http://agriculture.imva.info/?p=12
AGRICULTURAL APOCALYPSE, 2010
The food business is far and away the most importantbusiness in the world. Everything else is a luxury.Food is what you need to sustain life every day.
Dwayne Andreas
When a large segment of the population is facing a drastic cut in income in the face of escalating food prices we have a catastrophic problem in the making. Today we have the simultaneous events of income deflation and food inflation; two high-speed express trains coming down that tracks at each other, a financial crisis colliding with staggering crop losses, which are cutting deeply into available planetary food reserves. Prices of food are again beginning to soar again just as millions are losing the ability to afford a reasonable diet, though little of this is being observed or reported. But soon even the blind will see.
From corn to crude, prices for a wide range of commodities areon the rise across the globe. In recent months, global food priceshave been growing at a rate that rivals some of the wildest monthsof 2008, when food riots erupted across the developing world.January 9th Wall Street Journal
The cold is again freezing oranges in Florida. Temperatures in Miami dropped to 36F; beating the record 37F set in 1938. Officials are saying that hundreds of millions of dollars of food perished. Vegetables were among the hardest hit. At least one major tomato grower, Ag-Mart Produce, has already declared that most of its Florida crop is “useless due to the freeze.” Other vegetable farms were expected to lose their entire crop, and wholesale prices have already increased. “Tomatoes were down around $14 for a 25-pound box; now they are up over $20,” said Gene McAvoy, an agriculture expert with the University Florida, who predicted $100 million in vegetable losses. “Peppers — just after New Year’s they were $8 a box; now they’re up around $18.”
White sugar climbed to the highest price in at least two decadesin London on speculation that India, Pakistan and other importerswill purchase more of the sweetener as a supply deficit looms.Excess rains in Brazil and a weak monsoon in India hurtsugar-cane output from the world’s two biggest growers.January 20, 2010
The world faces “mass starvation” following North America’s next major crop failure. And it could even happen before year’s end. So says Chicago-based Don Coxe, who is one of the world’s leading experts on agricultural commodities, so much so that Canada’s renowned BMO Financial Group named the fund after him. A crop failure in North America will have particularly dire consequences for major overseas markets that are highly reliant on U.S. crop imports.
Scientists in England are warning that a “perfect storm” of food shortages and water scarcity now threatens to unleash public unrest and conflict, the government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has warned.[i] “People do not quite realise the scale of the issue,” said Professor Mike Bevan. “This is one of the most serious problems that science has ever faced.”
In Britain the lives of hundreds of thousands of people will be threatened by food shortages. The repercussions of food shortages for any society are devastating. The world faces “mass starvation” following more major crop failures in the United States and other places around the globe. According to Chicago-based Don Coxe, who is one of the world’s leading experts on agricultural commodities, so much so that Canada’s renowned BMO Financial Group named the fund after him, this mind boggling event could happen before year’s end.
We are facing a problem that literally has never been faced in human history. Surging population and food demand, food inflation, diminishing world food stocks, drought, flooding, cold, diminished credit, infestations, soil erosion, industrial farming, factory farm pollution, aquifers/wells going dry, relocation of produce for energy production are all slamming into a global financial and economic crisis. And in some places like the United States they don’t have enough farmers. Then on top of everything else we have desertification, which is one of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. New deserts are growing at a rate of 20,000 square miles (51,800 square kilometers) a year. Desertification leads to famine, mass starvation and human migration.
According to Eric de Carbonnel, “There is overwhelming, undeniable evidence that the world will run out of food next year. The 2010 Food Crisis is going to be different. It is the crisis that will make all doomsday scenarios come true. Early in 2009, the supply and demand in agricultural markets went badly out of balance. The world experienced a catastrophic fall in food production as a result of the financial crisis (low commodity prices and lack of credit) and adverse weather on a global scale. Normally food prices should have already shot higher months ago, leading to lower food consumption and bringing the global food supply/demand situation back into balance.
This never happened because the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), instead of adjusting production estimates down to reflect decreased production, adjusted estimates upwards to match increasing demand from china. In this way, the USDA has brought supply and demand back into balance (on paper) and temporarily delayed a rise in food prices by ensuring a catastrophe in 2010.”[ii]
According to the United States Department of Agriculture U.S. farmers produced the largest corn and soybean crops on record in 2009. And there are people who believe that anyone who believes government figures on anything concerning the economy or anything else is a total moron.
Very few people in the US have given any serious consideration to the question of food security. This essay should convince people that its time to start. For the most part, we’re not aware of the problem but if we look hard at the ‘hidden’ news we see that the handwriting is on the wall for an unimaginable crisis that will come on us as early as this year.
More than 2.1 million hectares of grain have been destroyedby drought in 2009 in Russia, Agriculture Minister YelenaSkrynnik said. A total of 616,000 hectares have beendestroyed in the region, or 70% of the total amount planted.[iii]
“The world is blissfully unaware that the greatest economic, financial and political crisis ever is a few months away. It takes only the tiniest bit of research to realize something is going critically wrong in the agricultural market. All someone needs to do to know the world is headed for food crisis is to stop reading USDA’s crop reports predicting a record soybean and corn harvests and listen to what else the USDA is saying.Specifically, the USDA has declared half the counties in the Midwest to be primary disaster areas, including 274 counties in the last 30 days alone. These designations are based on the criteria of a minimum of 30 percent loss in the value of at least one crop in the county,” continues de Carbonnel......
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
SC102-3
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25081.htm
Have a Nice World War, Folks
Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and “bunker-buster” bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay.
Meanwhile, the secretary of “defence” Robert Gates complains that “the general [European] public and the political class” are so opposed to war they are an “impediment” to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a “war of perception”. Thus, the recent “liberation of the city of Marja” from the Taliban’s “command and control structure” was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
“War is fun”, the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one “who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to values” (Hugo Young, the Guardian) compared with today’s public reckoning of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are not threatened by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the anti-war instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested Israel’s assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police “kettled” (corralled) thousands, first-offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry custodial sentences. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, like Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of famous writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the “market” or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them have spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq’s clean water system and lead to “increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease”. So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, noted Unicef, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a “pre-fascist era”. Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. “Fascism” is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is “more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent.”
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state with the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud “our boys”. The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a “partner”. We should interrupt their fun.
Have a Nice World War, Folks
Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and “bunker-buster” bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay.
Meanwhile, the secretary of “defence” Robert Gates complains that “the general [European] public and the political class” are so opposed to war they are an “impediment” to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a “war of perception”. Thus, the recent “liberation of the city of Marja” from the Taliban’s “command and control structure” was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
“War is fun”, the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one “who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to values” (Hugo Young, the Guardian) compared with today’s public reckoning of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are not threatened by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the anti-war instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested Israel’s assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police “kettled” (corralled) thousands, first-offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry custodial sentences. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, like Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of famous writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the “market” or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them have spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq’s clean water system and lead to “increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease”. So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, noted Unicef, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a “pre-fascist era”. Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. “Fascism” is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is “more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent.”
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state with the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud “our boys”. The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a “partner”. We should interrupt their fun.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
SC102-2
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18180
American Naifs Bringing Ruin to Other Lands
According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran.” http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/final-destination-iran-1.1013151
The next step will be a staged “terrorist attack,” a “false flag” operation as per Operation Northwoods, for which Iran will be blamed. As Iran and its leadership have already been demonized, the “false flag” attack will suffice to obtain US and European public support for bombing Iran. The bombing will include more than the nuclear facilities and will continue until the Iranians agree to regime change and the installation of a puppet government. The corrupt American media will present the new puppet as “freedom and democracy.”
If the past is a guide, Americans will fall for the deception. In the February issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, a scholarly journal, Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith writes that state crimes against democracy (SCAD) involve government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities in order to implement an agenda. Examples include McCarthyism or the fabrication of evidence of communist infiltration, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on false claims of President Johnson and Pentagon chief McNamara that North Vietnam attacked a U.S. naval vessel, the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in order to discredit Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers) as “disturbed,” and the falsified “intelligence” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2010/03/02/state-crimes-against-democracy/
There are many other examples. I have always regarded the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City as a SCAD. Allegedly, a disturbed Tim McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb in a truck parked outside the building. More likely, McVeigh was a patsy, whose fertilizer bomb was a cover for explosives planted inside the building.
A number of experts dismissed the possibility of McVeigh’s bomb producing such structural damage. For example, General Benton K. Partin, who was in charge of U.S. Air Force munitions design and testing, produced a thick report on the Murrah building bombing which concluded that the building blew up from the inside out. Gen. Partin concluded that “the pattern of damage would have been technically impossible without supplementary demolition charges at some of the reinforced concrete bases inside the building, a standard demolition technique. For a simplistic blast truck bomb, of the size and composition reported, to be able to reach out on the order of 60 feet and collapse a reinforced column base the size of column A7 is beyond credulity.”
Gen. Partin dismissed the official report as “a massive cover-up of immense proportions.”http://100777.com/node/106
Of course, the general’s unquestionable expertise had no bearing on the outcome.
One reason is that his and other expert voices were drowned out by media pumping the official story. Another reason is that public beliefs in a democracy run counter to suspicion of government as a terrorist agent. Professor Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph says that “false flag” operations have the advantage over truth: “research shows that people are far less willing to examine information that disputes, rather than confirms, their beliefs.” Professor Steven Hoffman agrees: “Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the most part people completely ignore contrary information.” Even when hard evidence turns up, it can be discredited as a “conspiracy theory.”
All that is necessary for success of “false flag” or “black ops” events is for the government to have its story ready and to have a reliable and compliant media. Once an official story is in place, thought and investigation are precluded. Any formal inquiry that is convened serves to buttress the already provided explanation.
An explanation ready-at-hand is almost a give-away that an incident is a “black ops” event. Notice how quickly the U.S. government, allegedly so totally deceived by al Qaida, provided the explanation for 9/11. When President Kennedy was assassinated, the government produced the culprit immediately. The alleged culprit was conveniently shot inside a jail by a civilian before he could be questioned. But the official story was ready, and it held.
Professors Manwell and Hoffman’s research resonates with me. I remember reading in my graduate studies that the Czarist secret police set off bombs in order to create excuses to arrest their targets. My inclination was to dismiss the accounts as anti-Czarist propaganda by pro-communist historians. It was only later when Robert Conquest confirmed to me that this was indeed the practice of the Czarist secret police that the scales fell from my eyes.
Former CIA official Philip Giraldi in his article, “The Rogue Nation,”http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/03/10/the-rogue-nation/ makes it clear that the U.S. government has a hegemonic agenda that it is pursuing without congressional or public awareness. The agenda unfolds piecemeal as a response to “terrorism,” and the big picture is not understood by the public or by most in Congress. Giraldi protests that the agenda is illegal under both U.S. and international law, but that the illegality of the agenda does not serve as a barrier. Only a naif could believe that such a government would not employ “false flag” operations that advance the agenda.
The U.S. population, it seems, is comprised of naifs whose lack of comprehension is bringing ruin to other lands.
American Naifs Bringing Ruin to Other Lands
According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran.” http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/final-destination-iran-1.1013151
The next step will be a staged “terrorist attack,” a “false flag” operation as per Operation Northwoods, for which Iran will be blamed. As Iran and its leadership have already been demonized, the “false flag” attack will suffice to obtain US and European public support for bombing Iran. The bombing will include more than the nuclear facilities and will continue until the Iranians agree to regime change and the installation of a puppet government. The corrupt American media will present the new puppet as “freedom and democracy.”
If the past is a guide, Americans will fall for the deception. In the February issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, a scholarly journal, Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith writes that state crimes against democracy (SCAD) involve government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities in order to implement an agenda. Examples include McCarthyism or the fabrication of evidence of communist infiltration, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on false claims of President Johnson and Pentagon chief McNamara that North Vietnam attacked a U.S. naval vessel, the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in order to discredit Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers) as “disturbed,” and the falsified “intelligence” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2010/03/02/state-crimes-against-democracy/
There are many other examples. I have always regarded the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City as a SCAD. Allegedly, a disturbed Tim McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb in a truck parked outside the building. More likely, McVeigh was a patsy, whose fertilizer bomb was a cover for explosives planted inside the building.
A number of experts dismissed the possibility of McVeigh’s bomb producing such structural damage. For example, General Benton K. Partin, who was in charge of U.S. Air Force munitions design and testing, produced a thick report on the Murrah building bombing which concluded that the building blew up from the inside out. Gen. Partin concluded that “the pattern of damage would have been technically impossible without supplementary demolition charges at some of the reinforced concrete bases inside the building, a standard demolition technique. For a simplistic blast truck bomb, of the size and composition reported, to be able to reach out on the order of 60 feet and collapse a reinforced column base the size of column A7 is beyond credulity.”
Gen. Partin dismissed the official report as “a massive cover-up of immense proportions.”http://100777.com/node/106
Of course, the general’s unquestionable expertise had no bearing on the outcome.
One reason is that his and other expert voices were drowned out by media pumping the official story. Another reason is that public beliefs in a democracy run counter to suspicion of government as a terrorist agent. Professor Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph says that “false flag” operations have the advantage over truth: “research shows that people are far less willing to examine information that disputes, rather than confirms, their beliefs.” Professor Steven Hoffman agrees: “Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the most part people completely ignore contrary information.” Even when hard evidence turns up, it can be discredited as a “conspiracy theory.”
All that is necessary for success of “false flag” or “black ops” events is for the government to have its story ready and to have a reliable and compliant media. Once an official story is in place, thought and investigation are precluded. Any formal inquiry that is convened serves to buttress the already provided explanation.
An explanation ready-at-hand is almost a give-away that an incident is a “black ops” event. Notice how quickly the U.S. government, allegedly so totally deceived by al Qaida, provided the explanation for 9/11. When President Kennedy was assassinated, the government produced the culprit immediately. The alleged culprit was conveniently shot inside a jail by a civilian before he could be questioned. But the official story was ready, and it held.
Professors Manwell and Hoffman’s research resonates with me. I remember reading in my graduate studies that the Czarist secret police set off bombs in order to create excuses to arrest their targets. My inclination was to dismiss the accounts as anti-Czarist propaganda by pro-communist historians. It was only later when Robert Conquest confirmed to me that this was indeed the practice of the Czarist secret police that the scales fell from my eyes.
Former CIA official Philip Giraldi in his article, “The Rogue Nation,”http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/03/10/the-rogue-nation/ makes it clear that the U.S. government has a hegemonic agenda that it is pursuing without congressional or public awareness. The agenda unfolds piecemeal as a response to “terrorism,” and the big picture is not understood by the public or by most in Congress. Giraldi protests that the agenda is illegal under both U.S. and international law, but that the illegality of the agenda does not serve as a barrier. Only a naif could believe that such a government would not employ “false flag” operations that advance the agenda.
The U.S. population, it seems, is comprised of naifs whose lack of comprehension is bringing ruin to other lands.
SC102-1
http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/1572/1/
Tipping Point
Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production
The credit crisis exemplifies society's difficulties in the timely management of risks outside our experience or immediate concerns, even when such risks are well signposted. We have passed or are close to passing the peak of global oil production. Our civilisation is structurally unstable to an energy withdrawal. There is a high probability that our integrated and globalised civilisation is on the cusp of a fast and near-term collapse.
As individuals, and as a social species we put up huge psychological defences to protect the status quo. We've heard this doom prophesied for decades, all is still well! What about technology? Rising energy prices will bring more oil! We need a Green New Deal! We still have time! We’re busy with a financial crisis! This is depressing! If this were important, everybody would be talking about it!
Yet the evidence for such a scenario is as close to cast iron as any upon which policy is built: Oil production must peak; there is a growing probability that it has or will soon peak; energy flows and a functioning economy are by necessity highly correlated; our basic local needs have become dependent upon a hyper-complex, integrated, tightly-coupled global fabric of exchange; our primary infrastructure is dependent upon the operation of this fabric and global economies of scale; credit is the integral part of the fabric of our monetary, economic and trade systems; a credit market must collapse in a contracting economy, and so on.
We are living within dynamic processes. It matters little what technologies are in the pipeline, the potential of wind power in some choice location, or that the European Commission has a target; if a severe economic and structural collapse occurs before their enactment, then they may never be enacted.
Our primary question is what happens if there is a net decrease in energy flow through our civilisation? For it is absolutely dependent upon increasing flows of concentrated energy to evolve and grow, and to form and maintain its complex structures. The rules governing energy and its transformation, the laws of thermodynamics, are the inviolate framework through which all things happen- the evolution of the universe, the direction of time, life on earth, human development, the evolution of civilisation, and economic processes. This point is not rhetorical, access to increasing flows of concentrated energy, which can be transformed into work and dispersed energy, is the foundation upon which our civilisation stands. Yet we are at a point where these flows are, with high probability, about to begin decreasing. We should intuit that an energy withdrawal should have major systemic implications, for without energy flows nothing happens.
The key to understanding the implications of peak oil is to see it not just directly through its effect on transport, petrochemicals, or food say, but its systemic effects. A globalising, integrated and co-dependant economy has evolved with particular dynamics and embedded structures that have made our basic welfare dependent upon delocalised 'local' economies. It has locked us into hyper-complex economic and social processes that are increasing our vulnerability, but which we are unable to alter without risking a collapse in those same welfare supporting structures. And without increasing energy flows, those embedded structures, which include our expectations, institutions and infrastructure that evolved and adapted in the expectation of further economic growth cannot be maintained.
In order to address these questions, the following paper considers the nature and evolution of this complex integrated globalised civilisation from which energy is being withdrawn. Some broad issues in thermodynamics, the energy-economy relationship, peak oil, and the limits of mitigation are reviewed. It is argued that assumptions about future oil production as held by some peak oil aware commentators are misleading. We draw on some concepts in systems dynamics and critical transitions to frame our discussion.
The economics of peak oil are explicated using three indicative models: linear decline; oscillating decline; and systemic collapse. While these models are not to be considered as mutually exclusive, a case is made that our civilisation is close to a critical transition, or collapse. A series of integrated collapse mechanisms are described and are argued to be necessary. The principle driving mechanisms are re-enforcing (positive) feedbacks:
• A decline in energy flows will reduce global economic production; reduced global production will undermine our ability to produce, trade, and use energy; which will further decrease economic production.
• Credit forms the basis of our monetary system, and is the unifying embedded structure of the global economy. In a growing economy debt and interest can be repaid, in a declining economy not even the principle can be paid back. In other words, reduced energy flows cannot maintain the economic production to service debt. Real debt outstanding in the world is not repayable, new credit will almost vanish.
• Our localized needs and welfare have become ever-more dependent upon hyper-integrated globalised supply-chains. One pillar of their system-wide functioning is monetary confidence and bank intermediation. Money in our economies is backed by debt and holds no intrinsic value; deflation and hyper-inflation risks will make monetary stability impossible to maintain. In addition, the banking system as a whole must become insolvent as their assets (loans) cannot be realised, they are also at risk from failing infrastructure.
• A failure of this pillar will collapse world trade. Our 'local' globalised economies will fracture for there is virtually nothing produced in developed countries that can be considered truly indigenous. The more complex the systems and inputs we rely upon, the more globalised they are, and the more we are at risk from a complete systemic collapse.
• Another pillar is the operation of critical infrastructure (IT-telecoms/ electricity generation/ financial system/ transport/ water & sewage) which has become increasingly co-dependent where a systemic failure in one may cause cascading failure in the others. This infrastructure depends upon continual re-supply; embodies short lifetime components; complex highly resource intensive and specialized supply-chains; and large economies of scale. They also depend upon the operation of the monetary and financial system. These dependencies are likely to induce rapid growth in the risk of systemic failure.
• The high dependence of food on fossil fuel inputs, the delocalisation of food sourcing, and lean just-in-time inventories could lead to quickly evolving food insecurity risks even in the most developed countries. At issue is not just food production, but the ability to link surpluses to deficits, collapsed purchasing power, and the ability to monetize transactions.
• Peak oil is likely to force peak energy in general. The ability to bring on new energy production and maintain existing energy infrastructure is likely to be severely compromised. We may see massive demand and supply collapses with limited ability to re-boot.
• The above mechanisms are non-linear, mutually re-enforcing, and not exclusive.
• We argue that one of the principle initial drivers of the collapse process will be growing visible action about peak oil. It is expected that investors will attempt to extract themselves from ‘virtual assets’ such as bond, equities, and cash and convert them into ‘real’ assets before the system collapses. But the nominal value of virtual assets vastly exceeds the real assets likely to be available. Confirmation of the peak oil idea (by official action), fear, and market decline will drive a positive feedback in financial markets.
• We outline the implications for climate change. A major collapse in greenhouse gas is expected, though may be impossible to quantitatively model. This may reduce the risks of severe climate change impacts. However our relative in-ability to cope with the impacts of climate change will be much greater as we will be much poorer with much reduced resilience.
This will evolve as a systemic crisis; as the integrated infrastructure of our civilisation breaks down. It will give rise to a multi-front predicament that will swamp governments’ ability to manage. It is likely to lead to widespread disorientation, anxiety, severe welfare risks, and possible social breakdown. The report argues that a managed ‘de-growth’ is impossible.
We are at the cusp of rapid and severely disruptive changes. From now on the risk of entering a collapse must be considered significant and rising. The challenge is not about how we introduce energy infrastructure to maintain the viability of the systems we depend upon, rather it is how we deal with the consequences of not having the energy and other resources to maintain those same systems. Appeals towards localism, transition initiatives, organic food and renewable energy production, however laudable and necessary, are totally out of scale to what is approaching.........
Tipping Point
Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production
The credit crisis exemplifies society's difficulties in the timely management of risks outside our experience or immediate concerns, even when such risks are well signposted. We have passed or are close to passing the peak of global oil production. Our civilisation is structurally unstable to an energy withdrawal. There is a high probability that our integrated and globalised civilisation is on the cusp of a fast and near-term collapse.
As individuals, and as a social species we put up huge psychological defences to protect the status quo. We've heard this doom prophesied for decades, all is still well! What about technology? Rising energy prices will bring more oil! We need a Green New Deal! We still have time! We’re busy with a financial crisis! This is depressing! If this were important, everybody would be talking about it!
Yet the evidence for such a scenario is as close to cast iron as any upon which policy is built: Oil production must peak; there is a growing probability that it has or will soon peak; energy flows and a functioning economy are by necessity highly correlated; our basic local needs have become dependent upon a hyper-complex, integrated, tightly-coupled global fabric of exchange; our primary infrastructure is dependent upon the operation of this fabric and global economies of scale; credit is the integral part of the fabric of our monetary, economic and trade systems; a credit market must collapse in a contracting economy, and so on.
We are living within dynamic processes. It matters little what technologies are in the pipeline, the potential of wind power in some choice location, or that the European Commission has a target; if a severe economic and structural collapse occurs before their enactment, then they may never be enacted.
Our primary question is what happens if there is a net decrease in energy flow through our civilisation? For it is absolutely dependent upon increasing flows of concentrated energy to evolve and grow, and to form and maintain its complex structures. The rules governing energy and its transformation, the laws of thermodynamics, are the inviolate framework through which all things happen- the evolution of the universe, the direction of time, life on earth, human development, the evolution of civilisation, and economic processes. This point is not rhetorical, access to increasing flows of concentrated energy, which can be transformed into work and dispersed energy, is the foundation upon which our civilisation stands. Yet we are at a point where these flows are, with high probability, about to begin decreasing. We should intuit that an energy withdrawal should have major systemic implications, for without energy flows nothing happens.
The key to understanding the implications of peak oil is to see it not just directly through its effect on transport, petrochemicals, or food say, but its systemic effects. A globalising, integrated and co-dependant economy has evolved with particular dynamics and embedded structures that have made our basic welfare dependent upon delocalised 'local' economies. It has locked us into hyper-complex economic and social processes that are increasing our vulnerability, but which we are unable to alter without risking a collapse in those same welfare supporting structures. And without increasing energy flows, those embedded structures, which include our expectations, institutions and infrastructure that evolved and adapted in the expectation of further economic growth cannot be maintained.
In order to address these questions, the following paper considers the nature and evolution of this complex integrated globalised civilisation from which energy is being withdrawn. Some broad issues in thermodynamics, the energy-economy relationship, peak oil, and the limits of mitigation are reviewed. It is argued that assumptions about future oil production as held by some peak oil aware commentators are misleading. We draw on some concepts in systems dynamics and critical transitions to frame our discussion.
The economics of peak oil are explicated using three indicative models: linear decline; oscillating decline; and systemic collapse. While these models are not to be considered as mutually exclusive, a case is made that our civilisation is close to a critical transition, or collapse. A series of integrated collapse mechanisms are described and are argued to be necessary. The principle driving mechanisms are re-enforcing (positive) feedbacks:
• A decline in energy flows will reduce global economic production; reduced global production will undermine our ability to produce, trade, and use energy; which will further decrease economic production.
• Credit forms the basis of our monetary system, and is the unifying embedded structure of the global economy. In a growing economy debt and interest can be repaid, in a declining economy not even the principle can be paid back. In other words, reduced energy flows cannot maintain the economic production to service debt. Real debt outstanding in the world is not repayable, new credit will almost vanish.
• Our localized needs and welfare have become ever-more dependent upon hyper-integrated globalised supply-chains. One pillar of their system-wide functioning is monetary confidence and bank intermediation. Money in our economies is backed by debt and holds no intrinsic value; deflation and hyper-inflation risks will make monetary stability impossible to maintain. In addition, the banking system as a whole must become insolvent as their assets (loans) cannot be realised, they are also at risk from failing infrastructure.
• A failure of this pillar will collapse world trade. Our 'local' globalised economies will fracture for there is virtually nothing produced in developed countries that can be considered truly indigenous. The more complex the systems and inputs we rely upon, the more globalised they are, and the more we are at risk from a complete systemic collapse.
• Another pillar is the operation of critical infrastructure (IT-telecoms/ electricity generation/ financial system/ transport/ water & sewage) which has become increasingly co-dependent where a systemic failure in one may cause cascading failure in the others. This infrastructure depends upon continual re-supply; embodies short lifetime components; complex highly resource intensive and specialized supply-chains; and large economies of scale. They also depend upon the operation of the monetary and financial system. These dependencies are likely to induce rapid growth in the risk of systemic failure.
• The high dependence of food on fossil fuel inputs, the delocalisation of food sourcing, and lean just-in-time inventories could lead to quickly evolving food insecurity risks even in the most developed countries. At issue is not just food production, but the ability to link surpluses to deficits, collapsed purchasing power, and the ability to monetize transactions.
• Peak oil is likely to force peak energy in general. The ability to bring on new energy production and maintain existing energy infrastructure is likely to be severely compromised. We may see massive demand and supply collapses with limited ability to re-boot.
• The above mechanisms are non-linear, mutually re-enforcing, and not exclusive.
• We argue that one of the principle initial drivers of the collapse process will be growing visible action about peak oil. It is expected that investors will attempt to extract themselves from ‘virtual assets’ such as bond, equities, and cash and convert them into ‘real’ assets before the system collapses. But the nominal value of virtual assets vastly exceeds the real assets likely to be available. Confirmation of the peak oil idea (by official action), fear, and market decline will drive a positive feedback in financial markets.
• We outline the implications for climate change. A major collapse in greenhouse gas is expected, though may be impossible to quantitatively model. This may reduce the risks of severe climate change impacts. However our relative in-ability to cope with the impacts of climate change will be much greater as we will be much poorer with much reduced resilience.
This will evolve as a systemic crisis; as the integrated infrastructure of our civilisation breaks down. It will give rise to a multi-front predicament that will swamp governments’ ability to manage. It is likely to lead to widespread disorientation, anxiety, severe welfare risks, and possible social breakdown. The report argues that a managed ‘de-growth’ is impossible.
We are at the cusp of rapid and severely disruptive changes. From now on the risk of entering a collapse must be considered significant and rising. The challenge is not about how we introduce energy infrastructure to maintain the viability of the systems we depend upon, rather it is how we deal with the consequences of not having the energy and other resources to maintain those same systems. Appeals towards localism, transition initiatives, organic food and renewable energy production, however laudable and necessary, are totally out of scale to what is approaching.........
Friday, February 26, 2010
SC101-15
http://www.ricefarmer.blogspot.com/
Infrastructure Deterioration
More on the Great Fall-Apart. One of today’s news links, which I’m sure many readers noticed, is “DoT budget isn’t keeping up with need for road, bridge repairs.” The article kicks off with the truly grim observation by the transportation secretary that “The Transportation Department has a backlog between $80 billion and $100 billion in high-priority infrastructure improvement projects that it cannot afford to fund” (emphasis mine). That represents a lot of miles of road and many bridges that will be repaired or replaced later than needed, and I predict that repair or replacement will never come for a significant percentage.
In the same vein, recently the New York Times ran an op-ed piece lamenting the woefully insufficient amount of investment in infrastructure. For those with shock-resistant hearts, this article gives a number of specific examples showing the horrendous state of America’s infrastructure. Here I will mention one of the best examples, which was that even though the state of Pennsylvania more than tripled its expenditures on bridges, it ended up with an even longer list of bridges needed repairs!
Of course, the US isn’t the only country with this problem. Britain isn’t known as “pothole nation” for nothing. And Japan, which at first glance seems to have a very modern and well-maintained infrastructure, has, for example, loads of bridges that need repair or replacement. According to this article (in Japanese), Japan has about 150,000 bridges that are 15 meters or more in length, and about 90% of them are managed by municipalities. Of those, 121 are totally closed to traffic, and 680 are still open but have instituted weight restrictions because of their deteriorated conditions. Recall that Japan is a geographically much smaller country than the US, and you can see the significance of these figures. Because many bridges and roads were built during Japan’s years of rapid economic growth, over the next decade a slew of them will be up for repair or replacement, and the money surely won’t be there. But bridges and roads aren’t the only problem. This post from last year provided some information on the grave state of sewage pipe in Tokyo.
We won’t make any headway on infrastructure because energy is too expensive now. Only a few years ago crude oil was still in the $20–30 range, which enabled countries to go on infrastructure construction sprees. Now that the same barrel of oil costs three times as much, we can buy only one-third as much energy for the same amount of money. And because — thanks to peak oil — budgets are severely constrained, that further limits the amount of energy we can expend on infrastructure. In a word, we’re fighting a losing battle. Infrastructure will crumble faster than we can possibly fix it.
The upshot is that vehicles will in time no longer be able to navigate broken roads and bridges, and that alone will strangle economies. Meanwhile, when aged water mains and sewage pipes break, the cities they serve will become uninhabitable. The big cities of the world now bill themselves as “24-hour cities” offering every kind of luxury and serving as economic and cultural centers, but when toilets are stopped up, sewage overflows in the streets, and there is no water, those masses of concrete will be hell.
Infrastructure Deterioration
More on the Great Fall-Apart. One of today’s news links, which I’m sure many readers noticed, is “DoT budget isn’t keeping up with need for road, bridge repairs.” The article kicks off with the truly grim observation by the transportation secretary that “The Transportation Department has a backlog between $80 billion and $100 billion in high-priority infrastructure improvement projects that it cannot afford to fund” (emphasis mine). That represents a lot of miles of road and many bridges that will be repaired or replaced later than needed, and I predict that repair or replacement will never come for a significant percentage.
In the same vein, recently the New York Times ran an op-ed piece lamenting the woefully insufficient amount of investment in infrastructure. For those with shock-resistant hearts, this article gives a number of specific examples showing the horrendous state of America’s infrastructure. Here I will mention one of the best examples, which was that even though the state of Pennsylvania more than tripled its expenditures on bridges, it ended up with an even longer list of bridges needed repairs!
Of course, the US isn’t the only country with this problem. Britain isn’t known as “pothole nation” for nothing. And Japan, which at first glance seems to have a very modern and well-maintained infrastructure, has, for example, loads of bridges that need repair or replacement. According to this article (in Japanese), Japan has about 150,000 bridges that are 15 meters or more in length, and about 90% of them are managed by municipalities. Of those, 121 are totally closed to traffic, and 680 are still open but have instituted weight restrictions because of their deteriorated conditions. Recall that Japan is a geographically much smaller country than the US, and you can see the significance of these figures. Because many bridges and roads were built during Japan’s years of rapid economic growth, over the next decade a slew of them will be up for repair or replacement, and the money surely won’t be there. But bridges and roads aren’t the only problem. This post from last year provided some information on the grave state of sewage pipe in Tokyo.
We won’t make any headway on infrastructure because energy is too expensive now. Only a few years ago crude oil was still in the $20–30 range, which enabled countries to go on infrastructure construction sprees. Now that the same barrel of oil costs three times as much, we can buy only one-third as much energy for the same amount of money. And because — thanks to peak oil — budgets are severely constrained, that further limits the amount of energy we can expend on infrastructure. In a word, we’re fighting a losing battle. Infrastructure will crumble faster than we can possibly fix it.
The upshot is that vehicles will in time no longer be able to navigate broken roads and bridges, and that alone will strangle economies. Meanwhile, when aged water mains and sewage pipes break, the cities they serve will become uninhabitable. The big cities of the world now bill themselves as “24-hour cities” offering every kind of luxury and serving as economic and cultural centers, but when toilets are stopped up, sewage overflows in the streets, and there is no water, those masses of concrete will be hell.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
SC101-14
Comment at the MCR Blog:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22903415&postID=8901553460030154073
sosheyack said...
It is a sign of our times that if a citizen expresses dismay with our government, then one is likely to be labeled a Tea Partier, Tenther, Truther or a Militia Member. These labels are meant to carry derogatory connotations. Recently, someone I know, responded to me in that manner. Although I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised, since it has been the central theme of the news media for several years now. They have been conditioning people to think in this manner. I won't go too far down this "rabbit hole", in the interest of time, but the psychology of predictive programming is well known and the freedom of information act long ago exposed the intelligence program called "Operation Mockingbird", in which the American news media was thoroughly infiltrated to coordinate the government message. In short, the elites have put a great deal of effort into categorizing the ideal of questioning authority, as some sort of fringe movement. Witness the recent rants of Glenn Beck or Chris Matthews' about the 911 Truthers or even former VP Dick Cheney's recent ominous warning that terrorism is imminent. I have come to understand that whenever there is a spike in these type of media communications, it always appears to be laying the groundwork for a cataclysmic event, which soon follows. They are in fact following the same script that they once stated Bin Laden did when he released his videos or audio tapes preceding a terrorist event. Don't you find that strange?
A citizen used to be known as patriotic if he engaged in critical analysis of government and questioned authority. This was and is necessary, in order to provide a cross check against excesses and the corrupting influences of government. Sadly, in present day, dissent is marginalized and those that dare to question authority are looked upon as potential terror suspects themselves. This represents a fatal departure from the core values of our country. Is this what terrorism has done to the USA? Apparently, this is exactly what Benjamin Franklin warned us about in the following quote, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".
I have news for you. I'm not wearing a label. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Tea Party person and I'm not exactly Libertarian. I'm certainly not a militia member. I don't believe in violence and I strive to believe in the inherent goodness of people. I belong to no clubs - Period. I am simply a husband and a father who DEEPLY cares about the world we are leaving for our children. That's it. That's all that I am. I'm a guy who has noticed that I personally dropped the ball and that we as a people have dropped the ball. We got too comfortable with our freedom. I'm a guy who now believes we have a responsibility to fix the problem, by voting, protesting, waking up our friends and family to do the very same thing and to throw our bodies upon the gears of corruption, to stop their progress through non-violent passive resistance.
It is time for people to step up to the plate. To get up off our knees and to stop allowing our freedoms to be carted away in the name of security. Its' time to speak up, speak out and notice what's going on in the world. To take a giant step back from the television monitor in your living room and to question authority. It is American - to question authority. Never forget that. Do not let it be taken away. It is American to seek out alternative views and balance the corporate-government message that is being balanced for us through the left-right paradigm of Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. If we fail to realize our responsibility, I fear that the world will one day look upon the people of the United States, as the world previously looked upon the people of Germany, following the end of World War Two. The haunting question will be, "how did they let this happen?"
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22903415&postID=8901553460030154073
sosheyack said...
It is a sign of our times that if a citizen expresses dismay with our government, then one is likely to be labeled a Tea Partier, Tenther, Truther or a Militia Member. These labels are meant to carry derogatory connotations. Recently, someone I know, responded to me in that manner. Although I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised, since it has been the central theme of the news media for several years now. They have been conditioning people to think in this manner. I won't go too far down this "rabbit hole", in the interest of time, but the psychology of predictive programming is well known and the freedom of information act long ago exposed the intelligence program called "Operation Mockingbird", in which the American news media was thoroughly infiltrated to coordinate the government message. In short, the elites have put a great deal of effort into categorizing the ideal of questioning authority, as some sort of fringe movement. Witness the recent rants of Glenn Beck or Chris Matthews' about the 911 Truthers or even former VP Dick Cheney's recent ominous warning that terrorism is imminent. I have come to understand that whenever there is a spike in these type of media communications, it always appears to be laying the groundwork for a cataclysmic event, which soon follows. They are in fact following the same script that they once stated Bin Laden did when he released his videos or audio tapes preceding a terrorist event. Don't you find that strange?
A citizen used to be known as patriotic if he engaged in critical analysis of government and questioned authority. This was and is necessary, in order to provide a cross check against excesses and the corrupting influences of government. Sadly, in present day, dissent is marginalized and those that dare to question authority are looked upon as potential terror suspects themselves. This represents a fatal departure from the core values of our country. Is this what terrorism has done to the USA? Apparently, this is exactly what Benjamin Franklin warned us about in the following quote, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".
I have news for you. I'm not wearing a label. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Tea Party person and I'm not exactly Libertarian. I'm certainly not a militia member. I don't believe in violence and I strive to believe in the inherent goodness of people. I belong to no clubs - Period. I am simply a husband and a father who DEEPLY cares about the world we are leaving for our children. That's it. That's all that I am. I'm a guy who has noticed that I personally dropped the ball and that we as a people have dropped the ball. We got too comfortable with our freedom. I'm a guy who now believes we have a responsibility to fix the problem, by voting, protesting, waking up our friends and family to do the very same thing and to throw our bodies upon the gears of corruption, to stop their progress through non-violent passive resistance.
It is time for people to step up to the plate. To get up off our knees and to stop allowing our freedoms to be carted away in the name of security. Its' time to speak up, speak out and notice what's going on in the world. To take a giant step back from the television monitor in your living room and to question authority. It is American - to question authority. Never forget that. Do not let it be taken away. It is American to seek out alternative views and balance the corporate-government message that is being balanced for us through the left-right paradigm of Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. If we fail to realize our responsibility, I fear that the world will one day look upon the people of the United States, as the world previously looked upon the people of Germany, following the end of World War Two. The haunting question will be, "how did they let this happen?"
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
SC101-13
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/32255149/wall_streets_bailout_hustle/print
Wall Street's Bailout Hustle
Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash
MATT TAIBBI
.........Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. "In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines," he said, "I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative."
Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we're so amazing at our jobs, so fuck all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses.
Goldman wasn't alone. The nation's six largest banks — all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry — set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007. In a gesture of self-sacrifice, Blankfein himself took a humiliatingly low bonus of $9 million, less than the 2009 pay of elephantine New York Knicks washout Eddy Curry. But in reality, not much had changed. "What is the state of our moral being when Lloyd Blankfein taking a $9 million bonus is viewed as this great act of contrition, when every penny of it was a direct transfer from the taxpayer?" asks Eliot Spitzer, who tried to hold Wall Street accountable during his own ill-fated stint as governor of New York.
Beyond a few such bleats of outrage, however, the huge payout was met, by and large, with a collective sigh of resignation. Because beneath America's populist veneer, on a more subtle strata of the national psyche, there remains a strong temptation to not really give a shit. The rich, after all, have always made way too much money; what's the difference if some fat cat in New York pockets $20 million instead of $10 million?
The only reason such apathy exists, however, is because there's still a widespread misunderstanding of how exactly Wall Street "earns" its money, with emphasis on the quotation marks around "earns." The question everyone should be asking, as one bailout recipient after another posts massive profits — Goldman reported $13.4 billion in profits last year, after paying out that $16.2 billion in bonuses and compensation — is this: In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street's eye-popping profits come from, exactly? Did Goldman go from bailout city to $13.4 billion in the black because, as Blankfein suggests, its "performance" was just that awesome? A year and a half after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these assholes not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble?
The answer to that question is basically twofold: They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients.........
You must read the whole article, your head will literally explode!
Wall Street's Bailout Hustle
Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash
MATT TAIBBI
.........Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. "In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines," he said, "I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative."
Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we're so amazing at our jobs, so fuck all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses.
Goldman wasn't alone. The nation's six largest banks — all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry — set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007. In a gesture of self-sacrifice, Blankfein himself took a humiliatingly low bonus of $9 million, less than the 2009 pay of elephantine New York Knicks washout Eddy Curry. But in reality, not much had changed. "What is the state of our moral being when Lloyd Blankfein taking a $9 million bonus is viewed as this great act of contrition, when every penny of it was a direct transfer from the taxpayer?" asks Eliot Spitzer, who tried to hold Wall Street accountable during his own ill-fated stint as governor of New York.
Beyond a few such bleats of outrage, however, the huge payout was met, by and large, with a collective sigh of resignation. Because beneath America's populist veneer, on a more subtle strata of the national psyche, there remains a strong temptation to not really give a shit. The rich, after all, have always made way too much money; what's the difference if some fat cat in New York pockets $20 million instead of $10 million?
The only reason such apathy exists, however, is because there's still a widespread misunderstanding of how exactly Wall Street "earns" its money, with emphasis on the quotation marks around "earns." The question everyone should be asking, as one bailout recipient after another posts massive profits — Goldman reported $13.4 billion in profits last year, after paying out that $16.2 billion in bonuses and compensation — is this: In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street's eye-popping profits come from, exactly? Did Goldman go from bailout city to $13.4 billion in the black because, as Blankfein suggests, its "performance" was just that awesome? A year and a half after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these assholes not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble?
The answer to that question is basically twofold: They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients.........
You must read the whole article, your head will literally explode!
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