Jim.

    http://rookery.s3.amazonaws.com/1022500/1022659_187a_625x1000.jpg

  74. UFIA July 3, 2013 at 11:29 am #

    Hey, E.

    I was wondering if you might speculate for us about fuel prices now that per barrel cost is hovering at $100 plus and what types of fluctuation at the pump you foresee in coming months and years? I’ve never understood how price per barrel translates to price per gallon; the futures markets are beyond me.

    I travel round trip for school about 120 to 140 miles per class day in addition to my work commute, which is about to increase again. I have some ignorant hunches of my own and fully expect $5 per gallon fuel within a year, which would be barely manageable. So, barring major international catastrophes, and aside from the continued misdirection and deceptions regarding the sur-realities of fracking and PO, what are some of the price tweaking/spiking influences someone with no experience in these matters can look for? Would you say that if all the manipulation continues as it has for some time the speculators will manage a steady but relatively predictable increase in costs, or is it an inevitability that they’ll lose control and soon?

    I might not be asking the right types of questions but thanks for the reply in advance.

    -UFIA

    Sorry for the double post, CFN. I’d like anyone to weigh in on this if they’d care to, except Carol. Even if he/she/it did bother with a non-confrontational response, the entity would just screw us over at some point with another sock puppet. So I pasted these questions further down thread to remove them from the latest pointless bickering, but we all now they won’t stay unburied for long.

    Oh, and JHK if you’re still watching I wonder if you wouldn’t agree that Carol truly has zero interest in civil or honest exchanges even after you’ve given it fair warning? Yes, we’re all responsible for our own side of the street, but damn, Carol puts itself right in the path of movement at every opportunity for no good reason.

    • Eleuthero July 3, 2013 at 12:00 pm #

      Well, nobody is a good short term forecaster no matter how much they toot your horn. However, you need to lower that commute time drastically. Just from class commuting you’re spending about $400/month just on gasoline assuming an mpg of about 28.

      Short term price movements aside, the futures point to rising oil prices and $5 in a year is a fairly sober minded assessment. Theoildrum.com is THE site to find out about net barrels pumped per day, worldwide supplies, and so on. It’s fairly politically neutral so you won’t get an exclusively conservative or liberal view. Lots of engineers weigh in with good analyses.

      The current backwardation, as with all backwardations in futures, generally indicators that it’s SUPPLY that’s the problem, not “speculators”. That’s why this recent rise above $100 is worrisome. Of course, there is ALWAYS commodity speculation but with this array of futures prices, it almost never indicates a speculative bubble.

      You have to understand that in the futures markets, farmers and oil companies are trying to lock in a price for the good that they buy and sell on a cash basis. It’s not like options where there’s huge leverage.

      E.

  75. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 11:59 am #

    But agricultural commodities, oil, and natural gas futures are almost NEVER in price backwardation unless there’s a supply bottleneck in the here and now.

    Okay, gee, if you say so. Nothing to see here. move along. And the following is just the tip of the iceberg: a containment gesture, if you will, to the blatant fixing that’s really going on. Supply and demand, my ass!! Any half-wit can deduce it has nothing to do with supply and demand and everything to do with a tax upon the poor by the wealthy, i.e. the investor class.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bp-and-shell-pricefixing-investigation-oil-executives-may-face-jail-warns-david-cameron-8617892.html

    Seth Freedman, the man who blew the whistle on alleged price fixing in the gas market, told The Independent that the practice was also common in the oil industry. “Traders have told me there is a widespread problem of attempting to manipulate prices right across the energy complex, in oil, gas, carbon and coal,” Mr Freedman said.

    The former city trader and price reporting agency employee – who regularly spoke to oil companies, banks, hedge funds and other players across the energy trading market – added: “Traders have named to me some of the world’s biggest energy companies as being notorious for attempting to manipulate energy prices, including oil.”

    Ultimately, the price that people pay for oil, petrol and related products around the world is determined by a handful of “benchmarks”, of which the best known is Brent crude. So-called price-reporting agencies calculate the benchmark rate using data provided to them by oil companies, banks and hedge funds, which trade oil on a daily basis; the EC suspects these submissions were in some cases fraudulent.

    Of course, we all know Cameron’s full of shit when he says they will be jailed. Quite the contrary; they’ll be patted on the back and told “job well done, keep up the good work, old man.”

    Where did the Boys In the Backroom from Enron go? Not to jail. Instead, they went to the Hedge Funds and Investment Houses to continue their craft, and we now have $100/barrel oil that has no basis in reality other than it’s robbery pure and simple.

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    • Eleuthero July 3, 2013 at 12:04 pm #

      “investors” rarely buy futures. They buy oil company stocks or stock options. THAT is what we call “speculation”. Once again your ignorance is on full display because you apparently don’t know that the commercial hedgers who buy and sell futures are the companies that make THAT particular commodity and buy and sell it on a cash basis.

      Your whole line of arguing on this site is that “da man be keeping me down and dat’s da cause of everything!!” Do you think you could try to appear scientifically, economically, or psychologically literate for once in your life?

      E.

  76. BackRowHeckler July 3, 2013 at 1:42 pm #

    WTI Crude at $101 per barrel today! What’s the deal? Is Bakken shut down for the holiday? I’m trying to find some answers. Nobody has any.

    • notaneoliberal July 3, 2013 at 3:47 pm #

      The current run up is ostensibly due to the Egyptian situation. Fear of supply disruption is the explanation. Seems to me though, the apparent fact that cost of production has exceeded the price may have to have an effect. From the article below;…. “In a recent analysis, it estimates that non-Opec marginal cost of production rose last year to $104.5 a barrel, up more than 13 per cent from $92.3 a barrel in 2011.” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ec3bb622-c794-11e2-9c52-00144feab7de.html#axzz2Y17Q1bVH

  77. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 1:48 pm #

    “investors” rarely buy futures. They buy oil company stocks or stock options. THAT is what we call “speculation”.

    I’m talking about the REAL investor class, not the ordinary Joe with a few extra dollars to invest. The REAL investor class certainly does buy futures, and due to deregulation, they no longer have to take physical possession of the underlying commodity. But it’s not speculating and/or gambling, because there is no down side for this. They will make it whatever they believe they can get away with at the moment. It explains perfectly the disconnect to which BackRowHeckler is referring.

  78. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 1:58 pm #

    “da man be keeping me down and dat’s da cause of everything!!”

    Hardly. I think that’s your argument. I don’t have an argument, just observations. My observation is that people such as yourself are blind to being ripped off, and even when you do suspect something is afoot, your reasoning for what may be going on is absurd and doesn’t stand the test of time. For example, the DJIA is up and about to breach 15,000 again. As adequatio pointed out in a post under the old format a month and a half prior, most of you who comment here claim the DJIA doesn’t reflect reality when it’s soaring to new heights, but when it takes what you believe to be a permanent nosedive, you jump on the DJIA bandwagon and clamor that the end is finally here. Cake and eat it too. Not surprising, that’s always been the “American” way. FYI, I pay no attention whatsoever to the DJIA. NONE. The only meaning that statistic holds is just how far they will push this charade; and boy howdy, speaking if pushing the envelope, this is one elastic envelope with no edges, apparently.

  79. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 2:03 pm #

    Well, nobody is a good short term forecaster no matter how much they toot your horn.

    Best disclaimer ever. Really. You know what it tells me? It tells me that anything this buffoon says thereafter is nothing more than horseshit. He even says it himself with his lead-in. I took his advice and didn’t read any further than the disclaimer. Thanks for the heads up. It saved me some of my valuable time.

  80. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 2:48 pm #

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-20/enron-no-lesson-to-traders-as-eu-probes-oil-price-manipulation.html

    “We’re making exactly the same mistakes we did with Enron, just with a different commodity,” Robert McCullough, an energy consultant, said by telephone from Portland, Oregon. “The same manipulation we saw in electricity and gas pricing is what we’re seeing in oil.”

    The Enron scandal started in 2001 as traders used trading strategies called “Fat Boy” and “Get Shorty” to create phantom congestion in the California energy markets. Electricity prices rose 10-fold on average and California consumers endured days of rolling blackouts.

    Large-volume, rapid-fire trades between Enron and a Reliant Energy Inc. unit’s gas trader through an Enron-run electronic platform triggered price moves that all traders could see without knowing the cause, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found in a 2003 report. The transactions made through EnronOnline influenced daily price indexes used in physical gas contracts and for settling financial derivatives such as swaps.

    Unlike spot power trades, regulators have “very little understanding” of how oil trades are reported to the trade press, and the practice lacks any real oversight, said McCullough, who after the California crisis helped regulators obtain tapes of Enron traders discussing how they drove up power prices.

    Price fixing in energy markets has the potential to inflate production costs and consumer prices for everything from gasoline to airline tickets to cosmetics.

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  81. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 4:11 pm #

    http://oilgeopolitics.net/Financial_Tsunami/Oil_Speculation/oil_speculation.HTM

    The price of crude oil today is not made according to any traditional relation of supply to demand. It’s controlled by an elaborate financial market system as well as by the four major Anglo-American oil companies. As much as 60% of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. It has nothing to do with the convenient myths of Peak Oil. It has to do with control of oil and its price. How?

    Per that article, the term “speculator” is defined as follows:

    a person who “does not produce or use the commodity, but risks his or her own capital trading futures in that commodity in hopes of making a profit on price changes.”

    It’s important to point that out because of the historical use of that term. Conventionally, the term “speculation” implies risk, but of course we know there is no risk when it comes to the price of oil and the people fixing the price so high. Even if for some miraculous reason the price of oil were to decline even though they still held long positions in it going higher, they would be made whole, as they always are. It’s a win-win for them until the The World Made By Hand arrives…..any day now.

  82. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 4:14 pm #

    The current run up is ostensibly due to the Egyptian situation. Fear of supply disruption is the explanation.

    Sure it is, and I have some swampland in Death Valley I’d like you to purchase; I’ll even give it to you at a discount.

    • notaneoliberal July 3, 2013 at 6:38 pm #

      Since you like to make sure all is written correctly, the semicolon in ” Sure it is, and I have some swampland in Death Valley I’d like you to purchase; I’ll even give it to you at a discount.” is inappropriate. The correct way would to end the sentence with a period and then start the second sentence.

  83. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 4:19 pm #

    Oh, I’ve no doubt your stronger than I

    There are a couple of grammatical errors that must be pointed out. I have bolded them for your convenience. It’s you’re, not your, and it should be me, not I. You’re welcome. No need to thank me. I do it as a public service…..for free.

  84. BackRowHeckler July 3, 2013 at 5:16 pm #

    Hey, What’s going down in Egypt? The Noble Peace Prize Winner needs to go back to Cairo and make another apologetic, rabble rousing speech. Seems like things are coming to a head, not just in Egypt, but in Syria as well. What happens next? How long can people go on believing ‘our energy problems are solved’ when crude tops $100 per barrel. For all you ‘Alt Energy’ people out there, now’s your time. I’ve been hearing about the promise of wind and solar for 40 years now. Well, time to step up. Let’s see, finally, what you’ve got. Truckloads of cash have been shoveled in your direction since 2009; now we need to see some results. I remain the …

    BackRow Heckler

  85. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 5:42 pm #

    The Noble Peace Prize Winner needs to go back to Cairo and make another apologetic, rabble rousing speech.

    That’s a great idea. This speech can be called A New² Beginning and amplify many of the themes from his first speech, A New Beginning in 2009.

    Jefferson would have been proud of Egypt. They’ve taken his message and put it on a diet of steroids. Instead of every generation, it’s every other year. Of course, there’s the nasty little fact that an increasing percentage of people are falling further and further into destitution in Egypt so these every other year “revolutions” don’t seem to be having much effect. Maybe it’s because they live under a de facto military dictatorship that takes the majority of the country’s spoils inot its own deep pockets much as they do in Pakistan……and the U.S.

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  86. xport July 3, 2013 at 6:09 pm #

    So, anyone who proffers a solution is a clown, a failure in your mind. and so it goes. Who juggles the buttons and calls the shots, a wise man I suppose, perhaps not.

  87. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 7:02 pm #

    The correct way would to end the sentence with a period and then start the second sentence.

    You forgot the “be” between would and to. Otherwise, you are correct. I realized the error after hitting submit. Good catch. Keep up the good work, but make sure to review your critique before submitting. If you had done so, you wouldn’t have left out “be”.

    Oh, enjoy the swampland. You deserve it.

    • notaneoliberal July 3, 2013 at 7:31 pm #

      You are correct. I missed the “be”. By the way, it was not my assertion that the price of oil has anything to do with Egypt. Thus the word “ostensibly”.

  88. Carol Newquist July 3, 2013 at 8:28 pm #

    You are correct. I missed the “be”. By the way, it was not my assertion that the price of oil has anything to do with Egypt. Thus the word “ostensibly”.

    My bad. I inferred sentiment where there was none. It’s a good thing I misinterpreted your sentiment, cuz I lost the deed to that swampland.

    • notaneoliberal July 3, 2013 at 8:35 pm #

      Damn, I always wanted some desert swampland.

  89. JB July 4, 2013 at 4:39 pm #

    I don´t consider Brazil to be a surprising place. I have been carefully observing this country for some years and everything it needs can be reached pretty soon. But guess what? Corrupted political elite, represented by the Worker’s Party, never tried to do anything. They were just pouring money they earned by selling their biggest treasure – the Amazonian forest – to the corporations. Right now, they are fucked. Their growth (whatever it means) stopped last year, and corrupted politicians could only come with a plan how to pour more money into the stopping machine of state generated public works. People are pissed, and they expect someone to take them from the misery, since their voice can’t be heart. I still find quite surprising that Sao Paulo is among the best cities of the future, with its complete social and architectural inefficiency and an overwhelming number of poor people who live on the streets. But it probably has some inner logic in it.

  90. janet July 4, 2013 at 5:23 pm #

    Historians of the future, squatting in the plastic and silicon midden-heaps of bygone technocracy, may note that FASB Rule 157 provoked a four-year psychotic episode of worldwide accounting fraud in which anything could mean anything.

    Yet years ago when the FASB rule was suspended, many (including JHK) were claiming this could not work. Four years later extend and pretend still seems to be a success.

    By success I mean the banks seem to be stable, and have been profitable since the FASB rule was suspended. In March 2009 the markets were way down (not as far as JHK’s DJIA at 4,000 prediction, but low) and the markets have been going up and up since FASB was suspended.

    Sure, the banks still have toxic assets on their books and they haven’t repaired their balance sheets. They just keep pretending and it continues to work for them to be pretend to be hedge funds, instead of being banks.

    Every year the JHK prediction is a 4,000 Dow yet what we see happening is more profitability for the banks (look at their price-to-earnings ration for proof). Unless the banks are a giant speculative bubble about to pop next week, we have to say the suspension of FASB Rule 157 (i.e., their extend-and-pretend strategy) has worked.

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  91. janet July 4, 2013 at 7:10 pm #

    The “money” is a matrix of counterparty entanglements so abstruse and impenetrable that all the vicars of Christendom (plus the mullahs of Islam, the monks of Mahayana, and the Op-Ed flunkies at The New York Times) would not avail to describe its metaphysical substance.

    With all due respect you are selling short (pun intended) the monks of Mahayana. Your comment reflects your western preconception.

    In the west we believe that we will be happy if we have a life partner, manage to get a good job, buy a house, make a lot of money, try to be a good person and not hurt anyone. This is the highest virtue taught in the west. Do all that and you’ll be happy. This is what our societal institutions tell us.

    Since this is the 4th of July, I’ll add that we are also told: “if there is war, you go and do your duty.” This is the propaganda we receive from our western society: “Follow fashion.” “Be successful.” “Conform.”

    Buddhism does not agree with these things, JHK, and you should not speak of the “monks of Mahayana” without knowledge of their philosophy. Buddhism, Mahayana, Hinayana, or any other variety, does not say that our happiness or unhappiness comes from any of the things the west is preoccupied with, and most certainly not from money.

    Buddhism does not even worry about money, or what you refer to: money as a “metaphysical substance.”

    I imagine you actually agree with at least the first two principles of Buddhism: 1) Life is difficult and full of problems. 2) These problems have a cause.

    I don’t imagine you have any grasp of the third and fourth principles of Buddhism. Hence your derogatory reference to the supposedly hapless “monks of Mahayana,” who, coincidentally, are NOT trapped in the “matrix of counterparty entanglements” the western preoccupation with money has led to. But the monks do understand why that has happened in the west.

  92. janet July 4, 2013 at 7:50 pm #

    JB said: “I don´t consider Brazil to be a surprising place.”

    I guess I am a bit surprised that Brazil is considered to have the world’s first sustainable biofuels economy and Brazil is the biofuel industry leader, a model for other countries to follow.

    From Wikipedia: “Brazil’s 37-year-old ethanol fuel program is based on the most efficient agricultural technology for sugarcane cultivation in the world, uses modern equipment and cheap sugar cane as feedstock, the residual cane-waste (bagasse) is used to produce heat and power, which results in a very competitive price and also in a high energy balance (output energy/input energy), which varies from 8.3 for average conditions to 10.2 for best practice production. In 2010, the U.S. EPA designated Brazilian sugarcane ethanol as an advanced biofuel due to its 61% reduction of total life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, including direct indirect land use change emissions.
    There are no longer any light vehicles in Brazil running on pure gasoline.”

    No other country, not even those with giant landmasses, can make that claim, so Brazil turns out to be a surprising place.

    • notaneoliberal July 5, 2013 at 3:08 pm #

      “There are no longer any light vehicles in Brazil running on pure gasoline.”

      No other country, not even those with giant landmasses, can make that claim, so Brazil turns out to be a surprising place.” All US gasoline (other than small aircraft) has 10% ethanol. No biofuel program is sustainable. Biofuels require phosphate. Phosphate is finite. http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Peak-Phosphorous-What-Can-we-Expect.html

  93. BROOMSGOAT July 5, 2013 at 1:46 pm #

    We will certainly have a RE-PU-LA-CRAT for our next pres. This has to fall, and it ain’t gonna fall on a DEM-O-KIN.

  94. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject July 5, 2013 at 2:01 pm #

    Nice. We have the blog identity controls in full effect I see. It will be interesting to see how the blog changes now that the two major impediments have been thwarted.

    Oh, and thanks for the feedback, E. The Oil Drum has been noted and bookmarked. Advice also heard regarding the commute, and as for mpg during my commute, well, it depends which vehicle I’m using. My truck gets a pathetic 16 mpg while my 250cc street-bike gets about 70mpg. Considering the seasonal at best nature of the cycle, you can imagine what my annual fuel costs are like; if I did move my living costs would almost triple, so for now the commute is cheaper. Anyhow, it all works out in the end.

    This was a test for my new account. Thanks, JHK!

    • BleatToTheBeat July 5, 2013 at 4:42 pm #

      Just went to The Oil Drum a couple of days ago.

      They are going to stop active reporting and are going into archive mode.

      • ozone July 5, 2013 at 4:44 pm #

        Truly true?
        No crank yanking?

      • ozone July 5, 2013 at 4:50 pm #

        Quote:
        “Because of [a lack of high quality articles] and the high expense of running the site, the board has unanimously decided that the best course of action is to convert the site to a static archive of previously published material as of 31st July 2013. We will continue to post articles up to this date. Afterwards any articles will be held as a public archive into the foreseeable future, so that others can continue to learn from the breadth and depth of knowledge published by our many authors, over the 8+ history of this remarkable volunteer effort.”

        Well, there it is. Thanks for the heads-up.

        • BleatToTheBeat July 5, 2013 at 5:12 pm #

          Sorry for the time-space lag.

          Yeah, I’m so bummed I learned a lot from that particular site. It had many technically knowledgable writers. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been coming here for so long. JHK has a unique talent for putting a human face on the unfolding energy crisis.

          Crisis!

          I would have responded sooner but I was reading an email from this site’s…webmaster? JHK?

          I sent a flattering, yet, unflattering email. There is the possibility that I was BANNED!

          Who, me?

          Sigh…

          Doncha’ just know that I’m probably gonna get banned again.

          Especially since a rebuttal to poster “Janet” is most definitlely in order.

          • ozone July 5, 2013 at 7:29 pm #

            Bah, don’t worry about this type-cast blather. We all know ‘who’ it is.

            …Stick with the menu. Mmmmm, pea soup and shenanigans; my favorite!!

  95. ozone July 5, 2013 at 5:43 pm #

    More secret communiques for us jangled, kept-in-the-dark peas from PCR. The shenanigans of ’employment’ pronouncements and lawlessness of a hegemon. (Who could he mean?)

    http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

    (Not so sweet, but short.)

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    • BleatToTheBeat July 5, 2013 at 9:39 pm #

      Don’t know about you, but it is impossible for me to downplay forcing Evo Morales’s plane to land in Austria.

      Austria? Based on bad intelligence from the French and Portuguese?

      Wow.

      We could be watching the unwinding of centuries.

      • janet July 5, 2013 at 11:48 pm #

        WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, said on Friday that Snowden had asked six more nations for asylum, bringing to about 20 the number of countries he has appealed to for protection from U.S. espionage charges. WikiLeaks said on Twitter it would not reveal which six new countries Snowden had applied to for asylum, due to “attempted U.S. interference”.

        If six planes leave Moscow simultaneously, do you think the USA will take them all down? Snowdon is like a pea under one of the six walnut planes.

  96. janet July 5, 2013 at 6:33 pm #

    The International Energy Outlook 2010 (IEO2010) presents an assessment by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the outlook for international energy markets through 2035.
    Doncha’ just know that I’m probably gonna get banned again. Especially since a rebuttal to poster “Janet” is most definitlely in order. –Bleat to the Beat

    If you get banned again, it will be because you are whining about TOD instead of providing valuable information to consider related to peak oil. For example, y’all are whining about $100 a barrel oil like it’s some kind of death knell.

    Hello? We’ve been there and done that before. Oil prices increased from about $82 per barrel at the end of November 2010 to more than $112 per barrel in day trading on April 8, 2011.

    Can you imagine? $112 per barrel! Did the world end? Are we in a WMBH now? Have we reached “peak oil” yet? Can you prove it?

    Here are some numbers to consider:

    The World’s Total Liquid Production ?(in millions of barrels per day)

    2006 … 84.7?

    2007 … 84.8

    ?2008 … 85.5

    Projections ?(by Petroleum Geologists)?

    2015 … 88.7?

    2020 … 92.1

    ?2025 … 97.6?

    2030 … 103.9?

    2035 … 110.6

    SOURCE: Projections of Liquid Fuels and Other Petroleum Production in Five Cases? http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/

    Now, by what definition do you see Peak Oil in those numbers?

    And, if you don’t like those numbers, or don’t trust them, then can you provide any published numbers that are authoritative that dispute these numbers, and on what basis?

    It’s fine if you want to reject the numbers, but give some evidence why and provide some alternative published numbers that are from an authoritative source and are justifiable.

    If you can’t do that, you have no reasonable peak oil argument… you are just a whiner mourning the death of The Oil Drum.

    Oh, by the way… At the last OPEC meeting (on May 31, 2013), the organization decided to retain its production target of 30 million bbl/d through the rest of 2013. Gee, how can they do that if their wells are running dry and production is in a post-peak-oil decline?

    How can OPEC maintain its production goals even without the additional capacity that may be available in Iran but is currently off line because of the effects of U.S. and EU sanctions on Iran’s oil sector?

    Janet’s Answer: we haven’t yet reached peak oil.

    • BleatToTheBeat July 5, 2013 at 7:10 pm #

      Concerning the Mahayana monks; it was NOT a derogatory reference. Mr. Kunstler was searching for beings that could possibly comprehend an imcomprehensible reality, the modern use of money. If anything, it was a COMPLIMENT to the Mahayana monk’s ablility to fathom the unfathomable. It doesn’t matter if understanding the concept of money is a part of Buddhism. If he thought that “Wheat Chex” had a firm grasp of the metaphysical, he may very well have used “Wheat Chex” as a reference.

      Secondly, instead of “imagining” what principles of Buddhism he has a grasp of, why not just ask the guy?

      Preferably off-line.

      Now, I don’t know how old you are, but in my lifetime, the impact of ever-rising oil prices is undeniable. This could be one of those “you don’t know any better” situations.

      Finally, where does all of this cultural sensitivity come from?

      Hmmm…

      Could it be from the USA’s decades of unbridled military adventurism in the pursuit of petroleum sources?

      Probably.

      I think that a better use of the monk’s time would be to publicly comment on India’s population and pollution problems. And don’t even get me started on the remnants of the caste system.

  97. Carol Newquist July 5, 2013 at 7:23 pm #

    This is a test. I have gone thru all the steps to register myself under the new system but STILL my comments/replies do not appear. Let’s see what happens to this reply.

  98. Carol Newquist July 5, 2013 at 7:40 pm #

    janet, I think a better statistic would be consumption versus production. I’m of the opinion that when it comes to oil, consumption equals demand regardless of the supply. As the following link reveals, consumption continues to rise and is forecasted to do so well into the future. Are we to believe that an entire industry is lying about this? I’m sorry, but it’s hard to believe that an entire industry would publish and support these numbers if they believed they weren’t true. Is Near-Term Peak Oil (NTPO) a conspiracy? I think it is, and yet I don’t hear anyone sneezing.

    http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/tables/pdf/3dtab.pdf

    • BleatToTheBeat July 5, 2013 at 7:52 pm #

      And the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t mean SHIT unless the rest of the world is on board.

      oooooooo….Doncha’ just wanna party like it’s 1999?

      • BleatToTheBeat July 5, 2013 at 8:36 pm #

        I have no choice but to respond to myself.

        Did I just defend the defanged EPA when the USA refused to sign the Kyoto Protocols?

        What the fuck is the matter with me?

        I’m guessing too many three letter abbreviations.

    • notaneoliberal July 5, 2013 at 10:07 pm #

      Carol, if you look a little closer at the chart you linked to, the last three quarters show a slight decline in total liquids consumption. Oops. Beyond Q2 of 1013, it’s just an estimate.

      • janet July 5, 2013 at 10:21 pm #

        Beyond Q2 of 1013, it’s just an estimate.

        The figure for 1013 has been stable for at least a thousand years and is not just an estimate.

        🙂

        • notaneoliberal July 6, 2013 at 5:37 pm #

          89.94 89.63 89.26 These are the world consumption rates for all liquids for the last three quarters. Does this look like an increase to you?

      • notaneoliberal July 6, 2013 at 5:29 pm #

        Correction; 1013 should be 2013

  99. janet July 5, 2013 at 10:12 pm #

    Is Near-Term Peak Oil (NTPO) a conspiracy? I think it is, and yet I don’t hear anyone sneezing.

    Thank you, Carol. I appreciate your contributions to CFN. What I want to establish is whether Peak Oil has a basis in fact.

    If you (OR ANYONE ELSE ON CFN) want to challenge the numbers I provided, it would be helpful if you provide a clear definition of the grade, type, and reporting framework used to estimate oil reserve volumes for any alternative numbers you provide. (So far, Bleat to the Beat has not come forward with numbers.) That way we can avoid confusion, further the discussion, and have a basis for a comparative analysis of the numbers.

    I don’t think this has ever been done before on CFN, so I’m looking forward to Bleat to the Beat’s response, since he (and probably many others) don’t think Peak Oil is even close to a mirage.

    To Bleat to the Beat, OR ANYONE ELSE, I am saying: Prove it.

    • janet July 5, 2013 at 11:53 pm #

      Personally, I am burned out on the Peak Oil problem. The vested interests have really done a magnificent job of obscuring the complexities of what takes to…

      Much like the DIA agent K-Dog took down this forum?

      You are “burned out” on the central theme of CFN? What are you doing here then?

      I am not obscuring complexities. I am revealing them. That appears to be what has you burned out.

      Meanwhile, Rhino probably cannot believe Snowden has been able to evade USA authorities for so long, or that Snowden has had so many offers for asylum. Snowden is a pea under a walnut and the NSA doesn’t know which one.

      • janet July 6, 2013 at 1:00 am #

        I invite you to respond to my post above on the World’s Total Liquid Production, which doesn’t appear to support Peak Oil.
        Have at it. Provide authoritative data and cite your sources… if you want to prove Peak Oil.

  100. Pucker July 5, 2013 at 11:45 pm #

    Employees with B,,oo,z A,,llen in Hawaii said that the last time that they spoke with Snowden, he said that he was stepping out of the office “…to take a leak.”

    MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela said Friday they were willing to grant asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

    Snowden has asked for asylum in several countries, including Nicaragua and Venezuela.

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    • janet July 6, 2013 at 1:23 am #

      Yeah… he must know something to successfully evade USA intelligence service efforts. Venezuela, too, could prove difficult.
      U.S. pressure on Caracas might be problematic given its energy exports.

      The U.S. Energy Information Agency reports Venezuela sent the United States 900,000 barrels of crude oil each day in 2012, making it the fourth-largest foreign source of U.S. oil.

      Poor USA. Addicted to the stuff Venezuela has. Needs the stuff for its military. Better be careful what they are doing about Snowden, lest they inadvertently endanger USA national security.

  101. janet July 6, 2013 at 1:36 am #

    In another step forward for the growing climate change divestment movement, the City Council voted unanimously to recommend the city’s retirement board pull its investments out of the fossil fuel industry.

    Encouraged by the pro-divestment actions of students at Harvard University and spurred on by growing numbers of community climate activists, Councilor Leland Cheung introduced his policy order after recently meeting with volunteers for 350-MA. The grassroots coalition of local individuals and organizations inspired by the national 350.org initiative to fight for effective responses to climate change, and “for a future beyond fossil fuels.”

  102. Pucker July 6, 2013 at 1:41 am #

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umS3XM3xAPk

  103. Pucker July 6, 2013 at 1:50 am #

    The Sn,,ow den negotiations….

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odd8Zdhuj9o&feature=em-hot-vrecs

  104. K-Dog July 6, 2013 at 2:26 am #

    Woof Woof !!

    Newly Registered. I’ll try a video. I set screen size to match the others.

    K-Dog newest post 🙂

    • K-Dog July 7, 2013 at 7:09 pm #

      MY video didn’t work 🙁

      Maybe next time.

  105. Carol Newquist July 6, 2013 at 8:07 am #

    janet, K-Dog is a DIA agent? I had my suspicions. Do you think he would stoop so low as to hijack JHK’s email account and pretend he was JHK to obtain personal information from unwitting posters?

    Back to your question of proving Peak Oil. I understand what you’re trying to do with this approach, but I’m a bit more intelligent than that. To me, Peak Oil is nothing more than the maximum point of liquid petroleum consumption. Production doesn’t matter. Per the chart I provided, consumption continues to rise and is forecasted to continue. If things remain the same, meaning growth is the economic paradigm well into the future, there’s going to be Peak Energy, not just Peak Fossil Fuels. The following link provides an excellent scientific argument for that. This is why I am focusing on Near-Term Peak Oil (NTPO) and not just Peak Oil. To argue the validity of the Peak of any non-renewable resource under a growth paradigm is a fool’s game and a waste of time.However, NTPO is fertile ground for shysters of all stripes. Those who adhere to it do so for a myriad of reasons. Some do so innocently enough because they consider themselves intelligent individuals and they have devoted a significant amount of their psychical energy to the exploration of the theory. They have reached the point of no return. To divest themselves of NTPO would be world-shattering, and they know they couldn’t survive the psychological ramifications of them being wrong all along. Others are in it for the swindle, plain and simple. NTPO is the justification for high oil prices. As I’ve proven, high oil prices are rigged, and NTPO provides the cover. NTPO also provides the cover for all the oil wars. It’s not about salvaging the last drops, it’s about controlling the flow, once and for all. He who controls the spice.

    http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

    Stop the Madness!

    The purpose of this exploration is to point out the absurdity that results from the assumption that we can continue growing our use of energy—even if doing so more modestly than the last 350 years have seen. This analysis is an easy target for criticism, given the tunnel-vision of its premise. I would enjoy shredding it myself. Chiefly, continued energy growth will likely be unnecessary if the human population stabilizes. At least the 2.9% energy growth rate we have experienced should ease off as the world saturates with people. But let’s not overlook the key point: continued growth in energy use becomes physically impossible within conceivable timeframes. The foregoing analysis offers a cute way to demonstrate this point. I have found it to be a compelling argument that snaps people into appreciating the genuine limits to indefinite growth.

    Once we appreciate that physical growth must one day cease (or reverse), we can come to realize that all economic growth must similarly end. This last point may be hard to swallow, given our ability to innovate, improve efficiency, etc. But this topic will be put off for another post.

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    • notaneoliberal July 6, 2013 at 5:52 pm #

      “Per the chart I provided, consumption continues to rise…” Here are the world consumption figures from the last three quarters from that very chart for all liquids; 89.94 89.63 89.26 . Odd that you would try to use this to show an ongoing increase.

  106. Carol Newquist July 6, 2013 at 8:33 am #

    Despite the intentions, Snowden is now an example to anyone who might feel inclined to blow the whistle. No one will have him, not even big bad Russia. Putin is full of puffery. He talks a big game against the West, but when the rubber meets the road, he has no tires. Venezuela and Ecuador are feigning at asylum, but if you read the fine print, their offers are basically nullified by disclaimers and conditions. The only country he would be honestly offered asylum is Cuba, and how much you want to bet he doesn’t even consider it? The fact that he doesn’t and won’t is very telling. What it says is that Cuba is the ONLY country not hitched to the imperial hegemon. If Snowden really valued his life, it should be a no-brainer that Cuba is his ONLY place of refuge. Isn’t he supposed to be uber-intelligent? It doesn’t add up, and when things don’t add up, they stink. Something stinks, and it’s more than just the shit in Snowden’s britches.

  107. ozone July 6, 2013 at 9:05 am #

    “The “money” is a matrix of counterparty entanglements so abstruse and impenetrable that all the vicars of Christendom (plus the mullahs of Islam, the monks of Mahayana, and the Op-Ed flunkies at The New York Times) would not avail to describe its metaphysical substance.” JHK

    Ahh, the mages of the Fed. and their dutiful toadies making it up as they go and proclaiming their tangled guesses as miracles! Hey, why not? It’s working (so far).

    Meanwhile, down in the trenches:

    “Taken as a whole, as a single community, the US is doing rather poorly. Yes, it still leads the world in propaganda, which tends to mask a lot of its problems, but beyond that the picture is not pretty. Among the world’s developed nations, the US leads in many categories in which one would rather not lead, such as obesity, divorce rate, child abuse death, teen-age pregnancy, incarceration rate, homicide rate, percentage of children brought up fatherless and rate of sexually transmitted disease infection. It leads the world in fear, stress, anger and the use of antidepressants and antipsychotic medications. Suicide is the number one cause of injury death, having surpassed the also plentiful car accidents and fatal gunshot wounds. More US soldiers kill themselves than die in combat. A third of all employees suffer from chronic debilitating stress; half experience stress that causes insomnia, anxiety and depression; more and more people find the workplace so unpleasant that they are choosing to opt out of the workforce altogether, finding a much lower standard of living to be an acceptable tradeoff.” -D.O.

    But there’s plenty of cheap, easily-extractable oil sloshing around, so why worry? Why is the Ministry of Propaganda working so damn hard these days? Is something amiss? I had thought “hunky-dory” was the catch-phrase of the era and we could discuss predicaments that are soooo far down the road, we can hypothesize for the rest of our na’chul lives. And why would this blog be considered a good value for the Ministry to work its’ wiles upon? Doomstead Diner too much “hard work” [tm GeeDubya], and its’ readers too resistant to and suspicious of gum’mint-sponsored bullshit?

    So many questions, so much mis-direction away from the essence of those questions. (Not to worry though, agents will provide their very own [pre-scripted] questions, complete with [pre-scripted] answers to save us all a lot of troubling and depressing research! Hurrah!)

  108. jim e July 6, 2013 at 10:46 am #

    103.68 / 100.71 WTI on 7.5.13… 110 by next weaks end?

    http://forexblog.oanda.com/20130503/wti-crude-short-term-and-long-term-resistances-pulling-rally-back/

  109. jim e July 6, 2013 at 10:57 am #

    An End to Eight Years of The Oil Drum?

    The Oil Drum is gone but he’s not forgotten..

    • janet July 6, 2013 at 12:35 pm #

      The editor of The Oil Drum was a hedge fund guy, and like many hedge fund guys at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, the hedge fund guys loved The Oil Drum and made a fortune on their information.

      Good riddance, TOD. Won’t miss you anymore than CFN will miss Eleuthero.

  110. jim e July 6, 2013 at 10:59 am #

    This is the story of Johnny (Rico) Rotten

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  111. janet July 6, 2013 at 12:24 pm #

    Eleuthero said: “so I think it is VITAL to associate a body of ideas WITH A PERSON…”

    What Eleuthero means is he wants to see a handle and know whether to rapidly scroll past… because Eleuthero is basically closed-minded and stereotyping people makes life convenient for him. Heaven forbid he might have to read content and be exposed to new ideas instead of being prejudiced. Eleuthero pigeonholes people and ignores ideas. He even pigeonholes whole communities. Palo Alto is dull he says, but Mountainside is FUN FUN FUN. And on his way out he thanks the racists like Jaego and attacks JHK for being Jewish!

    Good riddance, Eleuthero. You are a misanthrope. We won’t miss your racism, your anti-semitism, or your anti-women rants.

  112. janet July 6, 2013 at 12:46 pm #

    CORRECTION

    CAMBRIDGE — In another step forward for the growing climate change divestment movement, the City Council voted unanimously to recommend the city’s retirement board pull its investments out of the fossil fuel industry.

    Encouraged by the pro-divestment actions of students at Harvard University and spurred on by growing numbers of community climate activists, Councilor Leland Cheung introduced his policy order after recently meeting with volunteers for 350-MA. The grassroots coalition of local individuals and organizations inspired by the national 350.org initiative to fight for effective responses to climate change, and “for a future beyond fossil fuels.”

    LEAVE THE OIL UNDER THE GROUND!

  113. Carol Newquist July 6, 2013 at 2:55 pm #

    Anasazi? I thought it was Annunaki? It would explain the fascination with gold.

    http://beforeitsnews.com/contributor/upload/7961/images/sa8.JPG

  114. Carol Newquist July 6, 2013 at 6:27 pm #

    This is a test to see if this post makes it under K-Dog’s “Very good grasshopper” post. If not, anyone know the secret to get to the bottom of the page and be the last post….as it should be and would be had it not been hacked?

  115. Pucker July 6, 2013 at 7:33 pm #

    Speaking of Whistle Blowers, I wish that someone would blow my whistle.

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  116. ozone July 7, 2013 at 9:30 am #

    How many units of paper scrip are necessary to trade for a glass of water?
    GOT water? No? You’re well and truly fucked.
    And people are actually moving to the Republic of Texas?? The phrase ‘short sighted’ is totally inadequate. Perhaps they desire to die of thirst in the company of their ideological mates.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/jul/06/food-supply-threat-water-wells-dry-up

    Time to build up some mud huts to expire in!
    (“janet” can point you to her video on mud-huttery for your southwestern amusement. Good Luck with that desert livin’… and don’t forget to do away with most of your neighbors; they’ll be wanting water as well.)

  117. janet July 7, 2013 at 8:05 pm #

    “Throughout our history, immigrants have enriched our nation. From Albert Einstein who brought us the theory of relativity to Andrew Carnegie who led the American expansion in steel. From Madeline Albright our former Secretary of State to Jerry Yang who founded Yahoo!. America has benefited immensely from the contributions and talents of these and millions of other immigrants.” — White House Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough

    On July 3, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew delivered remarks at a naturalization ceremony at the Department of Treasury to honor a group of people who took the Oath of Citizenship.

    During the ceremony, Secretary Lew shared his family’s immigrant story:

    “These naturalization ceremonies are especially moving for me. My father was born in Poland. His family left their small town for America at the end of World War I. My mother’s family made the journey just a few years earlier. They were lucky. They had the chance to leave before the Second World War was underway. And they were especially fortunate to come here to America. Today, I can proudly say I am a first generation American and Treasury Secretary of the United States.

    Everyone has a specific journey and challenges overcome. It takes incredible resolve to become an American citizen. Citizenship isn’t given. It’s earned by each every person participating in these naturalization ceremonies this week. Their decision to become citizens has made our country stronger. We cannot forget we have always been a nation of immigrants. It is what defines us. And it is what makes our society and our economy so vibrant.

    It is no surprise that when you look at the list of America’s best businesses, many of them were started by immigrants or children of immigrants. … Yet the troubling truth remains that too many immigrants do not get a fair shot at the American dream. Too often, they are forced to live and work in the shadows. This not only hurts them, it hurts America as well.

    There is a bipartisan immigration bill before Congress that would fix our broken immigration system. This comprehensive legislation does a number of things. It strengthens our borders. It provides a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million people who are here illegally. And it will boost economic growth.

    This bill will drive growth by bringing highly skilled scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to the United States. We will also see our deficits shrink, and with added workers on our payrolls, Social Security and Medicare will be put on a more stable footing. In fact, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, this legislation will lower our deficits by nearly a trillion dollars over the next two decades.

    In addition to the celebration at Mt. Vernon and the Department of Treasury, there were ceremonies at the Chicago Cultural Center; Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona; the Freedom Tower in Miami; the Battleship Missouri Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. We congratulate all of our newest citizens and remind them, as the President often does when speaking at naturalization ceremonies, that in the United States anyone can write the next great chapter of our nation’s history.

  118. Pucker July 9, 2013 at 9:14 pm #

    So there’s not CFN blog post this week?

    What Gives?!

    Did the O-Man take out JHK with a drone missile?

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