[deMolay]

This is on the money. Look at all the hype and hucksters around. http://www.motherjones.com/media/2009/0 ... -recession

[deMolay]

How is this for spin. The consumers are not spending. Some advisers are saying North Americans don't save anymore. These Banksters are saying we need to spend. http://www.financialpost.com/personal-f ... id=2044036

[deMolay]

Another spin story. http://exiledonline.com/the-making-of-k ... e-machine/

[Pops]

The evil guys are getting their due - ad spending down 15% in '09.

[chadnirat]

This is a guest post by Richard Heinberg. Richard is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and author of five books on resource depletion and societal responses to the energy problem. He can be found on the web at www.richardheinberg.com and www.postcarbon.org.

Everyone agrees: our economy is sick. The inescapable symptoms include declines in consumer spending and consumer confidence, together with a contraction of international trade and available credit. Add a collapse in real estate values and carnage in the automotive and airline industries and the picture looks grim indeed.

But why are both the U.S. economy and the larger global economy ailing? Among the mainstream media, world leaders, and America’s economists-in-chief (Treasury Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke) there is near-unanimity of opinion: these recent troubles are primarily due to a combination of bad real estate loans and poor regulation of financial derivatives.

This is the Conventional Diagnosis. If it is correct, then the treatment for our economic malady might logically include heavy doses of bailout money for beleaguered financial institutions, mortgage lenders, and car companies; better regulation of derivatives and futures markets; and stimulus programs to jumpstart consumer spending.

But what if this diagnosis is fundamentally flawed? The metaphor needs no belaboring: we all know that tragedy can result from a doctor’s misreading of symptoms, mistaking one disease for another.










----------------------------------------


formations aux metiers sur l energie renouvelables

[Novus]

A lot of the things that are happening now would have happened anyway even if PO was little more than a wacky conspiracy theory. There is so much corruption in the markets and lack of government oversight. Everyone is trying to make a quick buck for nothing. Trillion dollar get rich quick Ponsi schemes are going up in flames. When bubble economics replaces traditional hard investments it was all doomed from the start.

[SeaGypsy]

Redistribution of limited resources for globalised ruthless efficiency.

[Cog]

Jumpstarting consumer spending through stimulus will only work if the consumer can take on more debt and service it. IMO the consumer can't really take on anymore debt since his principle asset(housing) has gone down in value as it well should.

I'm with Denninger on this. There are two choices with all the debt out there right now whether it be business or consumer debt. You have to either pay it off or default on it. Both of those things have to happen and we are a long way from approaching reasonable debt loads for consumers and business.

[Cloud9]

+1

[patience]

Bernanke-panky has come up with a 3rd option--pretend it doesn't exist!!

Chris Martenson, quoted at Zerohedge, said he thought they might try to just keep all that bad debt off the books forever. If we can successfully ignore it, then nobody has to take the pain, is the theory. I posted some quotes from it here:
http://peakoil.com/economics-finance/th ... 0-345.html

So, do we stay in limbo? For how long? My bet, is until somebody calls the bluff and s__t-cans the dollar. A notion's internal monetary policy can't stop the ROW doing what they gotta do. It's gonna happen sometime, and the noises about it are getting louder.

I'm convinced that US "growth" has been a mirage for some time now, and the real thing won't return until we flush out all the present problems.

[shortonsense]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('chadnirat', 'T')his is a guest post by Richard Heinberg. Richard is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and author of five books on resource depletion and societal responses to the energy problem. He can be found on the web at http://www.richardheinberg.com and http://www.postcarbon.org.

[shortonoil]

patience said:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ernanke-panky has come up with a 3rd option--pretend it doesn't exist!!

Chris Martenson, quoted at Zerohedge, said he thought they might try to just keep all that bad debt off the books forever. If we can successfully ignore it, then nobody has to take the pain, is the theory. I posted some quotes from it here:

[leduck]

it's obvious world oil production is on a plateau. If this were just another recession, then oil production would have responded by now to the gas price signal, with an increase in production. It hasn't happened yet. Although $3.00 gas is not as bad as $4.00 gas..., I'm sure things would be better at $2.00. Then there'd be more discretionary spending. It wouldn't solve our credit problems..., but we'd probably still be in better shape.
after all..., regardless of PO..., we are still living beyond our means.

but world oil production hasn't responded to any signals at all..., it remains flat since about 2005. Therefore, I believe it's just a matter of time before we end up in terminal decline. I think it may be anytime within the next several years. It all depends on howlong heavy sour crude can continue to make the difference for declining light sweet crdue wich seems to have peaked in 2005.

I believe very strongly that this is it. The end of Growth. The beginning of the end of Cheap Energy.

[evlana]

It's all inter-related. Real estate is not the first bubble.
A video on that behalf
Part1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P72DBplhdE
Part2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHq-ZxDHPz4

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('leduck', 'i')t's obvious world oil production is on a plateau. If this were just another recession, then oil production would have responded by now to the gas price signal, with an increase in production. It hasn't happened yet. Although $3.00 gas is not as bad as $4.00 gas..., I'm sure things would be better at $2.00. Then there'd be more discretionary spending. It wouldn't solve our credit problems..., but we'd probably still be in better shape.
after all..., regardless of PO..., we are still living beyond our means.

but world oil production hasn't responded to any signals at all..., it remains flat since about 2005. Therefore, I believe it's just a matter of time before we end up in terminal decline. I think it may be anytime within the next several years. It all depends on howlong heavy sour crude can continue to make the difference for declining light sweet crdue wich seems to have peaked in 2005.

I believe very strongly that this is it. The end of Growth. The beginning of the end of Cheap Energy.

[Revi]

This is no temporary recession. It's already worse than anything I can remember. Here in the US we have already had two car makers fail, some say that unemployment is over 20% and there's no growth in sight.

We are never going to have the kind of growth we had.

The only place that's going to grow is the poorhouse.

[ian807]

It'll be a slow bumpy slide down over the next two decades. Then peak oil hits hard with supplies drying up and not just higher prices. Maybe before then. We'll see lots of oscillation. The happy-talk media whores will play up each mild uptick, but the overall trend in the USA will be down, down, down.... just like Japan.

Meanwhile, China and India will appear to prosper just like we appeared to, until they too, run into the brick wall of peak oil, after which they spiral down too.

It's going to be a poorer, larger, hungrier world by 2030. Even more so by 2050.

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ian807', 'I')t'll be a slow bumpy slide down over the next two decades. Then peak oil hits hard with supplies drying up and not just higher prices. Maybe before then. We'll see lots of oscillation. The happy-talk media whores will play up each mild uptick, but the overall trend in the USA will be down, down, down.... just like Japan.

Meanwhile, China and India will appear to prosper just like we appeared to, until they too, run into the brick wall of peak oil, after which they spiral down too.

It's going to be a poorer, larger, hungrier world by 2030. Even more so by 2050.

[eXpat]

Recession Will Be 'Full-Blown Depression'
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his global recession will turn into a "full-blown depression," Nicu Harajchi, CEO of N1 Asset Management, said Friday, adding that global stimulus hasn't come down to Main Street.

Wall Street is making money, while consumers aren't, Harajchi told CNBC.

"We have seen the G20 coming out with cross border capital injections of $5 trillion this year… But a lot of this money hasn't really come down to Main Street," he said.
"When it comes down to corporate America, corporate Europe or even in Asia, in Japan, we are not seeing Main Street making any money," he said. "Consumers are losing their jobs. They are struggling with their mortgages, with their credit. And we are just seeing this continuing."

The $5 trillion injection is "monetary expansion," according to Harajchi. "At some point, which we believe to be 2010/11, some of the central banks are going to recall some of that money and that will turn from monetary expansion to monetary contraction."

He also said he doesn't see the corporates or the public "being able to pay back that debt."

"We see 2010 becoming a much more risky year than 2009," he said.

Harajchi said unemployment data are "a leading indicator" instead of a lagging indicator.

[phaster]

the question kinda depends upon one's point of view and where in the world a person lives. For example here in the USA we have lived the good "consumer" life since the end of WW II so I think society here in general will reevaluate what they consider important. We know people have worked themselves to death (or should say put themselves into a credit hole that is pretty damn deep) to get ever bigger cars, ever bigger homes and the latest electronic gadget.

But if you're living in any of the BRIC countries, people living there are going chase the "american dream" in other words they are now just entering the phase where they all will want to get ever bigger cars, ever bigger homes and the latest electronic gadget.

What's going to be interesting to watch over the next 20 to 40 years, is people all around the world are going to wake up to the fact that we live on a world where there are finite resources (i.e. peak oil), and its not possible for everyone to obtain ever bigger cars, ever bigger homes and the latest electronic gadgets...