[Heineken]

Yes, there was a housing boom after WWII but it never became the pyramid scheme of the latest one.

I bet there will be another economic boom, pstarr. Just you watch. The system still has a lot of juice in it. A few more booms, maybe, until the final unraveling and dieoff. Global warming may have an even bigger effect than PO in making that happen.

[Cog]

I'm at a loss to see how another boom of any kind can get started. It certainly won't be in housing with the overhang of foreclosures and a considerable amount of mortgages underwater. I also don't expect those new college graduates to fuel it since they have now accumulated over $1 trillion in student loans. With the job market very tight right now, they have basically enslaved themselves with debt for a considerable amount of time.

The seniors and retiring baby boomers certainly won't fuel it since their medicare costs are going to rise. No way to avoid that situation since the program is going bust. The retiring baby boomers are finding out that their retirement benefits aren't going to go very far with the basic costs of energy and other commodities are continuing to rise faster than their portfolios.

So who does that leave? People like me I suppose, who are still employed but nervous as hell about the future, and paying down debt as rapidly as possible while meanwhile spending as little as possible. Those like me won't be fueling any booms down the road.

The 1% I'm sure will continue to use their influence to continue to accumulate wealth and no doubt spend some of it on luxuries but I don't see a boom here either.

We have come to the end of growth and its down from here. Enjoy the ride.

[SeaGypsy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'Y')es, there was a housing boom after WWII but it never became the pyramid scheme of the latest one.

I bet there will be another economic boom, pstarr. Just you watch. The system still has a lot of juice in it. A few more booms, maybe, until the final unraveling and dieoff. Global warming may have an even bigger effect than PO in making that happen.

[Heineken]

Maybe getting married has made me more conservative, Chris. And slightly more hopeful.

More hopeful that the decline and collapse will be a little slower than I'd thought. I'm still very much a doomer.

I don't believe in a perfect, symmetrical bell curve. I am not convinced that oil has peaked, but rather plateaued. The plateau could last a while yet. Ten years, twenty. That and the very substantial NG and liquids boom could fuel another round of the party. I think we could see another boom-and-bust cycle or two because that's what the world thirsts for. It's foolish and wasteful and harmful but that's what people and business and governments want. It's our nature.

Debt has a funny way of getting erased. It can vanish, just as money can be made to appear---both through money printing. They control so many strings. And the world still has lots of resources, loads of cheap labor, and plenty of techno-innovation.

I'm a doomer but I've slightly softened my views on the timing, for now. The biggest risks right now are a massive depression and nuclear war, not a rapid, directly PO-related collapse. In the second half of this century I see resource depletion (energy, soil, fresh water), environmental damage, and global warming doing us in. Die-off.

That's my view. I respect stronger views and am fully open to them.

[SeaGypsy]

If you look at it squarely Steve, the booms were directly related to primary resource discovery and extraction rates/ primarily oil. Prices have generally run proportionate to these factors in a fairly predictable way, as have overall growth rates/ boom cycles in particular. As we are never going to go back to cheap oil, we have entered a new paradigm whereby a boom is impossible (short of a free energy innovation and pronto). Yes we are on a plateau, the spread of well numbers and locations shows that desperation is the only thing keeping the barrels up. Any upward mobility in the overall market sends an immediate confidence based price surge through the oil market, putting the brakes on primary industrial drivers virtually instantaneously. Couple these factors under 'new normal' and call it a plateau if you like/ but there aint going to be any booms in the traditional use of the word.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'I')'m at a loss to see how another boom of any kind can get started.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'I')f you look at it squarely Steve, the booms were directly related to primary resource discovery and extraction rates/ primarily oil. Prices have generally run proportionate to these factors in a fairly predictable way, as have overall growth rates/ boom cycles in particular. As we are never going to go back to cheap oil, we have entered a new paradigm whereby a boom is impossible (short of a free energy innovation and pronto). Yes we are on a plateau, the spread of well numbers and locations shows that desperation is the only thing keeping the barrels up. Any upward mobility in the overall market sends an immediate confidence based price surge through the oil market, putting the brakes on primary industrial drivers virtually instantaneously. Couple these factors under 'new normal' and call it a plateau if you like/ but there aint going to be any booms in the traditional use of the word.

[Cog]

The rabbit we pulled out of the hat was to run trillion dollar deficits for the next three years. That is not sustainable in any sense of the word because eventually your debt service consumes all of your revenue. The situation with Medicare is rapidly becoming dire and if nothing is done about it, it will consume every dollar of revenue the feds get.

So recovery? Not really for the millions out of work. Their jobs will not be returning. They have already experienced their fast crash and the rest of us are simply waiting our turn.

[SeaGypsy]

That the situation is dynamic can hardly be debated, complexity is still increasing so we certainly haven't passed the plateau in terms of available energy continuing to meet the needs of some growth in some specific regions and industries.

A competitive and intelligent person might benefit greatly from being able to anticipate these shifts. Opportunities for new entrepreneurship abound if you are the right person in the right place with the right motivation and zeitgiest. While the can kicking game perpetuates planet destroying activity, it is simultaneously the only thing converting ever scarcer resources into dinner on the table for 7,000,000,000 and giving the thoughtfull among us some breathing space and time to move. The game will eventually completely crumble, but for the time being let's appreciate what we have and do something inspirational with our time and our gifts.

[Daniel_Plainview]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'T')he rabbit we pulled out of the hat was to run trillion dollar deficits for the next three years. That is not sustainable in any sense of the word because eventually your debt service consumes all of your revenue. The situation with Medicare is rapidly becoming dire and if nothing is done about it, it will consume every dollar of revenue the feds get.

So recovery? Not really for the millions out of work. Their jobs will not be returning. They have already experienced their fast crash and the rest of us are simply waiting our turn.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'T')he US recovered from the depression too, and boomed like never before.

[Heineken]

Yes. Well, we still seem to find a way of getting the oil we need, Keith. We've built a foreign-policy and military machine designed to do just that.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'T')hat the situation is dynamic can hardly be debated, complexity is still increasing so we certainly haven't passed the plateau in terms of available energy continuing to meet the needs of some growth in some specific regions and industries.

A competitive and intelligent person might benefit greatly from being able to anticipate these shifts. Opportunities for new entrepreneurship abound if you are the right person in the right place with the right motivation and zeitgiest. While the can kicking game perpetuates planet destroying activity, it is simultaneously the only thing converting ever scarcer resources into dinner on the table for 7,000,000,000 and giving the thoughtfull among us some breathing space and time to move. The game will eventually completely crumble, but for the time being let's appreciate what we have and do something inspirational with our time and our gifts.

[SeaGypsy]

Steve, if such were possible it would have happened, they did pull out all stops. Oil is now nature's great big brake (& break don't mind the pun) on society. They can go berzerk to try, but the limit has already been reached. However, the hole has already been dug and it will never be filled, so why interupt the futile attempt (at digging their way out of a hole) while the game is being played out pretty much as expected and in some cases better than could have been hoped for?
Nature got the upper hand in 2008 and there is no getting it back.

[Heineken]

Maybe you're right, Chris. It will be fascinating, and terrifying, to see how it all plays out.

[ennui2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '
')In this PARTICULAR case, the collapse in real estate was in my opinion the chief, the direct, cause, or as they say in medicine, the proximate cause.

[Ibon]

In just simple english we all know there is a big difference between the worlds economy when light sweet crude was bubbling for pennies to the surface vs today when we are going after the more expensive lower quality stuff.

That does not mean however that this change precludes collapse or excludes future economic bubbles. What it does mean is that peak oil is far less important a factor than all of us were originally anticipating.

I know why that is also at least for myself. I am able to acknowledge that we foresaw peak oil as a game changer because we wanted it to be a game changer. Wanting something to have the power to change the status quo.

Still abundant lower quality fossil fuels along with emerging china and all the rest of the systemic issues we discuss simply does not in my view, at this time, offer any threat to the resilient status quo. And I don't see this changing in the next couple of decades.

And so I don't give the issue the importance I once did. It's just that simple.

[Cog]

@Ibon

Collapse is happening all around you right now and you can't see it?

High oil prices mean no growth for a world predicated on endless growth. When economic systems can not grow, they collapse. You are seeing that play out and it has been playing out since 2007. Only by massively increasing long term debt, have we managed an illusion of growth but not the real thing.

I don't know what you consider the status quo but we aren't going to see a return to it in our lifetimes. Instead you are going to see, and are seeing if you are looking, a grinding poverty and degradation of lifestyle for the majority of the world's population.

Maybe you have it great and I congratulate you if that is the case. But you can't go from a specific to a general without being in serious error.

[Heineken]

Cog, how do you define collapse? For me true collapse must be accompanied by at least partial population die-off. No die-off is taking place. Large parts of the world---Asia, South America---ARE booming. What we have right now is a pretty big case of indigestion. Not collapse. Maybe a PRELUDE to collapse, at most.