[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bobbyboy', 'M')y favourite quote (on how to get at the oil companies):

King: "if we change the technology, their oil will be redundant"

:lol::lol::lol:

[Wildwell]

A few points:

US speaker: A Dark age without cars, and billions are lifted out of poverty? Total rubbish only about 1 in 9 of the world population own one. In some British cities only 50% of households own one or we really saying they create more wealth when most journeys are just a luxury form of transport getting to and from work or to the shops instead of walking, cycling or taking buses? Millions of jobs were lost after the war in mass transit as private transport gained popularity. The only place they are a necessity is very rural areas. Have these areas gained? Well today there are dormitory villages and towns, stripped of their lifeblood and in some areas as people commute away. Quiet lanes are full of traffic.

You couldn’t travel? Total nonsense. The UK rail system was so dense you could get anywhere, and what wasn’t covered there was covered by trams and in later year’s buses. I travelled right around Europe earlier this year by electric train, from Cannes to Amsterdam, from Paris to Vienna.

RAC: We spend as much on rail as road? No the same is spent on the strategic highways (motorways, dual carriageways as rail) road spending overall is much higher because most roads are local and paid for through a different tax system, especially when external costs are taken into account. 3,500 killed and 280,000 injured with all the lost GDP isn’t cheap, noise, pollution, congestion, policing etc. Besides there are 22 times more main roads than all railways and most road journeys are less than 5 miles to/from shops, where bus in the main competitor. Most rail spending is going to pay off bank loans thanks to botched Tory privatisation, very little is spent on actual kit, and it’s rural areas it’s going to (IE that make a loss, because of lack of bums on seats) which cannot support itself thanks to heavy trucks and cars – it could pre 1955. And anyway, a lot of money is spent on replacing worn out victorian infrastructure (bridges, etc) main roads are only 40 years old at most. Whereas the M4 has been rebuilt several times, the adjoining great western main line still has most of it's track and signalling from the 1960s, when the road was built. Obviously a lot of cost is rolling stock and staff (which pay back a lot of tax) whereas with road, people provide their own vehicles @ £5000 pa per vehicle on average - a cost which comes from the RAC. Long distance trucks are only viable thanks to vast amounts of long distance cars.

The fact remains that relatively well off people that have one or more cars and fly regularly have a disproportionate effect on the environment, because they travel by motorised transport an awful lot more. I’m afraid some of the speakers are just trying to justify this, really with little merit. Car journeys have replaced walking and cycling the most and bus to an extent.

That said I’m in broad agreement that there’s nothing wrong with cars, but it’s the way systems have been set up to use them. They should be a ‘bolt on’ part of life, rather than a ‘must have’. That’s entirely down to government policy and planning.

The best form of integrated transport I’ve seen is in Germany, which has no speed limits on a vast Autobahn network, yet light rail/metro in most towns and a higher proportion of mass transit passengers and freight. Switzerland is even better.

Essentially those on the ‘pro’ side are hoping for a techno-fix. Those on the ‘not so pro’ side are saying reduce travel through planning.

[jaws]

Cars aren't ruining the planet, cars are just inanimate objects. People using cars, putting fuel in them and driving around are ruining the planet, and getting rid of cars isn't going to fix the people problem. There will still be a large supply of abundant, cheap energy just lying around and someone will find another way to burn it.

[malcomatic_51]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'C')ars aren't ruining the planet, cars are just inanimate objects. People using cars, putting fuel in them and driving around are ruining the planet, and getting rid of cars isn't going to fix the people problem. There will still be a large supply of abundant, cheap energy just lying around and someone will find another way to burn it.

[chakra]

This is an hour long interview with a Nobel prize winning economist, who basically is touting the complete opposite of everything I've been reading lately. He talks about how the economy is the strongest it has ever been, and how secure it is. How the American dollar is undervalued and will become strong in the medium term.

For someone that tries to study and understand what's happening in the economy; interviews like this make it so hard to grasp what is really going on. Is this Nobel prize winner right, or are the gold bugs right? Not that I base everything off of what I read from gold bug reports, but how can the perspectives be so far apart like this?

Has this old man gone loony, or does he speak the truth? video

[firestarter]

Perhaps Jay Hanson spiked Friedman's water before the interview.

[Colorado-Valley]

This guy is the patron saint of the bankers and financial elites -- the oligarchs, as they like to think of themselves.

And for them, things ARE going great ...

[jaws]

Don't take the Nobel prize in economics too seriously. In 1974 Hayek and Gunnar Myrdal shared the prize for two theories that contradicted each other.

[Lighthouse]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'D')on't take the Nobel prize in economics too seriously. In 1974 Hayek and Gunnar Myrdal shared the prize for two theories that contradicted each other.

[SILENTTODD]

None of this should surprise anyone who has followed Milton Friedman for the last 27 years since the publication of “Free to Choose”. He is a Globalist of the first degree. Of course he thinks this is the best of times. His position is modified Ayn Randism, he loves open borders, and the exporting American jobs to the cheapest labor source. These are Good things to Milton Friedman. His silver lining is eventually all labor will be working at the same rate as is found Shanghai or Botswana. I have to admit I only could watch part of this tonight; I actually had to work for a living. But I plan to watch the rest of it tomorrow on my day off, that is if I have the stomach for it.

[firestarter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Colorado-Valley', 'T')his guy is the patron saint of the bankers and financial elites -- the oligarchs, as they like to think of themselves.

And for them, things ARE going great ...

[Roccland]

Meet the Economist Who Thinks We're Doomed
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')fter analyzing the markets that collapsed in the '90s, Roubini set out to determine which country's economy would be the next to succumb to the same pressures. His surprising answer: the United States'. "The United States," Roubini remembers thinking, "looked like the biggest emerging market of all." Of course, the United States wasn't an emerging market; it was (and still is) the largest economy in the world. But Roubini was unnerved by what he saw in the U.S. economy, in particular its 2004 current-account deficit of $600 billion. He began writing extensively about the dangers of that deficit and then branched out, researching the various effects of the credit boom -- including the biggest housing bubble in the nation's history -- that began after the Federal Reserve cut rates to close to zero in 2003. Roubini became convinced that the housing bubble was going to pop.
___

Many economists, Roubini among them, argue that some of the optimism is built into the very machinery, the mathematics, of modern economic theory. Econometric models typically rely on the assumption that the near future is likely to be similar to the recent past, and thus it is rare that the models anticipate breaks in the economy. And if the models can't foresee a relatively minor break like a recession, they have even more trouble modeling and predicting a major rupture like a full-blown financial crisis. Only a handful of 20th-century economists have even bothered to study financial panics. (The most notable example is probably the late economist Hyman Minksy, of whom Roubini is an avid reader.) "These are things most economists barely understand," Roubini told me. "We're in uncharted territory where standard economic theory isn't helpful."

[s0ul5]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Roccland', 'T')hey "know".

[mefistofeles]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t's funny how most writers view peak oil as "a theory" even though hydrocarbons are simply a finite resource.

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Roccland', '[')url=http://www.alternet.org/workplace/95375/?page=entire]Meet the Economist Who Thinks We're Doomed[/url]

Roubini ans Schiff are two of my favorite economist.

They "know".

[shortonoil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Nouriel Roubini: "Literally every single Group of Seven economy is now headed towards a recessionary hard landing."

[deMolay]

My My. Finally the economists have sucked it up enough to whisper the word DEPRESSION. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... refer=home

[ReverseEngineer]

As I said way back when before the "R" word was being uttered by the MSM, when they started talking Recession, we would actually be in a Depression. When they acknowledge it as a Depression, it will REALLY be a Monetary System Collapse.

This is NOT a Depression. This is a fundamental collapse of the fiat monetary system devised by Sir Isaac Newton and the Bank of England in 1694. Its run its course, and there is no further way to prop it up as there is not sufficient wealth in the world for growth relative to the current population, essential for the perpetuation of a fiat system like this.

A return to a Gold standard is NOT a solution, and the future monetary system if it is to exist at all on a worldwide level has to be based on shrinkage, not growth. I reiterate here the importance of discussing alternative monetary systems based on usable energy resource for the population, aka food calories.

I think a statistical analysis of conversion percentages of extant fossil fuel energy to food energy needs to be undertaken. From that a base value of different types of land resource can be figured, dependant on local climates and soil types, and production quotas can be set. Labor can then be alocated based on those resources, and wages set to match the resource potential. Transportaion and distribution costs can be modelled to refine the currency value based on food calories. Each country can then set a weighted trade value for their currency to allow local production fo food and be able to distribute it out based on a fair wage. This economy MUST be set up if we are to avoid what is a totally avoidable food shortage problem in the short term. There is no EXCUSE for a shortage of food in the near future, there is sufficient productive capacity and sufficient fossil fuels available to keep this running for a decade at least while we figure out the rest of the problems.

Reverse Engineer

[Homesteader]

RE:

Silly Rabbit, there you go trying to devise a fair and honest financial system.

Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go and do not collect $200.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'T')his is NOT a Depression. This is a fundamental collapse of the fiat monetary system devised by Sir Isaac Newton and the Bank of England in 1694. Its run its course, and there is no further way to prop it up as there is not sufficient wealth in the world for growth relative to the current population, essential for the perpetuation of a fiat system like this.
Reverse Engineer