JHK’s Three-Act Play
T he money-moving world waits on tenterhooks for the Wednesday appearance of America’s oracle, Janet Yellen, to step out of her grotto and state whether or not she feels twinges of patience. Wikipedia notes that Pythia, the original priestess of Delphi “…delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapors rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish which priests interpreted as the enigmatic prophecies preserved in Greek literature.” Some things never change.
Patience for what? Well, whether to raise the Federal Reserve’s benchmark short-term interest rate from near-zero to something microscopically above zero. This is what the world foolishly turns on. And, of course, also some oracular hint as to whether this momentous move might occur in April, June, September, or not at all.
Some canny observers of the vaudeville that US money policy has become — namely, Jim Rickards, David Stockman, Peter Schiff — maintain that Yellen and her Fed are boxed in and can really do nothing. Their policies and interventions regarding the flows of capital have done nothing so far but disable the normal operations of markets and distort the valuation of everything, especially the cost of renting money itself — for that is what happens when you take out a loan. The net result of all that is a financial picture that no longer reflects anything truthful about the actual economy, being a trade in goods and services.
The transparent truthlessness of the Fed’s basic premises go far to explain the chasm between official policy and reality — though it does not explain the appetite for plain lying of the supposedly informed minority cohort of the public, the deciders among us in business, politics, and media. For instance, the employment numbers that came out of the federal government ten days ago saying that the jobless rate is just over 5 percent. Everybody not in a special ed class in America knows that this is a barefaced lie. But nobody except a few mavericks on the web (see above) object to it. Lesser official oracles such as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal report the lie without reservation and it gets absorbed into the body politic like any other morsel of protoplasm into the mindless amoeba that America has become.
So far, the Fed has tried to merely chatter about the possibility of raising rates as a substitute for actually doing anything. That’s because anything more than a gesture of raising rates will blow up the lucrative carry trade arbitrage enjoyed by the banks that hold the Fed (and everybody else) hostage, as well as the artificially inflated stock markets, and the US government’s ability to service its debt. That’s a lot to blow up. The wondrous levitating S & P index is the Fed’s substitute for reality. While the public’s attention is diverted to that ongoing marvel, they fail to see the appalling instability in currencies around the world, or the booby-traps laid in bond markets everywhere, or the devastation thundering through the oil industry, and the collapse of global trade relations that Tom Friedman said would last forever.
I’m sure that on Wednesday Janet Yellen will make a big show of surgically removing the word patience from the Fed’s so-called “guidance.” I’m inclined to predict that the Fed will make a gesture of raising the benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points or 25 measly hundredths of a percent. That will be as far as they dare go. They will make this lame gesture in the face of gales of bad news about what is really going on in a disintegrating global banking system, and also the devastation in real economic activity. Within a matter of weeks the oracle will step back out of her grotto and not only revoke the benchmark interest rate rise, but announce Quantitative Easing 4 in order to attempt to reflate the nation, gasping like a dying grunion on Redondo Beach. By then, the Fed will be completely out of cred. This will be the biggest disaster of all, since the loss of faith in august institutions will rage through every polity in the advanced economies. Nobody will believe any longer in anything they say or do, and especially the value of the papers (or digits) they denominate as money.
Note: JHK’s 2014 Garden Report is finally up
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Paintings from the 2023 Season
New Gallery 15
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This globalized system certainly appears to be a House of Cards and those responsible for creating it and setting it in motion are definitely not playing with a full deck. Kevin Spacey doesn’t do them justice. On a scale, I’d say the architects reside somewhere between Frank Underwood and Hannibal Lecter. They say, “what goes up must come down,” but that physical maxim doesn’t hold in a vacuum. The architects believe they are James Dyson. I believe they are Thomas Crapper and their invention is being used to flush humanity from the face of the earth.
Somebody’s Ringin’ The Bell
The Potemkin Presidency
You’re right, they can’t raise interest rates and won’t even though they’re teasing.
Sorry about the links not working — again. Here they are.
Somebody’s Ringin’ The Bell
The Potemkin Presidency
Get ready for Frank Underwood’s America Works. You can enjoy House of Cards and get brainwashed too. When congress slices and dices entitlements to stimulate the economy in an effort to ‘create jobs’ you as a House of Cards binge watching groupie will have your head already prepared to receive the news. It won’t seem strange at all and you will be reacting exactly the way you are supposed to.
As soon as someone refers to paycheck-deduction funded safety-net programs as “entitlements” you know who their master is, and how serious they _are not_ about efficiently allocating funds… It’s so transparent.
MD,
And let’s not forget the famous codeword, “reform”, which means, “to do away with”. 😉
The greatest trick of the Devil is to persuade you he does not exist. Talking heads, Fox news and spin. As most probably can’t spell entitlement, convincing The American peeps that they are not entitled to entitlements will not be hard. Truth is now what gets repeated the most and nobody has ever gone broke overestimating the intelligence of the cheese doodle crunching masses.
Indeed the American brain has been sucked out and replaced with something programed by Wal mart marketed by the Apple.
John Michael Greer also sneered at the unemployment figures this past week. At his blog, lots of readers responded with links to and quotes from Shadowstats supporting the Archdruid’s contention. I would expect the same here.
Greer also mentioned how Florida had supposedly banned the use of “climate change” and related phrases in official correspondence. That reminded me of a story from three years ago when a group of legislators in North Carolina tried to essentially outlaw honest estimates of sea level rise because they would be bad for real estate values. My response to that was I didn’t know Canute was the King of North Carolina. The difference is that the real King Canute knew better; he just wanted to make a point about the limits of his power. A better analog would be Xerxes, who ordered the sea be given 300 lashes, fettered, and branded after a boat bridge across the Hellespont was destroyed by a storm.
As for energy solutions that aren’t going to cause the seas to rise, the fourth anniversary of Fukushima triple disaster, earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown, reminded many that nuclear energy isn’t likely to be one of them.
Vincent, did you see the article where Florida officials are ordered not to use words like ‘climate change”?
Very similar subterfuge.
Re |”John Michael Greer also sneered at the unemployment figures this past week. At his blog, lots of readers responded with links to and quotes from Shadowstats supporting the Archdruid’s contention. I would expect the same here.”-nv.
It’s not just Greer, it’s a conservative bond-trader like Chuck Butler at the Daily Pfennig. It’s interesting how there are all these folks with pretensions of expertise *never* mentioning what the BLS’s own stats and statements make plain.
When was the last time you heard an MSM sock-puppet mention U6?
“…mentioned how Florida had supposedly banned the use of “climate change” and related phrases in official correspondence.”-Neon Vincent
I’m not sure how a geographical location can declare such an edict. What actually happened, according to rumor, is that our Governor, Rick the human reptile Scott, has ordered anyone working for any department controlled by the Governor’s office to not use the terms “climate change” or “global warming” in any official papers, correspondence, etc. (or something like that). Scott denies this and when asked by the media about it or his views on climate change, his stock response is “I’m not a scientist”, to which I say “No shit, so leave it to the scientists, who by consensus, agree that climate change is real, is happening and is man-made.”
I guess absence of the terms climate change or global warming means that they don’t exist, in his warped mind.
SCOTT’S CLIMATE CHANGE GAG ORDER CLAIMS A VICTIM
DEP Employee Reprimanded, Suspended and Ordered to Get Mental Exam
http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2015/03/18/scott’s-climate-change-gag-order-claims-a-victim/
For instance, the employment numbers that came out of the federal government ten days ago saying that the jobless rate is just over 5 percent. Everybody not in a special ed class in America knows that this is a barefaced lie.
Ahem… wpa, I think he’s talking to you.
Oh, let’s not tease him too much… ;)… He actually uses GDP figures as a cornerstone of his arguments, without ever noticing what the ‘P’ of that stat actually consists of at this late date…
Even if he’s getting paid to be here and is not just some chicken-sh*t old man scared about the future, it’s kinda sad that it’s come to this.
I grin when I hear “the jobless rate is just over 5 percent.”
Hilarious that anyone can claim that with a straight face. Technically it may be true, if a “job” includes the minimum-wage slavery of several part-time jobs strung together.
A friend laid off in the last few years pointed me to a book, The Tumbleweed Society. This friend was a successful mid-level mortgage banker for a giant financial-services firm that “treats older workers like used sanitary products.”
“I’m now a tumbling tumbleweed,” he notes. He’s not a whiner, and he started a business that JHK would approve of: a small farm currently catering to farm-to-table customers.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-tumbleweed-society-9780199957712?cc=us&lang=en&
When it all goes down he’ll have land and community connections. Both good.
Let alone the most cruel non-job, the “Zero Hour Contract”. Not sure if these are about in the USA, but here in Australasia, the big (American) fast food chains operate them.
To explain in a thumbnail: your ‘job’ is at minimum wage (currently $14.25 per hour) but with ZERO guaranteed hours of work. It could vary from as little as 4 to as much as 60 from one week to another, BUT is conditional on your being “on call at all times”, which makes it hard to get a second job when you have no idea when you’ll be required at this “primary employment”.
This casualization of the work force – a long-standing experience in the US but relatively new to the civilised world – is just the next nail in the coffin of the once-hopeful ‘middle class’, the further grinding of the worker for the profit of the shareholders. When 10% the employees of a corporation (such as Walmart) are welfare support, then that corporation is expecting the pubic purse to subsidize their obscene profits. It’s truly abominable.
It’s that way here, in more than just fast food. You list your ‘availability’ when you apply, and if they don’t think you are available enough, you don’t get hired. Then they “make up the schedule” one week at a time, and it always changes. One young woman I know had a problem in her retail job, that when closing the store, if a shipment came in, you could end up staying at work until one in the morning, but she could not get the supervisors to stop scheduling her to open the store the mornings after she stayed late to close. Retail jobs are now low-wage, part-time, no weekend or even two consecutive day off jobs, with no holidays.
Worse, this type of employment is spreading to what used to be considered professional work. There was an article in the July 15, 2014 NYT about this, but the reporter called it a recent, rapid trend, it is increasing rapidly but it is nothing new.
One does not “rent” money! Money is never borrowed, it is always created out of thin air.
Every “loan” from a bank is not a loan but newly created money… banks are not in the loan business, they are in the business of printing(counterfeiting) U.S. dollars. Our “money” is a fraud… which makes our economy a fraud… which, in the end, makes life as we know it a fraud.
Accounts will be settled, they always are – the only question is when.
Dear M111ark,
I know where my money comes from, for that matter I know where all Life comes from. While the USA has currency issues, more digits than they know what to do with, and can never “pay” back. They could just Zero a few more accounts than they have been.
Mike Maloney has several nice series’ on Youtube about this topic.
I have been over the years pondering the free food concept, from my Christ seeking background. Everything good is from God, But everything that happens He already knew about it before Creation, it’s us that can’t see around the corners. For a good place to look about this read Romans Chapter 9.
I can’t say I have not worried about currency matters, but I never needed to worry about it. We are only 7 to 8 Billion people, the planet was designed to feed this many people, in fact it could feed a lot more, we just go about seeking the food in the wrong way. Still got almost all the Atoms that we started with, the sun still shines, light still makes sugars in plants, we could get by if we thought about it differently than we have been.
Charles.
I thought that fairies made sugar in plants.
Seems to me no matter how clever the denizens of US money policy attempt to twist reality into a pretzel of prosperity, the fact remains that trying to inflate the American economy is like trying to pump air into an inner tube with a quarter sized hole in one side.
A definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Do whatever to monetary policy and the fact remains Americans don’t have jobs that produce anything. Production is done overseas by small hands that work so much cheaper than an American hands can possibly work that it is impossible to grow real jobs in America.
Janet Yellen might as well try rain dancing. Without fundamental change in the way Americans do business nothing can possibly improve. As fundamental change is too big an idea for any Washington nimrod to contemplate the end is inevitable. Sooner or later the party is going to be over. The end is nigh. All we are waiting for now is to see if the crowd naturally thins out or if the police show up and shut the party down.
“I’m inclined to predict that the Fed will make a gesture of raising the benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points or 25 measly hundredths of a percent.”
No, they’re not going to make any changes at all as it’s too close to the unleashing of some form of chaos in Eastern Europe to risk that. Generally speaking, the fictions disseminated by the so-called news media are getting weirder by the day. So much so that one is left to conclude that it has to orchestrated by some sinister propaganda ministry buried deep within the bowls of DHS. Fudging statistics and railroading in right wing crackpots into the governor’s offices of a few key states are parts of the program.
http://www.thesisa.org
The net result of all that is a financial picture that no longer reflects anything truthful about the actual economy, being a trade in goods and services.
To paraphrase the great equivocator, Billy Bob Clinton, depends on which “actual economy” you’re talking about. Anyone who’s anyone in the great power corridors of DC, NYC, and Boston knows that the only “real economy” these days exists in the rarefied air of Wall St and it’s associated hedge fund and other FIRE sector rackets. All that “real economy of actual goods and services” stuff is just SO 20th century.
re |”All that “real economy of actual goods and services” stuff is just SO 20th century.”-da.
It is, until you need consumers to buy your fuel and next-gen’ electronic schlock, then it’s **SO** not…
🙂
Makes me think they’re ready to pull up the drawbridge and release the crocs into the moat.
The media-industrial complex is superb at having us look at big letters while ignoring the fine print. The fine print in last week’s employment report was that most of the “new jobs” were waiters and bartenders. How long can THAT last given the roughly 9% drop in real wages since the start of Obama’s first term?
I can say for sure that the San Francisco Peninsula mimics the difference between reporting and reality plaguing the nation. By all reports, the tech “boom” in Silicon Valley is so huge that we’re all gazillionaires out here in the Bay Area. Yet in Sunnyvale, the heart of Silicon Valley, there is a tony street called Murphy Street that’s only about two blocks long where most of the weekend watering holes reside. Yet on most weekend nights, of the six bars on that street there are only two that are anything like full and one is a disco flooded into by third world “cybercoolies” brought in to write code for startups that will never go IPO.
In downtown Palo Alto, the north end of Silicon Valley, there have been NINE business closures since November, mostly rent-gouged out of existence and having existed for 3-5 decades. And I’m not talking just fluff businesses … a dry cleaner, a laundromat (now the Palo Alto downtown has zero of these), and an art supply store are among the victims.
How can the media continue to ape the government’s hyperbole about economic health when, allegedly, the healthiest part of the country features retailers going out of business in record numbers? And this is just the beginning of California’s shock. The drought here is so bad that we’re down to a year of water. I hate to burst your thinking about the desert southwest, Jim, but Arizona’s water situation is waaaaaay better than California’s. That state only has 6.7M residents, not 40 million (not counting illegals).
Oddly, for the third year in a row, Palo Alto will get less rainfall in this calendar year than Phoenix. That’s a lock because once May arrives, California is bone dry until November. Phoenix’ only definite dry season is April-June. And, of course, California continues to do monumentally stupid things like grow rice and keep ski resorts open by wasting water to substitute for the nonexistent snowpack.
If California leads the nation, we’re heading into some very hard times very soon.
An addendum about California’s water situation: It’s even worse than I let on. Palo Alto got a whopping ELEVEN inches of rain in December. Since then? Zero point five inches. And the rainy season is over in two months. What’s really bad about the last two years is that the December rains followed by Saharan dryness isn’t the valuable rain California needs. When it rains all at once like that, most of the rain ends up being runoff that goes into the ocean. The cold rains that make our snowpack have been virtually nonexistent for 3 years. And that snowpack is what feeds CA agriculture which is something like 40% of the nation’s food.
Which leads me to the inflation stats … we all know they’re as rigged as any other numbers. In the case of inflation, the place where people feel it the most is health care, food, and fuel. We’re lucky that a temporary surfeit of oil has depressed gasoline prices but most healthcare premiums are rising at annual double-digit rates. Same for college tuition. Watch for serious food price inflation this summer as California has a disastrous harvest.
Half that food is fluff food that can be grown in people’s back yards with a bit of work. Lawns aren’t edible to humans much. I have always advocated edible landscaping, the BioWebScape design Project is all about how we could if we thought about growing food differently feed the world off the footprint of the Lower 48 minus about 25% of it for real wild places.
We need to grow local again, Stop shipping most of our foods over 1 thousand miles just to have fresh greens, which we could have every day if we planned better and have had grown them ourselves.
Well now it’s being forced on us to think outside the box we seem to have taped ourselves into.
Charles.
Agreed, BWS. Spinach is easy to grow nearly year-round on most of the continent. But all the grifters on Wall Street are gonna have to go without their 3500-mile Caeser salads.
Mornin’ Farmer, I don’t know about your local but I can’t grow spinach without the “Leaf Miners” eating the crap out of it. I don’t use insecticides and you can’t easily pick or cut them out like the squash borers. So no spinach for me. I do grow a little in the greenhouse with some success.
You know what you’re writing about Therian.
re |”I can say for sure that the San Francisco Peninsula mimics the difference between reporting and reality plaguing the nation. By all reports, the tech “boom” in Silicon Valley is so huge that we’re all gazillionaires out here in the Bay Area. Yet in Sunnyvale, the heart of Silicon Valley, there is a tony street called Murphy Street that’s only about two blocks long where most of the weekend watering holes reside. Yet on most weekend nights, of the six bars on that street there are only two that are anything like full and one is a disco flooded into by third world “cybercoolies” brought in to write code for startups that will never go IPO… In downtown Palo Alto, the north end of Silicon Valley, there have been NINE business closures since November, mostly rent-gouged out of existence and having existed for 3-5 decades. And I’m not talking just fluff businesses … a dry cleaner, a laundromat (now the Palo Alto downtown has zero of these), and an art supply store are among the victims.”-th.
The situation over in Mountain View is the same: rents and prices keep going up, real-estate sales and consumer demand go down. That is the ‘death cross’ made manifest right before your very eyes. Those numbers aren’t ‘just’ “abstract” numbers anymore than a corporate accountants are. We’ve donethe books on America, and “it don’t look good”…
[chuckle]
Oh, and the clubbing scene is the same as well – just check Mollies and St Stephen’s on a Friday night…
I live in Oakland, and it appears we aren’t as subject to the whims of the Silicon Valley as these other folks. I grew up in San Jose and my mother worked in microprocessor production for 25 years. What is happening there now does not surprise me one bit. That industry was never worth a damn!
First, though, add a looming transportation disaster to these descriptions as the commuter gridlock gets worse almost daily. I am retired but I can see that just the East Bay-SF commute is a 2-3 hour nightmare every day. Adding profits to Chevron et al. Extend this picture south to Monterey and north to the wine country and, well, it won’t be pretty. Public transportation is also running near capacity and thousands of workers are being added to SF, but no one is thinking about where they will live and how they will get to work.
But though we have rising rents in Oakland we also have a booming local economy. My neighborhood near Lake Merritt has had a huge influx of young folks, many with infant children, in the last few years, and with our restaurants and the downtown entertainment district, we are not a sleepy city. Silicon Valley was always mostly veneer, and what people see in Palo Alto and Mountain View is the result. Palo Alto, OBTW, is also home to Stanford University. And you can’t find a house there for less than a million bucks. Maybe that isn’t such a good thing.
The state does have a gangster history when it comes to water. But then Capitalism turns everything to shit. Snow pack is less than 20%. I see produce from Mexico and South America. WHY?! Agriculture is only 5% of the state’s economy and gets 80% of our water. People will waste water until it hits their pocket books. And then the right-wingers will blame it on “illegals” – and Obama of course!
But never forget, CA gave the world both Nixon AND Reagan.
Thanks Therian for the Silicon Valley snapshot. The rent is still too damn high. I see the same signals in the SouthEast. Bernanke may have been correct in stating the business cycle has been “tamed” but what has been the net result? The “bust” may be of more benefit than the euphoric “boom” with regard to future real economic activity.
Regarding CA drought, barring a miracle turn in what may be a celestial-level event the smug inhabitants of the water-rich NorthWest may soon see the 21st Century Okies, many speaking Spanish only, knocking on their door. It’s not just the missing rainfall. The groundwater will be exhausted.
Dear Jim,
Good post, thanks for writing it, I had been wondering if you were going to mention the Putin Vacation, or not, but money works too.
The Lord gave Isreal rules for forgiving debts every so often, it’s almost like we forgot who is “The Lord” and started praying at the feet of Ole Money Bags. Might be time to forgive some debts of the nations, see if we can be more like Iceland.
Charles.
Well, when you worship the golden calf . . .
What happened in this international economy over the period of the “disappearance” of Putin from TV screens? Let’s list some of the events:
1. China announced the creation of its own analogue of the interbank payment system SWIFT, denoting the time of its launch – the end of 2015. So now December 2015 – January 2016 can now be regarded as a moment of transition of economic war between the US and the rest of the world into an acute phase.
2. Putin instructed the Ministry of Finance and the Russian Central Bank to develop a scheme of financing the construction of power plants in the Crimea.
Under the Russian Constitution, Putin has no right to give instructions to the Central Bank. CB is independent (e.g. belongs to Rothschild’s group), but it turns out that not entirely. If the order of the President is satisfied in the sense that CB gives money to the bank, the bank gives money to a Russian company for the construction of power plants in the Crimea, we get independent emission by Russian Central Bank to fund economic development. This is a revolution. The Quiet Revolution.
3. After approval by the Government, the Central Bank of Kazakhstan announced plans of full de-dollarization of the economy by the end of 2016.
The main goal is to get rid of macroeconomic instability that American currency creates. Nazarbayev is a politician with great intuition and serious ties to Beijing and Moscow. Final approval of the policy of de-dollarization now – a clear signal about the positioning of Kazakhstan in the context of impending acute phase of the economic confrontation.
4. President Putin on Tuesday (March 10) instructed the Central Bank and the government to determine the feasibility of establishing a monetary union of Eurasian Union by September 1. The new Eurasian currency – ALTYN – may appear in 2016.
5. Goldman Sachs, one of the top US banks, the Fed shadow controller and the “wallet” of that part of the global elite connected to the “Rothschild Clan” produces analytical bulletin which … recommends buying Russian bonds. Buy Russian bonds! American masthead Bank recommends buying the bonds of the country, whose economy Obama supposedly “ripped to shreds”.
6. The United Kingdom declares the desire to enter into the capital of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank – the international financial institution, which was founded by China as a competitor and replacement of the International Bank, which is controlled by the United States. London has openly showed the finger to Washington. Washington’s reaction resembles the reaction of a redneck who found his British girlfriend in bed fucking her Chinese squeeze. The reaction was an uncontrolled fury. A senior official of the Obama administration told the Financial Times that the British initiative to enter the Chinese capital project “is not the best way to interact with the developing economy.” By the “developing economy“ the American cuckold meant China. The most interesting thing is that London did not even bother to respond to Washington accusations.
In this context, you can guess what Putin was up to during his disappearance. He tames Central Bank, supports international contacts and doing everything so Russia would go into positive territory after the acute phase of the planned global economic conflict.
http://politrussia.com/ekonomika/ekonomicheskiy-front-putina-533/
FTM, you barely beat me to this. I was gonna quote JHK: …since the loss of faith in august institutions will rage through every polity in the advanced economies. Nobody will believe any longer in anything they say or do, and especially the value of the papers (or digits) they denominate as money as a lead-in to the same info — that the BRICs boys are poised to help the dollar finally swirl on down the drain later this year.
Good call.
Seconded… And who can blame the BRICS boys? They’ve been given no choice. They can’t allow themselves to wiped out for the sake of a gaggle of craven Manhattan mandarins…
One used to hear the English speak urgently of the need to keep America from starting WWIII with Iran.
Is the UK’s action described above part of that?
Finca: “He tames Central Bank, supports international contacts and doing everything so Russia would go into positive territory after the acute phase of the planned global economic conflict.”
Finca, are you sure the situation is acute, not chronic?
** Between June and December 2014, the Russian ruble declined in value by 59% relative to the U.S. dollar.
** At the beginning of 2015, Russia, along with neighboring Ukraine, had the lowest purchasing power parity (PPP) relative to the U.S. of any country in the world.
** A declining PPP lowers living standards, as goods purchased using the native currency become more expensive than they should be.
** Russia does not receive much of an economic benefit from lower pump prices as the U.S. does, as Russians consume much less oil and gas than Americans. Less than 30% of the Russia’s oil production is kept for domestic use; the rest is exported.
** Oil prices also affect imports for Russia, as was seen in 2014. Because the country is a net importer of almost every good except oil and vodka, the sharp increase in import prices caused by a falling ruble touched off major inflation, which the Russian government attempted to tamp down by raising interest rates as high as 17%.
As the U.S. discovered in the early 1980s, a sudden and significant interest rate hike can precipitate a deep recession. Fortunately, no one here on CFN thinks Janet Yellen is going to annouce that on Wednesday.
Fortunately, no one here on CFN thinks Janet Yellen is going to annouce that on Wednesday.
She wouldn’t dare. The decision’s largely made for her anyway. Mere rumors that interest rates might be going up spooked the markets last week, and as we all know, the markets are God now.
Now that is good news! I mean since God is dead!
How about “chronic and acute”? Or “Acutely chronic”? A “Total Farce”?!
“Nobody will believe any longer in anything they say or do, and especially the value of the papers (or digits) they denominate as money.”
Yes, but nobody has to believe in it. The government only needs to require you to pay taxes denominated in it. Then you must have it, whether you do any transactions in it or not. Ready for a head tax?
It’s interesting to see how many people are becoming wary of official statistics. Is every number reported, other than a specific price or today’s date, a lie? Not quite – you can use the legal rules of evidence to determine which evidence is self-serving or otherwise unreliable, and which is against the interest of a large power block.
Only trust the latter – and that only provisionally – e.g. climate scientists.
Money, money, money. Market, market, market. All sleighs sending us back to one celled idiots. What goes up must go down. Right on.
“Because the country[Russia] is a net importer of almost every good except oil and vodka” — wpa
And grain, and superior weaponry, and all rare-earth metals – including Titanium, crucial to Air Space industry, and Nuclear 5-th generation technology, and Rocket engines crucial to American Space program, and many more things.
Between June and December 2014, the Russian ruble declined in value by 59% relative to the U.S. dollar.” — wpa
Are you sure that was not a Putin special op, designed to protect Russian industry from capital flight?
I do not see any trouble for Russia paying off all dollar-denominated loans by private companies without declaring default and never borrowing dollars again.
Russian Government is net creditor in dollars, not debtor, so I guess it will dump all US Treasuries.
Of course!!
I didn’t get that part – that the oil price gambit specifically targets fugitive oligarchs. I thought that it was more of a blunt instrument. So that is another piece of the oil price puzzle.
Thank you!
FITM,
What the State Dept. shill (who must not be named) is forbidden on pain of loss-of-income and continued employment to tell anyone is that the Russian gov’t. was very busily *buying* pallets of expatriated rubles on the currency ‘market’ using US Treasuries… at bargain basement prices, to boot! Not stupid when looking at the creaking edifice of the tattered petro-dollar.
“Fortunately, no one here on CFN thinks Janet Yellen is going to annouce that on Wednesday.” — wpa
Who gives a shit what she is going to announce? She’s just a talking head of Wizard of Oz – the King with no clothes.
I thought they all worked for Goldman-Sachs!
To play the devil’s advocate, I would point out that we have operated on this “funny money” system since the Fed was first established in the 1910’s, and during that time there have been periods of impressive prosperity.
Our monetary system may be bizarre, and it is most probably far from an optimal one, but it does somehow sort of “work” to some degree.
“Our monetary system may be bizarre” — lsjogren
Bizarre – the understatement of the year! First off, it is not yours system any more, it is the world’s monetary system with not yet noticeable competition and it acts as giant vacuum cleaner sucking the living blood out of the rest of the world by creating huge imbalances everywhere.
US is more or less protected as long as no competition exists to the FED. As long as the world keep using dollars, you do not see hyper inflation in America, but what happens when there is more sound competition and all those dollars will have no place to go but return home to roost?
Maybe then we will finally see what all the mumbo jumbo both parties have been squawking for decades was really all about.
In the sixties we really tried to hold a mirror up to all of this phony rhetoric and tell America you just can’t claim to be something you are not. With millions of your own citizens denied the right to vote simply because of the color of their skin, America, you cannot present yourself to the world as a beacon of democracy and a defender of freedom.
What was the response? “America love it or leave it.” And “My country right or wrong,” It was frightening.
Unless and until this bilge stops and, e.g., Americans are told what Reagan ahd Clinton did to them, NOTHING will change.
We talk a lot here about the problems. BioWebScape is offering a solution whose time may have come: Jubilee. Thank you, Charles.
Jubilee comes from many faith traditions including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A jubilee is an event in which all debts are canceled. It worked in Biblical times and it can still work today.
For example, a kind of jubilee happened in Iceland after the 2008 economic crisis: instead of bailing out their banks, Iceland canceled a percentage of mortgage debt. What this example shows is that debts are just a promise which can – and should – be renegotiated or canceled when the circumstances warrant.
There is also an organization working toward resistance to debt: Strike Debt.
http://strikedebt.org
Strike Debt believes that now is the time for a jubilee for the 99%.
Igniting a war is the best jubilee for US Treasury, the rest of the world will be bound by War Reparations.
I disagree, since it would be primarily aimed at increasing the national debt. Guns and ammo – and all its attendant rhetoric – is all about spending our money. Even money we don’t have.
And, DA, below, is right, I think.
The fact that a debt jubilee would at least in part alleviate many of our current woes (although it would almost certainly cause a great many others) is not contested. Unfortunately, neither is the fact the current Global Capitalist Oligarchy who hold all that debt would never allow such a thing.
And remember one person’s debt liability is another person’s revenue asset The rich could probably bear the brunt of losing those revenue streams. The working poor? Not so much. Untangling the whole mess would be a good deal harder than it seems at first blush, with all the usual opportunities for savvy insiders to make a killing during the confusion.
What did Ram Emmanuel say? Something about never wasting a crisis? Now we know he meant never waste an opportunity to make a buck off a crisis, off of another person’s basic needs, e.g.
You CAN get rich that way, but i don’t think it’s a very sound basis for a national economy.
Rahm!! Sorry for the rather obvious pun!
More pain for Russia:
Recently, light, sweet crude for April delivery recently fell $1.65, or 3.7%, at $43.19 a barrel on the Nymex. It dipped as low as $42.85 a barrel, the lowest intraday price since March 12, 2009. Oil is now on pace for a five-session losing streak and is down nearly 14% in that span.
Adjusting for inflation, the price of gas in 1942 would have been $2.78.
According to today’s AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report the average price of a gallon of gas in the USA is $2.42.
1942: $2.78
2015: $2.42
We are paying less for gasoline today than we paid in 1942.
Gas prices are not as important for Russia, as it has a well developed public transportation system, of which significant part is operated by electric rail cars or trolley buses on plentiful electrical energy.
Which means drillers’ profits, and thus incentives to continue to invest in new exploration and production, are falling accordingly. The boomerang will come back around yet.
I think we’ve already established that these numbers are at best a carnival act.
As a data manager I used to tell people that numbers only provide the illusion of accuracy. Just another system of conventions, like language.
Government statistics, of course, are more like numbers wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a . . . you know the rest.
In Oakland, with refineries way too close, gas has gone back and forth between $3.89 and $2.59 – in just the last 30 days. So other numbers – especially like $2.42 a gallon! – sound like pure fantasy to us. It thus appears to matter not at all in terms of OUR pump price WHAT a barrel costs or WHAT numbers the sock puppets I ignore anyway are pronouncing.
And we are all like critics reviewing the latest Punch & Judy show for all the good it will do us.
We’ve reached such a level of complexity and enormity now that the numbers are almost unintelligible, even in the odd case or two where they do actually add up. Management’s preference for purty charts and graphs is beginning to make sense to me now.
And here it is again: that ‘rock’ and that ‘hard place’ confronting our front-mounted optical arrays. The ‘Federal Reserve has made itself *irrelevant* by intervening too much and much too frequently, for the sake of the economically least-deserving of us all – ancillary and parasitic financial grifters currently doing business as “banks”…
J H K’s only telling the truth.
Re |”Some canny observers of the vaudeville that US money policy has become — namely, Jim Rickards, David Stockman, Peter Schiff — maintain that Yellen and her Fed are boxed in and can really do nothing. Their policies and interventions regarding the flows of capital have done nothing so far but disable the normal operations of markets and distort the valuation of everything, especially the cost of renting money itself — for that is what happens when you take out a loan. The net result of all that is a financial picture that no longer reflects anything truthful about the actual economy, being a trade in goods and services.”-J H K.
The largest damage done was the past seven years of compounding opportunity-cost to our business of having a civilization. Viewed in Net Present Value terms, global trade and cash-flow went over the line in 2011 and now it’s flushed so far down the toilet it’s bobbing past the jaundiced eyes of bar-fly poets and swiftly out to sea…
IN OTHER NEWS, there was this little info-ditty:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-16/putin-reappears-puts-40000-troops-full-alert-part-snap-readiness-exercises
Take-Away Quote:
“After disappearing for ten days from the public’s eye, theories surrounding his absence ranged from the tabloidy (fathering a baby with a Russian gymnast), to the trivial (lower back issues), to the bizarre (another putsch in the Kremlin), to the idiotic (dead).”-zh.
Yes, that’s right. The “zed’s dead” theory of Putin’s absence was emphatically INCORRECT and it’s proponents are officially “idiotic”… That would be you *specifically*, RugSoaker-W’Pacc-Sock.
But, all’s forgiven (after a fashion). After all, it would be “boring without rumors”, no?
😉
Cheers All!
😉
What does the USAs future hold?
Finca: “Igniting a war is the best jubilee for US Treasury…”
Finca, many wars have already been ignited. Aren’t the local wars being fought now good enough for US Treasury? You want bigger wars than these?
** the war in Afghanistan (2,000,000 dead)
** the Boko Haram insurgency (15,000 dead)
** the Syrian Civil War (220,000 dead)
** the Iraqi Civil War (61,000 dead)
** the war in Donbass (6,000 dead)
** the Mexican drug war (250,000 dead)
** the Darfur war (178,000 dead)
** the Libya Civil War (13,000 dead)
** the war in Somalia (500,000 dead)
** the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (24,000 dead)
** the Colombian conflict (220,000 dead, millions displaced)
** the Kivu conflict (5,000,000 dead)
Finca, that is a lot of death and suffering. A lot more deaths than BRH reports to us from Connecticut. Arms dealers’ business is doing well.
And to think, we’re settling for watching the damn NFL for 6 months out of the year. Maybe our chicken shit MSM journalists should get off their collective arses and bring us some of this action on live TV! Hey, we’ve invested in all this war, might as well get our full money’s worth at least.
Another reason I miss Walter Cronkite and CBS News!
“the war in Donbass (6,000 dead)” — wpa
Who keep posting that nonsense? It is more like 50,000 dead already, mostly women and children and their grandparents killed in non-stop artillery shelling by Kiev’s Junta, whom Washington so loves these days.
Just think about it for a moment – Russia and US were allies in anti-Nazi coalition and now American Government is on the Nazi side? Are American people that far gone?
Re | “Just think about it for a moment – Russia and US were allies in anti-Nazi coalition and now American Government is on the Nazi side? Are American people that far gone?”-f.
It is crazy when you actually think about it… But that’s precisely what people refuse to do these days.
And yes, I am disgusted by the fact that Kiev’s usage of the Azov battalion and other neo-nazi militias is hidden by people who have _no_ business doing so. It’s betrayal.
Interesting to see who you think the Nazis are this time around.
We picked up the mantle before the dust had settled on WWII.
Mr. Darling, I read your response to my post last week on the issue of secession. Great writing, much useful stuff to chew over.
You have a great point when it comes to economics, that is, are current arrangements practical and sustainable? Should different places be under the same economic tent? Tough questions.
Maybe to people of sub-national polities it’s an issue of self-preservation. They just look at the ugly things swirling in the toilet bowl of political and economic power and want to climb out before the downward pull gets too strong.
And, to certain productive sections of a country getting milked by surrounding areas, economics and money are not inconsequential matters.
The trouble is in getting from Point A, that being pre-secession status, to Point B, that being post-secession nationhood. In so many instances, a split isn’t the velvet divorce of the Czechs and Slovaks.
If only the issues were just about money. Those things are relatively (and I do say “relatively”) easy to fix. Easy to say, not always easy to do, but governing and fiscal and trade arrangements can be re-negotiated. Of course, arrangements can come un-stuck and negotiations derailed by violence.
In any case, the deal often is just about “elite accommodation”, which is just another way of determining which oligarch gets to steal what.
Unfortunately, the issues aren’t always just about money. It’s a multi-faceted problem. There’s the culture and language aspect with demagogues that just can’t let historic sleeping dogs lie and who make it their daily business to remind the proles of long-ago injustices.
And so you have the tribal drums pounding with Serbs singing war songs about conquest by the Turks and their humiliation at the hands of Muslim landlords. And all it took was two-bit bullshitters like Milosevich to light the fuse. I mean, they couldn’t come up with a solution that didn’t result in a quarter million dead?
You raise the issue of the Spanish Civil War, a nasty thing, not so far in the past. The wise would avoid poking that hornet’s nest. The problem is in finding the “wise”. Those guys are in extreme short supply.
Can problems coming out of the war be re-framed in non-inflammatory ways, with moderate and civil speech? Is this an un-realistic expectation? How tempting would it be, for the sake of political advantage, to poke the nest?
What are the chances of the un-wise riling the hornets because, to them, simple justice requires it? Never mind that simple justice could make do with something less than a blood-fest. See, the hot-heads, typically young men with time on their hands, won’t settle for simple justice, no, they listen to the call of honor. See, “honor” demands something more, nothing but complete and unconditional defeat of the oppressor.
Are the Spanish more level-headed than this? I don’t know, maybe nowadays they have no will to kill the way the old-folks did.
It may be that the issues in places like Spain are so intractable that a national split is the simplest and most practical solution. Even one involving guns, deaths, disputed borders, and on-going tension. Because there’s always the hope that it won’t get too bad. And, also, this too shall pass.
Maybe it’s too much to hope to NOT have American/Russian/UN/Security Council and Ban-Ki Moon (and others) in the mix, busily “mediating” (but in reality jostling for position), saying stupid stuff, making empty threats, issuing laughable ultimatums, looking foolish, diminishing their own credibility, distracting the parties to the conflict who already have their hands full. And wasting everyone’s time and impeding resolution.
After the current economic war is over and, hopefully, we’ll end it without nuking each other up, US will have to go back to National monetary system, more like you had during FDR new Deal era – FDR managed to at least partially wrestle control of the FED from the International Banking Monsters and use it for the sake of American people.
The thing is, the larger the market – US has over 300 million – the easier will be to sustain the fully independent and healthy system of “Labor Separation”, e.g. National currency system that would act as an engine of domestic economic growth and development.
Smaller parts will be vulnerable to international loan sharks, whoever will emerge in the future – you know, human nature never change.
So, better stick it together.
What you propose is one of the essential financial strategies of a national socialist state. Problem is we have way too many grifters in the current system whose cushy positions and handsome remuneration would be threatened by such a change.
“Socialist”, “Capitalist”, “Communist” are just ideological stickers. You just have to be pragmatic and run on what make more sense.
FDR was not socialist, he was the follower of “American School of Economics”, the type that combines the Free Market Capitalism with State-run enterprises – mostly infrastructural, not for profit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_%28economics%29
I think this is confirmed by the recent “Roosevelts” documentary. FDR is frequently quoted as being focused on peoples’ daily lives and on helping them with those matters.
He was, I think, very practical. When I remember just indoor plumbing and electrification, by no means universal in 1933, I am reminded just how practical he was. And of how insidious his opposition was.
He didn’t just spout rhetoric.
My grandparents in central Nebraska didn’t have indoor plumbing until the mid 1960’s, and they were representative of the area. Electrical power availability was little more developed as well, although demand wasn’t great then either. Even people of my generation often forget how tough it was just that short time ago.
Cushy position offers handsome remuneration.
I don’t know, it just struck me as great copy for a job ad.
Lying required and creativity highly encouraged, although the Costanza rule* applies, of course.
*Just remember Jerry, it’s not a lie if you actually believe it.
Finca: “Who keep posting that nonsense? It is more like 50,000 dead already”
Which supports my contention that arms dealers are doing well now.
Finca, I got the information from the UKRAINE Situation report No. 28 as of 20 February 2015. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
You are drinking in the CFN zeitgeist, which is to doubt anything in print, especially if written by a government. If it comes from an anonymous person posting on the internet, CFN is more likely to believe it!
CFN treats everything as rumors, and as Mr. Darling says: “After all, it would be “boring without rumors”, no?”
Here is a rumor: BLS government unemployment statistics are Bullshit.
True unemployment is 99%. Put that in your CFN pipe and smoke it.
As I recall, the German intelligence service estimated that the death toll so far in the Ukrainian conflict is 50,000 persons.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/ukraine-sicherheitskreise-bis-zu-50-000-tote-13416132.html
We’re very sorry to inform you that you’re suffering from the same disease as the Fed. (It’s a ‘parallel’ thing…)
Quoth JHK:
“…the Fed will be completely out of cred. This will be the biggest disaster of all, since the loss of faith in august institutions will rage through every polity in the advanced economies. Nobody will believe any longer in anything they say or do…”
That ivory-tower cred (that you claim as “street”) has already been put in the CFN pipe and smoked up loooooooong ago. It was beneficial in one sense though: self-delusion has since lost its appeal.
The US dollar is strong and Oil is cheap.
Life is full of surprises.
However, Real Unemployment is 40% [my guess is better than theirs].
I sure wish I had a crystal ball. What happens next is anybody’s guess.
Beware Oscar Wilde’s implicit admonition against becoming a cynic:”A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Fincaln’s position on this as it relates to Russia’s innate strengths is much healthier.
Jim it is possible to run a complex economy on lies, bullsh-t and subterfuge, ‘specially one with 2 centuries of stored up wealth like the US. This can go on for a long time, maybe forever.
brh
Nothing goes on forever. The Party [for the 1%] ends when China pulls the plug or some unexpected event causes the dominoes to fall. Yes?
I’m not sure, Malthus; my knowledge of macro economics you could fit into a thimble. But soon we will blow past the $18 trillion debt limit, and still, Social Security checks continue to go out, EBT cards issued (50 million on foodstamps), Federal employees get raises, troops are paid etc. …
There are no limits, nothing seems to matter. This place has a life and logic of its own that is not attached to reality.
brh
you made me chuckle. good picture.
Faulkner said the God we need doesn’t exist but just has to. Well, the money we need doesn’t exist either but we use it anyway. I’m like a four year old, hung up on the whole fairness thing as if anything was “fair”. I’d just be envious and miffed if my neighbor was printing perfect $100 bills in the basement and living large pontificating about the value of hard work. For 30 years (or more) we have these dimwit leaders trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat while ignoring the elephant in the room. So when the bill comes due out of my savings and retirement, I’ll have to listen to them say Gee, who could have known? As a Democrat I had to vote for cranky Ron Paul who seems to be focused on the only two issues that matter–reducing our militarism/interventionism and honest money. And as for our fellow citizens’ awareness of what money is or should be–clueless. What difference does it make since 80% of the population doesn’t have any? I am the only fool and I don’t like it…
Rocketdoc: “And as for our fellow citizens’ awareness of what money is or should be–clueless. What difference does it make since 80% of the population doesn’t have any? I am the only fool and I don’t like it…”
Rocketdoc, money is a medium of exchange which has no inherent value. You are not the only fool. I, too, am a fool. Poor, but happy.
wpa,
How about you go offer that bullshit at your local McD’s for your nightly Big Mac and fries and report back to us?
American School (economics)
Central policies
The American School included three cardinal policy points:
Support industry: The advocacy of protectionism, and opposition to free trade – particularly for the protection of “infant industries” and those facing import competition from abroad. Examples: Tariff of 1816 and Morrill Tariff
Create physical infrastructure: Government finance of internal improvements to speed commerce and develop industry. This involved the regulation of privately held infrastructure, to ensure that it meets the nation’s needs. Examples: Cumberland Road and Union Pacific Railroad
Create financial infrastructure: A government sponsored National Bank to issue currency and encourage commerce. This involved the use of sovereign powers for the regulation of credit to encourage the development of the economy, and to deter speculation. Examples: First Bank of the United States, Second Bank of the United States, and National Banking Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_%28economics%29
Fincaln, your references are very elucidating indeed. It’s difficult to imagine that these three points are called “American.” Of note, every single one of these points is considered heresy under the current economic system here in the US. Am I incorrect?
It’s past time for ideological cliches. Use what has proven to work. Remember, ideology always serves somebody’s interests.
I think Putin now is more “capitalist” of American School of Economy than most of american academicians and politicians.
By the way, I consider health care and education as part of “business infrastructure” – Government run, not for profit. Pizza place – make all profit you can. Hospitals – make sure that patients are well.
Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev said one of Vladimir’s body doubles showed him around and the Putin body double was at the wheel.
Can you imagine the real Putin being the chaufeur to Almazbek Atambayev?
What more proof do you need that the real Putin still has not surfaced? All we are seeing are body doubles. Do not be fooled by clever state propaganda, CFNers. Zed’s dead, baby.
The Manuscripts don’t burn, the Ideas don’t die.
M.Bulgakov, “Master and Margarita”
Seek help.
Who’s the purveyor of propaganda now?
Two systems are before the world;… One looks to increasing the necessity of commerce; the other to increasing the power to maintain it. One looks to underworking the Hindoo, and sinking the rest of the world to his level; the other to raising the standard of man throughout the world to our level. One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other to increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.
Henry C. Carey, “Harmony of Interests”
I think you may be pandering a bit Fincaln. The “American System” is still an exploitative hierarchical based European system meant to maximize human population levels, rather than seek humans’ homeostasis within their natural environment. Word: human maximization is not the goal of terra firma and terra firma rules!
JHK: “the employment numbers that came out of the federal government ten days ago saying that the jobless rate is just over 5 percent. Everybody not in a special ed class in America knows that this is a barefaced lie.”
The BLS says the U-1 unemployment rate is 5.5% and they state how they arrive at that number. Openly, publicly, transparently. The BLS also states how it arrives at U-2, U-3, U-4, and U-5 numbers.
Then the BLS states how it arrives at the U-6 rate, which is 12.6%. This official BLS number is openly stated as including those “marginally attached to the labor force,” plus those “employed part time for economic reasons.”
BLS is not hiding anything. JHK simply calling the BLS liars without offering any proof is not convincing. What is the evidence? Just what is it that the BLS itself is not admitting?
The CFN tact is misleading and deceptive, because when you compare the U-6 numbers of 2009 and the U-6 numbers of 2015, real unemployment has come down, thanks to President Obama.
Nobody at BLS is lying, but a lot of CFNers sure like to accuse BLS with no hard evidence to back up their accusations. If even special ed students can understand the truth, then state the truth and explain it and give reasons instead of relying upon name calling.
This has been a public service announcement brought to you by wpa_ccc_bls, a paid government shill/bot. We will now resume our regularly scheduled programming. [cuts to Leave it to Beaver]
thanks
Yet, those special ed folks have guaranteed employment around here stocking retail shelves and assembling plastic ware packages for fast foodies.
Yet, those special ed folks have guaranteed employment around here stocking retail shelves and assembling plastic ware packages for fast foodies.
gotta love how cfn’ers always trash anything that could remotely be positive. if people have work, it’s dead end fast food / retail.
if oil is $110 bbl, it’s the end of the economy, if oil is $44 bbl, it’s the end of the oil industry.
laughable, girls, as always.
meanwhile, we are witnessing the age of energy ascent at our doorsteps.
Today, 4.4 percent of U.S. electricity comes from wind. Susan Reilly, president of RES Americas, said the wind industry’s goal is to produce 20 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030.
and
At nearly $1.3 trillion in global revenue for 2014, the market for innovative energy products and services is now as large as the market for apparel and fashion, and almost four times the size of the semiconductor industry worldwide, according to a new report commissioned by the group Advanced Energy Economy (AEE).
4.4% is a huge number, and will continue to grow as the renewables energy sector sees more installed capacity. only a question of time before ‘critical mass’ is reached in the sector & folks will chuckle about how we used to use fossil fuels to produce electricity.
that’s a ‘prediction’ you can bank on.
welles in brazil
Great post, Welles. But just remember: Kunstler and the CFN’ers have successfully predicted 27 of the last two recessions. So it’s not like they don’t have a stellar track record of grasping economic trends.
whom trashed what? i was reporting on the local job “market” and it is very positive for special people…
all other career openings are in sales, a bastiin for truthiness.
apparently you must be involved in selling wind…
if what you say was remotely truthy…my local millionaire and his portuguese partners would not have lost his wind turbine contracts and he would be building two more manufacturing plants for wind turbines and our town would be wind energy central employing 300 people…
the oil reality did away with all that.
there is a place in this world for what are considered lower life forms and they deserve dignity and respect, especially amoebas, however they are not what the future holds as so many sellers would have us believe. we are not going to subsist on slave labor and amoeba farts.
From the NYT today:
“Glut of Oil Pushes Prices to 6-Year Low”
I’m sorry, but isn’t this the exact OPPOSITE of what Kunstler has been telling us would happen, for at least the past six years?
Could be. And what, pray tell, are you to make of it?
(1) That we haven’t yet reached Peak Oil. (We will, of course, soon enough. But we’re not there yet, and all the evidence suggests the inevitable peak is still years away.)
(2). That the dramatic drop in petroleum and gasoline-at-the-pump prices bodes well for the U.S. economy over the short- to medium-term. Sure, it will result in layoffs of thousands of well-paid oilfield workers. But in an economy where pretty much every product, from transported food to fertilizer to asphalt to electric energy production becomes cheaper as oil and natural gas become cheaper, and where 300 million consumers will find themselves with a little more disposable income in their pockets each month, the net effect will be to goose the economy — in a real way: producing more for less.
(3). This turn of events will lull Americans back to sleep, unprepared for the actual peak and the long inevitable decline on the other side. That’s when things will get really ugly. But, in the meantime, Joe Sixpack is likely to see things get a little better for at least a little while. (At least if he doesn’t hand over what little is left of American democracy to his corporate overlords. The signs, though, are not good.)
welles in brazil
Brazil. Where 90% of new cars sold are flex fuel. Where gasoline has been replaced by renewable energy sources in 40% of its transportation fleet,
Brazil. Where millions of motorcycles, buses and cars DO NOT USE nonreweable fossil fuels like diesel or gasoline.
Brazil. Where of its 64.8 million vehicles, Brazil has the largest alternative fuel vehicle fleet in the world.
Come on now numb-nut, do the research on alternatives. Number one, flex fuel comes at the direct expense of REAL FOOD grown for humans, and number two, it’s a net energy loser (EROEI is negative). This is WAY old news.
And by the way, Brazil is merely diverting sugar cane production, which is highly subsidized and overproduced in the US already, for their rather paltry transport needs. And levelling the Amazon rainforest in the process to boot.
wpa_ccc. Where stupidity and disinformation comes home to roost.
Good post, DA. Asoka has always cherrypicked “facts” that aren’t facts at all. He’s always gotten my vote as CFN’s steadiest sociopath.
I’m sorry, but isn’t this the exact OPPOSITE of what Kunstler has been telling us would happen, for at least the past six years?
that’s correct.
but, just wait, the krash is koming. jhk’s pretty good with words, but not so much with the predictions.
i mean, we’ve been thru 2008, fukushima, the housing crash (recovering slowly), ebola….what the fuck do these cfners need to see to realise the world’s not going to end?
nothing will do the trick, as the majority of them don’t use measureable yardsticks to back up their views, they revert to calling posters paid shills and other names.
i guess that’s just desperation cuz they ain’t got much if any reality to stand on.
welles
Yeah, the worldwide disappearance of the middle class is just a big nothing. Let’s party. You, Fodase, are just another dupe of government jury-rigged statistics and you BELIEVE THEM. Oh the unemployment rate is 5.x%, let’s party!! Never mind that Workforce Participation is the lowest it’s been in THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS. Never mind that one in six Americans is on food stamps.
I’ve always felt that guys like you are “I got mine” types and everyone else is a “useless eater”. Either learn to gather facts or STFU, okay?
The world we know is indeed on its way to oblivion. It’s simple maths;
exponential growth cannot last in a finite world.
This civilization is 100% going to decline and fall [just as has been always the case]
There is no technological fix, no Dyson ring, no nothing. The more hi-tech the industry the more prone to failure. Hi tech will be the first to collapse.
The high point of western civilization was the 1969 moon shot. Almost straight after that we began our decline. It looks like the standard graph in the Club of Rome report “The End Of Growth” of 1972, borne out in a 40 year assessment by Graham Turner;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e5Zv3U_D3Y
As a person who was in high tech from the 1970s, I agree with you. The problem with entrusting critical functions of an entire civilization to software is that all large pieces of software have THOUSANDS of bugs.
A mathematician named Roberto Vacca wrote “The Coming Dark Age” in 1972 when he said that increasingly complex technology would “outstrip ordered control” and be an instigator of the Dark Age. I have always felt that high tech got prematurely tied to big money. Having taught thousands of programmers, most people do not have the mental organizational skills to write precise code.
Thus, our society is controlled by SPAGHETTI CODE.
OK, now that the more or less obvious “realities” have been thoroughly covered and are becoming quickly and boringly overstated, does anyone have any credible ideas about what is really happening? I don’t.
But the one thing that doesn’t fit into my big picture is puzzle piece that depicts every last soul on board as either a powerless passenger or a powerless hanger-on, all being drug to extinction on this runaway train wreck.
One pixel or puzzle piece that I have had in place in my big picture for nearly a decade and a half is the one that depicts a ruling elite possessing massive powers of influence over the global society, a cabal that has no intention simply allowing the industrial human society to disintegrate slowly, a process that would virtually destroy the entire infrastructure. I am guessing that these people plan on surviving the human dieoff and resurfacing later to flourish again but obviously on a much reduced scale. I’m constantly in search of credible analysis and prognostication that account for this little bit of personal conjecture.
One common observation, as one example of many these days, that simply does not pass the credibility test with me is the assertion that the Fed and the other central banks are inept, that they somehow don’t understand the fundamental destructiveness of their fiscal policies and actions. No. This is how very intelligent, very well educated, and, for the most part, very charismatic psychopaths bring down the entire industrial human society, dieoff and all, slowly while they lay in their preparations for long term survival.
One puzzle piece that is eminently worthy of attention is the Ukraine “crisis”. Of course the United States is completely mad militarily and beyond all boundaries of international decency not simply there but nearly everywhere. So, could someone illustrate how the U.S. actions regarding Ukraine and Russia make any sense?
Most of all, I am really curious about when “they” are going to retract their death grips on bullion prices, almost as curious as I am about when “they” are going to kick start this little collapse which they surely will in the story of The World According To Toktomi.
“Every minute I stay in this room…”
Great post overall. In case you need reassurance, you’re feeling the same things a lot of us are. If I, and people like me, are smart enough to figure out peak resources and peak human population carrying capacity in our spare time, I’m assuming the so-called masters of the Universe probably had this figured out many decades ago. One decided advantage to all that post-WWII military paranoia is that the DoD egg-heads left no stone unturned in their threat assessments, so peak oil and over population would have been no brainers, once you discount the threat of nuclear annihilation at least.
As for gold prices, I’m continually puzzled as to why anyone think that has any bearing on anything at all. When the dollar finally crashes, absent another equally speculative currency to temporarily take its place, we’ll be going back to things much more basic and useful as units of trade, almost certainly in a cobbled together local barter economy of sorts. The Dollar and all of its derivatives represents peak monetary abstraction. The return to something much more basic won’t be easy, especially since everything else (including gold “ownership”) has been likewise abstracted as well. Think about it. The idea that everyone is going to suddenly return to walking around with a ready supply of a precious metal for trade, most of the supplies of which have long since been locked away in vaults somewhere never to see the light of day, is simply specious. And perhaps even more importantly, it’s a commodity not unlike the Dollar itself. Almost totally worthless in real terms, its only value lying in its imaginary “value” as a means of exchange.
In the world to come, if you can’t eat it to nourish you, you can’t burn it for heat, you can’t use it to provide shelter, or you can’t otherwise use it to heal you of what ails you, it won’t be worth much. Gold? Just another shiny metal.
I agree with your long term assessment of the value of “precious” metals, except for one little detail – silver is a wonderful material for making bullets [or so it seems to me].
However, there are a number near term considerations upon which a foreknowledge [or reasonably quick after-knowledge] of the timing of a number of future events could be very worthwhile – – the bearing if you will.
But, yes, as I interpret some of your words, “it” is all ultimately going to be about calories.[end-of-story mark goes here] What are they waiting for do ya reckon?
However, there are a number near term considerations upon which a foreknowledge [or reasonably quick after-knowledge] of the timing of a number of future events could have significant effect. the bearing if you will.
you gotta be kidding toktomi
too much
hurry, buy gold !!
GOD
fodase
I take it you’re new to the pleasures of alcohol?
kidding about what?
I sure wouldn’t be urging anyone with less than $billions to spend to buy gold.
I would offer that when you see the price of bullion turn vertical, you had better tidy up cuz shit gonna get messy real soon.
…or maybe not.
JHK is probably right about QE 4. That it will happen that is but it will probably be a bit further off than this year. Credibility doesn’t really play a part however. The only people who would know more QE is a monetary policy absurdity will be only too happy to cash in on it. Save the usual suspect curmudgeons. You know, not rich guys or those who serve them. Losers. Like us.
QE’s already being dressed up in other, less obvious, garb. The true beauty of the Fed is that it allows such a cozy relationship between the US Treasury and Wall St financial markets that the whole subterfuge can be coordinated at the highest levels such that anyone below them can’t discern it no matter how hard they try. QE – essentially a direct monetary injection of liquidity into the Fed and the big banks – will be perpetual from here on out, as it’s the only thing still maintaining the illusion of a “growth economy” we have left. Pray that it works and lasts, as your bank balances certainly depend on it.
Peak abstraction! Right up until the time you find yourself penniless, homeless, and starving at least.
I doubt that QE4 is coming, Rapier. Not with these great employment numbers and roaring economic growth. It would be admitting these weekly positive statistics are nothing but a goddam lie. Then again maybe we’ll get QE4 but they’ll give it a different name, brand it something positive and new. Who’ll know the diff, who will care?
brh
lol gotta laugh at the colossal assumptions of what’s going to happen that are posted out here.
like peak population being a “no brainer”. everyone’s been saying that since we passed 1 billion, and we’re still producing enough food for everyone. and we will at 11 billion – that’s my colossal assumption, except in my case it’s based on our successful track record so far.
next up….the dollar will be annihilated. puh-lease…
The true beauty of the Fed is that it allows such a cozy relationship between the US Treasury and Wall St financial markets that the whole subterfuge can be coordinated at the highest levels such that anyone below them can’t discern it no matter how hard they try.
then how did you discern your conclusion, if no one can discern the relationship you cite?
The Dollar and all of its derivatives represents peak monetary abstraction
it’s not an abstraction, it’s a real ‘currency’ and ‘store of value’.
an overwhelming amount of evidence points in exactly the opposite direction of the endtyme calamity eschatology that dominates this board.
i used to believe it too, until i started looking at the real progress the Western world is making on so many scientific, financial and other fronts.
welles
I looked at the mass delusion all around me, and since it benefitted me and mine for now, I decided I’d like to believe in it too.
Not surprising. I used to think that way too, but then I grew up.
Yeah I guess you have a good job, right your Dudeness? As long as YOU are okay, nobody else is suffering, right? Those one in six Americans on food stamps don’t exist to you or the 93 million that dropped out of the workforce and aren’t even counted as unemployed.
Your “store of value” kaka was the funniest. It’s only working while everyone else is simultaneously debasing and that simultaneity will be broken soon. Already, some of our NATO allies are signing on to pacts with Russia and China to avoid dollar dependency (read GERMANY).
Banking tricks only work when everyone is on board with the trick. Once individual regional differences set in, all hell breaks loose. Enjoy your fool’s paradise. Nothing lasts forever.
To amplify:
“Your “store of value” kaka was the funniest. It’s only working while everyone else is simultaneously debasing and that simultaneity will be broken soon. Already, some of our NATO allies are signing on to pacts with Russia and China to avoid dollar dependency (read GERMANY).”-th.
Read: Australia and the UK as of this week – and the US has registered it’s diplomatic disaproval… The writing is on the wall, and the only people not seeing it at this point are folks who never were part of the global economy for one reason or another (too poor, or too dependent, etc.) or who have so much to lose that there’s no point in thinking about what happens when the margin they live on gets called…
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is scrambling to cover it’s collective backside. The time for ‘sunshine enemas’ from their very ‘special’ Uncle Sugar is wa-aaa-y over.
rofl… well, you made me laugh.
Absolutely! – what you say. There is absolutely nothing in compounding that could possibly go wrong
…absolutely.
Boston beat its previous snow record….
most of you readers can go outside and take a much needed walk.
Really look around and clear your head with some fresh air.
Spring is here for the rest of the nation.
Now most people have the option to get their cars and drive to the gas stations in order to demand oil. It is the beginning of the travel season!
spring break! then summer following on its heels. There will be demand!
do not believe the hype
Increased demand + reduced supply might well equal much higher prices sometime in the future. BUT supply has likely pooled and won’t diminish for some time, and reduced investment in exploration and production will take even longer to work its way through the system, so predicting prices over the short term is a fool’s errand. Not accounting for likely financial market manipulations, I’d expect delayed effects over at least the next 12-18 months or longer.
Thanks for mentioning Rickards/Stockman & Schiff in your post here Mr. Jim. I’m reading their own blogs right now for more perspective on what’s going on.
With all due respect to Jim, he could cite people who don’t aren’t moles (like Rickards) or shysters (Schiff). Schiff runs a brokerage (Euro Pacific) with just about the highest transaction fees in the known universe. Rickards is playing the “outsider” card when, in fact, he’s an insider’s insider. He’s an ex Intelligence guy who’s trying to get us to believe that the intelligence apparatus is giving him the straight dope because he used to be one of them.
Stockman is the only one of those three whose advise doesn’t reek of self interest.
Yep, we know it’s all a lie, stop beating a dead horse and give us something new Jim, please?
Those numbers you so disdain mean the difference between you getting the fencing around your new fruit trees and veggies or not.
Of course you know that TEOTWAWKI means you’ll have to fend off the critters, and the bad guys, by yourself, and with your bad hip (who paid for that exactly?), 24/7. You’d lose that battle real quick.
Just Imagine yourself under the complete control of someone bigger, stronger and without mercy. It happens to people everyday in the world, just not you (yet, until your wish comes true) because you live in America. You try, but you can’t relate, and it’s super scarey shit. And not something through which I think you’d last a day or two.
Be careful what you wish for, because if you get it you’ll be just another anonymous victim.
Have your gun, but do as the Peshmerga women fighters do – always save one bullet.
Therian: “Workforce Participation is the lowest it’s been in THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS. [sic]”
Therian, instead of shouting in all caps, why not engage in some critical thinking about the reasons for the decline in the labor force participation rate.
1) The number of disabled persons has been steadily rising
2) Retirement had not played much of a role until around 2010, at which point it started to make a large impact on the overall participation rate. In particular, the decline in the participation rate in the past one-and-a-half years (when the unemployment rate declined faster than expected) is mostly due to retirement.
3) Nonparticipation due to enrollment in school has been another significant contributor to the secular decline in the participation rate since 2000.
4) Some workers dropped out of the labor force due to discouragement during and after the Great Recession and some of those are now returning.
Disability. Enrollment in school. Discouragement. Retirement. None of these reasons justifies your strident use of all caps to shout at us.
For structural reasons it is not clear whether the overall participation rate will increase any time soon, given that the underlying downward trend is due to retirement and that is likely to continue.
You, Therian, retired and therefore contributed to the decline in labor force participation. I am not going to shout at you in all caps for that.
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/record-low-labor-participation-rate-not-due-retirement-or-school-5431
Read it and weep, Asoka. Your primary assumptions are bullshit. As for “Disability”, ask yourself why the disabled population since the 1960s has gone from TRULY disabled people (with musculoskeletal disorders, COPD, etc.) to half psychiatric patients. For psych patients, “disability” is their last method of gaming the system and I can assure you that many of them are more able-bodied than either of us.
“So, could someone illustrate how the U.S. actions regarding Ukraine and Russia make any sense?” — toktomi
“As for gold prices, I’m continually puzzled as to why anyone think that has any bearing on anything at all.” — DA
The current socio-economic regime in US is founded not on a “sound economic theory”, but rather on monopolistic position of US in control of world’s trade and financial streams through the US FED mechanisms as well as unipolar view of how the World should develop.
Anything that threatens such monopoly must be suppressed or eliminated. Gold represents a competition to American dollar, especially in terms of international trade settlement, that is why the price of gold must be suppressed, or at least made unstable. Putin’s Russia, since the time of Putin speech in Munich in 2007, present a clear and present danger to US in terms of military-political world domination, hence US needs a “regime change” in Russia.
Ukraine just happened to be in a wrong place at a wrong time – US cannot directly attack Russia due to its nuclear arsenal, so the indirect way of attack was chosen through the process of Nazification of Ukraine in order to create a huge instability zone on Russia’s Western border, break the normal trade relationships between EU and Russia, drastically worsen the Russian internal economic situation and achieve a “regime change” using well-developed mechanisms of “Color revolution”.
====================================
PATRICK L. SMITH: Our dangerous new McCarthyism: Russia, Noam Chomsky and what the media’s not telling you about the new Cold War
Three is that the object of the war I assert we are now waging is destruction. To put this precisely, Washington’s intent is not to destroy Russia: It is to destroy what we may as well call “Putin’s Russia.” The implications here should be evident. This is “regime change” on the grandest scale.
We can now comprehend Washington’s logic—a perverse, almost diabolical logic, Strangelovian logic. In last week’s column I used the term “monomania,” single-minded obsession. I hesitated to keep it in—too strong, I worried—but there was no need. The policy cliques in Washington have no intention of desisting in this war until they win it. Recognize this and you will find the prospect of hot war staring you down.
We can also understand the apparently nonsensical risks Washington is taking and forcing Europeans on the front lines to accept. Five thousand Ukrainians dead, the arming of hyper-nationalist Nazis, Russia provoked into full-frontal hostility, the E.U. economies at the precipice: All this amounts to the “small battlegrounds.” It goes down among the policy cliques as collateral damage and nothing more. I find no evidence of concern in Washington for any of it. This is what I mean by monomania.
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/30/our_dangerous_new_mccarthyism_russia_noam_chomsky_and_what_the_medias_not_telling_you_about_the_new_cold_war/
Finca, thanks fore the investment advice — I loaded up on Russian bonds yesterday per your admonition. Since there wasn’t a link, I assumed it was your advice absent verifiable attribution. Q. Shtik, I’d advise you to do the same as a novice and marginal investor. It’s time for you to break out and on through to the other side. Temper your risk aversion and realize greater returns on your investments. Now is not the time to be cautious. In fact, quite the opposite. You’re 74 — live a little, or a lot — but live dammit!
Sorry, here is the link:
‘Unpatriotic’ Goldman Dares To Suggest “Buy Russian Bonds”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-14/unpatriotic-goldman-dares-suggest-buy-russian-bonds
Thanks either way. I’m psyched. Soon enough, I’ll be rolling in the dough — before being placed in the oven.
Increased demand + reduced supply might well equal much higher prices sometime in the future. BUT supply has likely pooled and won’t diminish for some time, and reduced investment in exploration and production will take even longer to work its way through the system, so predicting prices over the short term is a fool’s errand. Not accounting for likely financial market manipulations, I’d expect delayed effects over at least the next 12-18 months or longer.
Support your argument with something other than bloviating conjecture. Provide proof of your assertion that “supply has likely pooled and won’t diminish for some time.”
Prove to us how oil and gas are priced. Prove it’s based on supply and demand. I’ll even let you have a guest blog post at my space to prove it so long as it doesn’t amount to “well, my broker is EF Hutton, and EF Hutton says…”
“I think you may be pandering a bit Fincaln. The “American System” is still an exploitative hierarchical based European system meant to maximize human population levels, rather than seek humans’ homeostasis within their natural environment. Word: human maximization is not the goal of terra firma and terra firma rules!” — DA
I am not really sure what you mean by “humans’ homeostasis within their natural environment” – lack of indoor plumbing?
To me it is not a practical question. The practical question is: why the FED QE money are going into “American World Domination Project” and not into rebuilding of American crumbling infrastructure, which, by the way, could also solve American unemployment problems? I mean putting people to do some meaningful work.
According to “American School” the FED should announce right here and now that it is ready to buy State’s “Infrastructure Bonds” – long maturity and low interest rate, in the range of trillions of dollars, as long as the proposed State’s projects will conform to latest technological and economical standards and improve overall business landscape.
I am sure there will be plenty of such projects for good private companies with established track record.
brh said: Who’ll know the diff, who will care?
We here at CFN will know and care, of course — and the others “all along The Watchtower” (not to be confused with The Belltower, although it often is).
And the wind cried, “Mary loves Whitman’s Sampler.”
Finca said: To me it is not a practical question. The practical question is: why the FED QE money are going into “American World Domination Project” and not into rebuilding of American crumbling infrastructure, which, by the way, could also solve American unemployment problems? I mean putting people to do some meaningful work.
I’ve provided the answer, or an answer, at my space, but you don’t want the answer, only the question. America’s a tool of the transnational global elite. It’s a means to an end for them, not the goal. Like any tool, once it’s used, worn, and/or technologically no longer relevant it will be discarded or hauled off to a museum as an exhibit.
Exactly my point. At least, people need to wake up and know what their demands should be. Unfortunately, in my experience, Americans are much more confused by propaganda these days than Russians were during USSR era.
The most effective policy bullet: nationalize the central banks
If the zombie banks cease to exist, so much the better. Every central bank can be seized and nationalized into a Hamiltonian national bank offering abundant 0% credit for infrastructure and tangible physical production.
This is the way out of the deflationary dilemma of either tax increases or budget cuts which haunts economists who have not understood that every government has the inherent sovereign ability to function as its own bank, using national credit creation for national job creation in vast projects of infrastructure and capital goods production.
This is the “policy bullet” which has yet to be tried, and the one which superficial and a-historical commentators like Nouriel Roubini have never understood. It is time in short to de-emphasize government borrowing as a means to counteracting the depression, and shift into the far more effective mode of dirigistic government lending for production. The US Fed and the ECB have been routinely dishing out credit at very near 0% rates to zombie banks. Dump that failed policy, and start issuing recovery tranches of long-term, 0% loans for energy, transportation, health, and education infrastructure to restore full employment and produce an economic recovery.
http://tarpley.net/2010/07/12/trichets-fake-stress-tests/
Sometimes visuals are important to emphasize and amplify your point. Pursuant to that observation, here’s a visual to accompany JHK’s blog post.
American Amoeba Devours Syrian and Russian Paramecia
Note the paramecia writhing. It’s great metaphor, you must admit.
I think that the world have already developed a healthy immunity to American Amoeba.
The answer to The Amoeba is not another Amoeba. That’s not immunity, it’s perpetual propagation of a menacing mechanism.
I see no evidence the rest of the world is immune to the love of money. Once they get a wiff, they can’t resist and they pig out. Wake me up when it’s any different.
Ask Russian peacekeepers in North Osetia who for 2 days stood their positions in 2008 under heavy Georgian fire – did they die for the love of money?
Or ask Kiev’s Police officers who, being unarmed and with order not to react, were taking “Molotov Cocktails” thrown at them by the Nazi and did not leave their posts? Did they burn for the love of money?
They didn’t die for their love of money or lack thereof, but they sure as hell died for someone’s love of money who ordered them into harm’s way.
Finca said: The most effective policy bullet: nationalize the central banks.
With a corporate-owned and controlled government, it would amount to the same difference, materially speaking. It’s not the root, merely a symptom you’re treating. Government, at this point, can’t be trusted to serve the interests of the vast majority. Education and propaganda are employed to make the people believe government does serve its interests. There is no waking up because it’s not a matter of the public being asleep — it’s a matter of capacity and capability. Education reinforced 24/7 by propaganda in all its manifest forms has ensured any capacity and capability to think objectively and critically has been eviscerated or severely stunted.
All it takes is a right guy in the White House – who knows, may be America will finally get lucky.
We need to educate people, so they’ll know the difference when they see it.
I guess Americans had a good sense of voting FDR in 4 times in a row.
FDR saved The Elite’s asses. If you’re a pleb, that’s nothing to be thankful for. His sponsoring of The Hoover Dam was metaphor for him damning the waters of evolutionary revolution.
One man or two can’t change the course. You can’t educate that which has been stunted. You can help the youth form themselves into well-adjusted, critically-thinking, intelligent and creative individuals, but for most over the age of eighteen, the damage has been done and trying to convert them is likened to spitting into a strong headwind. You may get The Herd to move in another direction but it won’t be because it was a conscious choice on its part, it will only be because that’s where the herd’s going so all the wildebeest follow. The Thundering Herd.
The Last Crossing
Alright, this is my last post for a while — I promise. I think some of you may get a kick out of this.
In reviewing my blog stats, guess what the most popular repeating search term is? What I mean by that is, someone types a search term into Google and they get a link to my blog as one of the choices.
It’s “erin burnett’s cleavage.”
I kid you not. Hands down I see this in my search terms every other day if not every day.
We Live In A Beautiful World
Her cleavage last night was divine. Life is Good — sometimes.
Raquel Welch in 10,000 BC is the epitome of Feminine Beauty. It’s all been downhill since then.
Forget dollars and oil. Therian yesterday alluded to what may become the signal US event of our time: water in California. It is disappearing. Not just the rainfall/snowpack but the groundwater.
The Okies migrating from the dust bowl during the 1930’s drought were met with great hostility in the Promised Land, and were relatively few in numbers compared to the 40 million now residing in California. It will be interesting to see how the liberal water-rich NorthWest reacts.
Debt Dollars and the price of oil are not imaginary as some would suggest here, but compared to water they are insignificant. The normalcy (sic) bias is strong and we have become accustomed to the equivalent of an 11th hour deus ex machine: witness Atlanta — 90 days from zero level in Lake Lanier a few years ago, and more recently Texas, where at least in East Texas it appears Perry’s prayers have been answered.
This time may truly be different — time in this case being measured on a geological/celestial scale rather then the 5000 years or so of recorded history.
Could that be the real reason why there is no significant investment into US infrastructure?
There was a NAWAPA – proposed continental water management project conceived in the 1950s by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance
Obviously, you can’t solve problem of that magnitude by just conservation and water re-use.
Why not implementing NAWAPA now, creating few million jobs in the process?
Necessity is the mother of invention. A NASA scientist has weighed in recently with an op-ed piece I recall in the LA Times listing some things to be done NOW, TODAY, but until the taps run dry in Beverly Hills and Marin County the sense of necessity among the power class will be lacking. Even in Atlanta with 90 days left they were still watering lawns in Buckhead.
In any event they cannot build De-Sal quickly enough at the magnitude required based on a worst-case scenario (i.e., no snow/rain, continued groundwater pumping for Big Ag) especially given California’s stringent environmental standards. And De-Sal requires lots of electrical power.
I have thought for years that a water redistribution system on the order of NAWAPA was so logical it could never be implemented. But recently diversion of the Great Lakes was discussed in relation to Las Vegas/Lake Mead. So the elemental concept is still alive.
People typically dismiss the possibility of celestial or geological events with a shrug and a “what can I do about it” attitude — which is understandable and logical until it punches you in the mouth today with a stream of refugees camping out on your lawn. Of course it is possible that the present northward migration of peoples from the South will reverse in the face of an inhospitable environment. George Clooney’s gardener might seize his estate in the name of La Raza and George will say “fine — take the keys — I’m outta here — there’s water in Alabama!”
FP,
Talking with a NASA engineer on Sunday, we both came to the conclusion that the most *necessary* innovation will come to the fore in times of privation and contraction. (He also sees this crapola in service of endless growth to be nothing more than a cornucopian delusion.)
Water is a prime indicator that you can only put so much stress on any system before it eventually fails. Money is ‘reliably’ being made out of the present conformation of political ossification and the patched together infrastructure. Until that is no longer the case, things will continue as they are. (This, of course, leads to a more catastrophic collapse when bullshit will no longer suffice.)
As the old adage (…or was it Sam Clemens?) goes: Whiskey’s for drinkin’; water’s for fightin’. That would be in the catagory of “Reality”, not “What We Believe”.
If you happen to be a [present] Floridian, look for the strange practice of building high-rise apartments at practically sea-level where the water is steadily turning more brackish as the aquifers are inundated with ocean water. Yep, ignorance and money-chasing *can* be dangerous.
Precious metals? Brass and lead. (Just peek at the price of used brass for reloading these days…)
Forget dollars and oil. Therian yesterday alluded to what may become the signal US event of our time: water in California. It is disappearing. Not just the rainfall/snowpack but the groundwater.
The Okies migrating from the dust bowl during the 1930’s drought were met with great hostility in the Promised Land, and were relatively few in numbers compared to the 40 million now residing in California. It will be interesting to see how the liberal water-rich NorthWest reacts.
Debt Dollars and the price of oil are not imaginary as some would suggest here, but compared to water they are insignificant. The normalcy (sic) bias is strong and we have become accustomed to the equivalent of an 11th hour deus ex machine: witness Atlanta — 90 days from zero level in Lake Lanier a few years ago, and more recently Texas, where at least in East Texas it appears Perry’s prayers have been answered.
This time may truly be different — time in this case being measured on a geological/celestial scale rather then the 5000 years or so of recorded history.
Florida Power-like your important post. I know that majority of CFN readers are of above average intelligence. I saw a man the other day wearing a t-shirt that said “Winter is Coming”, just after I had viewed Matt Anderson’s film “Fall and Winter”. This is one of the best films of the past two decades, if not more, about the global crises that we confront. It is like James Howard Kunstler’s words put on film including our electronic technology dream state.( Technology will save us) It’s absolutely hypnotic. It features an interview with Grace Lee Boggs of Detroit. OMG Grace Lee Boggs!! You gotta see this film and this interview. You should see Detroit. Like Hiroshima, a beautiful tribute to industrialization. After watching the film, I turned over to see The Dark Age of Egypt, about how climate change overtook one of the most powerful civilizations!!!! Sound familiar. Well, when the old kingdom of Egypt fell, about 4,000 years ago, they ate their children because the once prosperous kingdom fell into poverty!! Scary.!! Hope we don’t get to that point, but if we keep on without stopping to think, we may. Lack of water ain’t good.
Two of the best films of the past few decades, gotta see, “Fall and Winter” and “Surviving Progress” featuring an interview with Jane Goodall. More educational than Erin Burnett’s cleavage. But, according to the four horsemen film, another symptom of civilization demise, obsession with sex. (oh yah, always been, more or less) Anyone with any intelligence should see “Fall and Winter”. It’s amazing. Hope we don’t get to that Egypt thing, but like I say, if we go on, we will. Who needs reality, when you can live in a techo dream state.
While we’re on the topic of heroes(?)oh,Grace Lee Boggs: Here’s some: Charlotte Tidwell: (NOTE GENTLEMEN-NOT all southern women are fat and ignorant.) 69 year old retired, petite African American nurse from Arkansas, works 60 hours a week, runs a food bank, gives all her money to help run the bank. Her quote “No one goes hungry on my watch”. She should be CNN hero of the year 2015. Matt Romney take a lesson.
Wangari Maathai, (now deceased) winner of the Noble Peace Prize. responsible for the simple idea of planting 14 million trees on the continent of Africa. And 14 million trees have been planted there.
What do you got gentlemen? War may be the natural state of man, but perhaps not of WOman. Women are from Venus, goddess of love.
And any man who acts like a woman will be ignored by desirable women above a 5. Why? Because women seek to advance themselves via the other – much as Hillary Clinton did. Thus they will always select for ambition and aggression in men. Exceptions? Sure, but the mean determines human destiny.
Or you arguing for Rule by the Few, the Best as Plato does? Wilber does. Your Democracy is a joke and even the Liberal insiders know it.
Janos,
You give “Ms. Clinton” far too much credit. Is she really a she?? Jury is out on that one. Maybe it was listening to too much Art Bell in my younger years. I am convinced the Clinton’s are Reptilians.
@ ejhr:
It’s not wise to say 100%. That makes you incorrect if even one exception occurs. For me, I’d say 50%. You’re cherry-picking your own examples of why our civilization will collapse. Using Dyson spheres as an example of wishful thinking re tech saving us is rather specious.
To create such a structure is centuries, possibly millenia away. Although possible theoretically, the resources and technology needed for construction is simply too far away to even contemplate. No serious techie would push for it to be our savior.
Yes, we may fall, but maybe we won’t. Here are some examples of technology that could save us:
Hydrogen fusion – I know we’ve been trying for at least 50 years to produce an effective reactor, but that doesn’t mean we will never achieve it. Even if the probability is 1% (actually it is higher), it’s still not 0%, thus invalidating your premise of 100% certainty.
Conversion of organic material into oil – currently being worked on, and definitely possible with our current technology.
Carbon sequestering into our topsoil and increasing crop yields drastically. We just need the engineering to be developed.
Making solar energy more efficient and increasing the percentage of its use in electric consumption. This is happening now.
Latest generation (fifth?) of nuclear power reactors. Currently being worked on.
The above examples are just for energy and food proliferation. Rather than create a treatise here, let me just say, name a physical problem and I can list a reasonable solution.
All we lack is the will, for whatever reasons, to accomplish these things, That’s why I give us only a 50% chance of success.
BTW define your terms. What does “collapse” mean wrt civilizations? Civilizations change and/or morph into something else, not disappear.
I know we have serious issues, but for God’s sake, don’t give up without trying. I’m tired of hearing we are so fucked.
Erin Burnett’s Out Front, out front. A sure way to lure leers, I mean viewers. At least it’s not Fox so called news.
Bean Town Bill, didn’t mean to distress you so much. Just saying how things may go for us. Yes, I agree, we have about a 50% chance of making it, the human species. Pete Seeger said as much in an interview he did about a decade ago. I agree with that assessment. At any rate, the 21st century is liable to make or break the human species.
I am of the belief though that if we, as a species, if enough of us don’t wake up and take real notice, we are in for it. And I think we are “on the edge”, which can be a place for some interesting change., The film Fall and Winter states as much. But, if enough people wake up and make change, we could make it. Who knows. Man is a very inventive creature. I haven’t just given up. Peace out.
BTW- if you can read The Next American Revolution by Grace Lee Boggs. Excellent read.
Zed’s dead, baby?
There appears to be unusual high level of readiness of both American and Russian military: both sides are flexing their muscles.
Americans are moving Patriot batteries to Poland. All Russian military districts, fleets, groups in Abkhazia and Armenia are also in motion. The official excuse – unscheduled inspection. Northern Fleet is seeking NATO submarines to ensure the safety of Russian subs that have already left the piers. Tactical supersonic Iskanders are being moved to Kaliningrad. Pskov Division is on high alert. Strategic bombers Tu-22M3 has been moved to Crimea.
This time it will probably end with just that – muscle flexing.
All the East in on the move. All men are moving to Mordor. Those who refuse will be destroyed by those who have.
“America has grown at the expense of so many people, at the expense of the earth”. Grace Lee Boggs in an interview from the film Fall and Winter.
Have you read George Martin’s Fire and Ice series? That’s where he got “Winter is Coming”.
There’s nothing new under the Sun, Barb. The Hindoos call him Mr Day Maker. The Norse, the World Candle. What do you call Him? A ball of gas on fire? No wonder He is offended and about to take a nap. That means more Ice, much more.
Why doesn’t the Sun blow up? Something else is going on. The secret of our future is to learn the secret of the Sun.
BTW define your terms. What does “collapse” mean wrt civilizations? Civilizations change and/or morph into something else, not disappear.
I know we have serious issues, but for God’s sake, don’t give up without trying. I’m tired of hearing we are so fucked.
beantown, that’s how the endtymers write, it’s all general phrases that don’t mean anything specific.
like “i see madness all around me” and “i woke up”. what does that mean, specifically? anything or nothing, just like jhk’s timeline for his predictions, e.g. “soon”, “sooner rather than later”.
you are correct that we have easy technological fixes to our most basic problems, e.g. energy, water and food.
i have pointed out very low-tech solutions to e.g. make a huge positive influence towards ending water shortages: a recycling shower that uses the same 1-2 gallons almost endlessly, while cutting the energy needed to HEAT the water (equals less fossil fuel usage) and providing water that is of drinkable quality due to built-in filters/pasteurisation.
Showers account for roughly 17 percent of the water used indoors and are typically the third-largest use of water in the average home
So right away we can reduce by 15-16% the amount of water we use to shower, by employing simple recirculating/reheating/hygienisation technology. What a huge boon to the aquifers. I will go so far as to say that that percent reduction by itself will FIX the water shortage in California or anywhere else.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170784-recycling-closed-loop-shower-is-cleaner-greener-and-can-save-you-1000-per-year
Yes, the systems would have to installed in all homes – this is a political problem. The technology to SOLVE the water shortage exists, and it’s basic.
Notice, CFN’ers, how I am using specific examples of something real that can easily solve a huge problem.
sorry, but it’s too easy to knock you girls out of the ring.
need i rehash all of Europe’s triumphs implementing green power, e.g. Denmark, Spain, German, Norway, Iceland etc?
too easy….
now, in your replies, state a specific, fact-based reason why the above cited technology cannot work in the way I have stated.
that’s called basic argumentation, reason for vs. reason against.
go on, make my day, punk
Plumbers say that 40% of our daily water usage is in the flushing of toilets. Older toilets, which can last for many years, use 5 gallons per flush. New toilets use a lot less. My own 2 year old toilet uses .9 and 1.6 gal/flush. If every family in America had a modern toilet, think how much fresh water we would save.
Speaking of water, isn’t it mind-blowing that people are running out of fresh water when 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by H2O? It’s really sad that people out west are wringing their hands because of drought instead of having instituted massive desalination projects. Common sense says this area is a desert, maybe we should have planned to resolve the issue before it gets to be an emergency. Duh!
Yeah, I know desalinizing burns energy (energy negative), but every year research is making the process more and more energy efficient.
I read somewhere that if all the oceans spread out over all the land area of our planet equally so the Earth was 100% covered in water, then the ocean depth would be 12,000 feet. There’s no excuse to have any water shortages.
And at the same time that people are very worried about the California drought, other people are worried about climate change melting the polar ice caps such that sea level rises flood out cities located on coastlines. On the left hand, parching drought, on the right hand, underwater megalopolises. What’s a poor, frightful person to do?
How you suggest saving water on agricultural irrigation, ever thought about it? That’s where the bulk of water goes, not washing your behind.
It’s not washing your behind, it’s getting rid of waste, and the water usage for this function is very high.
I would have a national-WPA type project building desalinization plants up and down the California coast and transport the fresh water via pipeline (like it’s done with oil) to needed areas. I’d rather do that then spend several trillions of dollars on bombing and droning innocent and not-so-innocent civilians.
The Europeans are capable of collective action in future-oriented matters because they do not suffer the same density of stolid masses who must be made to feel, since they cannot be made to see.
But it is not impossible, not even in America. Florida, for all its reputed backwardness, has been quite forward-looking using reclaimed wastewater for irrigation and enforcing watering restrictions. That’s not as sexy as recycling gray water in an endless loop but it’s a start.
Ultimately collective ecological awareness comes down to individuals making conscious decisions about resource point-of-use. Public water is so cheap that the price system is no help here, and if it were priced in such a way as to influence behavior there would be cries of compassion for the poor who would be subsidized and, absent “being made to feel,” would continue to ignore the leaking faucets in their rental housing.
At present the USA is completely lacking any leadership with the ability to inspire, to get a nation of 300 million thinking the same thought at the same time — sort of what William James meant by the moral equivalent of war. James had in mind the self-sacrifice of the Civil War: there’s your example of millions “thinking the same thought at the same time.” But it seems to take a crisis to bring into collective consciousness the necessity of individual action.
Finca, the MSM is saying Putin is alive. CFN does not believe MSM or government because CFN says both are liars and cannot be trusted. Zed’s dead… Or has become a chafeur. I am just taking CFN cynicism to its logical conclusion.
This is how ridiculous paranoia can make you. CFN motto: we are all fucked. Believe that at your own peril.
Finca, you say: “All Russian military districts, fleets, groups in Abkhazia and Armenia are also in motion.”
This is the same as saying 100% are in motion and, as Beantown correctly points out, only needs one instance to the contrary to falsify your statement. Thou dost exaggerate much, Finca.
You read so much Russian propaganda that you now seem to be imitating it.
CFN motto: we are [all] fucked. – wpa
==============
Wrong.
Our motto is: we are [so] fucked.
Q., you are right. I stand corrected.
Premise 1: MSM lies.
Premise 2: MSM says Putin is alive.
Conclusion: Putin is dead.
All Cretans are liars. Then a Cretan says, “I am a Liar.” Computer, solve this paradox.
= burnt out circuits.
If by your definition that “all Cretans are liars”,
you mean that Cretans never tell the truth,
then, there is no paradox.
That a Cretan said, “I am a liar” would be a lie.
No Cretan would ever say that since they never tell the truth.
Financial Times: China’s money magnet pulls in US allies
Diplomatic debacle over AIIB will make America look isolated and petulant
The story of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is turning into a diplomatic debacle for the US. By setting up and then losing a power struggle with China, Washington has sent an unintended signal about the drift of power and influence in the 21st century.
As soon as China made clear, back in 2013, that it intended to establish the bank, the US set about persuading its allies to boycott the new institution. The Americans argued that the new Beijing-backed bank might follow less scrupulous lending standards than the World Bank on issues such as clean government and environmental standards.
But it was also pretty clear that this was a power struggle. The World Bank is based in Washington and its president has always been an American. The AIIB, a potential rival, will be based in Shanghai and China is the leading shareholder.
Initially Japan, South Korea and Australia decided to stand aside from the AIIB, as did all the big European nations. But the news that Britain now intends to join the new bank as a founder member looks like opening a decisive crack in the anti-AIIB front.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cd466ddc-cbc7-11e4-aeb5-00144feab7de.html#axzz3UfWXyRYT
wpa, your insistence on “Zed’s dead” makes you look isolated and petulant
ok, finally you cfners see that water is not a problem that cant be solved.
beantown, my sentiments exactly on desalinisation plants and pipelines.
kudos to all.
welles
http://fortune.com/2015/03/16/starbucks-baristas-race-talk/
So much for Cold’s values neutral Capitalism. I suppose they’ll spit in your coffee if they don’t like your response to their questioning.
McDonald’s is offering free meals for select customers if they complete their emotional assignments, such as hugging their kids or calling their mother. The assignments must be completed on the spot in front of the McDonald’s associate.
We are in a ‘New Age’. Thus the ‘New Age’ marketing.
I do not eat at MD so I am not too aware of their ‘Happy meals’ etc.
Corporations do different ad campaigns.
MD has got you thinking about it. That was the purpose of the new roll out.
Good lord….That Starbucks Racism Re-education initiative is a blight. I will not touch a drop of their overpriced coffee again. At 630am I want coffee not Kumbayah! What’s next, Marxist Self Critique sessions at Target??? Stupid twaddle.
The militants of the Islamic State run away from the battle zone, hiding in women’s clothing
Wearing bra, make-up, the veil and burqa: many suspected militants of the terrorist organization “Islamic State”, disguised as a woman, trying to get out of the city of Tikrit in northern Iraq, for which the fierce fighting is going on.
http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article138500562/IS-Kaempfer-fliehen-in-der-Burka-vor-Gefechten.html
Well yes, the Euro is almost at par with the dollar and a further decline of oil prices is forecast. Are these the end times that Jim predicts?
Will Jesus return in glory to straighten out the mess? Are will we just keep dribbling on is a slow meltdown that FINALLY awakens the masses to the fucking they are enduring and rise up. Not likely. Not for nothing have the police been militarized.
@ GutenbergGuy and others,
Re | “I live in Oakland, and it appears we aren’t as subject to the whims of the Silicon Valley as these other folks. I grew up in San Jose and my mother worked in microprocessor production for 25 years. What is happening there now does not surprise me one bit. That industry was never worth a damn!”-g.
Just to be very clear – I don’t live in the Silicon Valley, I just stay there for weeks at a time, when necessary. I have seen a number of those snapshots and I’ve seen it change quite a bit over the past two decades.
Re | “But though we have rising rents in Oakland we also have a booming local economy. My neighborhood near Lake Merritt has had a huge influx of young folks, many with infant children, in the last few years, and with our restaurants and the downtown entertainment district, we are not a sleepy city.”-g.
I think it’s great that you’re proud of ‘Oak-Town’, and I’m interested in finding out when it started “booming”… I’ve never seen any evidence of it – although I’m somewhat of an outsider. Maybe it is “booming” compared to how it was doing from 1970-2005.
On the other hand, I do know quite a few economic refugees from the 415 area code across the Bay, that moved to the “safer” parts of Oakland (ie., the Lake Merritt area).
What is driving this ‘boom’ in your opinion?
🙂
By the way, no one remotely familiar with the Bay Area ever thought of Oakland as a “sleepy” town… That was part of the problem.
Cheers!
Over the past 8 months I’ve noticed that there are a number of CFN’ers who attempt to take JHK to task for missing predictions and whatnot. I find this amusing for several reasons:
1) JHK’s been very clear about the link between Capital Formation (ie., the Finanicial Process et al) and our primary source of energy (ie, Oil et al). When one faltered for any reason so would the other. Which is precisely what happened.
2) These are strategic-level discussions. The point is not to pinpoint an exact day and date of ‘Collapse’. That kind of accuracy is only possible with small-scale ‘tactical’ events. The best that can be done with big-picture stuff is to correctly understand what _processses_ are in play, and what _stage_ of that process we’re in. That’s enough to make strategic-level decisions.
I’m putting this out there for those who can and do get it. For those who are having ‘fun’ (?) attempting to criticize, knock yourselves out. You’re always welcome to waste your own time.
Cheers!
MD,
Thanks for distilling that down to the essence. I’ve made a number of strategic decisions based on Kunstler’s observations (along with those of his fellow Cassandras). I’ve been very glad I did, so thanks JHK (and fellows). I now live much differently than I did when GWBush ascended to the Iron Throne of the Petrodollar and commenced his blood-drenched reign of terror. (…continuing through to this very day of the worship of green beverages and rivers…)
An attack against the Race/Nation of Japan. The usual demand that it take “immigrants”.
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/17/8230783/japan-racism-blackface
Starbucks ‘conversation about race’,
BUTTTTTT if ya go to ‘Newsbusters’ and read their article on this, in coimments there is a pic of a black man smashing a Starbucks window in.
ww.latimes.com/business/la-fi-starbucks-race-together-20150317-story.html
MD: “The best that can be done with big-picture stuff is to correctly understand what _processses_ are in play, and what _stage_ of that process we’re in.”
Understandin the “processes” cannot be done when the data are ignored.
Ditto with “stages” … When has JHK spoken of “stages”? Don’t confuse JHK with Orlov and Wilber.
Thank you for permission to continue posting. 🙂
Cheers!
Meanwhile, the rest of the world looks at the data & heads in the other direction;
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/germany-france-italy-join-chinese-led-asian-bank-121407697–finance.html
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/03/major-american-allies-ignore-u-s-pleas-and-join-chinas-development-bank.html
“Uh, Uncle Sugar? Yeah… Just *hold* that thought and I’ll be *r i g h t* back…”
(door closes softly)
[seeya!]
(scoots)
Ultimately collective ecological awareness comes down to individuals making conscious decisions about resource point-of-use. Public water is so cheap that the price system is no help here,
precisely. when it gets to that point people will begin to install endless loop water recycling systems and we’ll witness a major drop in water consumption.
it’s worth saying many times over – the technology to solve the water ‘crisis’ is there, and it’s basic low to medium level technology.
like alt energy, lots of people are getting it and changing their behaviour accordingly. eventually everyone else will, too.
right now, if i could get a $2000-3000 recycling shower i’d buy and install one.
i think i’ve seen a $5k price tag at best.
poof, major endtymes problem solved.
next.
rube-i-con
Mister Darling:
As Ronald Reagan said: “There you go again.”
You present no data, only hints of alarmism over a Chinese infrastructure development bank, as if it is an ominous development.
This is nothing to be alarmed about, nor is the transition of the USA from world leader/bully/world arms dealer to a less influential member of the world community an alarming development. About time, I say.
China has a huge foreign exchange reserve and it wants to use it wisely. It is very logical for China to found a new investment bank that is led by China. China has tried the IMF. But it has become clear that money cannot even buy vote in a game set up by others. Then there is nothing wrong in China wanting to start fresh and play its own game.
If you, Mister Darling, care to look at actual data on the history of “economic growth” of the nations with the highest per-capita level of “development bank” loans, you will find it’s been lower than nations at the same GDP levels who did not get “development bank” loans or got less of them.
Add the China development bank to a long list of scary things to worry about. Remember Ebola, anyone? Y2K? Peak oil? Elections in Greece, Spain, Italy, etc. and the collapse of the EU? ISIS/ISIL/Daesh? etc. etc.
You, Mister Darling, are a cheerleader for the sky-is-falling alarmism characteristic of CFN. You provide links to what you consider scary, but you provide no data.
wpa-ccc: “It is very logical for China to found a new investment bank that is led by China”
Mao: “Let a thousand investment banks bloom.”
Now that China is taking the lead, suddenly you no longer believe in free enterprise, national initiative, and competition on the world market for infrastructure development?
Isn’t concern over what China is doing a bit of hypocrisy on the part of the Republicans and Conservatives and Libertarians who espouse the very capitalist values China is putting into play?
Besides, other nations, like the UK, have reserved the right to withdraw from the China endeavor… if standards of transparency are not met or if China does not hold to high moral standards regarding governance, environmental responsibility, etc.
What is the reason for concern? Sounds like a worry for the 1%, and their concern is loss of power and uber-wealth. Cry me a river.
In 13 hours, give or take one minute, Janet Yellen will be at the point in her delivery of the FOMC’s guidance (of which Jim so humorously wrote) where “the markets” will interpret the gobbledy gook either positively or negatively, causing a violent lurch in the averages either upward or downward and then in the ensuing few minutes the averages will reverse and erase the initial lurch. How the day will play out after that I cannot say.
Q. Shtik, you could have written and composed the following for Janet so glued you are to her every word and action. brh, you said earlier “who will care?”. Here’s your answer. There are always a few who will care.
Every Breath You Take
And Q. Shtik is/was a “pool hall ace.” It’s uncanny how songs written and composed long ago remain relevant in unintended and unimaginable ways.
Buy Russian bonds now.
“Meanwhile, the rest of the world looks at the data & heads in the other direction” — MisterDarling
Bloomberg: EU Support for Russia Sanctions Waning. See Who’s Visiting the Kremlin
For evidence of the European Union’s diminishing appetite for sanctions against Russia, look no further than Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin guestbook.
Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades visited the Russian leader in February, granting the Russian navy access to Cypriot ports; March brought Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, labeled a “privileged partner” by Putin; Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is due next in Moscow, in April.
Along with Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Spain, the three countries were reluctant backers of economic curbs to protest Russia’s interference with Ukraine. As a wobbly truce takes hold in eastern Ukraine, the anti-sanctions bloc will lay down a marker at an EU summit starting Thursday in Brussels.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/putin-s-guests-show-diminishing-eu-backing-for-sanctions
Unintended consequences
Obama traces origin of ISIS to Bush-era Iraq invasion
President Barack Obama traced the origins of Islamic State militants back to the presidency of George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq back in 2003, arguing that its growth was an “unintended consequence” of the war.
In an interview with Vice News, President Obama said the rise of Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL) can be directly linked to America’s excursion into Iraq under Bush.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a01Rg2g2Z8
Well, if you don’t know what the hell you are doing, better not to do anything at all
Along with Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Spain, the three countries were reluctant backers of economic curbs to protest Russia’s interference with Ukraine.
No surprise there. All of those countries have had a historical tendency to accommodate fascist tyrants, especially Austria — it’s the Ed McMahon of fascism’s Tonight Show — always the faithful sidekick.
wpa said: Isn’t concern over what China is doing a bit of hypocrisy on the part of the Republicans and Conservatives and Libertarians who espouse the very capitalist values China is putting into play?
And yet these very same people give Putin a free pass. Why? I suppose it’s because his skin isn’t yellow and his eyes aren’t slanted in which case I’d say, “look again.” That boy’s skin has no color whatsoever — it’s translucent — and his eyes couldn’t be more “Chinese” at this BOTOX®-sponsored juncture. If I was a traffic officer and pulled him over I’d haul his ass into headquarters under suspicion of being stoned. If Putin’s eyes get any more “Chinese” they’ll be closed shut and he’ll have to use his sense of lifeless touch to navigate around his oyster — the world.
Why Russians leaked the news of relocating Medium-range missile systems “Iscanders” to Kaliningrad
Timing is the most important matter of any military collision in Europe between Russia and NATO: how fast the reinforcements from North America (USA and Canada) could make it to the Old World.
Naval convoys are the only way to deliver very large masses of manpower and equipment.
To stop the convoys, Russia must take under control the skies of the North Atlantic. And it is achievable through comprehensive amphibious operation in northern Norway with the capture of NATO airfields, including a key one – Icelandic Keflavik. Control over Keflavik will provide the Russian Air Force (including strategic bombers) control over the entire Atlantic to the Azores – the southernmost point of the route of potential convoys. Thus, the destruction of such convoys becomes purely technical matter. You can forget the northern route – transfer to northern Norway and Iceland of Russian special forces and air force will break the whole balance of power in the European Theater of Military Operations(ETMO).
At the same time, the Russian Northern Fleet, including submarines with nuclear weapons, can freely enter Atlantic, and war can be considered over. At this time, the Poles and all of the 12 American tanks in Latvia can indefinitely (probably an hour and a half) depict the heroic defense.
But to ensure that developments Russia will have to open the airspace over the Baltic and Scandinavia (i.e. destruction of airfields and their cover), and for which there are Iskanders in the Kaliningrad region and on the border with Estonia (in fact there are another Norwegian air defense system in Narvik and Mo-i-Rana). And there are Russian Arctic Special Forces with capability of quiet landing above the Arctic Circle – as it is now the Ivanovo paratroopers on the Norwegian border.
That is what scares NATO in the long-claimed scenario of relocating Iskanders to Kaliningrad. The Alliance does not have a mobile air-defense system – many years of its military-strategic planning was focused on the use of Tomahawks, assuming no resistance from the enemy.
The Arctic Ocean – once the potential Russian vulnerability point – now turned almost into a lake.
And American Naval group in the Persian Gulf has become vulnerable to Russian fleet missile attack with the new bases Russia acquired in that region. And most importantly, US still can’t figure out the counter-attack plan.
The comfortable colonial world in which the Western countries used to live began to crumble. Its end is in sight. The collapse of the current world order is bound to happen, and now we have to think, first of all, at what angle we enter into this historic storm, the roar of which can already be heard by anyone with at least some elementary historical hearing.
http://www.fondsk.ru/news/2015/03/18/u-nato-net-zaschity-protiv-operacii-hod-kotoroj-otrabatyvaet-rossia-32281.html
Cold Holfield:
Pretty good insights into Putin and Russia in your blog ‘The Potemkin ‘Presidency’.
Frankly, its almost as if it is professionally done. My reserve time was spent mostly in a G2 unit and it is written like something I would see come across the desk there. Are you a former member of one of the intel services? If not, you should be.
brh
A change in California state law five years back allowed people to put in basic graywater capture systems for a few hundred dollars. These laundry-to-landscape systems now require no inspections or permits.
It’s nearly impossible to track how many home water-recycling systems exist in California. But in the 2009 UCLA Institute of the Environment regional report card, Yoram Cohen wrote that if just 10 percent of Southern California homes reused their graywater, the savings would equal the output of a desalination plant.
too much magic? technofantasy?
no, a simple, inexpensive solution to a fundamental challenge to a state with 40 million residents.
btw, we here in brasil are facing water rationing on an unprecedented scale in sao paulo (20+ million residents) and rio (10+ million).
faucets emit only air for several hours a day, with no water on some days.
these are serious problems (duh), but could be easily fixed thru concerted large scale action.
technology does fix things, cfn’ers. Barcelona ran out of potable water several years ago, and put in desalination plants that have things under control.
water is not california’s problem, it is inaction on the part of the rulers in implementing simple, available fixes.
2) These are strategic-level discussions. The point is not to pinpoint an exact day and date of ‘Collapse’. That kind of accuracy is only possible with small-scale ‘tactical’ events.
entirely incorrect. jhk puts out an annual forecast, as in ‘to happen this year’, i.e. over 365 days, which is a fairly long time in which to be correct.
virtually none of it ever plays out.
also, jhk has been wrong so many times about oil, his class pet. linking capital formation and oil, and their intertwined problems, is nothing revelatory.
jhk is a staunch believer that the West will revert to an agrarian simplicity devoid of most of the technology we use today.
he is spectacularly wrong.
Q. Shtik, you could have written and composed the following for Janet – Cold N
==============
Cold, you are arguably the best here at associating life with art.
Perhaps it’s because I see them as one and the same or so integrally connected that they’re inseparable. Art imitates life which in turn imitates art (or the inverse) and round it round it goes in spirals of further abstraction.
Iraqi Hezbollah air defense prevents US from air supply of Islamic State
Iraqi Shiite Islamic Resistance Movement – Kataib Hezbollah declared that it placed modern air defense missile systems on all fronts against the Islamic State.
Defense will shoot down so-called “coalition aircraft.” Spokesman for the movement said that coalition aircraft bombed the headquarters and the positions of the Iraqi units and Shiite forces as well as air-dropped containers with weapons and supplies to IS militants.
http://dima-piterski.livejournal.com/196849.html
Let me guess who supplied Hezbollah with modern air defense. Zed’s dead, baby?
Q, how many hours and minutes (give or take one or two minutes) until Janet speaks? How many fractions of basis points? Will the word “patience” be used? What will she be wearing? How will your algorithims react to Janet’s announcement?
brh said:
Cold Holfield:
Pretty good insights into Putin and Russia in your blog ‘The Potemkin ‘Presidency’.
Frankly, its almost as if it is professionally done. My reserve time was spent mostly in a G2 unit and it is written like something I would see come across the desk there. Are you a former member of one of the intel services? If not, you should be.
brh
Thanks. No, I am not a former member of one of the intel services — but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I don’t know if I should be ( a former member), but I do know they owe me Big Time. They know it. I’m waiting for my check you cheapskates. In fact, just EFT the remuneration directly into my account. You have the number and access is automatically granted by virtue of what you are. I’ll settle for the equivalent of Snowden’s total lifetime earnings while he was in your employ. Lord knows I’ve provided immense value compared to that traitorous scum who told all of us what we already knew anyway.
Q. Shtik, this’ll make you chuckle.
A search term that showed up in my blog stats yesterday was “what is condo cock ring.”
I’m dead serious.
Believe it, or not, I get a fair amount of traffic from foreign countries.
For example, Hungary is viewing large right now — it’s second only to America in viewing statistics.
I’m getting about 10-20 visitors a day from Hungary lately responsible for at least 100 or more views.
In fact, my blog is approaching 35,000 views in just over a year.
That’s meager compared to CFN, but it’s not nothing either.
This stat summary is just food for thought.
It doesn’t matter if I had 10 views or 10 million, I’d still be ejaculating despite the statistics because that’s what jerkoffs do.
At least I have the balls to admit I’m a jerkoff.
If everyone else did, maybe we could make some progress.
The first step in fighting alcoholism is to admit you’re an alcoholic.
Same goes for jerkoffism.
Denmark and Germany with massive success in renewable energy:
From the NYT:
Lest anyone consider such a sweeping energy transition to be impossible in principle, the Danes beg to differ. They essentially invented the modern wind-power industry, and have pursued it more avidly than any country. They are above 40 percent renewable power on their electric grid, aiming toward 50 percent by 2020. The political consensus here to keep pushing is all but unanimous.
Denmark’s policy is similar to that of neighboring Germany, which has spent tens of billions pursuing wind and solar power, and is likely to hit 30 percent renewable power on the electric grid this year.
So. water shortage solved, failing fossil fuel supplies, solved.
technofantasy? too much magic? jhk says learn to drive a mule (literally).
nevertheless, we salute you as we soar high above you into an age of energy ascent and boundless progress.
welles
What will she be wearing? – wpa
================
Funny you should ask. I’ve wondered about myself.
I think this
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/janet-yellen-tells
is about as flattering an outfit as this little old Brooklyn Jewish lady could adorn herself in. But I don’t think she’ll wear it since she’s worn it at least twice in public already and the fashionistas have taken her to task for it. Basically she looks best in something dark and well-tailored. It makes for a nice contrast with her white hair.
As to your other questions: She will “step out of her grotto” at 2PM but otherwise I have no idea, I’m in it for the theater.”
that
Welles: technofantasy? too much magic? jhk says learn to drive a mule (literally).
Welles, some people dream a lot about the magical past … when things were supposedly “better” … That is too much magic for me, given that humanity always goes forward.
Thanks for your injections of realism here regarding the bright energy rich future we are moving into.
I also appreciate BTB’s measured and reasoned assessments of technology.
But we three tech-friendlies are pretty much alone here in the land of CFN.
Welles: technofantasy? too much magic? jhk says learn to drive a mule (literally).
Welles, some people dream a lot about the magical past … when things were supposedly “better” … That is too much magic for me, given that humanity always goes forward.
Thanks for your injections of realism here regarding the bright energy rich future we are moving into.
I also appreciate BTB’s measured and reasoned assessments of technology.
But we three tech-friendlies are pretty much alone here in the land of CFN…
I thought CFN prevented posts with duplicate content. I guess Asoka has found a workaround so that he can bother the hell out of us.
Oh, by the way, Asoka, your nonsense theories about Workforce Participation are refuted in an article I linked above along with my own data mining about “psychiatric disability”.
You’re another guy who thinks that it’s perfectly fine that we’re becoming a nation of waiters and bartenders who make less and less useful stuff. The F-35 proves that we’re even becoming inept at making killing machines which used to be our absolute forte.
Software is the ONE industry where the US can legitimately claim to be numero uno but even this won’t last forever given the total dopes who are getting comp. sci. degrees now.
Qshtik, patience is gone. Forward guidance (unanimous vote) scaled way back. Hedge fund managers happy. June is not a lock. Wall Street reaction favorable. Dollar weakening. All things point to Sept. 13, 2015.
Q, I was hoping for a frilly yellow dress, but it is looking like purple suit.
Time will be 2:30.
Q, theater is right!
POST PEAK OIL DEVELOPMENT
U.S. crude oil inventories saw a build of more than double the expected amount in the past week to 9.6 million barrels. We are awash with surplus energy, the sun still shines, the winds still blow, the water stills falls.
Chair Yellen is wearing a lovely yellow, red, and white neck scarf!
And giving good, dovish, news about federal funds rate, too.
Growth is downgraded, which should please P4W.
I like that Ms. Yellen is operating in a data-dependent environment, unlike CFN.
Today’s was not a weak forecast, with the economy growing above trend and improvement in the labor market continuing, including Mr. “all caps” Therian’s ALL IMPORTANT labor participation rate. The Fed is looking at a wider array of data than Mr. Therian. No more calendar-based guidance!
Very impressed with Chair Yellen’s measured and steady enunciation and absolute command of facts in the Q & A. No vocal fry. No upspeak. Not a single “ya know what I mean?”
Chair Yellen trashed your mathematical algorithm, Qshtik. “A very foolish thing to do, and I oppose it.” Yellen said.
The Federal Reserve is transparent in so many ways. With regard to the economy as a whole there are no threats to financial stability, there is reduced unemployment, and we are headed toward a downward adjustment in the funds rate path!
Good news all around!
Hey dopey … the dovish news is because the economy sucks. It’s that simple. Don’t believe me? Visit http://www.businesscycle.com. All they are is the greatest forecasting org in the entire world.
ANOTHER POST PEAK OIL DEVELOPMENT
By definition, once you reach peak oil you enter the downward slope of Hubbert’s curve and supply diminishes. At least that what the theory says.
In reality, today’s problem is not too little oil, but too much. America is producing so much crude it is running out of storage space. Tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, where most U.S. oil is traded, are reaching their capacity of 85 million barrels, and new ones are being built.
But gas at the pump is going up, you say. Even though gasoline prices have been back on the rise for a few weeks, analysts expect the over-supply to send them dropping again in the spring.
US are outraged by trading in the currency pair “yuan-ruble” on the Moscow Stock Exchange
“The beginning of the new futures trading due to significant growth in trading volume on the Moscow Stock Exchange in yuan, an increase in the share of foreign exchange operations yuan-ruble on the Russian foreign exchange market and the formation of basic demand for hedging operations of foreign trade contracts between Russia and China,” – said exchange press release.
“New players are challenging US leadership in the international financial system, “said United States Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew commenting on the expansion of trade in the yuan as a reserve currency, bypassing US dollar.
http://www.pravda.ru/news/economics/finance/exchanges/18-03-2015/1252948-valuta-0/
Where’s my fucking cut!!!
you can see Denmark’s real-time wind-generated electricity by clicking on
http://energinet.dk/Flash/Forside/UK/index.html
At times, wind-generated electricity exceeds Denmark’s entire power needs, and they export the excess ( meaning they earn money on green power).
technofantasy? too much magic?
how about too much oil?
welcome to the trappings of the age of energy ascent.
fodase: “welcome to the trappings of the age of energy ascent.”
welles, alternative energy is not just happening in Europe. During the first half of 2014, the amount of wind and solar capacity added in the U.S. more than doubled versus the first half of 2013. The U.S. added 2,478 MW of residential, commercial and utility-scale solar capacity during the first six months of 2014 while wind power accounted for 675 MW of new generation capacity.
So, welles, what I think the US and Europe should focus on now is large-scale energy storage battery systems, you know, for those overcast or windless days of intermittent generation. There is a solution that is also within our reach thanks to technological developments in grid-scale energy storage battery systems. Gotta do something with all the excess energy generated in our age of energy surplus (besides selling it to the neighbors!).
We are only just beginning to harvest and store the excess renewable zero-emission energy that surrounds us.
A couple dozen European tourists get machine gunned in Tunis by ISIS fanatics, Russian armed forces are mobilized from the Arctic to Crimea conducting massive military exercises, and going into a sports shop to pick up some fishing gear this morning there’s the Pharoah on ESPN leading a ‘class on bracketology’, making his picks and yukking it up with the TV hosts. I’m leaving about 1/2 hour later and he’s still on TV, analyzing the teams, cracking jokes and acting like he’s in a ghetto barbershop in New Haven, CT
Dow up over 225 pts on the news interest rates will not be raised.
brh
Think I should bring this up when I go to Starbucks and one of the chirpy Baristas, the one with orange hair and a ring thru her nose, says ‘Let’s talk about race’?
If you have an interest and the patience of a saint, here for you to read is the official statement released to the media this afternoon by the FOMC. It is an amazing example of government bureaucratese topped only by, for example, tax code instructions dealing with the taking of required minimum distributions from tax deferred accounts like IRAs.
I amuse myself by imagining my brother-in-law reading this document and discussing its meaning and implications with me over a cup of coffee in my kitchen.
It’s a mad mad mad mad world.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20150318a.htm
We installed the most loathsome jewess we could find….the human matzo ball Yellenski. Clever, eh? So our legal counterfeiting proceeds on schedule, rewarding our friends and associates with free money. Even the most cretinous R would dare not attack her, lest the dimwit be accused of both antisemitism and misogyny as well as homophobia….a fucking trifecta. And if she ever has a twinge of conscience and gets out of line…..who knows, a car accident or plane crash could occur. And then we could utilize the next in line, vice chairman Stanley Fischer, former governor of the Israeli central bank and one of our more reliable assets. This is all just too easy. We here in Ft. Meade and Langley are laughing our asses off…..
For the architecture aficionados here on CFN. I have worked with a builders over the years who had the most amazing architectural rendering on his office wall. He told me that it was titled “The New Campus Library” at Yale and that the architect was his grandfather Otto Eggers.
Folks, they don’t make architects like this anymore: what an incredible talent!
https://jeffstikeman.wordpress.com/otto-r-eggers/
Beautiful stuff.
Wonderfully devoid of glass, and poured concrete ala’ the Fuhrerbunker or Atlantic Wall fortifications.
Why must every piece of new architecture be such a monstrosity.
Buck Stud, I’m not sure what library you mean, but I thought the Sterling Library at Yale was designed by James Gamble Rogers, not Eggers.
You obviously didn’t read the link.
Anyway, some of the most outstanding architectural sketches from any era. Notice how Eggers envelopes the geometric architectural shapes with the organic forms of nature such as trees and foliage. The contrast amplifies they effect of both nature and man made architecture. Indeed Eggers never relinquishes ‘the stem of Nature’, to evoke Ruskin, even in the architectural forms.
Another great man that very few know about.
nsa: “the human matzo ball Yellenski”
nsa, be careful about insulting Chair Yellen, lest you find spit on your monetary assets.
nsa, from your comment I take it you didn’t care for Janet’s outfit yesterday. She needs a wardrobe consultant, that’s for sure. I suggest Q. Shtik for the job. He can use the compensation proceeds to supplement his retirement income and grow his inheritance nest egg. But look on the bright side, nsa — at least the Fed Chair isn’t Black — yet.
You know who I’d like to see as the next Fed Chair? Stephen Hawking. He’d be perfect for the job, and let’s face it, what they do at The Fed, whatever we or they call it, is tantamount to astrophysics, or so they’d have us believe.
A few questions.
It seems like Russia is preparing for war, bomb shelters being dug, troop movements, warships active in the Black Sea and the Pacific, bomber flights over Europe, and general mobilization. Meanwhile, sad to say, The Pharaoh is picking his brackets (Kentucky to take it all). What’s going on with Russia, and why is it being ignored in the MSM?
Heard a brief report on Bloomberg that Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac are running some pretty big losses from derivative bets and may need to be bailed out again. Is this true?
Saw an article questioning wether or not whites will get affirmative action when they become a minority in the US a few years from now. Their answer was no, but will be scapegoated and blamed for how f-cked everything is. Who knows, maybe re education camps are in the offing. If you want to see a possible future look at the massive internal refugee camps outside Jo berg SA, filled with tens of thousands of whites, including thousands children whose parents were murdered on farms thru out the country. This scenario has to make even you libs nervous, specially if you have children and grandchildren. Or maybe not, maybe your guilt and ideology trump all. But to go back to the original question, will whites get AA benefits when they become a minority in the US?
Just an observation. More racial trouble last nite, this time an arrest at Univ. of Virginia. Soros’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ took to the streets. This is going to be the summer The Pharaoh takes off his mask and reveals who he really is, and my advice is, stay out of the cities, at least until the temps. drop again to below freezing.
brh
Remember this scene? Fitting, wouldn’t you say?
It’s Doomsday
Who’ll Stop The Rain?
“It seems like Russia is preparing for war” — brh
Publius Flavius: “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (“If you want peace, prepare for war”)
USA are going through a very difficult period in their history, so the main task of Russia – convincingly show nervously looking around Uncle Sam that messing with Russia – a very bad idea.
The American empire is coming apart at the seams. Already proven NATO allies – Britain, France, Germany and Italy – ignored the angry rhetoric of weakened American “Big Brother” and ask China to put them in the Asian Bank of infrastructure investments.
Seven EU countries – Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia – are going to present a united bloc against the new anti-Russian sanctions.
More than that, even on the domestic front, Washington is no longer has unanimous support. So, Goldman Sachs, a huge financial conglomerate headquartered in New York, said that now is the time to invest in Russian bonds.
The window of opportunity is rapidly closing for United States. Either Washington in the near future will take up something extraordinary, or Ukrainian crisis will end in US defeat, which will be inevitably followed by a massive rejection of the dollar and other hard consequences for Pax Americana.
In fact, now is being decided – whether there will be America as a superpower, or it will undergo a catastrophe like the one that happened to the Soviet Union in 1991.
In this situation, Washington has a great temptation to arrange some kind of provocation: And the stakes are so high that you can expect almost anything.
welles, alternative energy is not just happening in Europe. During the first half of 2014, the amount of wind and solar capacity added in the U.S. more than doubled versus the first half of 2013. The U.S. added 2,478 MW of residential, commercial and utility-scale solar capacity during the first six months of 2014 while wind power accounted for 675 MW of new generation capacity.
very much aware of this too, it’s just that the Europeans are so far ahead of the US : 30% – 40% of electrical power from wind/solar!!
this might be one of the causes of the rising glut of oil, the fact that advanced consumer nations like Germany don’t need nearly as much anymore.
technofantasy? too much magic?
drive a mule (kunstler’s never-to-be-reality) or get into a self-driving car powered by wind/solar/biomass clean energy (your reality within 5 years).
i think even the staunchest of CFN’ers will look back and chuckle at their dire predictions, within the 5 years cited above.
maybe not….kunstler predicted the end of the world for Y2K:
“Y2K is real. Y2K is going to rock our world.” — James Kunstler (April 1999)
How’s that for a “strategic-level prediction” ? Here is jhk’s Y2K predictions in full. Have a good laugh, it’s highly face-reddening for him and his sycophants:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010211165926/kunstler.com/mags_y2k.html
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Denmark producing 11% of its energy via wind+solar as we speak…
http://energinet.dk/Flash/Forside/UK/index.html
Spain supplying 37% of its electrical power from wind turbines as we speak:
https://demanda.ree.es/eolicaEng.html
technofantasy? too much magic?
haha, it’s too easy defeating the girls out here.
nevertheless, we salute you….you know, as we progress toward a future of unlimited, pollution-free energy.
rube-i-con
brh, do you have a link for the article about affirmative action for Whites?
Cold:
http://www.claremont.org
“The Browning of America”
For the 600,000 white SAfricans in camps, check out ‘Genocide Watch’.
Warning, its not easy reading.
brh
Thanks. It was a good read. Jaffa lived a long time (96 yrs.).
there’s a popular song down SAfrica way.
‘Dubula iBhunu’ “Kill the Boer”
Who sings it?
President Zuma, on stage, accompanying his dear friend, Bono.
Bono sings it loud, and with gusto!
brh
In addition to high combat performance, the Russian tactical missile system “Iskander” has an interesting feature – the mere mention of it makes heads of states very nervous. And the possibility of placing “Iskander” near someone’s borders changes plans of military-political alliances.
Why is the world so afraid of “Iskander”? Why for the export version of the complex, flying at half the distance and devoid of major features dozens of countries are on the waiting list? Finally, why the news of the decision to adopt a new modification of missile, “Iskander-K” caused NATO response that cannot be called other than hysteria? Russia is accused of destabilizing the situation in Europe, the threat to a number of countries, the violation of treaties and agreements – and all because of one missile.
That’s because this is the rocket that guarantees destruction of the target. It’s very hard to see and it is impossible to bring down. And whenever the Iskander flies, there would be hotter than hell.
PTRC missile flies very fast and either very high or a few meters above the ground – depending on the version and mission. Flight speed is Mach 4 (almost 5,000 km / h) range – 500 km. All protruding parts will be shed immediately after the launch; the rocket surface is treated with special nano-material coating, which makes “Iskander” invisible to enemy radar.
According to experts, it is not necessary to completely incapacitate enemy air and missile defense – just confuse them for a short period of time necessary to achieve the objectives of the missile. Given the speed of “Iskander” this period is calculated in seconds and such a task is achievable using its equipment. On approach missile emits intensive jamming for enemy air defense and shoots off decoys.
But the main advantage is not that. Even if we imagine that enemy air defenses found the flying rocket, the opponent cannot knock it out. At the initial and final trajectory “Iskander” makes unpredictable maneuvers with overloads 20-30 Gs. To defeat it interceptor missile must maneuver at 2-3 times more overload – at 40 – 90 Gs. But now there are no such missiles and there will not be any in the foreseeable future.
Guidance to the target combined: inertial system, radio correction, GPS, GLONASS, laser and optical homing in the final phase of flight.
Probable deviation from the target is just 2 meters.
Buck Stud, iread the link up to the point where it said of Eggers Yale Series: “This was a concept, rather than anything literally to be built.” and decided it was a waste of time to continue. Come back to the 21st century, Buck Stud, instead of living in a romanticized past.
So you read the link after being called out for not reading it. In fact, you gave yourself away. You wrote:
“… I’m not sure what library you mean, but I thought the Sterling Library at Yale was designed by James Gamble Rogers, not Eggers.”
If you would have read the link you would have realized these were conceptual (you recognize it in your above comment) and yet you seem perplexed because you thought Eggers was the architect.
Give it a rest Captain Assclown; you don’t impress with your pretense of “knowledge”.
Asoka … the perpetual Assclown of CFN. Data cherrypicker and misinformer par excellence. But above all, a dilettante who poses as a pro by boning up on a few Wiki pages or an online journal article which he quotes, often without citation, so that we’re to believe he has any depth at all. The guy will die just the way he has been for the last five years.
Flight speed is Mach 4 (almost 5,000 km / h) range – 500 km. All protruding parts will be shed immediately after the launch; the rocket surface is treated with special nano-material coating, which makes “Iskander” invisible to enemy radar.
i highly doubt the trillion dollars US american defense industry hasn’t already dealt with the iksander threat & have a missile of its own that does the same.
lots of hyperbole out here about the coming wwiii.
russia and the US arent interested in fighting each other, too busy make the money.
Maybe not, fodace, but what’s with all the sabre rattling? At the same time Russia has mobilized … Nato troops are moving east thru Europe, and an American fleet is operating in the Black Sea, conducting war games. It wouldn’t take much to set something off, even an accident could do it. We just learned last week Putin put his nuclear forces on alert when he annexed Crimea. This guy is not fooling around, and he’s not to be trifled with.
brh
And just remember, its not Ike, Jack Kennedy or Reagan in the White House now, its the Pharaoh, and he’s busy picking his brackets.
Finca: “Probable deviation from the target is just 2 meters.”
Probable deviation from science to science fiction: 100%.
Hysteria 0%
Fear 0%
“i highly doubt the trillion dollars US american defense industry hasn’t already dealt with the iksander threat & have a missile of its own that does the same” — fodase
You are forgetting that the major part of US military spending is going to maintaining huge number of military bases and not into development new weapons systems.
Just look at the “famous” F-35 program – close to trillion dollars spent in the damn thing is still not flying.
And US Defense industry is getting paid on “Cost +” principle, so they are interested in inflating the costs.
“russia and the US arent interested in fighting each other, too busy make the money” — — fodase
Why in the world US would be interested in making the “money” when they could just print any amount they want?
What they are interested in is making sure that everybody else accepts American money, even if it is at gun point.
brh: “What’s going on with Russia, and why is it being ignored in the MSM?”
What’s going on with you, brh? Why so concerned about a minor regional player with an economy in such shambles that war is not feasible? Besides, like fodase says, war disrupts the money making game the big guys have going in the kleptocracy called Russia.
brh: “And just remember, its not Ike, Jack Kennedy or Reagan in the White House now, its the Pharaoh, and he’s busy picking his brackets.”
Ashton Carter is not picking his brackets, brh. Take a chill pill, dude.
Janos Skorenzy
March 17, 2015 at 2:52 pm #
And any man who acts like a woman will be ignored by desirable women above a 5. Why? Because women seek to advance themselves via the other – much as Hillary Clinton did. Thus they will always select for ambition and aggression in men. Exceptions? Sure, but the mean determines human destiny.
Maybe not so true Janos, all men need to get in touch more with their feminine side, and all women should get more in touch with the male. I’m above a 5 and I’d welcome someone who was a little more in touch with the feminine. But,the world is not going to end, it’s going to change.
A few years ago, there was an elephant herd in Africa that was brutally culled. Many elephants were killed including most of the family of a young elephant named Dolly. Dolly would have died if it hadn’t been for an older female elephant taking her under her wing.
The herd was traumatized. A team of researchers, led by a man named David, worked with the herd to try to help it heal. Eventually they got through and the herd started to trust the team, especially David with whom they formed a special bond. In the spring of 2011, David passed away. Right after, The elephants marched a long way and came to the research camp and stood for two days! The next year, the herd of elephants marched again to the camp, a year to the day of David’s death, and stood for several days!! With this true story, one can only imagine the mystery and love of a human spirit.
What can humans accomplish if they thought more long term, that’s some of the problem, humans are programmed to think short term.
JHK’s quote “it seemed like a good idea at the time” comes to mind.
“I look at my grandchildren and I don’t see a very bright future for them.” – Cindy Sheehan, grandmother, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, peace activist.
Cindy Sheehan, Charlotte Tidwell, Wangari Maathai who helped spawn plantabillion.org, JHK, you all, in your own way, exemplify the Age of Aquarius.
All should work to make the earth a garden of eden – author unknown
I don’t deny the Higher – even in animals sometimes – I merely object when you all deny the lower. And the lower has the power most of the time in most of the people and animals.
Yes the Feminine capacity for nurturance (which they no doubt deny) has reaped rich rewards in the study of wildlife. Leaky’s “ape girls” did fine work. Jane Goodall was amazed at both the goodness and later the evil of the Chimps. Her early work overthrew the stereotypes about Apes. Her later work confirmed many of them as she saw the murders of outsiders caught alone by the gang and even cannibalism within the group occasionally.
I like elephants a lot. The babies are as cute as kittens or puppies – and even more sensitive. One woman who worked with them learned to vary the attendants who worked with them. In the early years she lost a number of baby elephants who died of grief when their attendant moved on. She went away for a long weekend and the baby she was caring for pined away and died. Such emotional capacity. On the negative side: one woman was killed by an elephant she knew. She was just treating an insect bit near its eye, and the female elephant got mad and squashed her.
In one area, they found rhinos being killed which mystified them since the rhino has no enemies. They put up cameras and found adolescent male elephants chasing them down, knocking them down, and then stomping them to death. They were horrified, since both are herbivores and don’t compete for food. They realized it was because the herd had no adult males for the adolescents to model themselves after – the bulls being killed off for their ivory. They introduced a Bull and the adolescents quieted down. We can obviously extend this to humans. It’s certainly a rejoinder against Gay marriage and the war against fathers, eh? Btw, Heather just came out against gay marriage. She misses the Dad she never had.
Buddhism also says the cosmic clock is running down. Ken don’t like that. And poor Ken is scandalized that the Dalai Lama wont endorse anal sex. The things these people (you people) care about! But take heart: even a little practice in Kali Yuga earns rich rewards because of the difficulty. Mohammad said to his Companions: if you neglect even one thing I have taught it may send you to Hell. But in the latter days, if people practice even one thing I have taught, it will save them.
True me, Barb, women these days are more rapaciously masculine than most of the men whom they have cowed. They don’t have the mental horsepower, as a rule, to compete in hardcore engineering and sciences where major innovations are made so PBS makes sure that whenever there’s a Nova or Universe show that there are at least a couple of female scientists to render the illusion that they’re 30 or 40% of their respective fields. They aren’t close and they’re never Nobelists.
So the women end up being in sales, marketing, and middle management in high tech companies. Few males try to get by on pure ambition in the absence of analytical skills than the modern high tech workplace femme. Were we see their feminine side where a masculine side OUGHT to be more visible is in the running of the family … since the majority of US mothers are single mothers and look at the state of the generation they’re turning out. Horrible. Feminized males with no ambition, flabby, socially inept, and broke.
And the men that women are choosing to be daddy are the typical ear-ringed, tattooed fops who look tough but are total pussies. Only in Third World cultures with “retrograde” mores produce children who are competitive in the harsh workplaces of 2015 and that’s China and India. I’m not particularly fond of either of those cultures because of their materialism and dirigiste learning styles but they are kicking Whitey’s ass and Whitey has no one to blame but himself/herself.
For those who aren’t aware, foda-se means fuck in street parlance in Brazil and Portugal. When I first saw it, I thought it was a new pharmaceutical.
was wondering when someone’d explain the handle. it means ‘fuck it’ in portuguese.
how did u find out, btw?
welles
The Yellow King.
Cold, foda-se does not mean fuck.
Literally it means fuck it.
It is used when you want to drop a subject of conversation.
For example:
Your friend says: “Oh, no! You are no longer discussing peak oil on CFN?”
“Peak oil? Oh, fuck it, we’ll discuss something else, like the meaning of foda-se.”
I think it would have been more fitting if Heston said “foda se” rather than “it’s doomsday” in that clip I posted earlier.
We need a man like Colonel George Taylor to end this madness once and for all. Maybe Putin, or one of his doppelgänglia, is that man in some grotesquely distorted way.
While it’s still March.
It is obvious that the world economy and the entire world order now rests on the United States. America rules the world through finance, military forces, intelligence and diplomacy. World currency is the US dollar. The whole world is saturated with US military bases: on “defense” the United States spends more money than the rest of the world. It’s because the US assumed the responsibility to maintain the existing world order. Of course, they get rewarded for it – a level of consumption that does not match their contribution to the world production. This is the world order in a unipolar world.
The problem is that such a world – very unstable. It is very reminiscent of the old colonialism. Only now the US colony is the whole world. All perfectly see that Americans manage everything, and they also take the lion’s share of all goods produced in the world. Such a situation can not last long. Dissatisfaction with the dominance of America grows everywhere. America got a bonus for the victory – twenty years of world domination and consumer paradise. Enough. Unstable system of world governance is necessary to change to a more sustainable.
As a result of the current crisis will happen something like a dismembering of the global system of colonialism in the 1960s. Management functions will be transferred to the regional centers of power, to the “local” boys. This would greatly reduce stress and make the world much more stable. Of course, each nation and each ethnic group in its center would not get full-blown technological zone, because for that each area must have at least half a billion people.
But still, the world will become more stable.
Does it mean, then, that the split of the world economy in several technological zone – fiction? No. The global economy is really for some time will split into several economies. Some of the problems will be solved by that. Technological advances have made it possible to solve them.
First, the transition will happen to the planning and distribution economy. It is also called a resource-based. In contrast to a market economy, the goods will be produced not for profit, but to meet the needs of people. As it used to be in the USSR. Therefore, immediately eliminates a huge amount of unnecessary goods, invented by marketers. Then, the number of necessary goods will be sharply reduced by eliminating the technology of planned aging. There will not be a need in continuous changes to the shape of car’s headlights in order to pass it off as progress. The sharp decrease in the number and range of manufactured goods will level effect of reducing the market capacity in each technological area, compared to the world. The crisis and shock will help people to get accustomed to new consumption paradigm.
Second, modern automated production will break the concentration of production in some countries, and consumption – in others. There will not be need to carry goods across the world. Everything will be done on the spot – where robots are working. Thus, the enormous disparities disappear when some countries only produce, and others – only consume.
The world economy will once again be united, and some technological areas will only be areas of responsibility to maintain law and order.
http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/1855684
Buckstud,
Subject: libraries
Buck we have some beautiful libraries here, even in the smallest of towns. Andrew Carnegie paid for most of them to be built around the turn of the last century; the one in the village of Norfolk I believe was designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. We have this native brownstone from the quarries in Portland, CT that was a favored building material back in the day, and that’s what was used in Norfolk. Google that library and see what i mean. Maybe you know the answer to this: those quarries are just sitting there unused. Why did brownstone fall out of favor? It made for some beautiful buildings.
I think I’ll take a ride down to Yale and check out that Library you were mentioning earlier.
brh
well I was wrong about Frank LLoyd Wright. It was Hartford architect Frank Keller.
Also check out the Barney Library in Farmington CT.
WIKI [predictably] does not not the arsonists race.
Frank Lloyd Wright – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright
Wikipedia
Fallingwater (1935), which On August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a male servant from …..etc
But all the libraries were first imagined by Eggers.
I think I’ll take a ride down to Yale and check out that Library you were mentioning earlier. – brh
=================
Google “rare book library at yale.” The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was funded by the wealthy Beinecke family – owners of the Sperry and Hutchinson Co., better known as S&H Green Stamps (my first employer after a stint in the Air Force).
The building is more interesting from the inside than the outside. Its signature feature is its marble windows which light passes through.
I lived (1970 – 1971) in Branford, CT and worked in Hamden, CT, both a stone’s throw from downtown New Haven, home to Yale University and this famous library.
POST PEAK OIL DEVELOPMENT
The Cornucopians are winning!!!
For decades, it has been a doomsday scenario looming large in the popular imagination: The world’s oil production tops out and then starts an inexorable decline—sending costs soaring and forcing nations to lay down strict rationing programs and battle for shrinking reserves.
U.S. oil production did peak in the 1970s and sank for decades after, exactly as the theory predicted. But then it did something the theory didn’t predict: It started rising again in 2009, and hasn’t stopped, thanks to a leap forward in oil-field technology.
Maybe that is why peak oil is not discussed on CFN anymore. The doomsters are losing and the cornucopians are winning.
Or, it’s because ‘peak oil’ is now a given.
As usual, shallow, stupid thinking. It has “risen” to mid-1990s levels because of a shale oil boom that won’t last a decade. Ask some North Dakotans what they think of having their entire State dug up for wells with an 18-month lifespan and rents being almost at California levels in a horrid climate.
Even T. Boone Pickens, today, said oil will be back at $70 by the end of 2015 and Pickens is a greedy bastard who throws softballs at the media so that he can get ahead of any investment curve.
The “doomsters” as you refer to them, have been right all along. After all, under Clinton, oil was $10/bbl so we’ve had THREE-HUNDRED-FIFTY PERCENT INFLATION IN 20 years even at the current highly depressed prices. How you can spin this into “cornucopins win” is amusing but it’s just your ongoing modus operandi of being adversarial with shallow knowledge. You’ll die like you live now … sucking the hind teat of the intellectual world through shallowness in your every expression.
POST PEAK OIL DEVELOPMENT
Adjusting for inflation, the price of gas in 1942 would have been $2.78.
According to today’s AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report the average price of a gallon of gas in the USA is $2.43.
1942: $2.78
2015: $2.43
We are paying less for gasoline today than we paid in 1942. Peak oil theory and CFN rants for a decade never predicted something the rest of us take for granted: technological development.
Gasoline is cheaper today than it was in 1942.
Dollar for dollar, simply because it has to be. The entire world economy is dependent on it.
POST PEAK OIL DEVELOPMENT
Hubbert’s theory ensured the centrality of oil in almost all discourses about the future, and so it was for about 10 years on CFN.
Hubbert’s theory created a cultural movement of prophecy believers fixated on preparing for the oil end times, and CFN was holding the banner at the front of the parade.
Not anymore. In 2013 The Oil Drum shut down after eight years, and CFN has gone silent, too, on peak oil doom.
Oil prices have gone down, oil reserves are full to overflowing. The cornucopians are once again in ascendance thanks to technology, the bane of the “too much magic” true believers.
POST PEAK OIL DEVELOPMENT
M. King Hubbert made his predictions about oil production in the U.S. in 1956. He said oil would peak around 1970 and decline thereafter. We are 45 years out from “peak oil” and have sufficient data.
In 2009 oil production began rising again due to technological developments thereby invalidating Hubbert’s peak oil hypothesis.
The primary constraints on greater production in the U.S. do not appear to by related to supply; they are technical and economic. The cornucopians won the debate. The doomsters don’t even want to talk peak oil anymore.
The doomsters expected complete collapse by 2012, especially when crude oil was over $100 a barrel. Many right here on CFN thought the elections might not even be held in 2012. The doomsters were busy buying their gold, guns, and putting foodstocks into their bunkers.
I remember Asoka tried to warn the doomsters to sell their gold. Asoka warned them of the gold bubble and they laughed at him, then banned him, on CFN. The gold the doomsters bought at $1668 in 2012 has gone down in value to $1171 today. Their foodstuffs are rapidly approaching end-of-life and their guns are useless.
The Cornucopians are completely vindicated.
You are IMMENSELY stupid. The USA’s oil production peak was in 1972-1973 … exactly as Hubbert predicted. That you could have the temerity to say that Hubbert has been INVALIDATED shows your demonic egohood because you’ll say ANYTHING to be correct even when it’s incredibly stupid. The rise in oil production since 2009 has only put us at 1992-1994 levels and nowhere close to 1973.
NOBODY is anywhere near their peaks of 40 years ago. Try not to engage in over LYING, please.
A classic trifecta post for the ages by wpa_ccc!
The Cornucopians once again assume the helm of progress!
Nevertheless, we salute you as we soar high, high above your static, stunted 19th century conclusions regarding mankind’s allegedly ineluctible encounter with contraction, and rocket into an age of boundless scientific, social & material abundance!
We welcome all CFN refugees who are willing to build mankind’s wonder-filled future on the foundations of technology and scientific progress.
The future is ours, comrades! Welcome to the age of limitless advances in all human endeavours!
Let the CFN dead bury their dead!
Russia will build a group of military transport aircraft capable of delivering armored army of 400 heavy tanks “Armata” anywhere in the world in 7 hours
Despite the defensive nature of Russian military doctrine and statements of top political leaders about purely local, cross-border activities of Russian armed forces, changes in priorities for prospective arms tell a different story.
The development of new types of military equipment suggests that Russia will enter the strategy of global military response. Statement by the Ministry of Defense on the development and construction of a series of aircraft carriers by 2030 was followed by the decision to create by 2024 group of supersonic super heavy military transport aircraft of unprecedented capacity of up to 200 tons.
A feature of the new machines will be the adaptation to carry new tanks “Armata” – with automated loading, storing on board in several levels and possibility of air-dropping on any terrain.
If this program is implemented, in 10 years the Russian Air Force will be able in less than 7 hours to deliver to any continent a full armored army of 400 heavy tanks with three additional sets of ammunition and personnel to each of them, or about 900 tanks of lighter class. In view of the development of a network of military bases in the Middle East, Latin America and Southeast Asia, which is expected to be completed by the same date, it becomes obvious that the country is preparing for a full-scale military response of transcontinental character.
Source of “Expert Online”, who took part in a special closed meeting, in an interview with our correspondent on condition of anonymity admitted that he was completely shocked by today’s meeting. “Work on the PAK TA (Russian 5-generation fighter) has been ongoing for several years and the need to replace obsolete heavy-transport planes “Ruslan” and Il-76 was discussed under the Ministry of Defense. This is not news.
But such a global target for military transport aircraft is presented for the first time. In fact, for the first time in the world Russia aims to create the operational ability to deliver a full-fledged land forces anywhere in the world. To put in a different perspective, such group would be capable in one flight to deliver, say, to Cuba operational and tactical formation of troops, comparable to the total amount of US and NATO forces in Iraq.
“In the context of the current military doctrine, it defies comprehension, “- said the general. According to him, Russia is now preparing a government contract for research and development and further testing of the new Air Transport. A single aircraft will be able to carry over a distance of up to 7 thousand Km without refueling 5 heavy tanks armed with medium-range missile systems and additional ammunition to them. In just 5 years, 80 aircrafts will be built, which in 7-8 hours can, for example, deliver a whole army of long-range 400 tanks “Armata” on the American continent, or, say, to Australia. Alternatively, it may be air-droppable armored group of more than 900 light tanks “Octopus, SD” or self-propelled artillery units “MSTA-S”.
The speed of the new aircraft according to specs will be 2 thousand. Km / h and range without refueling – 7 thousand Km. The carrying capacity will be at record 200 tons.
http://expert.ru/2015/03/18/transportnik/?123
United States have defaulted on their Imperial obligation of keeping the world peace and order. They allowed rampant greed of the Wall Street to destabilize the economic development of the world. Instead of containing various extremists’ Islamic groups in ME and Nazi groups in Europe, US attempted to use their destructive potential to achieve short term political and economic gains. The Big American Sheriff went rogue, the position left vacant.
Finca: “Russia will build a group of military transport aircraft capable of delivering armored army of 400 heavy tanks “Armata” anywhere in the world in 7 hours”
Inflation in Russia remains at 16.7 percent. Russia is on track for the biggest drop in consumption in more than two decades, with the central bank predicting the economy may shrink as much as 4 percent this year.
Retail sales fell by 7.7 percent year-on-year in February, while real wages plunged 9.9 percent, demonstrating how high inflation is biting deeply into consumers’ pay packets.
Capital investment by Russian companies fell by 6.5 percent year-on-year in February, while unemployment rose.
MOSCOW, March 19 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday it was still too soon to feel confident about the country’s economy, in comments backed up by a raft of fresh data showing a slump in retail sales and wages and rising unemployment.
Putin is funny man. What to do about economy? To hell with ordinary Russian populace. Spend more money on military!
Putin is funny man. What to do about economy? To hell with ordinary Russian populace. Spend more money on military!
Lol! Sounds exactly like any American Prez since Ike.
“Russia is on track for the biggest drop in consumption in more than two decades”
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
King James Bible
Heather comes out against having two Mommies but no Dad. Good on you Heather. That took ovaries.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3001703/Another-mom-never-replaced-father-lost-Woman-raised-lesbian-moms-comes-against-gay-marriage.html
Finca: “Russia will build a group of military transport aircraft capable of delivering armored army of 400 heavy tanks “Armata” anywhere in the world in 7 hours”
Well, if America’s air defense is anything like it was on 9/11, I’d say Russia will lock up, and down, Manhattan and Washington DC in no time flat. In fact, I have no doubt America’s air defense would offer to escort this “Armata” for no additional charge so long as the operation didn’t disrupt The Yellen Queen’s empty guidance and the astrophysical machinations of The Federal Reserve’s Potemkin Monetary System.
See, when it comes to picking off easy target, brown-skinned, towel-wearing savages in the desert, high fructose, cornpone heartland males are lining up to be snipers, but when it comes to a real challenge, like Russia and Russians, cowards behind scopes piss and crap their pants and run and hide under the nearest rock or offer to fight for the other side. Remember the movie Red Dawn? They need to remake it not only because it was one of the cheesiest movies ever made, but also because it needs to be updated for today’s American warrior. If Russia invaded today, it would be a welcoming party. America’s heartland has been co-opted and turned into a giant jelly donut sitting in a Dunkin’ Donuts display case owned by an Indian fresh off the jet from Bombay who’s taken advantage of special programs to destroy European culture in America and replace it with something Pollock would paint — an incoherent and unidentifiable Hershey Squirt that calls itself art.
The JADE HELM 15 drill is a martial law, civil war and “RED LIST” extraction drill
From July 15th to September 15th, 2015, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command is conducting a massive military drill in an area covering the entire American Southwest. At first glance, I thought this drill was a response to the massive military drills being conducted by Russia. I wrongly assumed that Jade Helm 15 was a drill designed to protect the Southwest from an invasion by Russian-backed Latin American military forces (i.e. Red Dawn). However, after reading the operational plan of Jade Helm, it is clear that this drill is about the brutal martial subjugation of the people of Texas, Utah and Southern California who have risen up against some unspecified tyranny. Further, this drill is also about martial law being used as a preventative measure in states which “might” lean towards civil war against the United States government (i.e. California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico).
The term, “unconventional warfare (UW)” makes it clear that this exercise is not dealing with a Russian-backed “Red Dawn” invasion of the Southwestern United States by Russian backed Latin American partners. UW speaks to the guerrilla warfare (asymmetrical) nature of the anticipated and rehearsed conflict. Subsequently, it can be conclusively stated that Jade Helm is not preparing for a Red Dawn invasion, rather, they are preparing for a Red, White and Blue invasion. This is a massive rehearsal for martial law implementation as well as implementing the proverbial and much rumored Red and Blue List and the “snatch and grab” extractions of key resistance figures from the Independent Media as well as uncooperative political figures.
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2015/03/18/the-jade-helm-15-drill-is-a-martial-law-civil-war-and-red-list-extraction-drill/
I hope that US Military will be able to prevent any new Confederacy movement to split the country into helpless State-based micro-formations. All political and economic contradictions should be solved by peaceful means on the Union level. Just take a look on the consequences of disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Say no to modern days anarchists.
Look who’s doing the shooting, look who’s getting shot and look who owns and runs the motel. “Ain’t that America? Home of the free? Little pink houses for you and me?”
…high inflation is biting deeply into consumers’ pay [packets]. – wpa
==============
You forgot to provide attribution for the cut and paste words in ‘your’ comment. 99 out of a hundred Americans would have written pay “checks.”
Good on you Heather. [That took ovaries.] – Janos
================
If YOU thought up that line you’re a genius.
Alas no. Herdsmen. Cows. Other. It was the title of an anthology that came out about the exploits of women, mostly against men I suppose.
Q, CFN is not an academic venue. I cited Reuters for the quote. Attribution is not required for common knowledge.
It is common knowledge Russia is being fucked by Putin [sic] or whoever is feigning him. That is what Putin [sic] said at his [sic] press conference.
The JADE HELM 15 drill is a martial law, civil war and “RED LIST” extraction drill
Can I get one at Lowes or Home Depot? I was thinking of building a scaled-down version of the The Kremlin (like Q. Shtik’s pyramid) in my backyard this weekend and I need a new drill.
Imprison Hillary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lDN5b6ET0I
Go Jeb!
Even the feminazis hate her. Rush, on the other hand, loves her.
Noted Feminist Camille Paglia Unleashes Her True Feelings for Hillary Clinton
Can you imagine Camille and Janos on a dinner date? Food Fight!
TheCornucopians are completely vindicated…
Denmark currently covering 25% of total energy production with wind power…
Figure for Spain is 39%.
Cornucopians routing the cfn hoardes…
Cornucopians routing their own little sewing circle maybe…
Rostislav Ishchenko: Preemptive move
For the second time during this crisis Russia has raised the stakes in the game. Moscow has demonstrated not only its willingness to accept the challenge in the form of military confrontation. What was demonstrated is willingness to full-scale war with NATO.
If you get away from the bird’s diplomatic language, the legend of “spot checks”, which began with the Russian Northern Fleet and gradually covering all the armed forces of Russia is nothing else but last stage preparation for war with United States and its European allies in the conditions of use of conventional arms and the willingness to use nuclear weapons at any time.
Actually, these exercises can be regarded as the deployment of armed forces in the European Theater of Military Operations right before the outbreak of hostilities, under the thin guise of military drills.
By publicizing his Crimea interview, Russian President went to the violation of diplomatic practice, according to which politicians do not speak publicly how exactly they scare each other behind closed doors. Thus he defiantly cut off his retreat. Publicly declared that he would fight, he burned the bridge behind him. And almost simultaneously began military drills, very reminiscent of a pre-war deployment.
On the US proposal to measure up with the number of tanks in the border regions, Russia responded with a demonstration of readiness to send tanks directly on the Norwegian coast, Iskanders – to the Polish border, and strategic aircraft and submarines with nuclear missiles to the coast of the United States.
In general, Europe has been shown that NATO is organization even less effective than the EU: while US will think about whether to go with Russia into nuclear confrontation, European armies will cease to exist.
The Germans and French want to trade with Russia. They do not need a war for Ukrainian or Baltic Nazis, or even for the Polish ambitions. However, recently the Poles also began some thoughtful and somehow unkind glances in the direction of Kiev. The rest of Europe has nothing to fight for (and don’t need to). They are accustomed to the fact that they are protected by the United States.
US are faced with a choice. Take the challenge. So what? Start a war? What’s the occasion? Because of Russian military drills? Yeah, in Los Angeles will be very happy that due to the fact that the Pskov paratroopers shoot some rifles in the snows of the Arctic, the US government put the city under the threat of nuclear attack. After all, that is how it will look.
Do not take the challenge. And how the US will look like? Boasted to everyone that they would give Ukrainian Nazis such weapons, that they will not stop until Japan is reached. Ten tanks were sent to the Baltic. In the Black Sea exercises are held. And as soon as Pskov paratroopers shot some machine guns in the Arctic, retreated? How their European allies could rely on such “defender”?
In general, the United States has once again been caught in a trap, akin to those they themselves have repeatedly tried to place on Russia. Now, any of their possible moves are bad for them. Will they find a decent way out? Perhaps. Is there a danger that they will go the way of increasing tension and provocation of military conflict? There Is.
Actually, it is extremely risky actions of the Russian leadership over the past year and especially during the last month suggest that the world is on the brink of abyss and the danger of stepping over is great.
But Russia cannot leave the game. She is forced to play to win, otherwise simply be destroyed. In this situation, a demonstration of readiness for any eventuality makes the EU think that the allied relations with Washington have brought Europe much further than she had planned, and almost turned it into a battlefield. Europeans do not worry that Ukraine became the battlefield. They were even going to win something. Europeans were very upset when it was revealed that, contrary to their expectations instability beginning to flow from the Ukraine not to Russia, but to the European Union. But the Europeans just did not subscribe to a full-scale war with Russia. They do not even doubt whose tanks would be paraded in whose capitals in this case. And do not want to experiment.
I do believe this to be the most dangerous of times; a time of universal deceit, when what is actually required is pragmatic fact-facing. That makes it more than criminal; that makes it suicidal.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
-T.S. Eliot
Trouble is, ‘pragmatic fact-facing’ depends on actual agreed upon ‘facts’, the one thing the so-called ‘information economy’ is especially bad at producing. In a society inundated with information, “any fact will do” is usually the rule of the day (see any post by wpa-ccc and his related sycophants).
Fortunately for us all, as the cheap energy-enabled information economy fades into the rear view mirror, so will its illusions. Not soon enough to save us for sure, but soon enough for a handful of us at least to see it as the fraudulent malignant creature it always was.
“Trouble is, ‘pragmatic fact-facing’ depends on actual agreed upon ‘facts’…”
DA,
Aye, there’s the rub!
I agree with your refinement of the point. I’ll revise for clarity:
***********
I do believe this to be the most dangerous of times; a time of universal deceit, when what is actually required is pragmatic fact-facing. That makes *this venal deceit* more than criminal; that makes it suicidal.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
-T.S. Eliot
***************
We then note the slippery side of the beast with this ‘WTF?’ response:
“Post-collapse, trust will be the determining factor. Survival depends upon one’s integrity within a locally shared community.
Years and years of deception can lead to one’s demise. Ipso facto,
Zed’s dead, baby”. -errand boy
True enough.
Now, aside from the cryptic comment on “Zed”, I advise that he take his own advice very seriously! Otherwise this is what I’d imagine the “career path” would look like in a no-bullshit-tolerated world: Liar –> Outcast –> Thief –> Fugitive.
How on Earth could you possibly know that I whuz watching that S2 criminal minds episode, with the TS quotes (Ayup – 2)?!?
Hottest 3 months on the planet (Jan/Feb/Mar). Believ *DAT*. Any time’s a good time to stop clearcutting the Amazon…
“Hottest 3 months on the planet (Jan/Feb/Mar). Believ *DAT*. Any time’s a good time to stop clearcutting the Amazon…”
ZCD,
I’ve been following these reports as well. As to the butchery of the planets O2 providers for profit and debt-paying, I suppose we’ll have to find a way to take the profit motive out of it. These days, that’s the only way that these ‘enterprises’ come to an end. (IOW, I don’t see much hope for the you-man beans.)
TS Eliot quote?
Not to worry. Total co-wink-a-dink, my friend! (I do not/could not care less what my neighbors watch, read or do as long as no one gets hurt; only a paranoid-delusional gov’t. with pretensions of empire would go that route… as we have seen.)
ZCD/ZED? Profit motive? All THEIR profits are *external costs*, PERIOD. Got a degree in economics? I hope NOT.
I know – lattice of coincidence/synchronicity/holographic universe. Learning, indeed?!…
Our last hope is to keep that CO2 eating Amazon alive – alas, I think WE’VE already clearcut it 60% (Saharan desert, circa 5-6k BC)…
Thanks, Ozone, for that T.S. Eliot quote. Perfect for CFN.
Post-collapse, trust will be the determining factor. Survival depends upon one’s integrity within a locally shared community.
Years and years of deception can lead to one’s demise. Ipso facto,
Zed’s dead, baby.
If by Zed you mean American Exceptionalist Global Energy Exploitation you are correct. That is indeed almost dead. Whether it’s by means of other human nations with an actual backbone (Russia and China) standing up and asserting themselves, or whether it’s simply by means of short-sided American exhaustion of resources, it will come either way.
But the best part is that the handful of plutocratic elites who planned this fairly simple end game will have so much fun watching it all play out at your expense, all while you continue to sing the praises of the system they set up to steal it all from you in the first place.
Zed is dead? Might be. Look in the mirror dipshit. Zed is YOU!
Finca, “…extremely risky actions of the Russian leadership over the past year and especially during the last month suggest that the world is on the brink of abyss and the danger of stepping over is great.”
Finca, Russia is a minor regional player under dire economic stress. There is no appetite among the Russian people to take on the world militarily. Your posts about the big bad Russian miliary do not scare.
There is a saying in Spanish: “Perro que ladra no muerde”
Finca, Russia está ladrando demasiado.
“Perro que ladra no muerde” — wpa
No morir un idiota
He’s a fucking poseur, ain’t he?
Foda se is still my favorite.
There’s a saying in English too: “You’re a fucking idiot!” It translates well.
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/600-students-expelled-for-cheating-on-school-exams-114126604867.html
Parents scaling the building to throw little cheat sheets through the windows. Ichabod or the Glory is departed.
“Finca, Russia is a minor regional player under dire economic stress.”
Remember, all those talks about Putin’s hundreds of billions in hidden fortune? I guess now we know where they are – he wisely invested them.
Don’t think thou that they are happy when those investments are showing up in US coastal waters or on the Polish border.
That’s an awfully expensive way to commit suicide. I can think of cheaper ways. Guns are cheap, and so too is cyanide. Hell, with his connections, he can use the same formula they use in Oregon for those who wish to take their lives in a state-sanctioned manner at a fraction of the cost of his military budget. He’s not a very astute businessman, but that’s what you get when you don’t have shareholders to answer to.
If Zed isn’t dead, he or his doppelgänglia will be very soon at this rate.
Foda se!
“That’s an awfully expensive way to commit suicide” — Cold
Well, as any Russian will tell you: “Can’t kill us all”….
Russians are a lot like cockroaches. Even nuclear armageddon isn’t a guarantee of their annihilation.
My plan is the only plan that will work. Pen them in on the reservation called Russia and let them devour each other, literally and figuratively. It’s the only way to cure the Russian disease.
Lol! Plug American for Russian and I think you’ve got it! Unfortunately for us all, the US Capitalism disease is a good deal more virulent than that.
There’s this massive glacier, it goes from the Arctic to Long Island Sound, just like the one 20,000 years ago that covered the northern hemisphere, and when it melted about 10,000 years ago created the rivers, lakes and streams we know and enjoy today. That glacier just inched along at a slow rate, pushing up mountains, making valleys, scraping off topsoil. This current glacier is packed tight in my front yard, hard as granite, intractable, two feet hight. Does granite melt? With the nights down to 8dF, this snowpack won’t melt off until the month of May.
And I’ve got cabin fever.
brh
“I stand here today as a member of the University of Virginia and Charlottesville communities.
“I’m shocked that my face was slammed into the brick pavement just across the street from where I attend school. Three officers then pinned me to the ground, pressing their knees into my back while blood flowed freely from the gash to my head. As the officer held me down, one thought raced through my mind: How could this happen?
“My head lay bloodied, but unbowed. I still believe in our community. I know this community will support me during this time. I trust that the scars on my face and head will soon heal. But the trauma from what the ABC officers did yesterday will stay with me forever. I believe we as a community are better than this. We can not allow the actions of a few officers ruin the community of trust we’ve worked so hard to build.”
The student did not resist in any way but was charged with “obstruction of justice WITHOUT force” and got his face forcefully bashed against the concrete.
I’d love to hear from all the “well if he would just comply” people, like P4W, on this one. The student is on the school Honor Committee on full scholarship, with the UVa dean and state governor backing him up.
Oh, the student is Black.
I can’t breathe.
I saw the coverage of this on BNN. But even better was the Black murderer found hanging from a tree in Mississippi. Erin Burnett had the unmitigated gall to compare it to the fate of Emmett Till. I didn’t know Till was a murderer let out early on parole. It just goes to show, BNN will look high and low to find ridiculous catalytic examples for the race war they’re trying to foment. Good thing nobody’s buying it. I only watch for the cleavage. Life Is Good — sometimes.
How about events in Longmont, Colorado, expectant mother 7 months pregnant answers craigslist ad for baby clothes, has baby cut out of her stomach by woman who placed ad. Baby is dead, woman survived. (Will she ever recover?) The assailant is a black woman, under arrest.
Hopefully they didn’t bloody her up when they arrested her, although she was already pretty bloody, no doubt, from the involuntary and unprofessional abortion she administered. BNN should be all over this. This Black women’s rights activist had her rights trampled by the racist, authoritarian, paternalistic police. The abortion she administered was her peaceful protest.
He resisted arrest and got scratched. Big deal. Boo Hoo. Meanwhile Blacks commit mayhem like the Knoxville Massacre and it goes unreported.
And yet Janos runs his uninformed racist mouth daily likewise without penalty. Where’s the justice?
We’re at Peak Negro here in White America. You better get your head straight or you’ll end up on the other side of the fence – the dark side.
Penalty? So much for the First Amendment. Are you even an American? In your heart that is?
brh: “Does granite melt?”
No, try dynamite.
Dynamite melts?
Cold: “Russians are a lot like cockroaches. Even nuclear armageddon isn’t a guarantee of their annihilation.”
Cold, you are feeding Russian paranoia that could lead to WWIII. Unless that was your intention. You seem bored, in need of a distraction.
Besides you, no one is calling for Janos-type extermination of Russians. Not Obama, not me, nobody. Whoever this Putin guy is, he is weakening Russia. No need to eliminate all Russians… some of the elite who are hurting might have some ideas, though about one Russian ex-KGB agent.
It’s not me — I’m just repeating what I saw at another space to gauge the temperature of the audience here. I love Russians. The world wouldn’t be the same without them. America wouldn’t be the same without Russia. Russia makes America look good in comparison just as sorrow makes joy all the more appealing. It’s a yin-yang thing. Way to keep it honest, wpa. In fact, you’re so earnest, you could be Obama’s Press Secretary? Have you ever considered applying for the job?
Forbes: Russia Targets NATO With Military Exercises
Russian military exercises, the latest in a series across the country, have taken on a threatening posture. While the most recent installment is not the largest exercise Russia has conducted, the areas involved and the forces included seem to have been deliberately chosen to send a warning to NATO; the exercise itself seems to simulate a full-scale confrontation with NATO through the forward deployment of nuclear armed submarines, theater ballistic missiles and strategic bomber aircraft. Strategic weapon systems, including assets that are part of Russia’s nuclear capabilities, have also been deployed to locations near NATO’s borders.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2015/03/20/russia-targets-nato-with-military-exercises/
I remain confident that US idiocy will yet subside, if only based on personal profit motive. Seems that’s all we have left these days.
this whole russia thing is way too melodramatic. on the brink of wwiii, lol, moscow ready to wage fullscale war LOL
this socalled energy blog has really veered off course the past few months.
like wpa says, with the global oil glut, the Cornucopians/energy ascenters are having a field day with their downtrodden endtyme opponents.
ergo the attention deflecting, endless rehash of handwringing about allegedly arcane financing schemes, uncle fed, ad nauseum.
just read that Germany, which is an extremely UNsunny country, gets 7% of its energy from the sun, and fully 17% from combined sun and wind.
Denmark and Spain currently using wind+solar to provide 11% and 39% of their total energy production, respectively.
technofantasy? too much magic?
fodase, it´s called progress, get used to it, it´s here to stay and coming to a reality near you today.
Actually, it’s called propaganda, it’s here for as long as it lasts, and it’s based on wishful thinking, not on any sort of reality that’s going to last.
Attractive? Yes. Truthful? No.
Some people’s kids!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D5PtyrewSs
Cold, there is an earnest person in that position already. Keepin’ it 100% real.
Solar, on a dollar per kilowatt hour, competes on its own compared to other unsubsidized sources (oil, coal, nuclear, etc.) Wind is even better.
Using an Unsubsidized Levelized Cost of Energy Comparison ($/MWh):
$37 … Wind
$60 … Solar
$66 … Coal
$92 … Nuclear
Solar and Wind are the cheapest.
The conventional sources are even more expensive if you take into account potential social and environmental externalities (e.g., social costs of distributed generation, environmental consequences of certain conventional generation technologies, etc.)
Actually, you’re keeping it 100% bullshit like you always do. But that said…
Yes, Cold, I can tell you why alternative energy is cheaper than conventional sources.
Over the last five years, wind and solar PV have become increasingly cost-competitive with conventional generation technologies, on an unsubsidized basis, in light of material declines in the pricing of system components (e.g., panels, inverters, racking, turbines, etc.), and dramatic improvements in efficiency, among other factors.
Turns out it isn’t “magic” after all. Just technology at work.
Fossil fuels are being replaced with CHEAPER, ZERO EMISSION, AND SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY.
Green shoots, baby!
All being manufactured, distributed by, and maintained using old fashioned dirty oil technologies, while they last at least. It’s nice to know cornucopianism is still alive and well in the land of wpa, where the earth gushes forth free energy and profits for opportunistic humans of the capitalist persuasion forever and ever, Amen! Gives me renewed faith in the world!
Yeah, what he said.
March 16, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —
SolarCity® (NASDAQ: SCTY),
America’s #1 solar power provider, today unveiled GridLogic, a microgrid service that combines distributed energy resources—solar, batteries and controllable load—to enable a cleaner, more resilient and more affordable way of providing power. SolarCity’s microgrid service ensures that any community anywhere in the world vulnerable to power outages and high energy costs—including remote or island communities, hospitals and military bases—can have dependable, clean power when the grid is down. GridLogic can operate either in conjunction with or independently of the utility grid.
How much are you in for wpa?
DA: “How much are you in for wpa?”
I am not incarcerated, DA.
I think what @$$ soker is trying to say, is that he’s fully leveraged, to the hilt, through margins. Hah!
East coast abberration, indeed! NOYCE!!!
And, yes – I am completely unawares – of the palm oil plantations *DOWN THERE*…
DA is your typical inept CFNer who counters stats like Spain using wind energy to produce 40% of its electrical energy with arguments such as ´bullshit´ and oh you must be on the take.
In other words, he has no counterargument to offer, he just gets mad LOL because he lives in the CFN apocalyptic world that runs on baseless conjecture that is laughable in the face of real world advances.
DA, what if solar panels/wind turbines are manufactured and transported using clean energy produced by solar/wind installations?
Even if, as you state, solar and wind are produced using petroleum initially, they still are contributing in excess of 100% of Denmarks energy needs on certain days, and routinely provide 10-30%.Thats millions of barrels of petroleum that will never be needed now and in the future.
You girls need to admit the abject failure of your energy descent scenario. The world is spilling over in oil, in part thanks to alt energy, which is approaching critical mass in making fossil fuels a minority player. And, with that, your world view is finally smashed for good.
Just checked, and Spain producing 38% of its electricity with wind power. Denmark at 12% with wind.
Grow up and accept defeat. At least learn to argue using things called reasons, and not your stupid childish retorts.
Its telling how JHK has fallen wholly silent on oil…
http://www.eutimes.net/2015/03/top-us-commander-under-arrest-for-refusing-to-fire-nukes-at-russia/
Anyone hear anything about this? Hoax or are things really getting to this level of bad.
Does not sound credible. No confirmation in Russian press.
European Union Times:
“Almost every piece of information the site proffers about the world and, more worryingly, itself, is a demonstrably deliberate falsehood. Anyone who takes the site seriously, despite the evidence of its utter unreliability and lunatic views which springs to the eye almost immediately upon visiting it, is either a Nazi, a blind ideologue or a complete idiot.”
Situation is very tense, but there is hope that this idiocy will not explode.
Have any of you CFNers ever read “Thus Spoke Zarathustra’s Wife”?
I see that it’s like old times here at CFN. WPA-CCC, aka Asoka, is ramping up to produce about 40% of total posts whilst probably claiming, as he did in the past, that he has such a “full” life. His offense to people’s ability to COUNT is simply sociopathic. If you’re here morning, afternoon, and evening for weeks on end, your life is anything but full.
And yet with all that time on his hands he makes claims like King Hubbert has been “invalidated” when even with feverish shale production from the Dakotas down to the Permian Basin we’re still two million bbd short of Hubbert’s Peak. Ask any petroleum engineer what the lifespan of a shale well is and you’ll see quickly that the “bonanza” is short-lived and energy intensive.
We’ll get more oil and gasoline for about the next six or seven years and then we’ll have a natural gas problem because these low ERoEI wells don’t just spew petroleum without a concurrent depletion of other forms of energy.
What do you think, this Pope, Pope Francis, when he has his special sit down dinner with gay, HIV infected and transgendered prisoners next week, he’ll be discussing the fate of Christians in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen? And maybe come up with a plan to try to save some of them. They’re being slaughtered by the thousands, and a Church spokesman in Iraq stated last week it is possible all Christians in the Levant will be exterminated if something is not done. I think they better start looking elsewhere for help other than Rome, which is focused on more important issues.
This is a good example of how weak and pathetic the west has become. New book out titled ‘Inside ISIS’ by a British author, documents the fate of Christian women captured by ISIS. Needless to say it isn’t pretty. Where’s Code Pink?
brh
If the US will not do anything, their role in the world through 3-5-7 years will be reduced to Australia with nuclear missiles. Is someone in the world wondering what is happening in the global periphery, God knows where, in some Australia? All American icons – Pepsi, Madonna, Rock and Roll, Big Mac, Hollywood will be signs of a deep and settling provincialism and therefore lose their “divine” power to the masses. US actively resist it. With that, with each attempt, US actions are becoming increasingly chaotic. If they had previously tried to set up a controlled chaos everywhere except in its own territory, now the chaos began to degrade US itself. US concept of dominance has lost harmony and consistency. It has collided with another concept (Russia and China), which is a more systematic and more in the interests of the vast majority of countries in the world.
In addition, previously not observed contradictions in the United States in the form of the struggle, but not between the two parties, as we everybody assumed – Republicans and Democrats, but two conceptual views of the world – the “party of war” and “party of peace” who are personified by Clinton – McCain and Obama – Bush clans, periodically spill into the public sphere. Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize – for the fact that he has not allowed to power in US representative of the “war party” – Hillary Clinton, otherwise we already would be in World War III.
And now we are talking about the possibility of criminal proceedings against Hillary Clinton. And it is almost open confrontation in the United States between the two most influential and almost equal in power groups, which we have not seen since the Civil War. United States itself, if not on the verge of collapse, given the economic situation and the situation with the elite who are on the brink of declaring war with each other, in a very difficult position. And in order to prevent a collapse from the inside, they are forced to dump internal imperial rifts on the outside world, just as they shed their excess dollar supply internationally, so it would not explode US financial markets.
As a result, we are now witnessing the emergence here and there of new hot spots. The rate of their occurrence increases significantly. Recall unrest in Hong Kong, Venezuela, Ukraine last year, Arab Spring earlier, the war in Syria, now ISIS in Iraq, and the war continued in Ukraine today – attempts to lead the world out of balance only intensified.
Last week in Brazil have been demonstrations of millions similar to Hong Kong, allegedly in order to protest the policy of President of the country Dilma Rousseff, but in fact to show her that you should not sing in one ensemble with Russia and China. This week, being clearly unhappy with Germany’s decision to join the Asian Bank set up by China and insufficiently tough on Russia on the crisis in Ukraine, US “party of war” organized mass protests in Frankfurt. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to predict – as soon as a country or its elite will move towards independence and move away from America, there will immediately be rallies, demonstrations, Breivik in Norway, Charlie Hebdo in Paris, etc., i.e. some stormy episode to demonstrate the threat to power and stability of the country.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1907037.html
From Norway to Brazil to this”
“And now we are talking about the possibility of criminal proceedings against Hillary Clinton. And it is almost open confrontation in the United States between the two most influential and almost equal in power groups, which we have not seen since the Civil War. ”
LOL! Come on Finca, the author of this article is spreading themselves way too thin; thin as in transparently naive.
First of all the “criminal proceedings” mentioned in the article is nothing more than a kangaroo court convened by the GOP congressional lunatics.
The upshot of such a “trial” will only be a mobilization of the Dem base and when that happens it’s lights out for the GOP as their only hope is an apathetic, low turnout election.
And BTW, “Clinton Witch Hunts” have only been around for about the last 25 years or so. That sad old tired narrative will only serve to remind people how good they had it before the 2000 election was stolen by the SCOTUS: Back when Clinton prosperity yielded to GOP economics otherwise known as “Tax Breaks For The Rich”.
“Clinton prosperity”? I say it was looting of the USSR heritage prosperity. What the hell Clinton did? Build a Hoover Dam? Send Man to the Moon? Invented Internet?
Ah, yes, he for 40 days bombed the hell out of defenseless Belgrade, destroyed the US Banking system by revoking Glass Steagal, and gave China “preferred trading status” to make it easier to ship your jobs there. Oh yes, he allowed derivatives
We came, we saw, he died — Hillary Bloody Clinton
Le Monde: US threatened Germany with sanctions if it gives asylum to Ed Snowden
Vice-Chancellor of Germany Sigmar Gabriel said that his government has received from the United States “very clear warning”: if Germany will give asylum to former US intelligence officer Edward Snowden, US will impose sanctions against it, US decided to start with stopping of cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2015/03/19/les-etats-unis-ont-menace-l-allemagne-de-sanctions-si-elle-accueillait-edward-snowden_4597279_4408996.html?xtmc=russie&xtcr=1
Clear warning: take Snowden and face explosion of terrorism on German soil.
Russian Army large-scale drills ended
MOSCOW, March 21. / TASS /. Unannounced inspections of Russian Armed Forces, which began on March 16 ended. Troops involved received the command to return to places of permanent deployment.
This was reported today by the press service of the Defense Ministry and information.
http://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/1845948
Everybody still in one piece? No analytic details yet, just not this time….
An excellent interview
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37675.htm
Yes, Prof. Hudson is good, unfortunately, he tells the story that everyone (except Americans) know by now – all that liberal economic mambo-jumbo is a cover story for looting operation.
I wonder, who is in good senses listening to anything they say? Only question that bothers me – do these “economists” know, or they are so fucking stupid that they believe the story they’re telling themselves?
Remember, the herd is always placed between two lies to choose from – Peter Schiff (or whoever on one side), Fed Reserve chairwomen Yellen on the other, both spilling complete BS, just one question – do they know it?
We can keep this place going on lies, Bullsh-t, subterfuge, fraud, scams and hoaxes till the end of time. Who’s going to stop us?
There is human capital out there ripe for exploitation — 5 billion 3rd worlders eager to get in here and willing to work for pennies — just so long as they can visit Vegas for at least one weekend before they die.
brh
Because the truth is, when you get right down to it, if you’re not farming, mining, fishing or manufacturing something useful, you are involved in some sort of swindle. And that’s a fact.
brh
“if you’re not farming, mining, fishing or manufacturing something useful”
And teaching, and healing, and drawing, and coding, and playing music, and writing books, …….
It’s all about the money. A few weeks ago I posted an admission by a German journalist about why he lied for the CIA.
It’s all about rewards and punishments. If you toe the party line and lie for them, you’ll be paid handsomely and invited to gatherings with a trajectory upwards.
If you don’t you’re marginalized don’t make money and could lose your job.
Hudson may find an audience among us, as JHK, but the larger mass of people never hear about them.
They just don’t know who they are, because there is no mass media letting them speak.
Switch to RT – Hudson is there, turn off CNN.
“There seems to be such a dispirited, depressive feeling among debtors there is very little we can do besides talk to people like you and other sites and write our books.” –Michael Hudson
We can be thankful we have happy places like CFN … where happy people, like Therian, still know how to COUNT.
Thanks, BT, for sharing that interview.
Finca: “U.S. …. through 3-5-7 years will be reduced to Australia”
Finca: “God knows where, in some Australia?”
Finca, why do you say “reduced” to Australia? Australia is a fine country, something U.S. can aspire toward.
Why this need by China, US, Russia to be superpower when they could be Australia?
Finca, please stop Australia bashing. You should apologize to the fine citizens of Australia who do not suffer from power-madness disease.
“Because the truth is, when you get right down to it, if you’re not farming, mining, fishing or manufacturing something useful, you are involved in some sort of swindle. And that’s a fact.” –brh
Aren’t there some other activities you approve of? Like hunting, where is swindle? What about posting to CFN, where is swindle?
Does anyone make money posting to CFN?
If so, where do I get some?
Brazilian protests the other day were nothing like Hong Kong. They only lasted a few hours and had maybe 2 million people.
Also, they had NOTHING to do with Brazil and the ‘ Russia China ensemble’, Finca.
People are just fed up with rising prices, super massive corruption and no fucking personal safety in this semi-shambles of a country. Things just getting worse and worse. A single Petrobras criminal asshole was forced to return about $60 million in stolen money the other day from overseas – just the part they could find.
This while millions of people make $300 a month and gas is $4 a gallon in a country that exports petroleum.
The whole scandal is about in the $1+ billion range, I believe.
Cut the WWIII Russia nonsense already.
I’ll bet you $10,000 that the US will NOT be relegated to Australia’s status within 3-5-7 years as you say. More hyperbolic nonsense.
I really admire you for making a go of it in Central/S. American on a farm, Russians are incredibly resourceful & intelligent people, and have given humanity untold treasures.
Germany produced 12 GWh of solar electricity in the past 24 hours.
too much magic? technofantasy?
only the blind would opine that the world is running out of energy.
We’ve never had the ability to tap as much. Energy, like hydrogen, is limitless, and will never run out. That goes for petroleum as well. We’ll simply grab carbon from the atmosphere, arrange the molecules and create it.
Carbon, like water, can be endlessly recycled to produce fuels.
Yeah, I know you don’t believe it.
The same was said of solar and wind power 30 years ago and less. Except that on some days, Germany, Denmark and Spain get up to 60-100% of their energy requirements covered by solar+wind.
And the world hasn’t even begun to tap these resources.
Spain currently producing 23% of all electricity via wind power, as we speak. They typically do 40% EACH DAY using the wind.
Argue with that, punk
“They typically do 40% EACH DAY using the wind. Argue with that, punk” — fodase
Yeah, DA. What he said.
When alternative sources are providing 95% energy worldwide, some on CFN will still be braying: “It’s still all about the oil.”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Ozone: ” this is what I’d imagine the “career path” would look like in a no-bullshit-tolerated world: Liar –> Outcast –> Thief –> Fugitive.”
Ozone, your career path is incomplete. It should be:
Liar –> Outcast –> Thief –> Fugitive–>Dead.
Keep it real, Ozone.
wpa, tag, rest in the corner of the ring lol
i think the cfn´ers have had enuf of a brow beating about energy, on which JHK has been awol for eons.
guess thats what happens when reality keeps whipping your main arguments ass for years on end.
a global oil glut, energy prices in freefall, massive rampups in alternative (that term will soon cease to apply).
seems their broker is ef hutton
We all need to heed Ozone and his career path:
Truthteller –> Embraced –> Loved –> Honored–>Dead
Ozone’s Yankee Puritanism will not alter the final outcome of his life.
memento mori
“–>Dead”
Wow, you really fixated on the *death* meme. I guess sock puppetry not paying off so well, in THIS short run… You should really tune down your 4-year-old welles alias – just SAYIN’.
Ozone doesn’t claim Yankee status, even tho he lives in the heart of Yankee Country. (not far from where Hawthorne and Melville summered). He’s from western NY State. There is a difference.
brh
“guess thats what happens when reality keeps whipping your main arguments ass for years on end.” fodase
Yes, I have to admit it is satisfying that they have gone silent after listening to their vociferous pontificating about the laws of physics and how reality was going to slap us up the side of the head. All they are capable of now is ad hominem insult. Facing facts and letting go of dogma is never easy. Their silence on energy is an admission of defeat even though they may not yet realize it. Technology marches on.
Large scale storage is a problem because it is large scale. The needs of a utility are vastly different than the needs of an individual home. So tackling the problem of storage would seem to make the most sense if done on a small scale. GTM Research expects home battery storage to grow into a billion dollar a year money generator by 2018. That’s only three years away. Solar City, a large solar installer, is already offering battery storage for home use. They describe their system as:
“…a cost-effective, wall-mounted storage appliance that is small, powerful and covered by a long lasting full 10 year warranty.”
So our homes become a micro-grid.
Get small and be free!
“Get small and be free!”
Get small and get squashed!
Danish minister quarrels with Russian ambassador
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Russia’s ambassador to Denmark has said Moscow could send nuclear missiles against ships from the Scandinavian NATO country if it joins the alliance’s missile defense system.
Ambassador Mikhail Vanin’s comments, published in newspaper Jyllands-Posten Saturday, prompted an angry response from Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard.
“I do not think Danes fully understand the consequences of what happens if Denmark joins the U.S.-led missile defense. If this happens, Danish warships become targets for Russian nuclear missiles,” Vanin was quoted as saying by the daily.
http://news.yahoo.com/danish-minister-quarrels-russian-ambassador-140312011.html
“We can keep this place going on lies, Bullsh-t, subterfuge, fraud, scams and hoaxes till the end of time. ” – brh
I wish you were right, brh – I am too old to adjust to whatever comes next, but I don’t think it’ll pass this time.
If it was coming from Alex Jones, Rense or whatever – you’d probably be on the money, but its coming now from very serious motherf*ckers.
“If this happens, Danish warships become targets for Russian nuclear missiles”
Finca, “becoming a target” just means missiles are pointing in that direction. Most of our lives we have been targets of some country’s missiles. BFD.
As long as a Democrat is in the White House, like Obama or Clinton, we are safe because ain’t nobody gonna mess with the USA, or allies of the USA, with a Democrat in the White House.
When we last had a Republican in the White House we were attacked, and lost big skyscraper towers, thousands of lives, and three Trillion dollars by stupidly invading the wrong country. We’re still paying for that error.
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph Stiglitz
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Trillion-Dollar-War-Conflict-ebook/dp/B0041OTAY8/
“Does anyone make money posting to CFN? If so, where do I get some?” –BT
=========
BT, my guess is only idiots get paid and you are much too intelligent to qualify for a paid gig…
With the excessive volume of YOUR posting it’s as if you’re getting paid but we all know you’re just a get-a-life loser.
Fince in the mountains wins this years funniest quote. Russian nuclear missiles against Danish warships!!!!!
hahahahahahahah!!!!!
The mere idea of needing a fucking NUCLEAR missile to take out a ship is beyond laughable. Second, DANISH warships LOL
Didnt know Denmark was much known for being a military threat to Rossiya….HAHAHAH, especially their ships HAHAHALOL
Tx for the great Laugh Finca, man i love russians (I am 3rd gen AMerican of polish stock) but that is the funniest joke i have heard in Ages!!!
Zcrypdik – STFU with ur stipid ´sockpuppetry´ non-remark. if you punks can´t argue based on fact and need to revert to ad hominems…i´m sure DA or Therian will now chime in with ´bullshit´ and other highly relevant
´ arguments´ , after which our side will cite something real, demonstrable. so tiresome dealing with products of the US education system that don´t know the basics of debate.
and these kinds of folks vote….omg
guess that´s all that´s left of your side´s non-arguments. where´s your beloved leader backing you up , by the way….silence.
JHK, why don´t you ever respond to the alt energy successes we constantly point out.
jimmy constantly points out that europeans have great walkable cities and slim, healthy and educated denizens on that continent…but conveniently forgets that they are showing the world that alt energy will replace fossil fuels within 2 or 3 decades.
JHK, i´m disappointed you´ve thrown your lot in with ill-informed hangers on who can´t argue their way out of a paper bag.
jesus christ man. blog used to at least have pros and cons.
nevertheless, we salute you as we soar high, high above you into the glorious age of scientific enlightenment, boundless knowledge and advances on all fronts, as you goad your mule to pull harder on your iron plow and revel in the thought of your gold and foodstores.
Best rant from Welles yet. LMAO
BTW, the expression is “wet” paper bag.
“Zcrypdik – STFU with ur stipid ´sockpuppetry´ non-remark. if you punks can´t argue based on fact and need to revert to ad hominems…i´m sure DA or Therian will now chime in with ´bullshit´ and other highly relevant
´ arguments´ , after which our side will cite something real, demonstrable. so tiresome dealing with products of the US education system that don´t know the basics of debate.
and these kinds of folks vote….omg”
HAHAHALOL, no doubt – tell us all how it’s done, Master Debator… Or should I say, *BUSTED*!!!
I hope that mudhut in the Amazon clearcut is serving you well(es)…
OMG – Q on the ball (thread down) – what does he *think*?!?
“we all know you’re just a get-a-life loser.”
Therian, nobody wins… and nobody gets out alive. Not even the plutocrats, bankers, TPTB, and crooks of the 1%… not even Janet Yellen or any of the others, like Janet Yellen, CFN likes to predictably rail against… now that this is a finance blog and not a peak oil blog.
Your predictions of six years ago failed. Oil is not $200 a barrel, the banking system did not collapse, QE did not result in hyperinflation, gold was not a good investment, etc. Stimulus spending worked. Good paying manufacturing jobs are being created. The DOW has never dropped to 4,000, the dollar is stronger now, U-6 unemployment is down, etc.
And your only response is ad hominem… which makes no sense because I am vindicated. The cornucopians are vindicated.
My predictions? I never recommended gold as a “good investment”. Stimulus spending has made real, inflation-adjusted wages DECLINE since 2008 and the disparity between rich and poor greater than at any time in the history of the USA. My “ad hominem” is ACCURATE which really chaps your hide i.e., you have no life so you clog up this blog with your relentless litany of half-truths.
U-6 unemployment? Bwa-hahahahaha!! I already pointed at Workforce Participation AND refuted your theories about why it’s down so let’s not revisit an argument that is finished. The cornucopians are only “right” for the one-percenters. For everyone else they’re miserably incorrect.
If you think a job sector where McDonalds and Walmart are our major employers to be healthy there’s nothing I can do further to rectify your delusional thinking nor will I try because I HAVE A LIFE.
“ill-informed hangers on who can´t argue their way out of a paper bag.”
fodase, great description! And that includes Mr. Critical Thinking himself, former Teacher of the Year now retired, who in all his years of teaching computer science at a community college never came against one, not one, Black student who could be taught computer programming. Now known as Therian… he claims he can COUNT and has not overcome his penchant to use all caps, like he did back in 2011 when he swore the European Union was within days of collapse.
These fear-mongering clowns just want to scare each other because they have special access to secret information from the Iluminati or the Bilderbergers or somebody about… oh, take your pick… the FEMA camps which never materialized, or the revocation of the 2nd Amendment which never happened or how we were going to be wiped out by… take your pick: H1N1, bird flu, ebola, etc. Now it is Russia and World War III… we stand at the abyss… be afraid, be very afraid.
CFN is amusing. I give it that.
In a former post, you confused ALL of Kunstler’s predictions with mine but truth or untruth has never unduly concerned you because you have a diminished superego.
That “paper bag” is one you’ve never been able to argue your way out of. You can’t have it both ways and say the bankers have rescued us, on the one hand, and destroyed our economy by financing wars (your Stiglitz citing) on the other. You also know NOTHING about banking. Nothing!! The FEMA camps that “never materialized” started in 1984 under the Rex 84 program which was not a secret then nor now. They’re still building.
If you’re going to argue with ME, then argue with MY points, not the collective writings of all people who are your adversaries on the blog. It’s sad that with your surge of posts, the blog now stands ruined as it was a couple of years ago. A shame really.
“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people”.
-John Adams
Ayn Rand, in her novel “Atlas Shrugged,” reminded us that “when you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good.”
No justice, no peace. Black lives matter. John Q. Adams acted immorally.
As an American diplomat and as Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams had to advocate the interests of slaveowners, and he did so with his full determination and ability. Further, when Secretary of State Adams confronted the incident of the Antelope, a slave ship captured by a U.S. Treasury cutter, he showed himself startlingly indifferent to the fate of the enslaved men, women, and children who were the ship’s cargo.
You quoting Ayn Rand is hilarious for starters, especially when she most certainly was not referring to YOUR definition of “justice”. If Ayn Rand was alive today she would detest the likes of you. She was a model for libertarians and far-right conservatives. Do you even know the context of her quote? Likely not because the “evil means of survival” is through black market activities. She was a great believer in the American industrial system.
She also hated just about all the groups that liberals love like homosexuals and American Indians. Your quote is out of context but, I repeat, and will continue repeating, that truth vs. falsehood is not your concern but rather winning arguments through shady reasoning involving tactics like this, cherrypicked stats (or lack thereof like your “refutation” of King Hubbert which is incorrect because US peak oil remains 1973 … sorry dude), and half-truths.
Now, it’s time to act as if you don’t exist because if “existence” means what it meant when the word came into existence (from the Latin “ex sistere” which means to “stand outside oneself”) then you do not exist. You stand firmly inside yourself because THIS … is your life and no person can be on a blog 8 hours a day and have an actual life. True two years ago, true today. Bye bye!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w6QYPzF2TI
On March 20, 2015, started a new electronic gold fixing based on CME / ICE-LBMA-Reuters. Six banks will take part in the auction – Barclays, HSBC, Bank of Nova Scotia, Societe Generale, UBS, the name of the sixth banks has not been disclosed. It is learned that Chinese banks at this stage will not be admitted to fixing, despite the submitted bids.
Given China’s share in the global gold market, this may lead to an increase in conflicts and the establishment of China’s own system of fixing at SGE quotes in RMB. According to Barclays bank, in 2020 China could consume half of the world’s physical supply of gold.
Perhaps we are witnessing the separation of gold trade into two circuits. West will continue to trade in “paper” gold; real gold will continue to accumulate in Russia, China and other BRICS countries.
How President Clinton destroyed the rival to US dollar
By early 1999, the European Union has prepared a big surprise for the US – the euro. However virtual, it was very dangerous for the US economy. Washington was threatened with more trouble. After all, the Democratic president, Bill Clinton was able for the first time in a long period to reduce country’s external debt, reduce unemployment.
And then it could all go to the dogs, the efforts of the White House would have failed. In the global financial system before 1999 the dollar did not have a competitor. The population of the Third World, at least three billion people, kept their stash in US dollars. The bulk of the foreign exchange reserves of the Central banks were kept in dollars as well. In the entire history of the twentieth century printing dollars was by far the most profitable enterprise.
On January 1, 1999 Europe inflicts the first blow to the monopoly of the dollar – creates a single European currency. There is a single market comparable in size to the US. Europe would soon get the Seigniorage (the difference between the value of money and the cost to produce and distribute it). Clinton at all behind closed doors meetings said: “The single European currency – is a threat to US national security. We must look for the ways to make money around the world to be kept only in America”
Clinton urgently needed a “lifeline” – instability-driven center in Europe. The CIA has been working on project “Kosovo” for several years. In February, the US peace talks failed in Rambouillet. Here was the first time there was Hashim Thaci. He, along with Richard Holbrooke did everything so the Pentagon and NATO in a month to begin a campaign “to punish Belgrade for disobedience.” The decision to hold the operation “Merciful Angel” had been taken.
The air war in Yugoslavia, with the blessing of NATO Secretary General Javier Solana began late on March 23, 1999. Just in a few days the euro began to fall. Purchasing power parity went down from 1.18 to 0.87. Sometimes it came all the way down to 0.60. By setting outbreak of war in the Balkans, Clinton slowed the development of Europe; he saved the dollar, and that was all he was interested in.
Nobody in US care about the fact that the population of Serbia and Montenegro is still paying for the results of “Merciful Angel”. Dollar for Americans is more important than the lives of people, especially some Balkans beggars. American TV had asserted that “Merciful Angel” is humanitarian rescue operation by NATO to rescue unfortunate Albanians whom Milosevic and Belgrade did not want to set free.
Today, nobody knows exactly what weapons were used in the war against the Serbia. Such information is nowhere to be found, in Brussels about this nobody want to talk. American commanders never reported to the international community, which “Tomahawks”, vacuum and cluster bombs were dropped for three months on people’s heads, industrial and infrastructural objects of Yugoslavia.
Serbian military experts and scientists firmly believe that during the “Merciful Angel” bombs with depleted uranium were used. These weapons were dropped from A10 aircraft. Alliance was constantly used cluster bombs, which have great striking effect when used against manpower.
NATO has also led indirect chemical warfare against Yugoslavia. Direct chemical weapons were not used. With classical bombs (conventional weapons) they destroyed the factory for the production of nitrogen in Pancevo (near Belgrade) and other chemical factories. NATO aircraft deliberately destroyed transformer substations, where a lot of Perylene is stored. After NATO bombing Perylene was found in the land and water of Serbia and Montenegro. The consequences of using depleted uranium affected after the aggression. In Kosovo, the percentage of cancer cases rose sharply among children. There were cases of cancer among the Italian and American KFOR representatives, who served in the cities of Prizren, Pec and Djakovica, were in the spring of 1999 most of the A10 planes were flying.
About 15 tons of depleted uranium and plutonium, in munitions were dropped on Serbia, that will affect the environment for several centuries. For 79 days on Yugoslavia were dropped 14,000 bombs (a total of 23 thousand bombs and missiles), weighing more than 27 thousand tons. 2300 bombing attacks on 995 objects were applied in Yugoslavia. Only in one terrible night for the Serbs, from 20 to 21 May 1999 in a single raid participated over a thousand bombers.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1907480.html
But wait! Just when you thought it couldn’t get any nuttier, Teddy Nutsack himself throws his hat in the ring. Whatever his actual outcome, we can be sure he’ll at least drive the political conversation to previously unimaginable conservative fringes, and thus make the mainstream nut sacks seem eminently “reasonable” in comparison. As in, you might well despise John Ellis as a bought and paid for establishment “conservative,” but just look at the alternative! Well played conservatives!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/22/ted-cruz-2016_n_6917824.html
I wouldn’t trust that slimy lookin’ prick as far as I could throw him.
DA: Well played conservatives!
Ted Cruz has been ordained by GOD ALMIGHTY to smite Hillary!
The Apocalyse is on!
US oil production may have peaked 40 years ago…but we have prices that, adjusted for inflation , are lower than then. Plus we have an unprecedented global oil glut. Plus we have worldwide use of renewable, virtually free and nonpolluting energy at levels that are replacing fossil fuels use.
I don´t get it.
Shouldn´t the endtymes playbook be seeing massive price rises due to worldwide shortages, along with massive human dieoffs as wildly soaring populations succumb to limits in food production from a lack of petroleum based fertilizers…
Explain that one to me.
Peak oil is rendered much less troublesome because the need for oil has been offset so much by hydropower, wind, solar, biomass, improvements in energy efficiency, massive recycling (80% of germany´s waste is recycled), improved gas mileage, smart grids reducing electricity consumption.
I.e., technological improvements have chipped away so much at peak oil´s effects that it is not affecting us in the predicted manner.
The peak oil predictions are not panning out because they dont factor in improvements in oil recovery technology, efficiency, conservation.
Peak oilers apply a static metric that simply says we have fewer barrels of oil being produced so that must mean lots of trouble.
it doesnt, science has handily tackled the energy problem. the last several centuries are a success story of humans overcoming the near exhaustion of one energy source after another.
the more we probe the earth and the universe, the more energy we find. and we are handily learning to tap it.
we are on the cusp of the age of energy ascent.
carbon is one of the most abundant elements. we can already pull it out of the air, rearrange the molecules and produce FUELS from it. we need to scale up our ability to do so.
thank god there are intelligent people working on that, instead of wringing their endtymes hands and making dyre predictions that virtually never pan out.
Spain using the wind to supply 35% of its electricity needs AS WE SPEAK. making peak oil that much more ineffective.
that´s called reality.
i´ll go ahead and supply the counterarguments.
i call bullshit. how much are you getting paid to post this. get a life. you post too much. sockpuppet. i woke up because jhk has made me see the light.
What kind of message Moscow will send to the world on May 9, 2015?
The Moscow Victory Parade of 1945 was a victory parade held by the Soviet army after the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War. It took place in the Soviet capital of Moscow, mostly centering around a military parade through Red Square. The parade took place on a rainy June 24, 1945, over a month after May 9, the day of Germany’s surrender to Soviet commanders.
One of the most famous moments at the end of the troop’s parade took place when various Red Army soldiers carried the banners of Nazi Germany and threw them down next to the Lenin’s Mausoleum. One of the standards that were tossed down belonged to the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s personal bodyguard.
For more than a decade now Lenin’s Mausoleum hides behind the plywood scenery for the parade on May 9th. Visitors and viewers of parade on Red Square on May 9 do not get to see one of the main symbols of the Soviet Union – the mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin. On Victory Day celebrations it is hidden by colorful plywood decorations with congratulations.
During the Great Patriotic War, Lenin’s mausoleum was also “masked” from the Nazi aviation attacks. A simulation ordinary wooden house was built around it so to find it from the air in the dark was impossible.
On the coming 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, the mystery remains: will Putin greet his troops from the granite podium of the Lenin’s Mausoleum, or from the temporary painted plywood tribune construction.
The world is ruled by symbols
Therian: “She [Ayn Rand] was a model for libertarians and far-right conservatives.”
Right. Railed against the takers and the believers in big government… until she needed big government’s safety net… then she applied for and received monthly paychecks from big government that allowed her to exist. Some model, Therian! Just like you receiving your state and federal monthly paychecks, criticizing government from your perch of government-supplied economic safety.
“Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974 after decades of heavy smoking. In 1976, she retired from writing her newsletter and, despite her initial objections, allowed Evva Pryor, a social worker from her attorney’s office, to enroll her in Social Security and Medicare.”
SOURCE: Weiss, Gary (2012). Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden struggle for America’s Soul. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 978-0-312-59073-4.
SOURCE: McConnell, Scott (2010). 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand. New York: New American Library. ISBN 978-0-451-23130-7. OCLC 555642813
Oral history means Ayn Rand’s hypocrisy was revealed by those who were there and witnessed Rand’s hypocrisy.
If You are correct in thinking who Therian used to be, I’d say don’t reply to his posts, it’s not worth the hassle. It would soon degenerate into an unpleasant name-calling tirade on his part. I know you enjoyed baiting him in the past, but the rest of us here probably don’t want to witness it. Sorry, I know it is tempting.
Yes, he’s correct and you talk about ME not being “worth the hassle”. In just the last couple days of scanning his nonsense he stated that oil production was higher than Hubbert’s Peak which is incorrect by about 2 million bpd. I’m not going to engage in his relentless point-by-point “checklists” because they’re mostly provable lies and because I’m not going to be on the blog 24/7 like he is just so I can be present to refute every lie, every half-truth, every false attribution, and every cherrypicked statistic.
The guy is all for the cornucopian “the bankers rescued us” idea but when those same bankers finance wars they’re horrible people. Well, are they our saviors, our demons, or is the whole idea that we’ve been saved a farce? Our Monetary Velocity is LOWER than the 2008 low, Workforce Participation is at 37 year lows, and median inflation-adjusted incomes are down since 2008. In the latest BLS employment report, the growth in jobs was largely waiters and bartenders. Does this sound like a cornucopia to you?
He’s taking over the blog again just like he was when I was a regular in 2012. Do you think this is good for the blog? Do you think that a man can be on here just about all day and all night and have the fabulous life he describes? He can’t be here and be saving Brazilian whales and woodlands at the same time unless you think he’s discovered a way to clone himself.
It’s your blog, Bill. If you want him to have it then your judgments are no more perspicacious now than they were a few years ago. The leopard really doesn’t change its spots.
“A recent headline in Mother Jones read: “US Weapons Have A Nasty Habit of Going AWOL.” The report was about $500 million worth of military equipment that is unaccounted for in Yemen. Just as in so many other places, our policy of provoking civil strife in Yemen has been a complete failure. At one time it was announced that there was a great victory in a war being won with drones assisting groups that claimed to be on our side in the Yemen Civil War. As usual, we could have expected that these weapons would end up in the hands of the militants not on the side of United States and would never be accounted for.
There are numerous examples of how our foreign intervention backfires and actually helps the enemy. Just recently a headline announced: “CIA cash sometimes refills al-Qaeda coffers.” This was a story of our government helping pay ransom to al-Qaeda for the release an Afghan diplomat. However this was a measly $5 million so it was not considered a big deal. Another headline just recently announced that, “Iraqi army downs two UK planes carrying weapons for ISIL.” The Iraqi army is supposed to be on our side, and many people believe the UK is also on our side as well. One thing for sure the American taxpayer pays for all this nonsense.
Building weapons and seeing them end up in the hands of the enemy is almost a routine event and one should expect it to continue to happen under the circumstances of the chaos in the Middle East. This represents a cost to the American taxpayer and is obviously a major contributing factor in what will be the ultimate failure of our plan to remake the Middle East. This is bad enough, and the only people who seem to benefit from it are those who are earning profits in the military-industrial complex. But there is something every bit as bad as our weapons ending up in the hands of the jihadists and being used against us. That is, the fact that our presence there, our weapons, and our bombs, are the best recruiting tool for getting individuals to join the fight against America’s presence in so many conflicts around the world.” –Ron Paul
“I’d say don’t reply to his posts” –BTB
Thank you for this advice, Beantown.
Welcome back Therian! I sometimes would wonder where “E” went, but lo and behold, you’re back.
I always enjoyed your reading your distinct brand of intellectual pugilism. Hopefully the more dainty flowers of this blog won’t inhibit you from walking through their fragile gardens.
Well, Buck, you may have noticed that, compared to the old days, my posting volume is low with few exceptions like yesterday but I had to combat Asoka’s usual collection of half-truths, false attributions, and outright lies and remind him that you cannot pretend to be a complete human being and write 40% of the totality of posts on a blog.
In a way, people who LIVE on these blogs think they can win an argument by simply outsitting you rather than outwitting you. If he makes six replies to ONE post of mine, what chance do I have to defend myself other than to cast aside my entire life for a blog.
As usual, Asoka is an “I got mine” type who thinks “it’s all good” because he reproduces government-generated statistics here which even the financial media know are lies or half-lies but which back his cornucopian argument. If he thinks the bankers have engineered prosperity, then let him explain the truly unbelievable facts about who has what percent of the money as explained in this remarkable six-minute video:
http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2?g=2&c=reccon1
If he sees this video and continues to spew his “it’s all good” crap then we will truly see the emperor naked.
“There is human capital out there ripe for exploitation — 5 billion 3rd worlders eager to get in here and willing to work for pennies — just so long as they can visit Vegas for at least one weekend before they die.”
According to Expat Explorer Survey, Russia ranked 17 out of 34 countries desirable for immigrants, United States ranked 30.
http://expatexplorer.hsbc.com/survey/
But I bet it is due to Russian women.
Putin Wants to Create His Own Version of the Euro
Putin on Friday met with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. After the meeting, he told reporters, “The time has come to start thinking about forming a currency union.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-wants-create-own-version-103700629.html
Originally, the EuroAsian currency union was set to start by 2025 – in 10 years from now.
The new Chinese bank for infrastructure development is rumored to be a full-blown emission center. In conjunction with new Chinese InterBank payment system to be launched by September – January 2015, we may have a strong competition to American Dollar.
Events have greatly accelerated, final bastion of PetroDollar is Saudi Arabia – watch events unfolding in Yemen.
Also, new Gold Price Fixing system – who is mysterious sixth member of it?
Basically, I think Chinese are planning to emit money to finance large Asian infrastructural projects – what I always said US should do, instead of channeling printed money on to financial markets – a much more sound system for new money emission.
Probably it will not be 100% of new construction, technical details are not available yet (and, probably, never will be).
In a meantime, it appears that Putin managed to at least partially nationalize the Russian Central Bank by forcing to change its policy and cover with new ruble emission construction of electrical production plants in Crimea.
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