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My Lunch With the CIA
Lunch with the Central Intelligence Agency is always interesting, although five gorillas built like brick shithouses staring at me intently didn’t help my digestion.
Obama’s pick of Leon Panetta as the agency’s new director was controversial because he didn’t come from an intelligence background- upsetting the career spooks at Langley to no end. But the President thought a resume that included 16 years as the Democratic congressman from Monterey, California, and stints as Clinton’s Chief of Staff and OMB Director, was good enough. So when Panetta passed through town on his way home to heavenly Carmel Valley for the holidays, I thought I’d pull a few strings in Washington to catch a private briefing.
The long term outlook for supplies of food, natural resources, and energy is becoming so severe that the CIA is now viewing it as a national security threat. Some one third of emerging market urban populations are poor, or about 1.5 billion souls, and when they get hungry, angry, and politically or religiously inspired, Americans have to worry. This will be music to the ears of the hedge funds that have been stampeding into food, commodities, and energy since March. It is also welcome news to George Soros, who has quietly bought up enough agricultural land in Argentina to create his own medium sized country.
Panetta then went on to say that the current monstrous levels of borrowing by the Federal government abroad is also a security issue, especially if foreigners decide to turn the spigot off and put us on a crash diet. I was flabbergasted, not because this is true, but that it is finally understood at the top levels of the administration and is of interest to the intelligence agencies. Toss another hunk of red meat to my legions of carnivorous traders in the TBT, the leveraged ETF that profits from falling Treasury bond prices!
Job one is to defeat Al Qaida, and the agency has had success in taking out several terrorist leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan with satellite directed predator drones. The CIA could well win the war in Afghanistan covertly, as they did the last war there in the eighties, with their stinger missiles supplied to the Taliban for use against the Russians. The next goal is to prevent Al Qaida from retreating to other failed states like Yemen and Somalia. The Agency is also basking in the glow of its discovery of a second uranium processing plant in Iran, sparking international outrage, and finally bringing Europeans to our side with sanctions against Iran.
Cyber warfare is a huge new battlefront. Some 100 countries now have this capability, and they have stolen over $50 billion worth of intellectual property from the US in the past year. As much as I tried to pin Panetta down on who the culprits were, he wouldn’t name names, but indirectly hinted that the main hacker-in-chief was China. This comes on the heels of General Wesley Clark’s admission that the Chinese cleaned out the web connected mainframes at both the Pentagon and the State Department in 2007. The Bush administration kept the greatest security breach in US history secret to duck a hit in the opinion polls.
I thought Panetta was incredibly frank, telling me as much as he could without those gorillas having to kill me afterwards. I have long been envious of the massive budget that the CIA deploys to research the same global markets that I have for most of my life, believed to amount to $70 billion, but even those figures are top secret. If I could only manage their pension fund with their information with a 2%/20% deal! I might even skip the management fee and go for just the bonus. The possibilities boggle the mind!
Panetta’s final piece of advice: don’t even think about making a cell phone call in Pakistan. I immediately deleted the high risk numbers from my cell phone address book.
I have been pounding the table with these guys for four decades to focus more on the resource issue, but they only seemed interested in missiles, planes, tanks, subs, and satellites. What a long strange trip it’s been. Better take another look at the Market Vectors agricultural ETF (DBA), their agribusiness ETF (MOO), as well as my favorite ag stocks, Monsanto (MON), Mosaic (MOS), Potash (POT), and Agrium (AGU). Accidents are about to happen in their favor.
For more iconoclastic and out of consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com. And don’t forget the secret knock before entering!
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If Israel strikes Iran and Oil rises to $500 a barrel,
would that help to soak up excess dollars and curb high
inflation? Could this be a strategy?
What's the matter Dick, not appearing on Fox today?
Food production in the USA and Australia and other parts of the west are being destroyed by the globalists as part of the depopulation campaign. The goal in Pakistan is to break up the country and take down Iran with it. Preventing legitimate economic development and progress will give the Alglo-American bankers a relative advantage going forward if they can make the rate of collapse in central asia faster than wall st.
If there is any leadership than the government needs to liquidate the food speculators and retart production to protect the 1.5 billion lives at stake because of the global hustle. There is going to be a reckoning for this kind of killing, and no amount of PR is going to keep peoples heads out of nooses.
The world has 6 billion people, for fuck's sake.
I don't care about globalist or non-globalist (I happen to be a Cheney-loving conservative). I support ANY conspiracy that stops the world from submerging any further into the emerging Malthusian nightmare.
Food needs to get more expensive before it's too late.
Cheney's non-globalist, huh?
>>Food needs to get more expensive before it's too late>>
I think it's doing a good job at the grocery store. Too bad the people that produce it don't see a dime of it.
Yeah.... theres not enough people starving as it is.
People like you need to be shot in the head as soon as the revolution begins. Fuck you and Eugenics.
Education is the #1 most effective way to reduce the population explosion. Unfortunately it's your same conservative bretheren who wish to reduce education benefits for the poor and instead subsidize rich corporations. Birth control is also key, but unfortunately the same conservative movement pushes archaic non-sensical religions and tell you not to use a condom.
This let the poor/brown people starve to death isn't very Christian. Those Cheney loving Christians who believe being a good Christian in American means hating gays, Jews, Muslims, the poor, bombing the shit out of innocent people for profit, and letting the poor starve to death might want to brush up on there study of the gospels. Pretty much, all Christ did was feed the poor, heal the sick, and fight for the oppressed. It's just how the story goes. There's no arguing that fact. How do you reconcile your Malthusian eugenics based belief in survival of the "fittest" with the teachings in the gospels? I've always wanted to ask that question.
I don't want to upset anyone here but the Bible is one book that people should actually read... if for no other reason than to understand the implications upon society of it's numerous and often contradictory teachings.
Heres a good place to start... I think it's Cheneys favorite site for biblical insight!
www.evilbible.com
(Oh and use your own bible in case you think they are making shit up...)
the nag hammadi library discovered in 1945 is also a worthwhile read for those who are willing to consider how the big book has been rewritten in order to justify a certain structure of power & control.
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html
www.biblegateway.com
Various versions, I recommend the 1545 Martin Luther version, use Google Translate if you can't read german
+1
How the hell you got flagged is beyond me.
Considering how many land owners are out there refusing to use their land to cultivate crops unless they receive a "proper rental payment" and how often food producing farmers are paid to destroy part of their crops to control supply, food shortages are entirely a corporate based phenomena. Just like "avian" flu or "swine" flu, it's all about profits at the expense of human life. Good work middle management!
you are right about education--that is a fact
What about people who lack sufficient intelligence to be educable to the level necessary for them to apprehend the need to have less children?
There is no link between education and birthrates, not a causal one, only correlative.
The link is between consumption/development/economic growth and low birthrates.
The problem is that we all can't have this lifestyle.
And the world does not need more stupid people driving SUVs
What about people who lack sufficient intelligence to be educable to the level necessary for them to apprehend the need to have less children?
The problem is neither education, nor economic growth. The problem is religion. Muslims treat their women like breeding cattle - they don't want women going to school, they don't want them educated, they don't want them free - they just want them making babies. I suggest you read Mark Steyn's America Alone for a detailed look at this issue. It isn't the developed countries who are increasing the population burden on the world's food supply.
A cynic would suggest providing more arms to Africa, instead of food, and trying to foment another Sunni/Shia bloodbath. Of course, one can always hope the Iranians do something stupid, and give the Israelis an excuse to turn them into glass. But, overpopulation is going to be a problem until Islam is dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the 7th century, and into the 21st.
People aren't born stupid, they're taught to be through archaic religions and government based education in poor rent districts.
You want proof? Me.
My mother was born to two spanish immigrants, my grandfather picked strawberries during the summer, did odd jobs during the winters and did not know how to read or write. My grandmother had 14 children and lived off welfare, seeing her husband only during the winters when he wasn't off drinking or sleeping with other women... of course, she was devoutly catholic, so they stayed together. My mother was raped at 14 by my Aunt's husband and she dropped out of high school and married a drug dealer.
I guess I should say that by age 33 she spoke 4 languages and had her doctorate in demographics and business location geography... oh and was in the who's who twice.
What was the cause of the incredible change? What happened in those 19 years?
Her first husband gave her books to read. Books that changed her life. And guess what?
- Not a fucking one was the bible.
So why am I proof? Because I'm alive, I understand numbers (better than most of the MBA idiots out there), and because I give a flying fuck about my fellow man without giving a fuck about religion (although I have studied it to learn about interest aka usury)
Grow the fuck up, you're not better than anyone else, we are all from the same fucking dust as the other person. The only difference is in the economic opportunities that are presented as we grow up, mostly as a result of the economic status of our parents which relied on that of their parents. Education is the only answer. But I will agree on one thing, we don't need more stupid people driving SUVs.
But if you need colour coded charts -
http://homepage3.nifty.com/sociology/motion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
Developed countries usually have a much lower fertility rate due to greater wealth, education, and urbanization. Mortality rates are low, birth control is understood and easily accessible, and costs are often deemed very high because of education, clothing, feeding, and social amenities. Further, longer periods of time spent getting higher education often mean women have children later in life. The result is the demographic-economic paradox. Female labor participation rate also has substantial negative impact on fertility. However, this effect is neutralized among Nordic or liberalist countries.[4]
+1
Or dog-owners: :-(
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010183212_dogcarbon02m....
That's hilarious.... but considering that there are so many strays out there, we can't truly control the population short of regulating breeding (oiy, that would be a GREAT use of taxpayer dollars in the senate). We can control the amount of useless SUVs :) Plus SUVs don't decay, lol
I take your point that it would be hard to demonstrate the link as being a causal one, and that these other factors weight heavily on fertility rates. But female education is a primary factor, close if not equal to relative wealth. If there is a link between education and wealth, however, and wealth/consumption/growth is what you consider to be the main factor, than surely the link logically extends back to that very education?
No doubt the world "does not need more stupid people driving SUVs," but I think oil prices will mitigate that possibility in the future. And I'm not sure what your broader point is--that entire countries with high fertility rates are uneducable??
"food needs to get more expensive before it's too late"
not sure i agree with you. i think it WILL get more expensive, and i'm happy to have bought dba several dollars ago. the "malthusian nightmare" has been subverted, time and again, by technological advancement. take a look at what the pioneer division at dupont is doing with seed development. take a look at what satellite soil-mapping is doing for productivity in africa. the fact is that any realignments of agricultural production that must occur due to natural or man-made temperature changes this century will be handily accommodated by genetically modified crops and accompanying technologies.
price appreciation in agriculture is not a moral imperative. and if you want to talk about conspiracies to make food more expensive for the rest of the world, take a look at the subsidies we doled out to the big farmers last year. call your congressman and tell him or her to get off amd's dick. and think about how cushy and helpful it really is next time you see usaid dump our subsidized excess capacity on that poor, starving nation--which doesn't produce precisely because of our protectionist regime. is this worthy of our support? it is the second-most contemptible policy of the us after our current approach to propping up the financial industry. yet it achieves the ends you seek...making food more expensive.
Obviously I'd prefer that all countries be able to implement reasonable birth control policies and voluntarily limit their own population growth the way that many of the European countries have done.
You say that technology always averts a Malthusian crisis.
Does it? Can you be sure it always will? Does it really cancel it, or just postpone it, just as we do with the day of reckoning on our federal defecit? Because it's saved us in the past, can we guarantee that it will always be there in the future to save us? How can we even pretend to be able to answer that question when no one really knows what the technological possibilities are yet?
And what happens if the system we've built breaks down? Imagine what would happen if a Yellowstone-scale supereruption happened tomorrow, wiping out global agriculture for 10-20 years. We'd have 6 billion mouths to feed and very little agriculture would be possible for a decade.
Bottom line, I'm in favor of sustainability -- economic, environmental, and social.
The current population of 6 billion is unsustainable and the projected exponential expansion is even less so.
It is a moral imperative to rein in that reckless and unsustainable expansion and short of providing low-cost birth control, higher food prices are the most ethical way to do that.
This ideology is how they win. They isn't us, and isn't who what we want to win.
Implement birth control policies? Obviously? As in the right thing to do, obviously? What a malthusian viewpoint.
Yes technology does always avert a malthusian crisis. That's why we have 6.7 billion people. If we had been doing more to develop the world so the population of earth is focusing on wants rathers than fighting for needs, there would not only be less war, but more people on this planet, comfortably living. But we like to think short-term, we like to think about me, me, me, just a little too much, and so that hasn't happened. In spite of that, we've gone from 1 billion people to 6.7 billion. Now you can also postulate, what if there comes a time where it cannot? True, but you are sadly mistaken if you think we are anywhere near that. First, the slack from all the needless things we waste time, energy, brainpower, resources is huge. You could probably meet the needs of double the population on half the resources if they were directed optimally. Now the question goes, how do you get optimally? That's the 6 million dollar question. However it's answered case by case, year by year, innovation and savings after innovation and savings. Second, we haven't even TRIED to solve the problem. How hard is it to really solve the world food problem? Well, if the populations that needed food had the access to the resources, machinery, and know how, it would be far less that a perpetual half measures that is our aid packages. Teach them how to fish, not give them fish. But if they come back from fishing and don't have fish, give them fish. Instead of giving them what they need to do the job, our imperialist ways guarantee poverty somewhere in the world at any given time. But let's also focus on the bait and switch here. It's YOUR viewpoint which is the perversion in a sense of nature. Do human beings procreate or not? Most of the accumulation of population came from life extending innventions and discoveries (germ theory). Because before we knew such things, if you wanted 4 adult children, you wife better of spit out 8. Now all 8 can live. This is human nature. This is what will happen regardless of what happens. Nuclear holocaust, guess what people are still going be f*&*&*&. Your way is the opposite of human nautre. Thus it's YOUR viewpoints that need to PROVE it cannot be done, not human nature that must conform to your viewpoint. Postpone our day of reckoning? Well if that's the case we started with our discovery with fire, and it'll end far beyond the 'barely out of the jungle' we currently sit. For you to not even understand that shows you shouldn't be playing in this arena. Jesus 300 years ago we were burning people at the stake for disagreeing with the bible. 100 years ago, people thought man would never fly, and a person with your same stunted viewpoint on what is possible, see self limiting behaviors, would say something like the following, and I quote you. " How can we even pretend to be able to answer that question when no one really knows what the technological possibilities are yet" Simple, look at history. If you don't see where we've come from, at such great speed, and yet you can still sit there and say 'we don't know what we don't know and thus there is a chance it'll never come and we must bank on that' is a self defeatist attitude. Right before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, most people, even skilled scientists and academics didn't think it was possible. You never know until it's created, but rest assured, great things will be created. We will have our whole lives, as human beings, this generation, past generations, future generations, to meet the needs for itself. If it is our destiny to run out of ideas, then it's our destiny. But so far, NOTHING has proved that to be the case. If you look at human history one needs to be blind not to see the OPPOSITE. Your viewpoint is just to quit, go home, and sentence the people of the Earth to things not needed, simply because you wish not to open your mind, think, or pay someone else to. It's that sort of thinking, or non-thinking that allows for genocide to occur.Again with your viewpoint the one that asks people to change everything about being human, it's your responsibilty to prove that a human being can't advance any further than it currently is situated. You can't, thus what you are saying is complete sophistry, and precluding you from actually finding a solution to the problem. You just say, hey, it's unsolvable, I give up. Well fine, you can, but the human race, won't.
What if the system we built breaks down? umm ok we build another. again if your mind is too tired to do that, let someone else do it, don't keep everyone else from trying.
Yellowstone supereruption? C'mon and monkeys will fly out of my butt. If you use yellowstone supereruption as any basis to make a crazy decision that severely limits you because 'it could happen', then you are literally running a red light at a busy intersection because at some point I've seen the light be green. You don't stop progress because you hear we might be hit by an asteroid in 2550 AD. I know let's watch a football game and turn it off before it starts because our team might lose. Or better yet, let's not even go because we are afraid of terrorism, and thus we won't go sit in the outfield cheap seats at a AA baseball game in a town of 20,000 people in the middle of bum nowhere.
But where in any of your wild viewpoints of what might happen is the chance we could achieve what we want? Where are your viewpoints of the human race SUCCEEDING? You are already dooming us to failure. People that follow your viewpoint, if they succeed, will lead us to failure. Because it's already been decided by your kind.
Your bottom line is a nice piece of sophistry. Sustainability the word as you use it, is perverted. You're not talking about sustainability, you're talking about reducing population so that retards who don't think, can have the resources they need, and everyone else be dammed. Now I'm not trying to put words into YOUR mouth, but that's the fleshed out thought process by those that created your viewpoint from scratch.
Economic sustainability. Well it's not the federal reserve, derivative debt based monetary system, ANY MONETARY system, nor is outsourcing, or a million other things that we currently have in place. We have economic unsustainability. Sustainable options are out there, but they take some of the greed out of profit. Thus you actually have to produce a good product, or do better than the rest in something to be the best and thus profit the most.
All the solutions are there, mostly in the form of proposed congressional legislation, sitting on the desks of people in congress. We could turn this thing around TOMORROW, one single day, if congress came to its senses, and actually worked one day, cut through the bs, and pass what's needed and already sitting on their desks. You could do that in one day. It's human nature to resist however, especially those on the gravy train, and that's why it hasn't happened. Becuase those on the gravy train, lobby, and thus their policies are enacted.
Environmental sustainability- this is going to be a fun one. By what metric are you judging what is sustainable? Knowing that human beings invent, there is no metric available to judge this. Thus there is no actual concrete number of what number of people this earth can support, sustainably.
It's not overcrowding. Do you realize you could put the entire population of the world inside of TEXAS, with ROOM TO SPARE.
It's not global warming. The Earth warms and cools naturally, from the SUN, plus the warming/cooling methods the Earth itself employs. As others have stated, there are plenty of ways technology can mitigate this. We can also be smart and not build on islands that are only 1 foot above sea level.
But destroying all industry in a futile attempt to keep the Earth exactly how it is, is not only idiotic, it's genocidal! If you don't see that, I am very sorry for you. Killing the world's population, for some crazy (usually well intentioned) scientists piss poor metric of saving the world is well, genocidal.
As for resources, there's more Oil in the universe than the entire volume of our solar system. Think sea of oil from the Sun to past pluto into the kuiper belt and oort cloud and beyond. There's more oil than that. Metals? See a metorite at all?
Not to mention when we finally get fusion, a plasma arc can create base elements. Meaning if you need more Uranium, you can make more Uranium. Need more iron? No problem.
Once that is mastered combining them into more complex combinations is possible. There is nothing against the laws of physics to preclude us from having the Star Trek replicator. It may be a hundred years away, but at some point for us as humans, so was flight, or cars, or even fire.
Why anyone can say they know we are overpopulated, and why we must reduce to x level, usually around 2 billion persons, is the most arrogant, destructive, and ridiculous assumption to maybe EVER be made on this planet. The people that want 2 billion people on this planet, simply want it, for their own purposes, not because they have irrefutable proof that this is all the Earth can maintain. Sorry, since we evolve, since we move to things like higher energy flux density, since we invent the billions of things we've invented, there is no number which can be attached to it. We simply don't know, 1 trillion people? Why not? We couldn't meet the needs with today's standards. But tomorrow isn't today. History has PROVEN that we can make leaps, and in fact we generally are in a state of making progress unless disease or monetarism gets in the way (generally the two go hand in hand).
Social sustainability? You mean culture? Well sorry to break this to you, but cultures....CHANGE! Is Italy like the Roman Empire? Is it like it was during the middle ages? Do languages change? Do tastes change? Surely they do. Thus culture changes. Do we evolve as a species to change our culture into banning slavery? Ending suffrage? Gay rights?
It is amazing to me that people that think they have it all figure out, and that we have made it as far as we can go, simply can't think of two words -gay marriage. Just think that, and when our descendants think about how backwards we were, we will be lumped in with the era where slavery was ok, where women had no rights, and yes - when gay people were 2nd class citizens. We aren't as enlightened or as polished as you make us out to be. There are many steps for us to improve upon before we could even create a competent checklist of what an enlightened speices truly is. Our species still doesn't know what we don't know. But I assure you, it is vast, and outnumbers what collective knowledge our species does currently know.
My god common sense dictates that everyone should realize there are planets around many stars, and that some of them are similar to the Earth, in the goldilocks zone of that particular star, and guess what, there are plants living on those planets. Even animals. But we always take the viewpoint of, we need to prove it first. Ok, we need to prove it, to prove it. But we shouldn't take such a strong position of the opposition until we prove that oppposition to be incorrect. Why? Because it's common sense that out of trillions of planets out there, at least one would have plant life on it. How much of a leap of faith does it take to think that-that is basically assured? It doesn't.
The current population is not unsustainable. What's unsustainable is our current overall (key word) way of sustaining our population. We do it piss poor, don't plan nearly enough, don't put the money in for research nearly enough, and are filled with so many self limiting behaviors that we're too pu**y to try and fail anymore. We just all want to go home.
But then again, when you live in a society where no one loses, of course failure is the biggest problem. No, actually it's the mind of somone who thinks that. The real bottom line is the people telling you we must reduce population because things are sustainable don't know CRAP. It's funny it's like the armegeddonists that wish for it to happen in their lifetime. Well if they ever live they'll realize a funny point after it's too late. The human race will go on after the bombs go off, and humans would suffer for millions of years from the radiation, but hey at least they gave god a chance to take the world back. Well if you have that viewpoint, congratulations, you're crazy. Reckless and unsustainable increase? again by what metric that's unfallable? by what metric will you assume to know what's best for 6.7 billion people to the point where you say, or your viewpoint's side says, needs to be at 2 billion persons or less? There is none, thus you are just making assumptions, and want concrete decisions based on those assumptions that can severely affect the lives of about 4.7 billion people? That's asinine and irresponsible. Plus you can't prove your point. Which again since is denying people things, or going against what IS human nature, YOUR SIDE needs the irrefutable proof to derail us from our current path and into one where we shut it all down based on assumptions. (I love the fallacy known as the statistical models completely made up by those whose agenda is already set...talk about the study wagging the data. It's an epidemic right now. I don't know where you got your info, but seems like talking points from the Queen of England or Prince Phillip. Both of whom, will destroy the world to save their own skin, and make you think your are doing the lord's work. You are completely off based, genocidal, and would have been hung at nuremberg war trials had you been part of a certain regime and used that as an argument. I can already heard the wooden doors dropping. It is ethical to kill people by starving them to death? If you don't realize what you said, rethink it. Because you implicitly imply that raising food prices reduces the worlds population....and it ONLY does that through STARVATION. As for birth control, that's an individuals opinion. ANY forced birth control is a crime against humanity. Most of the problems in this world would be solved if those involved simply stopped thinking 'what do I get out of this'? You don't have to profit off EVERYTHING. Again I love how you specifically used the Londonistan way of turning (actually SPINNING) immoral practices considered genocide by any sane person, and turn it casually into a moral act. Nope, what you say isn't moral, and shows me we are far closer to allowing genocide on such purposes that any of us would care to admit. The sadest thing, I'm sure you mean well, and actually think your policies, if they were to be implemented, would be a good thing. It just shows you how far Londonistan has corrupted us.wow +6.7 billion humans
what's really interesting is what waterwings mentioned earlier -- how birth rates are inversely related to the economic 'success' of the population.
perhaps if humans were given equal opportunity at survival (this is not an argument for socialism or communism, but rather for spontaneous order & collective intelligence), humanity would find a natural equilibrium itself, which might be higher or lower than it is now.
we all may be smarter than we give ourselves credit for.
Hear, hear (! x 2).
+1 >>> awesomeness.
hear, hear
Live your believe, help reduced the world's population, starting with yourself and your family!
People like you seek to control the entire world, and it's a horror what the NWO does to people. It's the Federal Reserve and International banks that caused this problem in the first place. I'm willing to bet you have no idea about where money comes from, how it's created, and how more money means less value on the existing dollar. Everything comes back to the money, so you need to understand it first.
You are literally retarded if you don't understand that everything comes back to money.
Starving people on one half of the world while the other half throws out half their meals is what is really reckless. Shame on you. Just die already and help reduce the population by 1.
I think voluntary suicide, would be a noble gesture, for you to make, as an example, of the simplest solution.
A+++
malthusian catastrophists such as yourself present a valid argument, and one that is central to my investing style: how can i be sure? i can't be. and therefore we do things like buy guns for reasons other than mere curiosity or sustenance. or horde gold and stash food. etc. the technological possibilities, however, are real and proven. we will continue to raise yields, we will be able to exploit more land. and if not? price goes up. what i was getting at is that the price dynamics of agriculture are not a moral issue. to argue that we "need" lower prices is naive and ignores the realities of the demand side (not the supply side as you are arguing). on the other hand to argue that we "need" higher prices, as you have, frankly does reek of eugenics and rather beastly notions of population control. point being that the price will do what it will do, and all we can do is hedge for disaster scenarios and have faith in the notion that we are pretty damn clever when it comes advancing technologies in response to price appreciation.
CTB, you are discounting the inherent leverage of being dependant on technology. The human infestation of Earth is like an algae bloom. We will reach a tipping point, after which a Malthusian collapse will surely occur. I'm not saying when this will happen, nor do I wish for this to happen, however, I believe that we are unable to exercise the prudence and self-control required to avoid it.
You cant have infinite growth in a finite world..period end of story.We will run into a brick wall,there is no way to escape that..and lets not forget that any advances in ag have been made possible by cheap plentiful oil...how much longer will that last?
That brick wall has been constructed in the minds of some for almost 300 years. Seems we keep busting through it. Nota bene your cheap oil argument, but hand-in-hand with higher yields will necessarily be advances in alternative energies. I'm not saying it's about to happen, but it will. While I agree that we are in a terrible bind and will be paying the price for our profligacy for many years--and we may even have embarked on an irreversible relative decline in America in relative prosperity--but I still have faith in human ingenuity when fundamental needs arise--like the need to keep feeding people. Especially when feeding people makes money, which it always will.
In most cases, the more educated a people become, and the higher the likelihood of children surviving to adulthood, the fewer children they have. Birth rates in much of the west are not even self-sustaining anymore. Japan's is even lower than the west.
BINGO!
When referencing Malthus, people too often focus on his work regarding population with respect to food supply, forgetting that Malthus produced incredible insight about population with respect to demographics.
In short: Over the long-term, the general profile of a population will take on the characteristics of its fastest growing segments. Taking the long view, it's simple to understand the long-term implications (both in the U.S. and globally) when put into the context of your comment.
Domestically, we continue to see not only an ever-growing concentration of wealth at the top of the pyramid, but also ever-growing demand for entitlement programs at the base of the pyramid. Who gets hurt the most? The middle class.
Globally, Japan has been thrust into the throes of European-style economics (negligible growth, unsustainable fiscal policies, increased frequency of economic downturns) with the U.S. closely behind. Meanwhile, China continues to actuate their burgeoning labor class, and the center of global economic dominance continues to shift in their direction.
+1000
+1
Human beings can figure it out. Imposing control is corrupt and always leads to disaster. We just don't place enough blame on corruption these days.
that's adm, not amd.
Thank You. This is great news for me. I was looking at 2/3 of these stocks and now I'm finally confident to jump in. I especially like MOO.
Job one is to defeat Al Qaida, and the agency has had success in taking out several terrorist leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan with satellite directed predator drones.
- Yeah, Bushie Jr said the same thing.
Seems disingenuous at best to accept any believable report even from Mother were she installed at the Agency..for instance, the Jordanian doctor invited into close proximity with way too many agents in Afg and the story went as if he was a straightforward informant who was a straightforward planned attacker...without having any sources or information, more likely he was an high-level informant who was discovered or was compromised beyond the breaking point for yet more than he could get away with delivering, could in no way go back home knowing him and family would be crushed, so he had only one choice: to buy an insurance policy for his family and kiss his ass away with honor...but that story they won't ever tell.
What a plausible explanation!
We don't need the CIA running around in the sandboxes over there. They are protecting big business, not the common American's interest. We have a fascist state on our hands, folks. Until the common American realizes that it will be death from above.
I seriously, seriously doubt they are just realizing the implications of global collapse. This is just stupid.
These people are incompetent beyond belief - you mean the last two decades don't count as cyberwarfare? Welcome to 2010. We have a new battlefront? What the CIA is aware of is that the American people are going to deliver retribution to their representative 'handlers' sometime in the near future. No more staring at computer screens and firing rockets at boogeymen in the sandboxes. This should anger every American to the point of buying a ticket straight to DC to personally halt all process there.
The CIA is a liability to freedom!
The only thing I gleaned from this fluff piece was that the ultra-rich are getting ready to cash in on food shortages. Bastards.
Well I guess it's not a good idea for the NSA to put hooks into Windows code and to do MOST OF THE WORK on Security Enhanced Linux and then turn around and complain about how everyone is using thier secret sauce. Either stop being a fuck up or get the fuck out of dodge.
Oh Intel leaving root kit vulnerability in all their CPU's for years until everyone figured it out last year is also not a good thing. It's hard to keep trying to make spying easy for some and hard for others. it's either doable or it's not. And now they are going to make graphics boards where the cores can communicate with each other. So that'll be root kitted and you'll have 10 percent of your cores in your computer graphics cards doing nothing but spying on you.
Brilliant comment
- Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
- 24X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
- ALX Space Black - Anodized Aluminum Chassis
- Intel® Core™ i7 960 (3.2GHz, 8MB Cache)
- 1 Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis
- Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 CrossfireX™ Enabled
- 6GB DDR3 1333MHz (3x 2GB) Tri Channel Memory
- 1.2TB RAID 0 (2x 640GB SATA-II, 7,200 RPM, 16MB Cache HDDs)
- Hard-wired Spyware™
And one out of every few proles will still buy it!Just what I'm in the market for... hard-wired is better than wireless... right?
+1000
Whatever you're smoking ... I urge you to stop smoking it.
Now, how obvious is that !
Hadn't thought that out - thanks for doing the heavy lifting for me, ToNYC
don’t even think about making a cell phone call in Pakistan.
Dude,
How about a call to Saudi Arabia
Forget the phone calls...
....and forget about managing the pension funds my madhedgefundtrader friend....what you really want is to manage the 90% of financing that doesn't come from the government.....like Afghanistan and Columbia! CIA runs a virtual monopoly on the $500 billion a year industry. Afghanistan now puts out 95% of the world's heroin and Columbia puts out 85% of the world's cocaine. CIA rules both roosts!
The US taxpayers fund the Taliban (pay transportation security fees to the tribal chiefs who then pay the Taliban to run security) which gives us an excuse to have the troops over there making sure growing & distribution operations run smoothly. Of course the MIC still isn't getting enough...and why not shoot for 100%....let's take on Pakistan too!
Columbia isn't doing as well so taxpayers are gonna chip in for 7 new military bases which should get them up to 95% or more of the world market. On a positive note...gone are the days of Operation Watchtower and relying on pineapple face to distribute goods and wash the cash through the banks....they have since cut out most of the middle men.
Will say this though...good ol' Ollie North did get enough cash to get FEMA off and running!
As for the Al Qaeda subsidiary...LOL they've sure been busy haven't they! Born out of the Safari Club set up by Bushy in the 70's with the Saudi's and ISI...funding originally flushed through BCCI....notice the recent action in Yemen which is on the verge of a civil war thus jeopardizing the $6 billion they've borrowed in the past year or two....good enough reason for a banker to send his son in with explosive underwear....good enough for the agency to play along!
An estimated 352B of drug money was laudered and used to float liquidity to banks during the crisis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims