https://srsroccoreport.com/has-peak-diesel-arrived-the-data-doesnt-look-good/
HAS PEAK DIESEL ARRIVED?? The Data Doesn’t Look Good
Has Peaked Diesel arrived? Well, if so, it is terrible news for the automobile and trucking industry as well as the overall economy. I came across this information from an article written by Antonio Turiel on his The Oil Crash website. The article provides some sobering data suggesting that the global production of diesel fuel may have peaked.
Furthermore, due to the peak of conventional oil in 2005 and the considerable increase of U.S. shale light tight oil, the production of all fuel oil (not diesel, rather bunker fuel for ships, etc.) has also declined. Turiel explains in the article The Peak of the Diesel: 2018 Edition, that the refineries cannot make as much diesel from the U.S. light tight shale oil, so they are forced to crack the heavier fuel oil to make diesel. If true, what we have here is the cannibalization of the refinery system to continue to produce diesel at the expense of the heavier fuel oils.
If Peak Diesel has arrived, Peak Gasoline isn’t too far behind....
....
Note in the next article ( SC178-15 ) that the Yellow Vest protest was at its start " catalyzed by rising taxes on diesel fuel ". Protest around the world will be increasing as vital resources that make complex societies possible continue to go into decline.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Monday, December 10, 2018
SC178-13
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50726.htm
French Lessons
French people are standing up for their rights and speaking out for many others around the world who are sick at the injustice of capitalism. None more so than people of Western states who have had to endure decades of economic austerity while a tiny elite become ever more obscenely wealthy.
In addition to the irrational malign distribution of wealth that capitalism bestows, Western states — that is, the oligarch-serving politicians — spend and waste inordinate financial resources on militarism and waging criminal wars.
For the fourth weekend in a row, the French public have taken to the streets of Paris and other major cities to demand economic justice.
They also want President Emmanuel Macron to resign. Macron has so far kept his usual aloof silence on the protests, leaving it up to his prime minister Edouard Philippe to placate the angry nation.
Bringing the country to almost a standstill by blocking transport links and fuel supply, the French have demonstrated "people power" and what can be achieved when we organize for our rights.
Macron's government has caved in to scrap plans for tax hikes on the transport fuel. Those proposed price hikes is what triggered ordinary people's fury, donning the now symbolic "yellow vests" that all drivers in France are obliged to carry in vehicles for safety reasons.
The French public say the new taxes would hit their livelihoods.
Macron claimed the new fuel levies were for raising government funds in order to pay for transition to a more ecologically sustainable society.
However, ordinary citizens point out that Macron — whom they disparage as "president for the rich" — recently abolished taxes for the very wealthy. That giveaway could have been used instead by the government to fund whatever green projects it is planning.
Macron's administration is also planning major tax reductions for big business and corporations. Again, that move shows the elitist priorities of this president and his ministers. The Élysée Palace is intent on making the majority of working people pay for social changes, rather the rich class who could easily afford it.
In addition, the French state spends about $50 billion a year on military. If that expenditure was, say, halved, then there would be no need for austerity and arbitrary cuts in public services and welfare.
The French extravagance on military is typical of all Western states and NATO members in particular. If they slashed their militarism, then other countries like Russia and China would also be able to reduce their military budgets, which are maintained out of defensive posture owing to the aggressive stance of Western states.
The French yellow vest movement appears to be at a momentous turning point. It could go either of two significant directions.
Already, the Macron government has capitulated over its brazen tax burdens on ordinary citizens. There is a sense that the elitist president and his administration are teetering to stay in office. For the French people their protest movement has gone beyond fuel levies.
They are questioning the entire neoliberal capitalist system, and why they have been made to endure decades of economic exploitation and oppression.
Moreover, there are signs that the yellow vest movement is inspiring the public in other European countries to likewise take to the streets and finally hold the oligarchic system to account. There are reports of similar solidarity protests taking place in neighboring Belgium. We can be sure that governments across Europe are wary of a tidal wave of people power.
There is also a more ominous, sinister direction. A foretaste of that was seen last week when French riot police arrested dozens of high school students rallying against education reforms, and made them kneel on the ground, hands on head. Some of the students were forced to kneel with their faces against a wall.
That scene has horrified many people in France and further afield. It bore the actions of a police-state dictatorship and the abrogation of legal rights. Some commentators even remarked that the detained students cowering in front of armed officers looked like a mock-execution scenario.
This weekend ahead of the planned protests in Paris, hundreds of people traveling to the capital to join demonstrations were arrested "preemptively" by police, and taken into custody. The French authorities claim they were preventing "trouble makers" from inciting violence.
Though many other French citizens fear that what is really going on is the beginning of repressive crackdown by the state against democratic rights to free speech and public assembly.
Recall too how only a few weeks ago, during World War One commemorations, President Macron sparked a hue and cry when he praised former General Philippe Pétain for his battlefield bravery. Pétain later became the leader of Vichy France which collaborated with the German Third Reich during World War Two. Ignominiously, the French state functioned as a fascist regime, rounding up tens of thousands of its citizens, and dispatching them to Nazi death camps.
Arguably, capitalism is an irrational, anti-democratic system that always has a tendency towards oligarchy, militarism and fascism. When the economy is doing relatively well, then the system tolerates forms of "liberal democracy". But when the system is running on empty, then more extreme powers are exercised to control the restless masses.
Decades of economic austerity and mass impoverishment across Western states show that capitalism can no longer disguise itself as liberal democracy. The people are rightly becoming restless and angry for their human rights: to have decent jobs, salaries and public services.
The rebellious French are inspiring all people to demand what is their natural rights and to overthrow the injustice of capitalism. That could go in an historic progressive direction, not just in France, but across all Western oligarchic states.
There again, the powers-that-be may, out of desperation to retain their privileges and wealth, go full fascism. The liberal mask of Western democracies appears to be slipping to reveal the brute force beneath.
We seem to be at a historic juncture.
French Lessons
French people are standing up for their rights and speaking out for many others around the world who are sick at the injustice of capitalism. None more so than people of Western states who have had to endure decades of economic austerity while a tiny elite become ever more obscenely wealthy.
In addition to the irrational malign distribution of wealth that capitalism bestows, Western states — that is, the oligarch-serving politicians — spend and waste inordinate financial resources on militarism and waging criminal wars.
For the fourth weekend in a row, the French public have taken to the streets of Paris and other major cities to demand economic justice.
They also want President Emmanuel Macron to resign. Macron has so far kept his usual aloof silence on the protests, leaving it up to his prime minister Edouard Philippe to placate the angry nation.
Bringing the country to almost a standstill by blocking transport links and fuel supply, the French have demonstrated "people power" and what can be achieved when we organize for our rights.
Macron's government has caved in to scrap plans for tax hikes on the transport fuel. Those proposed price hikes is what triggered ordinary people's fury, donning the now symbolic "yellow vests" that all drivers in France are obliged to carry in vehicles for safety reasons.
The French public say the new taxes would hit their livelihoods.
Macron claimed the new fuel levies were for raising government funds in order to pay for transition to a more ecologically sustainable society.
However, ordinary citizens point out that Macron — whom they disparage as "president for the rich" — recently abolished taxes for the very wealthy. That giveaway could have been used instead by the government to fund whatever green projects it is planning.
Macron's administration is also planning major tax reductions for big business and corporations. Again, that move shows the elitist priorities of this president and his ministers. The Élysée Palace is intent on making the majority of working people pay for social changes, rather the rich class who could easily afford it.
In addition, the French state spends about $50 billion a year on military. If that expenditure was, say, halved, then there would be no need for austerity and arbitrary cuts in public services and welfare.
The French extravagance on military is typical of all Western states and NATO members in particular. If they slashed their militarism, then other countries like Russia and China would also be able to reduce their military budgets, which are maintained out of defensive posture owing to the aggressive stance of Western states.
The French yellow vest movement appears to be at a momentous turning point. It could go either of two significant directions.
Already, the Macron government has capitulated over its brazen tax burdens on ordinary citizens. There is a sense that the elitist president and his administration are teetering to stay in office. For the French people their protest movement has gone beyond fuel levies.
They are questioning the entire neoliberal capitalist system, and why they have been made to endure decades of economic exploitation and oppression.
Moreover, there are signs that the yellow vest movement is inspiring the public in other European countries to likewise take to the streets and finally hold the oligarchic system to account. There are reports of similar solidarity protests taking place in neighboring Belgium. We can be sure that governments across Europe are wary of a tidal wave of people power.
There is also a more ominous, sinister direction. A foretaste of that was seen last week when French riot police arrested dozens of high school students rallying against education reforms, and made them kneel on the ground, hands on head. Some of the students were forced to kneel with their faces against a wall.
That scene has horrified many people in France and further afield. It bore the actions of a police-state dictatorship and the abrogation of legal rights. Some commentators even remarked that the detained students cowering in front of armed officers looked like a mock-execution scenario.
This weekend ahead of the planned protests in Paris, hundreds of people traveling to the capital to join demonstrations were arrested "preemptively" by police, and taken into custody. The French authorities claim they were preventing "trouble makers" from inciting violence.
Though many other French citizens fear that what is really going on is the beginning of repressive crackdown by the state against democratic rights to free speech and public assembly.
Recall too how only a few weeks ago, during World War One commemorations, President Macron sparked a hue and cry when he praised former General Philippe Pétain for his battlefield bravery. Pétain later became the leader of Vichy France which collaborated with the German Third Reich during World War Two. Ignominiously, the French state functioned as a fascist regime, rounding up tens of thousands of its citizens, and dispatching them to Nazi death camps.
Arguably, capitalism is an irrational, anti-democratic system that always has a tendency towards oligarchy, militarism and fascism. When the economy is doing relatively well, then the system tolerates forms of "liberal democracy". But when the system is running on empty, then more extreme powers are exercised to control the restless masses.
Decades of economic austerity and mass impoverishment across Western states show that capitalism can no longer disguise itself as liberal democracy. The people are rightly becoming restless and angry for their human rights: to have decent jobs, salaries and public services.
The rebellious French are inspiring all people to demand what is their natural rights and to overthrow the injustice of capitalism. That could go in an historic progressive direction, not just in France, but across all Western oligarchic states.
There again, the powers-that-be may, out of desperation to retain their privileges and wealth, go full fascism. The liberal mask of Western democracies appears to be slipping to reveal the brute force beneath.
We seem to be at a historic juncture.
Sunday, December 9, 2018
SC178-12
https://eand.co/im-burned-out-on-collapse-and-i-bet-you-are-too-70114c184c02
I’m Burned Out on Collapse — And I Bet You Are Too
The Hidden Psychological Toll of Living Through a Time of Fracture
It was around Thanksgiving that I noticed that all I wanted to do was sleep. And it wasn’t the leftover turkey. My mind felt bruised to a livid purple welt. Just thinking felt — disturbingly — painful. My bones felt as weary as dust. And that fine dust seemed to cover everything, leaving my world cloudy, hazy, foggy, slow-motion, indistinct. The dust sang sweet lullabies of slumber.
Just sleep, it would murmur, please, let yourself rest, doesn’t it feel sweet. So one part of me would plead with another for sleep, for rest, over and over again. The other part, annoyed and alarmed in equal measure by such self-indulgence, such laziness, replied sternly: you’ve slept plenty long enough today! And commanded me to sternly to leap up, write, work, meet, discuss, talk, go, do — like everything was fine, normal, pretty good.
(Now, one of the strange things about the sunlight being able to kill you is that you come to know yourself pretty well. You listen to your internal signs and signals, the movements and pulses of the strange and unknowable thing called a body, its rivers and oceans, its beats and murmurs. And yet I couldn’t pin down just why I felt so tired. So sleepy. So utterly exhausted. Lethargic, drained, done, like all those rivers and oceans had turned to deserts and parched earth.)
By about a week later, I was a walking zombie. I’d toss and turn at night, then leap out of bed, groaning with frustration, and pace from the living room to the bedroom to the bathroom and back again. Wait — wasn’t I worn out? So why was sleep eluding me? Then I’d sleepwalk through the day. I’d sleepwrite through my daily essays (forgive me for all the recent typos, now you know why.) I’d wake up, and — snap! — my mind would go numb. It would simply shut itself down. Every cell, feeling, sensation in my body seemed to want was to hibernate blackly through the darkness of a white winter.
It took me a week or so to put my finger on it. I don’t have a particularly stressful life. Or do I? I rouse myself, go have coffee, write, do my little consulting projects, coach a few people here and there. It’s pretty low-key. I can’t manage much more, to tell you the truth. There’s a reason none of the storybook vampires ever have nine to five jobs. And yet nobody who can’t sleep, can’t think, feels so inexplicably tired all the time can tell you they’re not feeling some kind of acute, systemic stress. So what the blazes was it that was stressing me out?
So I confessed to my friends Tucker, Elena, and James. Weirdly, they were all feeling more or less the same way, they admitted reluctantly, when I pressed them a little. Sleepless — but restless. Exhausted — but wide awake. Sleepwalking through the day. Worn out, drained, wrecked. Minds numb. Fatigued and stunned — all at the same time. What the hell was wrong with all of us? Was there something in the drinking water in London, New York, Paris, and San Francisco? And then it hit me.
I was burned out on collapse. And so were they. Our lives might not be particularly stressful in some kind of narrow personal sense — but they’d become profoundly, severely distressed in what you might call a psychosocial one. Living through an age of fracture and decline — if not outright shattering collapse: it’s an exhausting, soul-crushing thing.
I’m burned out on collapse — and I’d bet you are too. It’s not easy living in a time like this. It sucks the life out of you, drains you, changes you. Just being there. Just watching it all go down. Just going on to fight through another day. That’s the truth. Give yourself a round of applause. You deserve it. Cry a little tear for yourself. You deserve that, too. You’ve been tested — in a difficult, deep, and painful way. But let’s think about what all those emotions really mean.
Now, I won’t give you the usual rigmarole. You know: get-off-the-internet-and-practice-self-care. I think all this cuts a little deeper than that. I’ll simply talk you through what I noticed in myself, and you can judge for yourself if it applies to you, too. You can be honest — nobody’s listening but you. (And let me say emphatically that isn’t a plea for pity, though it’s always nice to know that you care about me. It’s just a little reflection, that I thought I’d share with you, about the psychological price of living in an age of collapse.)
The first thing that I noticed, if I looked at myself, was that almost the instant I woke up, my mind was shutting itself down. Snap! It was like it decided, all by itself, to operate at a quarter speed. I’d struggle for words, to make decisions, and so forth. Any good psychologist would probably have noted that this was a kind of protective measure — a defense mechanism, kicking into high gear. Technically, several at once: denial, compartmentalization, possibly regression, maybe even a little bit of dissocation. But from what? Such a sudden, intense defensive posture tells us that a mind is under acute pressure, tension, conflict. It prefers the bliss of ignorance to the anxieties of a dreaded reality. Snap! Shutdown.
In the case of you and I, I think the cause of that tension, that pressure, that conflict, is pretty easy to understand. Who wants to wake up and read the news? Who wants to pore over the grim headlines anymore? We say casually that they’re full of bad news. But the truth is a little tougher to bear. To constantly read a litany of things like your society’s broken, the planet’s melting down, the capitalists have left you broke, and the fascists are rising — it’s psychologically ruinous.
Human beings don’t need to awash in a warm bath of good news — that’s destructive, too. But when reality itself has turned into something like a grotesque, bizarre dystopia — then just making contact with it is deeply psychologically stressful.
How stressful? Like me, during the course of 2018, many of my friends began to develop trouble sleeping. Not just minor-league trouble — but staying up many nights a week levels of trouble. Now, all this is doubly ironic for me, because I stay up all night anyways, because the sun can melt my blood. So there I was, staying all day…staying up all night. No sleep till the apocalypse. It should have occurred to all of us sooner, I guess. If we’d talked about it, noticed, we would have soon uncovered the next thing a good psychologist would: we were going into hyper vigilance and hyperarousal. Another sign of severe psychological distress — this time, bordering on trauma.
Now, another irony was I’d written many times, in 2018, that I thought this era was leaving many people with low-level PTSD. How absurd and funny then that I didn’t see it my friends and myself, when it was right in front of me. Really, you might wonder, PTSD? Come on! But that’s exactly what I think a good psychologist would and should say about many of us today — maybe not that we “have PTSD”, but certainly that we have been traumatized. To be traumatized is to be exposed to death, of violence, to feel threatened with one’s own nonexistence, or that of a loved one. And a good psychologist would know that none of that has to be “direct.” You don’t have to be the one who is hit by an abuser to be traumatized by abuse. You merely have to be in proximity to such a thing, for the experience to ripple out and strike you, too.
But isn’t that precisely what this age feels like? Proximity to, if not direct experience of, relentless, gruesome, needless, abuse after abuse? Abuse of power. Abuse of societies. Abuse of democracy. Of technology. Abuse of the planet. Violence against the vulnerable. An indifference to life and truth and decency. Capitalism, greed, devastation. Fire, famine, flood. Skyrocketing poverty amongst soaring riches.
Wouldn’t watching all of that make sane person burn with rage, pound with anxiety, shudder with dread, go cold with panic? It does me, and I think that you the only person you’re kidding is yourself if you pretend it doesn’t do just that to you, on some level, too. This, my friends, is a traumatized time, generation, milieu, society, world.
Imagine watching your house burn down. Imagine being in a car crash. Imagine watching a highway pileup happen in front of you. Every day. Over and over again. We might not be there physically — but that is precisely where we are psychologically. We are forced to watch our house burn down — or be burned down — every day. The house of democracy, the planet, the future, society, prosperity.
What’s worse, it’s addictive — and it’s always on, like a weird, gruesome spectacular machine of destruction. It’s a click away. Just tap Twitter, Facebook, whatever, and wham!! There’s this age’s choice of catastrophes, on auto-repeat, every instant of the day or night. You can’t really escape it — unless you decide to forsake the modern world and become a hermit. And it’s not just always going, this machine. Sometimes, it feels better to watch it than not to watch it — because at least bearing witness is the responsible, mature thing to do. And so we watch our house being burned down by this giant machine of ruin, obsessively-compulsively — never quite fully knowing that the price is anxiety, dread, panic, powerlessness, hopelessness. In short, trauma.
That’s probably why we’re having less sex, why we’re so depressed, why we’re so unhappy, why we’re committing suicide more and more. We’ve been traumatized — “burned out on collapse” — and we don’t quite know it. But only a traumatized world, society, time, generation, place, ends up like that. Feels so powerless, hopeless, desperate, guilty, ashamed, bad. You can tell me you don’t feel those things, and maybe you yourself don’t. But what else does it say when the pulse of society is taken today — and what it beats with is despair, fury, and sorrow?
It’s obvious to say that people worry these days — what happens if I get cancer? Will I have to off myself so the kids don’t have to pay medical bills? But that is being traumatized. It is not a thing that anyone should have to worry about in a remotely normal, or decent, time, society, or place. And yet that’s just the beginning.
I’ve come to think that we live in something like an age of trauma. Many of us are instantly traumatized from the moment that we wake up. Today, this school was shot up. See that poor guy? He had to crowdfund insulin. Those little children were put on trial, and then sent to a concentration camp. The planet’s melting down. The rich are getting richer. Your income hasn’t gone up in decades. How are you going to survive? These are just everyday thoughts that might be provoked by simply glancing at the news, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. But they are also the stuff of panic attacks, of palpitations, of profound distress that must be buried deep where it isn’t seen or felt. They are the stuff of trauma. They are the living essence of a constant exposure to death, to nonexistence, to violence.
I’m burned out on collapse, and I’d bet you are too.
It goes without saying: “Umair, you need to take better care of yourself.” I always do. I smoke and drink and rage and weep when I see old couples and stand right there in the sun, daring it to kill me, sometimes, never really knowing why, wondering like a child about the strange, improbable miracle that it can. I do need to take better care of myself. But that’s besides the point. Who doesn’t?
We need to take better care of all of us. We need to take better care of the wounded parts of us — individually, as societies, as a world. And to do that, the reverse, strangely, maybe beautifully, is also true. We need all of us to take better care of each other, too.
So hang in there. Stay loving, stay gentle, stay kind. Sleep, rest, breathe, eat well. Taking care begins with the basics. Above all, stay true. It’s OK to admit it. This has been a terrible, unforgiving, horrific year. It’s been a psychological catastrophe for all of us. You don’t need to keep it inside. It’s the greatest gift that you can give, to share your burdens, sometimes. That way, we grow.
I’m Burned Out on Collapse — And I Bet You Are Too
The Hidden Psychological Toll of Living Through a Time of Fracture
It was around Thanksgiving that I noticed that all I wanted to do was sleep. And it wasn’t the leftover turkey. My mind felt bruised to a livid purple welt. Just thinking felt — disturbingly — painful. My bones felt as weary as dust. And that fine dust seemed to cover everything, leaving my world cloudy, hazy, foggy, slow-motion, indistinct. The dust sang sweet lullabies of slumber.
Just sleep, it would murmur, please, let yourself rest, doesn’t it feel sweet. So one part of me would plead with another for sleep, for rest, over and over again. The other part, annoyed and alarmed in equal measure by such self-indulgence, such laziness, replied sternly: you’ve slept plenty long enough today! And commanded me to sternly to leap up, write, work, meet, discuss, talk, go, do — like everything was fine, normal, pretty good.
(Now, one of the strange things about the sunlight being able to kill you is that you come to know yourself pretty well. You listen to your internal signs and signals, the movements and pulses of the strange and unknowable thing called a body, its rivers and oceans, its beats and murmurs. And yet I couldn’t pin down just why I felt so tired. So sleepy. So utterly exhausted. Lethargic, drained, done, like all those rivers and oceans had turned to deserts and parched earth.)
By about a week later, I was a walking zombie. I’d toss and turn at night, then leap out of bed, groaning with frustration, and pace from the living room to the bedroom to the bathroom and back again. Wait — wasn’t I worn out? So why was sleep eluding me? Then I’d sleepwalk through the day. I’d sleepwrite through my daily essays (forgive me for all the recent typos, now you know why.) I’d wake up, and — snap! — my mind would go numb. It would simply shut itself down. Every cell, feeling, sensation in my body seemed to want was to hibernate blackly through the darkness of a white winter.
It took me a week or so to put my finger on it. I don’t have a particularly stressful life. Or do I? I rouse myself, go have coffee, write, do my little consulting projects, coach a few people here and there. It’s pretty low-key. I can’t manage much more, to tell you the truth. There’s a reason none of the storybook vampires ever have nine to five jobs. And yet nobody who can’t sleep, can’t think, feels so inexplicably tired all the time can tell you they’re not feeling some kind of acute, systemic stress. So what the blazes was it that was stressing me out?
So I confessed to my friends Tucker, Elena, and James. Weirdly, they were all feeling more or less the same way, they admitted reluctantly, when I pressed them a little. Sleepless — but restless. Exhausted — but wide awake. Sleepwalking through the day. Worn out, drained, wrecked. Minds numb. Fatigued and stunned — all at the same time. What the hell was wrong with all of us? Was there something in the drinking water in London, New York, Paris, and San Francisco? And then it hit me.
I was burned out on collapse. And so were they. Our lives might not be particularly stressful in some kind of narrow personal sense — but they’d become profoundly, severely distressed in what you might call a psychosocial one. Living through an age of fracture and decline — if not outright shattering collapse: it’s an exhausting, soul-crushing thing.
I’m burned out on collapse — and I’d bet you are too. It’s not easy living in a time like this. It sucks the life out of you, drains you, changes you. Just being there. Just watching it all go down. Just going on to fight through another day. That’s the truth. Give yourself a round of applause. You deserve it. Cry a little tear for yourself. You deserve that, too. You’ve been tested — in a difficult, deep, and painful way. But let’s think about what all those emotions really mean.
Now, I won’t give you the usual rigmarole. You know: get-off-the-internet-and-practice-self-care. I think all this cuts a little deeper than that. I’ll simply talk you through what I noticed in myself, and you can judge for yourself if it applies to you, too. You can be honest — nobody’s listening but you. (And let me say emphatically that isn’t a plea for pity, though it’s always nice to know that you care about me. It’s just a little reflection, that I thought I’d share with you, about the psychological price of living in an age of collapse.)
The first thing that I noticed, if I looked at myself, was that almost the instant I woke up, my mind was shutting itself down. Snap! It was like it decided, all by itself, to operate at a quarter speed. I’d struggle for words, to make decisions, and so forth. Any good psychologist would probably have noted that this was a kind of protective measure — a defense mechanism, kicking into high gear. Technically, several at once: denial, compartmentalization, possibly regression, maybe even a little bit of dissocation. But from what? Such a sudden, intense defensive posture tells us that a mind is under acute pressure, tension, conflict. It prefers the bliss of ignorance to the anxieties of a dreaded reality. Snap! Shutdown.
In the case of you and I, I think the cause of that tension, that pressure, that conflict, is pretty easy to understand. Who wants to wake up and read the news? Who wants to pore over the grim headlines anymore? We say casually that they’re full of bad news. But the truth is a little tougher to bear. To constantly read a litany of things like your society’s broken, the planet’s melting down, the capitalists have left you broke, and the fascists are rising — it’s psychologically ruinous.
Human beings don’t need to awash in a warm bath of good news — that’s destructive, too. But when reality itself has turned into something like a grotesque, bizarre dystopia — then just making contact with it is deeply psychologically stressful.
How stressful? Like me, during the course of 2018, many of my friends began to develop trouble sleeping. Not just minor-league trouble — but staying up many nights a week levels of trouble. Now, all this is doubly ironic for me, because I stay up all night anyways, because the sun can melt my blood. So there I was, staying all day…staying up all night. No sleep till the apocalypse. It should have occurred to all of us sooner, I guess. If we’d talked about it, noticed, we would have soon uncovered the next thing a good psychologist would: we were going into hyper vigilance and hyperarousal. Another sign of severe psychological distress — this time, bordering on trauma.
Now, another irony was I’d written many times, in 2018, that I thought this era was leaving many people with low-level PTSD. How absurd and funny then that I didn’t see it my friends and myself, when it was right in front of me. Really, you might wonder, PTSD? Come on! But that’s exactly what I think a good psychologist would and should say about many of us today — maybe not that we “have PTSD”, but certainly that we have been traumatized. To be traumatized is to be exposed to death, of violence, to feel threatened with one’s own nonexistence, or that of a loved one. And a good psychologist would know that none of that has to be “direct.” You don’t have to be the one who is hit by an abuser to be traumatized by abuse. You merely have to be in proximity to such a thing, for the experience to ripple out and strike you, too.
But isn’t that precisely what this age feels like? Proximity to, if not direct experience of, relentless, gruesome, needless, abuse after abuse? Abuse of power. Abuse of societies. Abuse of democracy. Of technology. Abuse of the planet. Violence against the vulnerable. An indifference to life and truth and decency. Capitalism, greed, devastation. Fire, famine, flood. Skyrocketing poverty amongst soaring riches.
Wouldn’t watching all of that make sane person burn with rage, pound with anxiety, shudder with dread, go cold with panic? It does me, and I think that you the only person you’re kidding is yourself if you pretend it doesn’t do just that to you, on some level, too. This, my friends, is a traumatized time, generation, milieu, society, world.
Imagine watching your house burn down. Imagine being in a car crash. Imagine watching a highway pileup happen in front of you. Every day. Over and over again. We might not be there physically — but that is precisely where we are psychologically. We are forced to watch our house burn down — or be burned down — every day. The house of democracy, the planet, the future, society, prosperity.
What’s worse, it’s addictive — and it’s always on, like a weird, gruesome spectacular machine of destruction. It’s a click away. Just tap Twitter, Facebook, whatever, and wham!! There’s this age’s choice of catastrophes, on auto-repeat, every instant of the day or night. You can’t really escape it — unless you decide to forsake the modern world and become a hermit. And it’s not just always going, this machine. Sometimes, it feels better to watch it than not to watch it — because at least bearing witness is the responsible, mature thing to do. And so we watch our house being burned down by this giant machine of ruin, obsessively-compulsively — never quite fully knowing that the price is anxiety, dread, panic, powerlessness, hopelessness. In short, trauma.
That’s probably why we’re having less sex, why we’re so depressed, why we’re so unhappy, why we’re committing suicide more and more. We’ve been traumatized — “burned out on collapse” — and we don’t quite know it. But only a traumatized world, society, time, generation, place, ends up like that. Feels so powerless, hopeless, desperate, guilty, ashamed, bad. You can tell me you don’t feel those things, and maybe you yourself don’t. But what else does it say when the pulse of society is taken today — and what it beats with is despair, fury, and sorrow?
It’s obvious to say that people worry these days — what happens if I get cancer? Will I have to off myself so the kids don’t have to pay medical bills? But that is being traumatized. It is not a thing that anyone should have to worry about in a remotely normal, or decent, time, society, or place. And yet that’s just the beginning.
I’ve come to think that we live in something like an age of trauma. Many of us are instantly traumatized from the moment that we wake up. Today, this school was shot up. See that poor guy? He had to crowdfund insulin. Those little children were put on trial, and then sent to a concentration camp. The planet’s melting down. The rich are getting richer. Your income hasn’t gone up in decades. How are you going to survive? These are just everyday thoughts that might be provoked by simply glancing at the news, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. But they are also the stuff of panic attacks, of palpitations, of profound distress that must be buried deep where it isn’t seen or felt. They are the stuff of trauma. They are the living essence of a constant exposure to death, to nonexistence, to violence.
I’m burned out on collapse, and I’d bet you are too.
It goes without saying: “Umair, you need to take better care of yourself.” I always do. I smoke and drink and rage and weep when I see old couples and stand right there in the sun, daring it to kill me, sometimes, never really knowing why, wondering like a child about the strange, improbable miracle that it can. I do need to take better care of myself. But that’s besides the point. Who doesn’t?
We need to take better care of all of us. We need to take better care of the wounded parts of us — individually, as societies, as a world. And to do that, the reverse, strangely, maybe beautifully, is also true. We need all of us to take better care of each other, too.
So hang in there. Stay loving, stay gentle, stay kind. Sleep, rest, breathe, eat well. Taking care begins with the basics. Above all, stay true. It’s OK to admit it. This has been a terrible, unforgiving, horrific year. It’s been a psychological catastrophe for all of us. You don’t need to keep it inside. It’s the greatest gift that you can give, to share your burdens, sometimes. That way, we grow.
Friday, December 7, 2018
SC178-11
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/114604/every-bubble-search-pin
Every Bubble Is In Search Of A Pin
The 'Everything Bubble' has popped
Now that the world’s central banking cartel is taking a long-overdue pause from printing money and handing it to the wealthy elite, the collection of asset price bubbles nested within the Everything Bubble are starting to burst.
The cartel (especially the ECB and the Fed) is hoping it can gently deflate these bubbles it created, but that's a fantasy. Bubbles always burst badly; it's their nature to do so. Economic suffering and misery always accompany their termination.
It's said that "every bubble is in search of a pin". History certainly shows they always manage to find one.
History also shows that after the puncturing, pundits obsess over what precise pin triggered it, as if that matters. It doesn’t, because 'cause’ of a bubble's bursting can be anything. It can be a wayward comment by a finance minister, otherwise innocuous at any other time, that spooks a critical European bond market at exactly the right (wrong?) moment, triggering a runaway cascade.
Or it might be the routine bankruptcy of a small company that unexpectedly exposes an under-hedged counterparty, thereby setting off a chain reaction across the corporate bond market before the contagion quickly spreads into other key elements of the financial system.
Or perhaps it will be the US Justice Department arresting a Chinese technology executive on murky, over-reaching charges to bully an ally into accepting that unilateral US sanctions are to be abided by everyone, regardless of sovereignty.
How was it that the famous Tulip Bulb bubble came to a crashinf end back in the 1600’s? No one knows the exact moment or trigger. But we can easily imagine that in some Dutch pub on the fateful night on the Feb 3rd 1637, a bidder on the most-coveted of all bulbs, the Semper Augustus, had an upset stomach and briefly grimaced when hit by a ripping gas pain:
Interpreting this face as distaste for the opening bid price, the assembled crowd may have suddenly realized the absurdity of paying so much (enough to clothe and feed a family for more than half a lifetime) for an ungrown flower. The bids were pulled, and the rest is history.
The point is: it doesn’t really matter what the pin actually is. The fatal trigger is often something completely unexpected and impossible to have predicted. So obsessing over what will end the Everything Bubble is a fool's errand.
Rather than the "pin", what's important to focus on is the "pop" -- what the aftermath will be. The duration and height of a bubble is directly correlated with the scope of the destruction its bursting will wreak, as is the number of asset classes that get caught up in the mania.
It's much wiser to spend our time focusing on where the damage is going to occur, what path it's most likely to take, and how bad the losses will be -- so that we can position ourselves accordingly in advance for safety and, for the more adventurous, profit.
We've never seen anything like current bubble we're in. Stocks, bonds, real estate, fine art, you name it -- nearly everything has been inflated to all-time highs. When this Everything Bubble pops, the pain is going to be epically calamitous.
And it's increasing looking like the "pop" has sounded.
Greed & Fear
Every bubble requires two essential inputs to fuel its rise:
a compelling story
ample credit
If either is missing, no bubble.
Price bubbles are not financial phenomenon, but rather psychological constructs born and nurtured in the human brain stem. Greed and fear -- that’s what drives bubbles.
Greed on the way up and then fear on the way down. But neither has much influence without a tempting yarn and a lot of easy credit.
Attempting To Replace The Business Cycle With A Credit Cycle
In their quest for power and glory (and accompanied by a dead-flat learning curve), the world’s central banks are now pursuing their third, largest, and most ill-considered attempt to defeat the business cycle by replacing it with a credit cycle. The fact that the prior two credit cycles blew up spectacularly doesn't seem to be deterring them in the slightest.
A rather minor business cycle slowdown in 1994 was fought with a tidal wave of new credit under Greenspan. That ultimately resulted in the Dot Com Bubble crash of 2000, but the lesson went unlearned.
Instead the Fed concluded that the idea was sound, but was simply not taken far enough. The elite cheerleading squad, captained by Paul Krugman, fully supported a doubling down, and the media unquestioningly went along with the program.
So Greenspan and Bernanke created the Housing Bubble 1.0 by offering the world’s credit markets a price of money so low it couldn't be refused. Housing was the story, and the Fed supplied the credit. As predicted by a scant few of us, that all blew up spectacularly in 2008. And no constructive lessons were drawn from that experience, either.
With the political aircover to "save the system" (from the problems that it created!), Bernanke, Yellen, Kuroda and Draghi then led most aggressive, coordinated central bank bender in all of human history.
$Trillions and $trillions were printed up, and many times that amount were leveraged and loaned throughout the banking and speculative finance universes:
If you can't clearly see how the above chart explains the massive price inflation over the past years in stocks, bonds and real estate, you'll have no chance of understanding what’s coming next. Best of luck to everyone choosing to avoid paying attention to this critical information; you'll dearly need it.
Paying attention or not, here we all are; stuck together in a world awash with credit. $250 trillion in debt. 4 times that amount in unfunded liabilities. And a mind-bogglingly massive amount of tangled financial derivatives roughly the same size as both those debts and liabilities put together.
The Greed Is Now Gone
All that credit had to go somewhere. And it did.
Rare art fetched record-breaking prices. As did top-end trophy properties the world over. Rare cars and large gemstones commanded the highest prices ever seen. Stocks were bid up to ridiculous Price/Earnings multiples. And the Housing Bubble 2.0 returned to many metros around the globe -- housing has never been more unaffordable to more people than it is now.
Can you feel it? How greed is now giving way to fear?
Sure, you probably know people who are hanging onto the Wall Street marketing slogans (“Buy the dips…hang on…don’t panic…successful investors don’t sell into weakness, they buy more!”). But the party atmosphere is now over.
Just ask anyone who bought a house in Seattle in June (now down 11%). Or FAANG stocks in July (down 20%+). Or cryptocurrencies in January (down 80%+).
We've seen more downside volatility in the financial markets this year than in all of 2012-2017.
Until and unless the central banks reverse their current tightening course, everything is headed lower.
And I mean everything.
How bad will it get? Honestly, pretty damn bad. Worse than 2000 and worse than 2008.
The credit cycle is just that much larger this time.
It’s the airgap between the economic value added (EVA) lines below and the spiked tops above that defines the amount off pain involved in the unwinding. This chart clearly shows the reckoning is going to be on a scale we've never experienced before.
Which is why our our advice continues to be protect your money, develop all 8 Forms of resilience (especially Emotional), and prepare to be a source of support for shell-shocked neighbors and loved ones.
The "Big One" Is Here
The recent market volatility is just the beginning of the downslide.
There will be many starts and stops along the way, but coming soon will be a shock that wakes people up and scares them badly.
Perhaps it will be another institutional failure like Lehman Brothers. Or maybe a sovereign default. Or even a central bank failure (yeah, I’m looking at you Swiss National Bank!).
Just "printing less" is causing the major stock indexes to stumble, while plunging the peripheral emerging markets into bear market territory.
What's going to happen when the central banking cartel is in net "money withdrawal" mode? Will today's teetering markets be able to withstand that headwind?
We won’t have to wait long to find out. We should hit that milestone in the next quarter.
For now, the Fed and ECB lack the political capital to resume printing anytime soon. The Bank of Japan hardly has the muscle to muster anything more than temporary speed bump on its wind-down. And China increasingly has less and less motivation to help the US financial elites by rescuing their markets for them. Besides, the Chinese authorities have their own massive collapsing bubbles to contend with right now.
And to add insult to injury, recession indicators are piling up faster and faster now. 2019 is looking primed to be The Year That Mass Layoffs Returned. Should that be the case, the resultant slowdown in consumer spending is certainly not going to help matters.
Against this backdrop, how far could the markets fall from their current prices? Easily 30% to 50%. And that's if we're lucky.
In Part 2: What To Do Now That The "The Big One" Is Here, we detail out the key indicators to watch most closely to track the great unwinding ahead, so that you can stay head of events and increase your odds of positioning for safety (and profit).
Those of us who have spent the past years watching in concern as the Everything Bubble grew, this is the moment we've been anticipating. Time to put your crash plans into action.
Every Bubble Is In Search Of A Pin
The 'Everything Bubble' has popped
Now that the world’s central banking cartel is taking a long-overdue pause from printing money and handing it to the wealthy elite, the collection of asset price bubbles nested within the Everything Bubble are starting to burst.
The cartel (especially the ECB and the Fed) is hoping it can gently deflate these bubbles it created, but that's a fantasy. Bubbles always burst badly; it's their nature to do so. Economic suffering and misery always accompany their termination.
It's said that "every bubble is in search of a pin". History certainly shows they always manage to find one.
History also shows that after the puncturing, pundits obsess over what precise pin triggered it, as if that matters. It doesn’t, because 'cause’ of a bubble's bursting can be anything. It can be a wayward comment by a finance minister, otherwise innocuous at any other time, that spooks a critical European bond market at exactly the right (wrong?) moment, triggering a runaway cascade.
Or it might be the routine bankruptcy of a small company that unexpectedly exposes an under-hedged counterparty, thereby setting off a chain reaction across the corporate bond market before the contagion quickly spreads into other key elements of the financial system.
Or perhaps it will be the US Justice Department arresting a Chinese technology executive on murky, over-reaching charges to bully an ally into accepting that unilateral US sanctions are to be abided by everyone, regardless of sovereignty.
How was it that the famous Tulip Bulb bubble came to a crashinf end back in the 1600’s? No one knows the exact moment or trigger. But we can easily imagine that in some Dutch pub on the fateful night on the Feb 3rd 1637, a bidder on the most-coveted of all bulbs, the Semper Augustus, had an upset stomach and briefly grimaced when hit by a ripping gas pain:
Interpreting this face as distaste for the opening bid price, the assembled crowd may have suddenly realized the absurdity of paying so much (enough to clothe and feed a family for more than half a lifetime) for an ungrown flower. The bids were pulled, and the rest is history.
The point is: it doesn’t really matter what the pin actually is. The fatal trigger is often something completely unexpected and impossible to have predicted. So obsessing over what will end the Everything Bubble is a fool's errand.
Rather than the "pin", what's important to focus on is the "pop" -- what the aftermath will be. The duration and height of a bubble is directly correlated with the scope of the destruction its bursting will wreak, as is the number of asset classes that get caught up in the mania.
It's much wiser to spend our time focusing on where the damage is going to occur, what path it's most likely to take, and how bad the losses will be -- so that we can position ourselves accordingly in advance for safety and, for the more adventurous, profit.
We've never seen anything like current bubble we're in. Stocks, bonds, real estate, fine art, you name it -- nearly everything has been inflated to all-time highs. When this Everything Bubble pops, the pain is going to be epically calamitous.
And it's increasing looking like the "pop" has sounded.
Greed & Fear
Every bubble requires two essential inputs to fuel its rise:
a compelling story
ample credit
If either is missing, no bubble.
Price bubbles are not financial phenomenon, but rather psychological constructs born and nurtured in the human brain stem. Greed and fear -- that’s what drives bubbles.
Greed on the way up and then fear on the way down. But neither has much influence without a tempting yarn and a lot of easy credit.
Attempting To Replace The Business Cycle With A Credit Cycle
In their quest for power and glory (and accompanied by a dead-flat learning curve), the world’s central banks are now pursuing their third, largest, and most ill-considered attempt to defeat the business cycle by replacing it with a credit cycle. The fact that the prior two credit cycles blew up spectacularly doesn't seem to be deterring them in the slightest.
A rather minor business cycle slowdown in 1994 was fought with a tidal wave of new credit under Greenspan. That ultimately resulted in the Dot Com Bubble crash of 2000, but the lesson went unlearned.
Instead the Fed concluded that the idea was sound, but was simply not taken far enough. The elite cheerleading squad, captained by Paul Krugman, fully supported a doubling down, and the media unquestioningly went along with the program.
So Greenspan and Bernanke created the Housing Bubble 1.0 by offering the world’s credit markets a price of money so low it couldn't be refused. Housing was the story, and the Fed supplied the credit. As predicted by a scant few of us, that all blew up spectacularly in 2008. And no constructive lessons were drawn from that experience, either.
With the political aircover to "save the system" (from the problems that it created!), Bernanke, Yellen, Kuroda and Draghi then led most aggressive, coordinated central bank bender in all of human history.
$Trillions and $trillions were printed up, and many times that amount were leveraged and loaned throughout the banking and speculative finance universes:
If you can't clearly see how the above chart explains the massive price inflation over the past years in stocks, bonds and real estate, you'll have no chance of understanding what’s coming next. Best of luck to everyone choosing to avoid paying attention to this critical information; you'll dearly need it.
Paying attention or not, here we all are; stuck together in a world awash with credit. $250 trillion in debt. 4 times that amount in unfunded liabilities. And a mind-bogglingly massive amount of tangled financial derivatives roughly the same size as both those debts and liabilities put together.
The Greed Is Now Gone
All that credit had to go somewhere. And it did.
Rare art fetched record-breaking prices. As did top-end trophy properties the world over. Rare cars and large gemstones commanded the highest prices ever seen. Stocks were bid up to ridiculous Price/Earnings multiples. And the Housing Bubble 2.0 returned to many metros around the globe -- housing has never been more unaffordable to more people than it is now.
Can you feel it? How greed is now giving way to fear?
Sure, you probably know people who are hanging onto the Wall Street marketing slogans (“Buy the dips…hang on…don’t panic…successful investors don’t sell into weakness, they buy more!”). But the party atmosphere is now over.
Just ask anyone who bought a house in Seattle in June (now down 11%). Or FAANG stocks in July (down 20%+). Or cryptocurrencies in January (down 80%+).
We've seen more downside volatility in the financial markets this year than in all of 2012-2017.
Until and unless the central banks reverse their current tightening course, everything is headed lower.
And I mean everything.
How bad will it get? Honestly, pretty damn bad. Worse than 2000 and worse than 2008.
The credit cycle is just that much larger this time.
It’s the airgap between the economic value added (EVA) lines below and the spiked tops above that defines the amount off pain involved in the unwinding. This chart clearly shows the reckoning is going to be on a scale we've never experienced before.
Which is why our our advice continues to be protect your money, develop all 8 Forms of resilience (especially Emotional), and prepare to be a source of support for shell-shocked neighbors and loved ones.
The "Big One" Is Here
The recent market volatility is just the beginning of the downslide.
There will be many starts and stops along the way, but coming soon will be a shock that wakes people up and scares them badly.
Perhaps it will be another institutional failure like Lehman Brothers. Or maybe a sovereign default. Or even a central bank failure (yeah, I’m looking at you Swiss National Bank!).
Just "printing less" is causing the major stock indexes to stumble, while plunging the peripheral emerging markets into bear market territory.
What's going to happen when the central banking cartel is in net "money withdrawal" mode? Will today's teetering markets be able to withstand that headwind?
We won’t have to wait long to find out. We should hit that milestone in the next quarter.
For now, the Fed and ECB lack the political capital to resume printing anytime soon. The Bank of Japan hardly has the muscle to muster anything more than temporary speed bump on its wind-down. And China increasingly has less and less motivation to help the US financial elites by rescuing their markets for them. Besides, the Chinese authorities have their own massive collapsing bubbles to contend with right now.
And to add insult to injury, recession indicators are piling up faster and faster now. 2019 is looking primed to be The Year That Mass Layoffs Returned. Should that be the case, the resultant slowdown in consumer spending is certainly not going to help matters.
Against this backdrop, how far could the markets fall from their current prices? Easily 30% to 50%. And that's if we're lucky.
In Part 2: What To Do Now That The "The Big One" Is Here, we detail out the key indicators to watch most closely to track the great unwinding ahead, so that you can stay head of events and increase your odds of positioning for safety (and profit).
Those of us who have spent the past years watching in concern as the Everything Bubble grew, this is the moment we've been anticipating. Time to put your crash plans into action.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
SC178-10
https://www.globalresearch.ca/debt-death-and-the-us-empire/5661645
Debt, Death, and the US Empire
In a talk which garnered little attention, one of the Deep State’s prime operatives, National Security Advisor John Bolton, cautioned of the enormous and escalating US debt. Speaking before the Alexander Hamilton Society, Bolton warned that current US debt levels and public obligations posed an “economic threat” to the nation’s security:
It is a fact that when your national debt gets to the level ours is, that it constitutes an economic threat to the society. And that kind of threat ultimately has a national security consequence for it.*
What was most surprising about Bolton’s talk was that there has been little reaction to it from the financial press, the markets themselves, or political commentators. While the equity markets have been in the midst of a sell off, it has not been due (as of yet) to US deficits, currently in excess of $1trillion annually. Instead, the slide has been the result of fears over increase in interest rates and the continued trade tensions with China.
While Bolton’s warning about the debt is self-serving, it is accurate in the sense that the US Empire which, in part, he directs is ultimately dependent on the strength of the economy. “National security” is not threatened by a debt crisis which would mean a compromised dollar, but such an event would limit what the US could do globally. Real national security is defense of the homeland and border control – non intervention abroad.
War mongers like Bolton are fearful that a debt crisis would necessitate a decline in US power overseas. America is fast approaching what took place with the British Empire after its insane involvement in the two World Wars and its own creation of a domestic welfare state which exhausted the nation and led to the displacement of the British pound as the “world’s reserve currency.”
The US-led wars in the Middle East have been estimated by a recent Brown University study to have cost in the neighborhood of $4 trillion.** Despite this squandering of national treasure and candidate Trump calling the Iraq War a “disaster,” as president, Trump increased “defense” spending for FY 2019 to $716 billion.***
Profligate US spending and debt creation has, no doubt, been noticed by those outside of the Empire. It is probably why Russian President Vladimir Putin has been so hesitant to take any serious action against the numerous provocations that the US has taken around the globe and against Russian interests directly. The wily Putin probably figures that an implosion of US financial markets would eventually limit America’s ability to foment mayhem and havoc internationally.
The Trump Administration’s latest bellicose act, engineered by – you guessed it – John Bolton, has been the withdrawal from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (INF). The treaty, signed in 1987, was a landmark achievement of the Reagan Administration which de-escalated tensions between the two super powers and kept a lid on a costly arms buildup that neither can afford.
The next financial downturn will certainly dwarf the 2008 crisis, the latter of which nearly brought down the entire financial system. The next one will be far worse and will last considerably longer since nothing has been resolved from the first crisis. The only thing that has occurred has been the creation of more debt, not only in the US, but by all Western nation states.
Under current ideological conditions, a change in US foreign policy to non-intervention is unlikely. Public opinion is decidedly pro-military after years of indoctrination and propaganda by the press, government, academia, and the media. It will take a fall in America’s economic power, specifically the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which will ultimately bring down the empire that has neocons like John Bolton concerned.
Unfortunately, until that time, the US will continue its rampaging ways. The day of reckoning, however, appears to be fast approaching and instead of a defeat on the field of battle, the US Empire will collapse under a mountain of debt. It would be more than fitting that such a scenario should play itself out which would thus begin the very necessary retribution process that may, at least in a small sense, compensate those who have suffered and died from America’s murderous foreign policy.
Debt, Death, and the US Empire
In a talk which garnered little attention, one of the Deep State’s prime operatives, National Security Advisor John Bolton, cautioned of the enormous and escalating US debt. Speaking before the Alexander Hamilton Society, Bolton warned that current US debt levels and public obligations posed an “economic threat” to the nation’s security:
It is a fact that when your national debt gets to the level ours is, that it constitutes an economic threat to the society. And that kind of threat ultimately has a national security consequence for it.*
What was most surprising about Bolton’s talk was that there has been little reaction to it from the financial press, the markets themselves, or political commentators. While the equity markets have been in the midst of a sell off, it has not been due (as of yet) to US deficits, currently in excess of $1trillion annually. Instead, the slide has been the result of fears over increase in interest rates and the continued trade tensions with China.
While Bolton’s warning about the debt is self-serving, it is accurate in the sense that the US Empire which, in part, he directs is ultimately dependent on the strength of the economy. “National security” is not threatened by a debt crisis which would mean a compromised dollar, but such an event would limit what the US could do globally. Real national security is defense of the homeland and border control – non intervention abroad.
War mongers like Bolton are fearful that a debt crisis would necessitate a decline in US power overseas. America is fast approaching what took place with the British Empire after its insane involvement in the two World Wars and its own creation of a domestic welfare state which exhausted the nation and led to the displacement of the British pound as the “world’s reserve currency.”
The US-led wars in the Middle East have been estimated by a recent Brown University study to have cost in the neighborhood of $4 trillion.** Despite this squandering of national treasure and candidate Trump calling the Iraq War a “disaster,” as president, Trump increased “defense” spending for FY 2019 to $716 billion.***
Profligate US spending and debt creation has, no doubt, been noticed by those outside of the Empire. It is probably why Russian President Vladimir Putin has been so hesitant to take any serious action against the numerous provocations that the US has taken around the globe and against Russian interests directly. The wily Putin probably figures that an implosion of US financial markets would eventually limit America’s ability to foment mayhem and havoc internationally.
The Trump Administration’s latest bellicose act, engineered by – you guessed it – John Bolton, has been the withdrawal from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (INF). The treaty, signed in 1987, was a landmark achievement of the Reagan Administration which de-escalated tensions between the two super powers and kept a lid on a costly arms buildup that neither can afford.
The next financial downturn will certainly dwarf the 2008 crisis, the latter of which nearly brought down the entire financial system. The next one will be far worse and will last considerably longer since nothing has been resolved from the first crisis. The only thing that has occurred has been the creation of more debt, not only in the US, but by all Western nation states.
Under current ideological conditions, a change in US foreign policy to non-intervention is unlikely. Public opinion is decidedly pro-military after years of indoctrination and propaganda by the press, government, academia, and the media. It will take a fall in America’s economic power, specifically the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which will ultimately bring down the empire that has neocons like John Bolton concerned.
Unfortunately, until that time, the US will continue its rampaging ways. The day of reckoning, however, appears to be fast approaching and instead of a defeat on the field of battle, the US Empire will collapse under a mountain of debt. It would be more than fitting that such a scenario should play itself out which would thus begin the very necessary retribution process that may, at least in a small sense, compensate those who have suffered and died from America’s murderous foreign policy.
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
SC178-9
https://srsroccoreport.com/it-begins-rapidly-falling-oil-prices-first-guts-tar-sands-then-shale-oil/
IT BEGINS… Rapidly Falling Oil Prices First Guts Tar Sands, Then Shale Oil
The rapidly falling oil prices have finally claimed the first victim, but it won’t be the last. The Alberta government announced late yesterday for a substantial cut in tar sands oil production to stem the hemorrhaging low oil price. The price paid for tar sands oil has fallen a stunning 77% from its peak just two months ago.
While the Canadian tar sands oil price has fallen the most, various U.S. benchmarks are also experiencing substantial discounts to the standard West Texas Crude Oil price. For example, the price paid for Bakken oil has dropped by 42% from its peak in October. This is terrible news for the shale oil producers in North Dakota.
However, as bad as the situation is becoming for the U.S. oil industry, it isn’t as bad as the disaster taking place in Alberta, Canada. According to the Zerohedge article, Alberta Orders “Unprecedented” Oil Output Cut To Combat Crashing Prices:
So in a long-awaited and according to local energy traders, overdue response, Canada’s largest oil producing province ordered what Bloomberg called “an unprecedented output cut”, an effort to ease a worsening crisis in the nation’s energy industry and adding to global actions to combat a recent price crash ahead of this week’s OPEC+ summit where oil exporters will similarly seek to slash output.
… The plan, which was announced late on Sunday, will reduce production of raw crude and bitumen from Alberta by 325,000 barrels a day, or 8.7% from January until excess oil in storage is drawn down. The reduction would then drop to 95,000 barrels a day until the end of next year at the latest.
The Alberta government plans to cut oil production by 325,000 barrels per day for three months starting in January. That will cost the Alberta oil industry at least a half of billion dollars at current market prices. A nice chunk of change. Unfortunately, if the U.S. and the global economy continues to weaken in 2019, the Alberta government may be forced to extend or increase cuts in oil production.
As we can see the Western Canadian Select oil price has fallen to a new low compared the previous lows set at the beginning of 2016. When the U.S. oil price was trading at $30 a barrel in January 2016, the Western Canadian Select spot price was higher at $15. However, with the U.S. oil price now at $53, the Western Canadian Select tar sands oil is trading at nearly a $40 a barrel discount:
Now, while lower oil prices have prompted the Alberta government to issue a mandatory oil production cut, market forces will likely be the primary factor reducing U.S. shale oil supply. Why? Well, the prices paid for oil from the various shale fields and regions have also traded at a steeper discount to the standard U.S. WTI oil price. For example, Bakken oil (Williston sweet crude) fell to a low of $39.55 a barrel from its peak of $66.50 in October.
Furthermore, the price paid for oil coming from the second largest shale field in the United States, the Eagle Ford, has fallen 36% from its peak in October. All of these benchmarks are trading at a much larger discount to the standard West Texas Oil price, which is down 30% from its high of $76.41. So, as we can see, the higher cost unconventional oil supply sources are suffering the lowest prices. No doubt, a double-edged sword.
The U.S. shale oil industry is in deep trouble as 75% of the companies are still suffering from negative free cash flow. While I have written about this many times, one of my readers sent me the following article by Rystad Energy, MORE THAN 75% OF DEDICATED US SHALE OIL COMPANIES KEEP REPORTING CAPEX IN EXCESS OF CFO:
Essentially, the market is still not convinced that a typical shale oil E&P is able to grow in a self-sourced manner as more than 75% of dedicated US shale oil companies keep reporting capex figures in excess of cash flow from operating activities.
What is important to understand is that even with higher oil prices this year, three-quarters of the shale companies are still spending more than they are making. Moreover, the U.S. shale energy industry has racked up nearly $300 billion in debt. What happens if the oil price continues to slide during the winter months? I have heard from someone in the industry that energy companies are already laying off workers.
If the oil price continues to weaken over the next 3-6 months, I believe the U.S. shale oil industry could be in serious trouble. While the Alberta government cut oil production to save its tar sands industry, I bet my bottom dollar that good ‘ole fashion market forces will do the trick for pushing the U.S. shale oil industry over the cliff.
IT BEGINS… Rapidly Falling Oil Prices First Guts Tar Sands, Then Shale Oil
The rapidly falling oil prices have finally claimed the first victim, but it won’t be the last. The Alberta government announced late yesterday for a substantial cut in tar sands oil production to stem the hemorrhaging low oil price. The price paid for tar sands oil has fallen a stunning 77% from its peak just two months ago.
While the Canadian tar sands oil price has fallen the most, various U.S. benchmarks are also experiencing substantial discounts to the standard West Texas Crude Oil price. For example, the price paid for Bakken oil has dropped by 42% from its peak in October. This is terrible news for the shale oil producers in North Dakota.
However, as bad as the situation is becoming for the U.S. oil industry, it isn’t as bad as the disaster taking place in Alberta, Canada. According to the Zerohedge article, Alberta Orders “Unprecedented” Oil Output Cut To Combat Crashing Prices:
So in a long-awaited and according to local energy traders, overdue response, Canada’s largest oil producing province ordered what Bloomberg called “an unprecedented output cut”, an effort to ease a worsening crisis in the nation’s energy industry and adding to global actions to combat a recent price crash ahead of this week’s OPEC+ summit where oil exporters will similarly seek to slash output.
… The plan, which was announced late on Sunday, will reduce production of raw crude and bitumen from Alberta by 325,000 barrels a day, or 8.7% from January until excess oil in storage is drawn down. The reduction would then drop to 95,000 barrels a day until the end of next year at the latest.
The Alberta government plans to cut oil production by 325,000 barrels per day for three months starting in January. That will cost the Alberta oil industry at least a half of billion dollars at current market prices. A nice chunk of change. Unfortunately, if the U.S. and the global economy continues to weaken in 2019, the Alberta government may be forced to extend or increase cuts in oil production.
As we can see the Western Canadian Select oil price has fallen to a new low compared the previous lows set at the beginning of 2016. When the U.S. oil price was trading at $30 a barrel in January 2016, the Western Canadian Select spot price was higher at $15. However, with the U.S. oil price now at $53, the Western Canadian Select tar sands oil is trading at nearly a $40 a barrel discount:
Now, while lower oil prices have prompted the Alberta government to issue a mandatory oil production cut, market forces will likely be the primary factor reducing U.S. shale oil supply. Why? Well, the prices paid for oil from the various shale fields and regions have also traded at a steeper discount to the standard U.S. WTI oil price. For example, Bakken oil (Williston sweet crude) fell to a low of $39.55 a barrel from its peak of $66.50 in October.
Furthermore, the price paid for oil coming from the second largest shale field in the United States, the Eagle Ford, has fallen 36% from its peak in October. All of these benchmarks are trading at a much larger discount to the standard West Texas Oil price, which is down 30% from its high of $76.41. So, as we can see, the higher cost unconventional oil supply sources are suffering the lowest prices. No doubt, a double-edged sword.
The U.S. shale oil industry is in deep trouble as 75% of the companies are still suffering from negative free cash flow. While I have written about this many times, one of my readers sent me the following article by Rystad Energy, MORE THAN 75% OF DEDICATED US SHALE OIL COMPANIES KEEP REPORTING CAPEX IN EXCESS OF CFO:
Essentially, the market is still not convinced that a typical shale oil E&P is able to grow in a self-sourced manner as more than 75% of dedicated US shale oil companies keep reporting capex figures in excess of cash flow from operating activities.
What is important to understand is that even with higher oil prices this year, three-quarters of the shale companies are still spending more than they are making. Moreover, the U.S. shale energy industry has racked up nearly $300 billion in debt. What happens if the oil price continues to slide during the winter months? I have heard from someone in the industry that energy companies are already laying off workers.
If the oil price continues to weaken over the next 3-6 months, I believe the U.S. shale oil industry could be in serious trouble. While the Alberta government cut oil production to save its tar sands industry, I bet my bottom dollar that good ‘ole fashion market forces will do the trick for pushing the U.S. shale oil industry over the cliff.
Monday, December 3, 2018
SC178-8
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
Truth Is What We Hide, Self-Serving Cover Stories Are What We Sell
We can summarize the current era in one sentence: truth is what we hide, self-serving cover stories are what we sell. Jean-Claude Juncker's famous quote captures the essence of the era: "When it becomes serious, you have to lie."
And when does it become serious? When the hidden facts of the matter might be revealed to the general public. Given the regularity of vast troves of well-hidden data being made public by whistleblowers and white-hat hackers, it's basically serious all the time now, and hence the official default everywhere is: truth is what we hide, self-serving cover stories are what we sell.
The self-serving cover stories always tout the nobility of the elite issuing the PR: we in the Federal Reserve saved civilization by saving the Too Big To Fail Banks (barf); we in the corporate media do investigative reporting without bias (barf); we in central government only lie to protect you from unpleasant realities--it's for your own good (barf); we in the NSA, CIA and FBI only lie because it's our job to lie, and so on.
Three recent essays speak to the degradation of data and factual records in favor of self-serving cover stories and corrosive political correctness.
Why we stopped trusting elites (The Guardian)
"It’s not just that isolated individuals are unmasked as corrupt or self-interested (something that is as old as politics), but that the establishment itself starts to appear deceitful and dubious. The distinctive scandals of the 21st century are a combination of some very basic and timeless moral failings (greed and dishonesty) with technologies of exposure that expose malpractice on an unprecedented scale, and with far more dramatic results.
Perhaps the most important feature of all these revelations was that they were definitely scandals, and not merely failures: they involved deliberate efforts to defraud or mislead. Several involved sustained cover-ups, delaying the moment of truth for as long as possible.
(The selective coverage) "generated a sense of a media class who were adept at exposing others, but equally expert at concealing the truth of their own behaviours.
Several of the defining scandals of the past decade have been on a scale so vast that they exceed any individual’s responsibility. The Edward Snowden revelations of 2013, the Panama Papers leak of 2015 and the HSBC files (revealing organised tax evasion) all involved the release of tens of thousands or even millions of documents. Paper-based bureaucracies never faced threats to their legitimacy on this scale."
From the Late Founder and Editor Robert Parry of the Consortium for Independent Journalism (via John S.P.)
When I was a young reporter, I was taught that there were almost always two sides to a story and often more. I was expected to seek out those alternative views, not dismiss them or pretend they didn’t exist. I also realized that finding the truth often required digging beneath the surface and not just picking up the convenient explanation sitting out in the open.
But the major Western news outlets began to see journalism differently. It became their strange duty to shut down questioning of the Official Story, even when the Official Story had major holes and made little sense, even when the evidence went in a different direction and serious analysts were disputing the groupthink.
Looking back over the past two decades, I wish I could say that the media trend that we detected in the mid-1990s had been reversed. But, if anything, it’s grown worse. The major Western news outlets now conflate the discrete difficulties from made-up “fake news” and baseless “conspiracy theories” with responsible dissenting analyses. All get thrown into the same pot and subjected to disdain and ridicule.
In academia, censorship and conformity have become the norm (Globe and Mail)
In truth, facts today are deemed controversial if they deviate from accepted narratives, and professors must self-censor out of fear of being condemned and losing their jobs.
Based on conversations I’ve had with colleagues still working in academia and from what I can tell about recent cases of censorship, the antagonism is primarily from left-leaning colleagues attacking other liberals.
These instances are indicative of a larger, worrisome trend – instead of debating contentious ideas, those in opposition to them throw words ending in “-phobic” around, shutting the conversation down and pretending they don’t exist.
For those who say ideas that denigrate members of society shouldn’t be entertained, silencing the debate doesn’t make hateful beliefs go away. In many cases, it isn’t controversial findings that pose a threat; the threat comes from the possibility that others will use these facts to justify discrimination. But it’s important that we distinguish between an idea and the researcher putting forth that idea, and the potential for bad behaviour.
With academics avoiding entire areas of research as a result, knowledge currently being produced is constrained, replaced by beliefs that are pleasant-sounding but biased, or downright nonsensical. The recent “grievance studies” investigation, led by academics Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, laid bare how bad the problem has become. The trio managed to get seven fake papers (but oh-so politically correct and hence "good to go"--CHS) accepted in high-ranking humanities journals.
In a consumerist-based culture accustomed to 24/7 selling of one self-serving story or another, the fact that lies and cover stories are now the official norm only makes us love our servitude with greater devotion. I've noticed a new twist on self-serving propaganda: an alternative opinion isn't debated, it's debunked, as if questioning the official narrative is by definition a "conspiracy theory" that can be "debunked" by repeating the official self-serving cover story enough times.
Truth Is What We Hide, Self-Serving Cover Stories Are What We Sell
We can summarize the current era in one sentence: truth is what we hide, self-serving cover stories are what we sell. Jean-Claude Juncker's famous quote captures the essence of the era: "When it becomes serious, you have to lie."
And when does it become serious? When the hidden facts of the matter might be revealed to the general public. Given the regularity of vast troves of well-hidden data being made public by whistleblowers and white-hat hackers, it's basically serious all the time now, and hence the official default everywhere is: truth is what we hide, self-serving cover stories are what we sell.
The self-serving cover stories always tout the nobility of the elite issuing the PR: we in the Federal Reserve saved civilization by saving the Too Big To Fail Banks (barf); we in the corporate media do investigative reporting without bias (barf); we in central government only lie to protect you from unpleasant realities--it's for your own good (barf); we in the NSA, CIA and FBI only lie because it's our job to lie, and so on.
Three recent essays speak to the degradation of data and factual records in favor of self-serving cover stories and corrosive political correctness.
Why we stopped trusting elites (The Guardian)
"It’s not just that isolated individuals are unmasked as corrupt or self-interested (something that is as old as politics), but that the establishment itself starts to appear deceitful and dubious. The distinctive scandals of the 21st century are a combination of some very basic and timeless moral failings (greed and dishonesty) with technologies of exposure that expose malpractice on an unprecedented scale, and with far more dramatic results.
Perhaps the most important feature of all these revelations was that they were definitely scandals, and not merely failures: they involved deliberate efforts to defraud or mislead. Several involved sustained cover-ups, delaying the moment of truth for as long as possible.
(The selective coverage) "generated a sense of a media class who were adept at exposing others, but equally expert at concealing the truth of their own behaviours.
Several of the defining scandals of the past decade have been on a scale so vast that they exceed any individual’s responsibility. The Edward Snowden revelations of 2013, the Panama Papers leak of 2015 and the HSBC files (revealing organised tax evasion) all involved the release of tens of thousands or even millions of documents. Paper-based bureaucracies never faced threats to their legitimacy on this scale."
From the Late Founder and Editor Robert Parry of the Consortium for Independent Journalism (via John S.P.)
When I was a young reporter, I was taught that there were almost always two sides to a story and often more. I was expected to seek out those alternative views, not dismiss them or pretend they didn’t exist. I also realized that finding the truth often required digging beneath the surface and not just picking up the convenient explanation sitting out in the open.
But the major Western news outlets began to see journalism differently. It became their strange duty to shut down questioning of the Official Story, even when the Official Story had major holes and made little sense, even when the evidence went in a different direction and serious analysts were disputing the groupthink.
Looking back over the past two decades, I wish I could say that the media trend that we detected in the mid-1990s had been reversed. But, if anything, it’s grown worse. The major Western news outlets now conflate the discrete difficulties from made-up “fake news” and baseless “conspiracy theories” with responsible dissenting analyses. All get thrown into the same pot and subjected to disdain and ridicule.
In academia, censorship and conformity have become the norm (Globe and Mail)
In truth, facts today are deemed controversial if they deviate from accepted narratives, and professors must self-censor out of fear of being condemned and losing their jobs.
Based on conversations I’ve had with colleagues still working in academia and from what I can tell about recent cases of censorship, the antagonism is primarily from left-leaning colleagues attacking other liberals.
These instances are indicative of a larger, worrisome trend – instead of debating contentious ideas, those in opposition to them throw words ending in “-phobic” around, shutting the conversation down and pretending they don’t exist.
For those who say ideas that denigrate members of society shouldn’t be entertained, silencing the debate doesn’t make hateful beliefs go away. In many cases, it isn’t controversial findings that pose a threat; the threat comes from the possibility that others will use these facts to justify discrimination. But it’s important that we distinguish between an idea and the researcher putting forth that idea, and the potential for bad behaviour.
With academics avoiding entire areas of research as a result, knowledge currently being produced is constrained, replaced by beliefs that are pleasant-sounding but biased, or downright nonsensical. The recent “grievance studies” investigation, led by academics Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, laid bare how bad the problem has become. The trio managed to get seven fake papers (but oh-so politically correct and hence "good to go"--CHS) accepted in high-ranking humanities journals.
In a consumerist-based culture accustomed to 24/7 selling of one self-serving story or another, the fact that lies and cover stories are now the official norm only makes us love our servitude with greater devotion. I've noticed a new twist on self-serving propaganda: an alternative opinion isn't debated, it's debunked, as if questioning the official narrative is by definition a "conspiracy theory" that can be "debunked" by repeating the official self-serving cover story enough times.
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