[onlooker]

I am not sure how the Western Economies will recover from this.  They will not.  Already the middle class has virtually disappeared.  The financial system is a rogue and parasitic element on the general Economy sucking wealth from the general economy and totally unresponsive to the working class as it serves totally the ownership/wealthy class. 

Already Americans overwhelmingly had little extra income and virtually no savings. They are  as the phrase says
 living paycheck to    paycheck.  Their economic condition after all this will be significantly worse. And yes we are still better off than many others around the world. The point is the trajectory is downward

[Cog]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'I') am not sure how the Western Economies will recover from this.  They will not.  Already the middle class has virtually disappeared.  The financial system is a rogue and parasitic element on the general Economy sucking wealth from the general economy and totally unresponsive to the working class as it serves totally the ownership/wealthy class. 

Already Americans overwhelmingly had little extra income and virtually no savings. They are  as the phrase says
 living paycheck to    paycheck.  Their economic condition after all this will be significantly worse. And yes we are still better off than many others around the world. The point is the trajectory is downward

[ROCKMAN]

Big problem with the poll IMHO: collapse is a meaningless term. IOW without a defined definition it means many different things subject to the views of each reader. With multiple definitions it essentially has no definition. Folks will argue endlessly because each debater will be arguing their own definition.

Also there is the question of who is "collapsing". Fortunately the Rockman has suffered zero collapse regardless of whose definition. The Rockman has lost no money in the stock market since all his retirement funds are in CD's. Not much interest but no loss either. Since retired no wage loss and Social Security check keeps being deposited every month. No mortgage or debt since Rockman knew how to plan on retirement and didn't piss money away on expensive cars or a McMansion he didn't need. Just talked to my engineer this morning. He's on SS too but also loss about 30% in the stock market...on paper. But isn't selling since he only owns securities that pay nice dividends. He did build his McMansion in the Texas Hill Country but also paid off his mortgage years ago. Bought expensive cars but still drives them because he learned how to do repairs on YouTube. That's engineers for you. LOL.

In fact most I know aren't "collapsing" but since they are all old farts and in the high risk group they might croak from coronavirus but are not going to "collapse". LOL. I suspect that since all us old oil patch farts have survived the boom/bust cycles we just all plan for another bust before we die.

And true story I just got from my engineer this morning. An oil patch salesman we know may have been "Patent Zero" for his community. On 28 Dec he played golf with 2 Chinese that had just flown in. A few days later started getting sick. Docs had no idea what was wrong with him. Various meds didn't work. Had such a high fever for 5 days he couldn't speak. Doc didn't know what to do so gave him a med with high sulfur. Started feeling better right away. The drug: anti-malaria drug. My engineer didn't know which one. Interesting. eh?

[careinke]

I voted YES. I hope it is just as reliable as my more recent predictions, meaning it will fail miserably.

[onlooker]

All tied up. That makes for healthy debating

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'I') am not sure how the Western Economies will recover from this.  They will not.  Already the middle class has virtually disappeared.  The financial system is a rogue and parasitic element on the general Economy sucking wealth from the general economy and totally unresponsive to the working class as it serves totally the ownership/wealthy class. 

Already Americans overwhelmingly had little extra income and virtually no savings. They are  as the phrase says
 living paycheck to    paycheck.  Their economic condition after all this will be significantly worse. And yes we are still better off than many others around the world. The point is the trajectory is downward

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('asg70', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'b')oy are we far along in that process.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('asg70', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'b')oy are we far along in that process.

[asg70]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', '
')a teetering Oil Industry ie oil price too low to sustain the Shale/fracking

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')nless you work in the shale patch, low oil prices are only a benefit.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')nless you work in the shale patch, low oil prices are only a benefit.

[JuanP]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')nless you work in the shale patch, low oil prices are only a benefit.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'h')ave always been quite certain that the oil companies would be bailed out or nationalized if necessary, particularly on the shale side of the business which has always seemed to me to be financially unsustainable in the medium term. Letting some companies go bankrupt while having others buying the assets for pennies on the dollar also seems another way to keep things going for a few more years, too. I don't know anything about the business. What do you think of these ideas?

[JuanP]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'h')ave always been quite certain that the oil companies would be bailed out or nationalized if necessary, particularly on the shale side of the business which has always seemed to me to be financially unsustainable in the medium term. Letting some companies go bankrupt while having others buying the assets for pennies on the dollar also seems another way to keep things going for a few more years, too. I don't know anything about the business. What do you think of these ideas?

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')onsolidation sounds quite reasonable. How long do you think it would take for US shale oil production to peak from a geological point of view, if we disregarded all economic considerations.

[JuanP]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', '
')you can't do a calculation without taking into consideration economic considerations given it is the economics that drive whether a new well gets driven or not. The details require digging in the data and I'm sure some like WoodMac and Rystad have been busy doing that. We know that new drilling isn't going to happen and the decline rate over the first 24 - 36 months in horizontal unconventional wells drilled into tight formations and fracked is somewhere between 65 - 80%. After that those wells go into a gradually slowing low rate decline phase. But the wells are all staggered in time of course so some will already be through that hyperbolic decline and others are just starting into it. Adding to that calculation is the need to look at conventional production both offshore and Canadian heavy oil. Unlike the unconventionals operating costs (the cost to keep lifting oil) are much higher so if you get the oil price into the teens then those wells will be shut-in. So how long does it take for all that production to fall off? In 2014 it took about 6 months before it became noticeable but total production from unconventionals was much smaller back then. An added uncertainty is that many producers have hedged a portion if not all of their 2020 production at higher prices so that draws the curve out further. I'm not going to dig through the data to come up with an estimate as it would almost certainly be wrong but I've seen estimates that US production could easily drop by 30% this year.

[sparky]

.
voted business as usual ... for a while , the Titanic remained a ship fora while after striking the iceberg
great systems have an inertia about them ,
we are not watching a house collapse , we are watching a whole mountainside sliding down

[EnergyUnlimited]

Voted collapse because it is likely that historians will mark it as an important turning point.
But for a while due to system inertia once initial turmoil is over it will superficially look like BAU.
Lame duck type of BAU but still.
Economic trajectory in coming decade or two will resemble final two decades of Soviets.
Superficially working but with deeper and deeper rot destroying fabric of economy, society, government etc.
It will no longer be possible to massage numbers and pretend that everything is fine.
Progress of crisis is going to be selfevident.

But there might be a bright outcome of all of that.
Working of society may be reshaped (after a due period of chaos) into some nicer, more placid setups.
Debt may go out of fashion, big corporations may end up disassembled and even smartphones may well end up abandoned by most. Not because they are no longer produced but because there is no interest in possessing them and no funds to maintain mobile networks outside of large cities.
Passenger air travel is going to be at most few times in life experience and satellite network will gradually dissipate due to lack of funds.
Only very few satellites will be worth to maintain and replace.
Life expectancy will shorten because of lack of funds to keep half dead people still alive for next 30 years and because of general dissipation of healthcare.
Knowledge will remain as long as it can be practised but affordability of high tech for masses will be gone.
As long as Guy McPherson's scenario with global dimming does not play out we should be fine.

[asg70]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', '
')not the case if there are massive layoffs...

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')hale was already hit hard once before during when the Saudis kept the taps open to kill it. The greater economy of the US barely felt it. It's a minor factor