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THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby BigTex » Mon 23 Nov 2009, 20:09:09

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shortonsense', 'I') was recently asked, "but who actually believes that PO was supposed to cause collapse!!" and thought that this was an interesting perspective on how hyped last years stock market taking a dump was scaring people.

So...economics triggered collapse....that trigger was pulled more than a year ago....... and.....??

I seriously think someone should tell the stock market!!

Does anyone know anyone who has starved to death yet? Mcgowanjm claims that 50,000,000 people are starving in America....a quick calculation shows that of any 6 people any of us know, one of them should be starving.

I know...perhaps....30 people? So 5 of them should be starving? Particularly since the trigger for collapse was pulled more than a year ago....I'm feeling really abused here guys, shouldn't some of these starving people be hanging out on street corners and such where us lucky "5 of 6" can appreciate how good we have it?


A camel's back doesn't sag visibly from any particular piece of straw.

Gail the Actuary over at the Oil Drum has written some interesting pieces about peak oil, the 2008 oil price spike and the financial panic that began in the fall of 2008.

As pointed out in one of the posts above, what the analysis comes down to is that a debt-driven economic and monetary system needs a plausible case for future economic growth on a scale large enough to satisfy tomorrow's desires AND pay off the debts taken on today. When the plausibility of future economic growth comes into question through something like the lack of availability of cheap and abundant oil, then rational lenders begin to think twice about loaning out money that requires a larger economic pie in the future to facilitate repayment.

Perhaps the biggest "it's different this time" that no one seems to be focusing on is that in an economy this weak and with as much excess capacity as we have, one would expect the price of oil to fall through the floor. Instead, the price of oil has remained stubbornly high (from a historical perspective). With oil prices this high, the probability of any robust economic recovery is near zero, in part because the oil market seems poised to rocket higher at the first sign of real economic growth, which would in turn destroy the prospects for an extended period of fresh economic growth (since $80+ per barrel seems to be the point at which oil prices are toxic to economic expansion).

When looking at markets for confirmation or refutation of the "peak oil killed the economy" thesis, the appropriate market to look at is the credit market, not the equity market. The credit market is sending an ominous signal right now. T-bills are at near zero, and I believe the two year treasury auction today had the lowest yield on record. Judging by the unwillingness of lenders to lend, the signal I get is that there is a sense that people will have a hard time paying back today's debts in the future because the economic pie is not going to be expanding enough to facilitate the repayments of those debts. This is exactly what one would expect if the market was looking for something like higher oil prices to choke off any potential economic growth (though peak oil is obviously not the only headwind the market is thinking about).

The fact that peak oil happened to hit at the same time that the housing bubble popped and a massive deflationary tidal wave began to form is probably just dumb luck, though the sudden tightness in the oil market that formed a few years ago and as been with us ever since probably placed additional stress on every aspect of the global financial system, thus aggravating the 2008 panic once it got underway (and as Gail at TOD has argued, it's clearly possible that the oil price spike was just the breeze that started the house of cards collapsing). The important takeaway is that we were dealing with a house of cards in the first place (i.e., a debt-saturated and over-securitized financial world), not a real economy with any durability against systemic shocks, whether they be in the form of financial or natural resource-related disruptions.

As for the stock market, it's a typical bear market rally based on nothing but wishes and momentum. Enjoy it while it lasts. Take a look at the P/Es of the various indices if you need something to wake you up.

We are, sadly, proceeding down Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Currently, we are chewing through "Self-Esteem." This process of unwinding what Hubbert called our "treasured folkways" will likely unfold over many years. At this point, starvation is way off for much of the industrialized world and talk of it is mostly hyperbole right now. I would, however, keep the overall strategic situation in mind and understand how starvation fits into it.

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Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby eastbay » Mon 23 Nov 2009, 23:09:46

There are at least five excellent Member Quote possibilities from BT's clear and concise above remarks. Which would we like to post?

How about this morsel??

We are, sadly, proceeding down Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Currently, we are chewing through "Self-Esteem."
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Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby BigTex » Tue 24 Nov 2009, 00:38:24

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'T')here are at least five excellent Member Quote possibilities from BT's clear and concise above remarks. Which would we like to post?

How about this morsel??

We are, sadly, proceeding down Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Currently, we are chewing through "Self-Esteem."


I'm just getting my doomer juices flowing for the opening of "The Road" on Wednesday...

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Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby mos6507 » Tue 24 Nov 2009, 00:42:56

Just in time for thanksgiving. I wonder if they intended such ironic timing? It had to be a conspiracy ;)
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Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby mos6507 » Tue 24 Nov 2009, 01:05:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')When looking at markets for confirmation or refutation of the "peak oil killed the economy" thesis, the appropriate market to look at is the credit market


I think you're looking on the wrong end of the credit market. It's not so much that new credit was hard to come by (although it was). It was that new credit was hard to come by because credit already issued was being defaulted on by those who had their ARM resets. It was this default train-wreck that caused a domino effect all the way up the chain which stopped further credit from being issued. The ratings agencies were revealed to have cooked the books, and so nobody could tell the difference between a true AAA rating and a liar loan waiting for approval. So obviously the banks didn't want to extend any new credit. It was a quarantine, basically.

The schedule of the ARM resets demanded that those who never should have afforded these properties go into default exactly when it happened, and the timing with $147/bbl is largely coincidental. Their cash-flow was just plain insufficient to handle the new mortgage payments. There was certainly some middle-ground where marginal homeowners were pushed over the edge by high oil prices, but by and large, those who went into default would have gone into default even with cheap oil, as they began to do when oil was still reasonable during 2007 (the true start of the housing crash).

I mean, if everyone here agrees that housing was a ponzi scheme, then point to a ponzi scheme that didn't end with a crash. If it wasn't going to crash at the peak of ARM resets, then I don't know any other conclusion that could be made than that the US workforce suddenly decided to go on overdrive to radically increase their take-home pay in order to cover the higher mortgages. Sorry, it wasn't going to happen. Nobody with these ARMs wanted to avoid foreclosure so much that they would work themselves to death to pay for them post-reset. They just didn't know what they were getting into or they thought they could flip them to cash out.

So it was this more than the financial industry collectively looking at oil prices and saying "uh, oh, olduvai ahead, stop lending".

So I see peak oil as more of a glass ceiling on the economy. Where we are now, looking in the rear view mirror in order to put a badge on peak oil as the cause of the crisis serves only propaganda purposes to artificially promote peak oil theory to those who are only concerned with economic collapse. It will be a more compelling case when oil puts a lid on any recovery attempts down the road.
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Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby BigTex » Tue 24 Nov 2009, 10:44:24

Mos,

Do you think that the implosion of the housing market, the implosion of many credit markets, the plunging of treasury yields, and the stock market crash had ANY connection to the oil price spike in 2008 and the high oil prices that had been leading up to it for several years?

It seems to me that this recession is similar to every other recession in the past 40 years in that there was an oil price spike preceding it.

The idea that a spike in energy costs could provide a catalyst to expose underlying economic weakness seems sound to me.

As you suggest, however, I do think that the REAL test for where we are in the peak oil process will be the degree of strength in the economic expansion coming out of the current recession. A further interesting data point will be to compare in the next 10 years or so the peak of economic expansion coming out of the current recession and compare that to the peak of economic expansion coming out of the NEXT recession (whenever that occurs). Steadily weakening post-recession levels of economic expansion in the face of persistently high oil prices over multiple economic cycles should start to get peoples' attention (I hope it does, anyway).
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Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby mos6507 » Tue 24 Nov 2009, 12:44:19

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')Do you think that the implosion of the housing market, the implosion of many credit markets, the plunging of treasury yields, and the stock market crash had ANY connection to the oil price spike in 2008 and the high oil prices that had been leading up to it for several years?


I really think that's the wrong way to look at it. It's not about looking at the crash superimposed with the oil prices. The crash was basically a shockwave of events that took place years prior to the oil spike, kind of like looking at the ancient sunlight of a star that went nova many years ago. So $147/bbl oil and the housing crash have little to do with eachother. Not nothing, but little. I'm aware that there are some studies here and there that try to connect the dots, but I think they suffer from not looking at the logic below:

The argument I like to use is to theorize what the housing situation in 2008 would be like if you removed oil from the mix. The ARM resets were written in stone. They were there on the calender. How many people who bought these houses had any intention of staying in their homes after the reset? How much farther could the ponzi scheme have gone with oil removed? It had already reached a peak and started to pop in 2007, before the oil spike peaked so dramatically. The popping of the bubble therefore had to do with what took place when these mortgages that had their ARMs reset were signed, not so much the sale of new houses. Certainly in order to flip the house you need a new sucker, but whether that new sucker was paying $1 a gallon for gas or $10 a gallon, they were not going to buy houses that had slipped into absurd price levels. The housing market was also rather saturated. Those who wanted houses, had already bought in. So there really was no farther for the housing bubble to expand. It simply did not need an oil spike to pop it. Did oil prices make commutes more expensive? Yes. Did the allure of the exurbs go away? Yes, but this was basically overkill on a situation that was already correcting itself for about a year before the credit crisis.

So to obsess on timing is to fall into that trap of correlation is causation, and something that I really try to avoid as a peak-oiler is to draw connections that are self-serving. That's why I've adopted this topic as my personal pet-peeve, and have had to restate my position about a dozen times over the last year.

I don't think it's going to change anybody's mind. People can point to Jeff Rubin or other supposed experts who have more name recognition than me who have dared to imply that peak oil caused the credit crisis. But I'm telling you that I don't buy the logic.

You go right on down the line and I can show you how the peak oil argument has been overplayed. For instance, the auto industry. You know, the auto industry with its housing bubble vulnerability with GMAC, etc... The auto industry which was already a dinosaur of union perks in the age of globalization. The auto industry that had no longer had a quality reputation with the public. So all of that was building up in addition to their SUV-heavy portfolio of cars. So to say the US automakers were killed by peak oil is to ignore these other factors.

And therefore when you add the failure of the auto industry to the mix of the general downturn in the economy, then you have to not just chalk that up as a 'peak-oil' card in the whodunit. The situation is more complicated than those who think all-peak-oil-all-the-time realize.

Likewise, the speculation in the oil runup. If roughly half of the oil price spike, especially at the tail end, was speculation, then what does that say about our fears of global geological peak oil? It says we have more of a market or regulatory issue than a geological constraint. Something resolvable, something transitory. The immense crash in oil prices following the peak should be proof enough that oil prices are not simply a 1:1 representation of supply and demand, but are highly colored by the commodity markets.

So that whole episode was a wake-up call for me not to look at peak oil as simple chart-watching with very simplistic conclusions to be made.

And even if you completely stop looking at 2008, and analyze the economy going forward, it's possible to make a case that the US economy was going to crash and burn anyway. Ron Paul and Peter Schiff's platform is completely devoid of the peak oil argument and says as much.

What I am almost singularly interested in with the issue of peak oil is how I can make the case to the layman, and do so in a way that is genuine, and incontrovertible. I would not want to make a case based on tenuous connections. It would be like saying "the rain won't come because we have angered the gods". It's a superstitious argument. It's possible to believe in peak oil but not to treat everything as being the negative fallout of peak oil or for peak oil to always be magically dated as right now or in the past tense. There is this growing dogma of peak oil that I really think is dangerous, and I was right in the middle of it during that oil runup, bowing down to Matt Simmons and his predictions of $200-300 oil. I was waiting for the Great Pumpkin and his sidekick, Toecutter, to come around. Well, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to always see the future more as a probability matrix due to the world being a highly complex thing with more moving parts to analyze besides TOD's charts. Do I think we're in the final danger-zone? Yes, but setting some exact date on peak and giving that peak event credit for this or that is a fool's game, really.
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Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby BigTex » Tue 24 Nov 2009, 16:01:49

Mos, whether or not peak oil had anything to do with the economic panic of 2008, do you think that the failure of oil prices to dip for an extended period following the panic (as they have following prior recessions) will be a contributing factor to sluggish economy activity going forward?

In other words, whether or not peak oil caused the current economic mess, do you think it may be what prevents us from getting out of it?

I have always viewed post-recession oil price collapses as a form of economic stimulus provided by Mother Nature. From here forward, I think we may need to look elsewhere for post-recession forms of economic stimulus. Is there somewhere else to look? I don't know.
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Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby mos6507 » Tue 24 Nov 2009, 17:30:29

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')In other words, whether or not peak oil caused the current economic mess, do you think it may be what prevents us from getting out of it?


Yes, but I don't think the general public will attribute it to peak oil, since it will be easily attributed to the death of the dollar and the decline and fall of US dominance. So we're entering into that era when it's not really a matter of whether or not the sh*t has hit the fan, but what we should position as the root cause. The finger-pointing era, so to speak. I don't think it's particularly useful to be in that mindset. I think it's better to look for ways forward that's, you know, a little more nuanced than finding the next scapegoat, but given human nature, including doomers here, that's what you get. You know, the sentiment goes something like this. "If only I can convince the blogosphere to hate Obama, then we can have morning in America once again." There is a great deal of simplistic vengefulness in the collective psyche right now. It's the kind of thing that, for all the hand-wringing about the NWO and various dystopias, actually sets the stage for a strongman to create a dystopia on the false hope of cleaning house. Out of the frying pan and into the fire we go, ala Animal Farm, without learning anything in the process.

So what we really need more than anything else is a holistic view of what's going on, which is not something people are very good at, or interested in. We want things black and white with a clear villain to string up by the balls. We just don't want to face the laws of thermodynamics head on.
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Re: Role of PO in current economic collapse?

Unread postby BigTex » Tue 24 Nov 2009, 19:33:24

Mos,

I agree with you. Blaming Obama for anything at this point is like blaming the pilot of a poorly designed plane that crashes after years of sloppy maintenance.

The processes that are unfolding now are probably far beyond the point at which meaningful human intervention could have altered the outcome. "The Limits to Growth" analysis is probably for the most part correct and the economic system is starting to appear frayed, in part, because the underlying ecological system is beginning to fray as well (economic software runs on ecological hardware).

But that is to be expected, and it is why civilizations both rise AND fall. If they only rose, history would be a lot less interesting, eh?

The good news is that these things usually occur over long periods of time, and it normally takes decades instead of years for feared events to unfold.

The current social, cultural and political philosophy of economic growth as the ideal and consumption as a measure of self-worth will probably be grist for some Monty Python-type skit 500 years from now. Something along the lines of the one where they are throwing people in the water as part of the "witch test", except the label won't be "witch", it will be "industrial capitalist."
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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby sparky » Sun 26 Aug 2012, 21:35:15

.
There is sometimes some fun in picking through old post
this one is a doozy cica 2005
quote
["Crash should happen long before peak oil ?
by Sys1 » Thu Mar 24, 2005 7:32 pm

When i watched the hubbert curb, the first thing i noticed was the peak extraction itself.
This peak means that we won't be able to grow anymore, so a crash will happen in our capitalism economy, because founded on debts.

IMO, things are not so simple. The question is not just about the growth itself, but its speed. The more you get close to peak oil, the more growth opportunities are reduced (watch the shape of Hubbert curb).
Some decades ago, the growing of oil extraction was awesome, allowing an economy's debt based to be healthy.
Now that the growing get slower and slower, economy is slowing too, becoming unable to pay the debts accumulated in the past. Economy can't get out of this vicious circle.

Knowing that peak oil is for 2008 (ASPO source), inflation explosion should happen somewhere betwen now and the peak.
Last edited by Sys1 on Thu Mar 24, 2005 " ] end of quote
link
crash-should-happen-long-before-peak-oil-t6207.html

Roughly , Peak oil and Peak debt should happen at about the same time
if one consider the debt to include government debt too ,
.....we should live in interesting time
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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby Revi » Fri 01 Nov 2013, 11:39:47

Let's bump this thread. Do you think that peak oil will rear it's ugly head again? Gail Tveberg sure does, and it sounds like it may be soon. Here's her blog. Check out particularly Oct. 23rd's entry. She has a little different slant on how peak oil will affect us economically, but remember she is an actuary and the whole thing doesn't add up to keeping the status quo going.

http://ourfiniteworld.com/author/gailtheactuary/
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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby John_A » Fri 01 Nov 2013, 13:50:18

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'L')et's bump this thread. Do you think that peak oil will rear it's ugly head again?


Why wouldn't it? The good news being, the more you prepare for it and mitigate against growing prices and whatnot, the less you care the next time it comes around.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('revi', '
') Gail Tveberg sure does, and it sounds like it may be soon. Here's her blog. Check out particularly Oct. 23rd's entry. She has a little different slant on how peak oil will affect us economically, but remember she is an actuary and the whole thing doesn't add up to keeping the status quo going.

http://ourfiniteworld.com/author/gailtheactuary/


Gail was calling for peak oil in 2008. So sure...it MUST be soon, otherwise she has to admit how little she actually knows about oil extraction, the economics of the oil and gas business, or net energy. Colin Campbell played kick the can for two decades, Gail is only a quarter of the way there so far, so she has PLENTY of room to run yet.
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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby radon1 » Mon 24 Mar 2014, 07:30:08

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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Mon 24 Mar 2014, 09:24:31

Seems to me all the places self sufficient by 50% or more not counting nuclear could achieve self sufficiency by building a nuclear network like that of France. It wouldn't be cheap or even easy, and as long as importing is cheaper energy only a dedicated leadership will male it possible. In the 1970's France was blessed with that kind of leadership and everywhere else was not.
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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Mon 24 Mar 2014, 10:14:25

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'S')eems to me all the places self sufficient by 50% or more not counting nuclear could achieve self sufficiency by building a nuclear network like that of France. It wouldn't be cheap or even easy, and as long as importing is cheaper energy only a dedicated leadership will male it possible. In the 1970's France was blessed with that kind of leadership and everywhere else was not.

Would you not run up against "peak uranium"? or peak storage of radioactive waste?.
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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Mon 24 Mar 2014, 10:32:51

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'S')eems to me all the places self sufficient by 50% or more not counting nuclear could achieve self sufficiency by building a nuclear network like that of France. It wouldn't be cheap or even easy, and as long as importing is cheaper energy only a dedicated leadership will male it possible. In the 1970's France was blessed with that kind of leadership and everywhere else was not.

Would you not run up against "peak uranium"? or peak storage of radioactive waste?.


Sure, in about a thousand years. Modern reactor designs are much more fuel efficient than the 1960's designs of most of the current set. The next generation of reactors like the Integrated Fast Reactor, IFR, and the Molten Salt Thorium Reactor are all able to run on the waste from the earlier reactors for their entire 100 year operating life.

Radioactive waste storage is now and has always been a political problem, not a technology problem.
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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Wed 02 Apr 2014, 14:40:07

Ignoring the silly words of our gov (“Texas’ conservative fiscal principles…” are not the primary reason IMHO but PO is. Or the sense that businesses will suffer less in Texas than elsewhere. And not just other US companies: I recently posted articles about a variety of EU companies locating here to take advantage of our much cheaper NG. And yes, Texas is generally business friendly but has been for many decades. So I see the shift in the last 10 years more related to an increased appreciate for the energy predicament we are currently in and how much worse it may be in the future:

“Dallas Fed Report Finds Texas Leads in Job Creation at All Pay Levels - A recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that Texas experienced more job growth at all pay levels than any other state in the nation from 2000 to 2013. The highest rate of job growth in Texas occurred in the upper half of the pay scale.

“Texas’ conservative fiscal principles continue to be a national example for stimulating job growth at all wage levels and creating opportunity for families,” Gov. Perry said. According to the report, the two upper wage quartiles were responsible for 55 percent of the net new jobs in Texas. The state also experienced growth in middle income wage jobs over the time period, whereas the rest of the nation saw negative or zero growth. Texas has succeeded in producing broad-based job growth in the context of job and wage polarization nationally. The most recent jobs data shows Texas with 5.7 percent unemployment, a full point below the national rate. Over the last ten years, Texas has added nearly one third of the net new jobs created in the U.S.”
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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby Graeme » Wed 02 Apr 2014, 21:45:31

JPMorgan Explains: The Problem Is The Inexorable Rise In Entitlement Payments

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nother question that comes up: why can’t the US spend more on worker retraining? The entry of China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 accelerated a massive decline in US manufacturing jobs, and after the housing bust, the country’s unemployed construction workers need new skills. As shown in the first chart on the next page, why is less money being spent on training, employment and related social services? The second chart on the next page is striking as well: given concerns around peak oil, fracking, climate change, etc., you would think that public sector spending on commuter rails, urbanized natural gas vehicles, carbon capture and storage, safer ways of operating nuclear power (light water reactors), more efficient internal combustion engines, battery/electricity storage R&D and renewable energy integration would be rising. So why is energy spending falling?



The answer to all these questions is the same: these categories are declining since they are being squeezed out by the inexorable rise in entitlement payments. There may be negative consequences for productivity, job growth and national income over the short run and over the long run (the New Orleans infrastructure cost/benefit failure is one textbook example). Of course, some argue that there are sufficient incentives for the private sector to solve the transportation, natural resource, infrastructure, job retraining, energy and urbanization challenges facing the US, so that the above trends aren’t a problem. I wouldn’t.


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Re: THE Peak Oil & Economics Thread (merged)

Unread postby Pops » Thu 03 Apr 2014, 08:44:45

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'L')et's bump this thread. Do you think that peak oil will rear it's ugly head again?

A little late responding Revi but I'd say that PO will eventually be seen as never having lowered it's ugly head, instead, we will be seen as having buried ours. If that makes sense.

Most people are optimistic by nature, and I mean that literally. Imagine the pain and suffering that a great portion of humanity goes through daily yet doesn't just sit down and die. We choose to hope, or at the least, cope.

I don't blame us necessarily, there are very strong tides tossing BAU about. Even I, who can see the oil in everything, can't tell how much PO is affecting the economy compared to other trends. The Walmart effect of Lowest Wages Everyday race to the bottom, combined with the true globalisation of the economy via the web - and - the success of the Reagan revolution is hollowing out the middle fast. People feel it, regardless of the size of the headline type and number of grass-shoot pictures posted.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ince 2008, the number of people who call themselves middle class has fallen by nearly a fifth, according to a survey in January by the Pew Research Center, from 53 percent to 44 percent. Forty percent now identify as either lower-middle or lower class compared with just 25 percent in February 2008.

. . . People are generally slow to acknowledge downward mobility. Many regard themselves as middle class even if their incomes fall well above or below the average. Experts say the rise in Americans who feel they've slipped below the middle class suggests something deeply rooted.
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I think that change is significant. Bernak, Paulson, Timmy and Mitt showed us that we are not the priority, the owners are the priority. Bernanke's Great Moderation was the theory that the markets had been perfected and bubbles could no longer happen. A so-called Student of the Depression he learned that the people don't matter, the system is what matters. And while it may be true that the system needs to be preserved I think it was completely false that individual institutions should be protected when they make poor decisions.

But I think the lesson learned by the average guy, the average American anyway, was that more than ever we as individuals are on our own. The big change that I think is coming to dawn on people is that The American Century has come to a close. In fact the very idea of political borders is becoming less and less relevant as economic interests blur the old lines.

How peak oil affects an economy based on international trade is the open question.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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