Venezuelan Leader Hugo Chavez Dies

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who went from a young conspiratorial soldier who dreamed of revolution to the fiery anti-U.S. leader of one of the world’s great oil powers, died March 5 in Caracas of complications from an unspecified cancer in his pelvic area. He was 58 and had been president since 1999, longer than any […]

Economic Fascism and the Power Elite

The state—the organization of the political means—is the institution that allows an idle, unproductive class of parasites to live at the expense of ordinary, working people, whose means are industrious activity and consensual exchange in the marketplace. We ought not assume, however, that the indigent segment of society, those who receive social welfare aid from […]

Clock Runs as Obama Faces Pressure for Strike on Iran

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said there remains “time and space” for diplomacy to avert military action to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power. Still, the pressure on President Barack Obama’s administration to move toward military action is growing as Iran advances its uranium enrichment capabilities, and U.S. lawmakers, Israel and Persian Gulf […]

Orlov: Where There’s No Government

Excerpt from The Five Stages of Collapse Modern societies rely on the government to defend property rights, enforce contracts and regulate commerce. As the economy expands, so do the functions of government, along with its bureaucratic structures, laws, rules and procedures and—what expands fastest of all—its cost. All of these official arrangements show an accretion […]

As We Near the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War

Here is something other than The Sequester to think about at the beginning of March: This month marks ten years since the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq. In my view this was the biggest strategic error by the United States since at least the end of World War II and perhaps over a much […]

Keystone XL: State Dept. Finds No Significant Environmental Impacts

The Keystone XL pipeline now is four-for-four – that is, four environmental impact assessments by the State Department and four findings that the project wouldn’t have significant impacts. From State’s draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) released Friday: The analyses of potential impacts associated with construction and normal operation of the proposed Project suggest that […]

SE4ALL for global population

Nearly 40 per cent of the world’s population – rely on wood, coal, charcoal, or animal waste to cook their food – breathing in toxic smoke that causes lung disease and kills nearly two million people a year, most of them women and children. Without access to modern energy, it is not possible to achieve […]

China Central Bank Says It Is “Fully Prepared For Looming Currency War”

Just in case Lagarde (and everyone else except for the Germans, who have a very unpleasant habit of telling the truth), was lying about that whole “no currency war” thing, China is already one step ahead and is fully prepared to roll out its own FX army. According to China Times, “China is fully prepared […]

Energy and the Federal Budget Sequester

Barring a last-second deal to avert it, the federal government’s budget will be cut today by $85 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends in September.  These cuts will be applied across the board to every cabinet department and agency of the federal government, though at different rates for defense and non-defense activities, and with […]

Germany Debates Fracking as Energy Costs Rise

Germany is debating whether to allow hydraulic fracturing, a controversial drilling technique to extract natural gas from shale, amid growing concern that rising energy costs in the country could threaten its industrial backbone. The German public is deeply suspicious of the drilling practice, commonly known as fracking. Many Germans worry that the process, which involves […]

Russia is Back to Stay in the Middle East

Russia is back. President Vladimir Putin wants the world to acknowledge that Russia remains a global power. He is making his stand in Syria. The Soviet Union acquired the Tardus Naval Port in Syria in 1971 without any real purpose for it. With their ships welcomed in Algeria, Cuba or Vietnam, Tardus was too insignificant […]

Mexico (Sort Of) Liberalizes Its Oil Industry

Mexico relies on 1/3 of its government revenues from national oil company Pemex. Yesterday, they announced they’ll be inviting foreign investment to expand production: In what would be a historic step, Mexico’s ruling party is expected to modify its political statutes Sunday to allow private investment in state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos and the possibility […]

No End in Sight for Iraq Oil Dispute

Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of  the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq,  is criticizing Baghdad for threatening to cancel the contracts of companies operating in the country’s southern oil fields if they refuse to stop dealing separately with the Kurds. “Instead of warning companies to choose between the KRG or Baghdad, it’s in Iraq’s interest to cooperate […]

Iran Said to Plan Countering Offer by World Powers

Iran is preparing a counteroffer to a proposal by the U.S. and its partners to ease some banking, petrochemical and gold sanctions if the nation curbs its atomic activities, according to two officials close to negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear program. At the talks today in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Iran was offered limited sanctions […]

Bernanke Testimony To Senate: Defends QE

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke defended the central bank’s unprecedented asset purchases, saying they are supporting the expansion with little risk of inflation or asset-price bubbles. “We do not see the potential costs of the increased risk- taking in some financial markets as outweighing the benefits of promoting a stronger economic recovery,” Bernanke said […]

World powers and Iran begin nuclear talks

Iran said it was prepared to make an offer to major powers in talks on its nuclear programme in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, after the United States proposed limited sanctions relief in return for a halt to the most controversial work. The first meeting in eight months between Iran and the five permanent members of the […]

Heinberg: Deficit Reduction = Recession

The math is not difficult. The US has an annual GDP of $14 trillion, and the nation’s current $1 trillion in annual deficit spending is seven percent of its GDP. Growth in GDP has recently been running at about two percent annually (though in the last quarter of 2012 the economy actually contracted slightly). The […]

The Economic Impact of a War Between Japan & China

Global economists are keeping their eyes glued to the Asia-Pacific region, where a bitter feud is brewing between two of the world’s most powerful nations over a small collectivity of islands in the East China Sea. The Chinese government argues that a treaty signed during the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) conferred ownership of the islands […]

Can Endless Quantitative Easing Ever End?

The publication, earlier this week, of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee minutes of January 29-30 seemed to have a similar effect on equity markets as a call from room service to a Las Vegas hotel suite, informing the partying high-rollers that the hotel might be running out of Cristal Champagne.  Around the world, […]

Iran Says It Has Brought Down Another Foreign Spy Drone

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have brought down a foreign surveillance drone during a military exercise, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said on Saturday. “We have managed to bring down a drone of the enemy. This has happened before in our country,” the agency quoted war games spokesman General Hamid Sarkheli as saying in Kerman, southeast […]

China to Increase Fuel Prices

China will raise fuel prices for the first time since September amid a gain in oil benchmarks since the start of the year. Gasoline will increase by 300 yuan ($48) a metric ton and diesel by 290 yuan a ton effective tomorrow, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement on its website […]

Peak Oil Will Be Fully Discredited When Peak Government Is Realized

President Obama recently nominated Sally Jewell to head the Department of Interior. Her bona fides include growing a business — Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) — to nearly $2 billion in revenue last year. But in her new job, the question is whether Secretary Jewell will grow America’s vast, untapped domestic energy resources. Jewell is now […]

Peak oil down to war, depression and geopolitical shifts

Given the increase in the amount of oil that China and India are importing, it looks as if there will be no oil available for other countries to import in another decade, warns expert In recent months, there has been a spate on stories in the press pronouncing that any imagined energy crisis is over […]

Radioactive Waste Is Leaking From Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation

And now for a quick lesson in government spending: in the 1940s the federal government created the now mostly decommissioned Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. During the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which […]

Iran to speed up nuclear program

Iran has begun installing advanced centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday, a defiant step that will worry Western powers ahead of a resumption of talks with Tehran next week. In a confidential report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge […]

A Bridge to Nowhere: Creating Natural Gas-Based Infrastructure

Many have advocated the transition from a coal-based to a natural gas-based energy infrastructure as a crucial advancement in avoiding the catastrophic effects of climate change. This rapid transfer from one fossil fuel source to another, spurred by the explosion of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” fails to account for the life-cycle and vast externalities […]

Saudi Arabia Seen Unlikely to Seek Nukes If Iran Gets One

Challenging what has become conventional wisdom here, a new report released here Tuesday by an influential think tank argues that Iran’s neighbours – Saudi Arabia in particular – are unlikely to pursue nuclear weapons if Iran obtains one. The 49-page report, “Atomic Kingdom: If Iran Builds the Bomb, Will Saudi Arabia Be Next?”, notes that […]

BP Wins U.S. Agreement to Cut Potential Spill Fine by $3.4 Billion

BP PLC ( BP ) is seeking to reduce by as much as $3.4 billion the amount it could be fined as a result of an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, Bloomberg News reported Friday on its website. The U.K. company is seeking credit for the collection of 800,000 barrels of […]

Kjell Aleklett: Comments on the hearing on “American Energy Security and Innovation” before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power

“Many small creeks make a large stream” is a Swedish saying that describes well the production of shale oil and shale gas. Equivalent English sayings are, “Many a little makes a mickle”, (that originated in Scotland and then President George Washington used in a text of 1793) and “Many drops make a river”. If one […]

Mexico tells Pemex to explain ‘loan’ to own labour union

Mexico has ordered state oil monopoly Pemex to provide details about a controversial multi-million dollar loan it made to its trade union, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong has told a Mexican newspaper. Overhauling Pemex, which has been dogged by allegations of corruption, is one of the government’s top priorities in 2013, and this week […]

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