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NatGas Nightmares & The Descending Deep State
Submitted by Howard Kunstler of Kunstler.com,
And so it’s back to the Kardashians for the US of ADD. As of Sunday The New York Times kicked Ukraine off its front page, a sure sign that the establishment (let’s revive that useful word) is sensitive to the growing ridicule over its claims of national interest in that floundering, bedraggled crypto-nation. The Kardashians sound enough like one of the central Asian ethnic groups battling over the Crimea lo these many centuries — Circassians, Meskhetian Turkmen, Tatars, Karachay-Cherkessians — so the sore-beset American public must be content that they’re getting the news-of-the-world. Perhaps one of those groups was once led by a Great Kanye.
Secretary of State John Kerry has shut his pie-hole, too, for the moment, as it becomes more obvious that Ukraine happens to be Russia’s headache (and neighbor). The playbook of great nations is going obsolete in this new era of great nations having, by necessity, to become smaller broken-up nations. It could easily happen in the USA too as our grandiose Deep State descends further into incompetence, irrelevance, buffoonery, and practical bankruptcy.
Theories abound about what drives this crisis and all the credible stories revolve around the question of natural gas. I go a little further, actually, and say that the specter of declining energy sources worldwide is behind this particular eruption of disorder in one sad corner of the globe and that we’re sure to see more symptoms of that same basic problem in one country after another from here on, moving from the political margins to the centers. The world is out of cheap oil and gas and, at the same time, out of capital to produce the non-cheap oil and gas. So what’s going on is a scramble between desperate producers and populations worried about shivering in the dark. The Ukraine is just a threadbare carpet-runner between them.
Contributing to our own country’s excessive vanity in the arena of nations is the mistaken belief that we have so much shale gas of our own that we barely know what to do with it. This is certainly the view, for instance, of Speaker of the House John Boehner, who complained last week about bureaucratic barriers to the building of new natural gas export terminals, with the idea that we could easily take over the European gas market from Russia. Boehner is out of his mind. Does he not know that the early big American shale gas plays (Barnett in Texas, Haynesville in Louisiana, Fayettville in Arkansas) are already winding down after just ten years of production? That’s on top of the growing austerity in available capital for the so-far-unprofitable shale gas industry. That’s on top of the scarcity of capital for building new liquid natural gas terminals and ditto the fleet of specialized refrigerated tanker ships required to haul the stuff across the ocean. File under “not going to happen.”
Even the idea that we will have enough natural gas for our own needs in the USA beyond the short term ought to be viewed with skepticism. What happens, for instance, when we finally realize that it costs more to frack it out of the ground than people can pay for it? I’ll tell you exactly what will happen: the gas will remain underground bound up in its “tight rock,” possibly forever, and a lot of Americans will freeze to death.
The most amazing part of the current story is that US political leaders are so ignorant of the facts. They apparently look only to the public relations officers in the oil-and-gas industries and no further. Does Barack Obama still believe, as he said in 2011, that "we have a hundred years of shale gas?” That was just something that a flack from the Chesapeake Corporation told to some White House aide over a bottle of Lalou Bize-Leroy Domaine d’Auvenay Les Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru. Government officials believe similar fairy tales about shale oil from the Bakken in North Dakota — a way overhyped resource play likely to pass its own peak at the end of this year.
If you travel around the upper Hudson Valley, north of Albany, where I live, you would see towns and landscapes every bit as desolate as a former Soviet republic. In fact, our towns look infinitely worse than the street-views of Ukraine’s population centers. Ours were built of glue and vinyl, with most of the work completed thirty years ago so that it’s all delaminating under a yellow-gray patina of auto emissions. Inside these miserable structures, American citizens with no prospects and no hope huddle around electric space heaters. They have no idea how they’re going to pay the bill for that come April. They already spent the money on tattoos and heroin.
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Stay away from the cabbage borscht! Gives u gaz like crazy!
If you like your natural gas, you can keep your natural gas.
Bullish on opium futures! Oh, wait...
Yup.. better to wait.
Karzai Inc. is still in business for the time being...
... invest in Colorado Marijuana companies!
Dude that is not even funny. The MJ growers are going to be the only ones working at a profit in a few years.
We're all gonna be stoned.
Woo hoo! Moar groath!
Sounds like Kunts got up on the wrong side of the bed today.
Quite a dim view.....time to buy land in Albany
"No Reggrets"
Green Shoots!
At least it's carbon-neutral. So go nutz.
Time to secede. Want no part of a union that can elect an Obama twice.
Russia, to their credit, is also less Trayvonish.
"If you travel around the upper Hudson Valley, north of Albany, where I live, you would see towns and landscapes every bit as desolate as a former Soviet republic. "
Where did this come from? From out of the blue with little connection to the main story line ...
This guy Kuntsler is not exactly Norman Vincent Peale... is he?
Go read his book "The Long Emergency"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Emergency
Published in 2005.......stands up to this very day like words from an Old Testament Prophet.
Cognitive dissonance for another peak oil believer.
Energy production cannot possibly be increasing (even though it is) because peak oil says it can't. Reality cannot possibly be real.
Energy production per unit of capital input is in terminal decline. Once it costs more money to get oil out of the ground than people are willing to pay for the product, the game just ends right there. No warning. Full stop.
Hint: at $100/bbl, we're there.
The oil majors are toast and everyone knows it. They are unwinding, cannibalizing assets to pay a dividend so that fund managers don't spook and run away entirely. They need Ukraine now for its underground stocks, but Putin will make that an excuse for WWIII before he lets them have it.
It's the end-game now, fuckers. If you had a Plan B ready for the day, you better roll it out.
EDIT: The only other gambit here is actually quite likely; government oil companies. The government can operate strategic activities (ex, the military) at a dead loss, tapping tax payers to keep it running. Americans at least are ready to send our military overseas for oil resources, I certainly imagine they won't bat an eye if the government takes over oil and gas field production at a loss to keep the suburbs rolling.
Weeks, months...what?
That depends on how long they can kick the can. If Exxon/Mobile can get the USG to "underwrite" some of the "strategic investment" they can pretend to work at a profit for a while, letting The Fed QE the fuck out of it. Since propping up appearances is about the only game left I'm pretty sure Obama will roll with it.
Give it 6 months at least. Regardless, start looking for jabber out of Washington DC soon about "strategic investment in America" and "what Americans are ready to pay" and you'll know they are priming the pumps for a huge dump of the unprofitable oil and gas plays onto taxpayers. I don't know what the price at the pump will look like (they don't have much room to move there) but the costs of production will have shifted to the US Treasury, and how long that can continue is very much anyone's guess.
Might depend also, in how long peak demand falls at a faster rate than peak oil.
A fall in demand won't solve anything. It keeps prices from rising against rising input costs, but it also signals a deflationary death spiral at the bottom of which is no demand at all.
There is no way out of this. The board is set and the pieces are in motion. Anyone who knows how the game is played knows how it now ends.
Energy production cannot possibly be increasing (even though it is) because peak oil says it can't. Reality cannot possibly be real.
Get an education. pay attention, partucularly 20 minutes in, This info costs hedge funds millions,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLCsMRr7hAg&list=FLSIcLl4SLNDiPv4Mcm9xu0g...
And miles driven per year is down below 1975 or something. ...
Surely that's just because we all order everything from Amazon Prime and never need leave our palatial homes. BULLISH!!
Really? There's a lot more people now. If true, kinda spectacular. Source?
eia.gov
Interesting tidbit, as consumption per mile goes down, so does the gas tax income for road repair. See if you can drive your Prius down a road full of potholes.
Yep, now states are facing the issue of constantly raising taxes on gas, which voters hate, by indexing the gas tax to inflation!!!
Crimminy.
"Might depend also, in how long peak demand falls at a faster rate than peak oil."
They would be the same. As fewer consumers can afford oil, Drillers will be forced to cut drilling, as the need revenue to afford the drilling costs. So if people can only afford $80/bbl oil anything that costs more will be off limits. FWIW: Since 2005 the Oil Majors (ie Exxon, Shell, BP, etc) spent 3.5 Trillion on convential drilling and managed to decline oil production by 1 Mbpd. We probably have a few years before the big global energy crunch begins. Either prepare or party like its the end of the world, because it is.
There's a lot of momentum in the system - and a lot of energy that goes to non-essential BS - so my guess is that it'll take years. Although each year will get steadily worse - at the fringes first, then more toward the center.
Just beware those unexpected tipping-points when the center loses its hold.
In other words, stay prepped my friend.
Yup yup. True words. The timing cannot be known ... but from here forward it is only a matter of time.
At $100/bbl, we are absolutely not there. I know of one company (an independent) that can keep running business as usual until oil drops below $85/bbl. I would expect the majors can continue business as usual past that point.
Independents can always cut corners. The majors have sunk costs, long-term contracts, and investor confidence to monitor. Those guys are already blown. They'll become "brokers" of their long term oil field contracts, and let others invest the risk money to drill a hole.
In the end (meaning 10 years from now) oil and gas production could well become a boutique business run by small producers. Just like selling organic truffles to 5-star French restaurants. Yeah there is money it, fucking yeah and lots of it. But only for a very very small class of specialist.
Here's the funny part; you won't be putting any of that wild-catted gas in your shitty Ford F250, homie.
I'm not really sure where you get the idea that independents can cut more corners than majors. Independents also have sunk costs, long-term contracts, and investor confidence to monitor. You can obviously have whatever opinions you wish, but your facts, aren't.
Then I was wrong and the independents aren't going to make it either.
But I don't see how that makes the situation any better, only worse.
.
cougar_w,
"peak oil" is largely an economic problem, not a depetion problem. It's complicated by the fascist cartel forces that manage the oil supplies and delivery. There is not a shortage of oil any more than there is a shortage of copper, water, seawater or farmland. It's just a matter of price. As prices rise for a given problem due to scarcity, individuals change their behavior and ration the use of it. Innovation happens to develop new sources. Just as every malthusian prediction for the last 200 years has been proved false, so will peak oil. Could we have temporary disruptions? Certainly. Will driving automobiles become cheaper in the long-term? Abolutely.
This is a key lesson in Austrian Economics, and it's best argued in a book by Julian Simon: "The Ultimate Resource 2".
If individuals are able to participate in a free economic system with real money; scarcity induced doomsdays become impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLQoa_FA_zo
This is a physics problem compounded by economic problems. Either we find an oil substitute, or modern industrial society goes away. This is conservation of energy and the second law of thermodynamics in play here, and changing economic systems can only extend things so far.
I'm sure this country's dependence on centralized food production doesn't help as well. I'm not sure if it is feasible to go to a local model if the economy crashes. Doubling my garden this year.
Miffed;-)
Joel Satatin has said if all the lawns in America were converted to food gardens no one would be short of food, ever. That's a lot of lawn & it's very de-centralized.
Ok, you're a man after my heart! ;-) Joel Saladin is a personal hero. I tried to get a tour of Polyface but I was,unfortunately, there on the wrong day. I think he's right but the gardening ability of the average American is so woefully deficient, they'd probably starve. Having a lawn is frankly a suburbia abomination IMHO. What a waste of water. But I speak as a Californian stuck in a drought and am worried about my well.
Miffed;-)
true BUT if people willing to garden were willing to travel from lawn to lawn then those who don't know how to garden would need only need to agree to sharing a portion of food in trade for having it worked by someone with the skill. That's an easier sell than every person learning to garden on their own, for any who were that willing to begin with.
Ah...yes. You propose game theory. Nash Equilibrium. Can people cooperate and take risks to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome? But this is a description of a thinking man strategy. I am not sure this is applicable here. At least, not in the crisis phase. Drop a rock on an ant hill and all you get is frantic chaotic movements. Only hours later there is a semblance of order. What you propose may work eventually but economic collapses generally occur quickly and the topic of food production is on a longer time frame.
Miffed;-)
What's the risk? The gubbermint says you can't grow food in your back yard, maybe front yard? Grow something tall & frondy in front of it so it's not obvious except from above. You rent your lawn which you only grew grass on & in return you get free food, effectively, while others also get food as compensation for their work. Our teeny tiny work garden did up 300 pounds of vegetables for the food bank. It's super teeny tiny. Imagine what an entire lawn could do. Then all of 'em.
If I can manage it I plan to apply the Mittleider gardening techniques to the work garden once all this crappy snow is gone. Got a fresh lot tonight. I hate digging my way in after work.
I am very fortunate I live in the country on 10 acres and no one cares what you do. We once lived in a town home with a HOA and vowed never to make that mistake again. With our growing climat, we can almost have a year round garden but our problem is critters. In an arid climate the world is very hungry! My neighbor put in 15 feet of lettuce, walked up to his house to get a glass of water and in 15 min the birds decimated it. We put in 5 pots of tomatoes on our raised porch thinking they would be relatively safe. No, the birds ate all of them. We have now given up and have carved out a 15X20 spot that is fully enclosed in narrow chicken wire including shock wire to discourage the burrowing rabbits and squirrels. It's well constructed to last awhile and certainly wasn't cheap.
I had never heard of Mettleider. Have you personally done this? I googled it and it sounded interesting. We use square foot gardening. I wouldn't mind trying something new. The yields looked impressive.
Miffed;-)
I haven't had a chance, I move frequently.
You see videos of the results (Texas) on youtube channel LDSprepper:
http://www.youtube.com/ldsprepper
The results are very good. Includes anti-critter measures.
It is slightly worse than that. Economic systems in fact cannot extend enything, just add a little borrowed momentum to the train as it rolls to a stop. The insane hopelessness of such an effort makes earnest men look like clowns.
I would argue that more equal income distributions coupled with less fraud would mean that we could afford higher oil prices than less equal income distributions and more fraud before things come to a halt. It is a difference of a few years. That is all that I am talking about. I might also argue that less fraud and less regulatory capture would have allowed things to really start pricing expensive oil into how things are done by shortening supply chains for necessities.
I don't agree, and neither do most Austrian economists. A depletion curve of a well, a region or country is a physics problem. Energy usage by people is an economics problem.
Increased scarcity increases prices. Increased prices act as an incentive for innovation. Inflation adjusted, it will be cheaper to drive your car in 20 years than today. That is an economic law.
If a new technology, such as graphene made it cheaper to power a scooter, or a passenger car, and 1/5th of owners of cars and scooters found it cheaper to use electric cars, oil prices would plummit. There's plenty of oil, it's just the extraction rate that is a problem. Oil will always be in use for certain tasks, but it will be in ever smaller required quantities. The Austrians and innovation will save the world if given a chance.
We've been consuming debt for 40 years trying to survive energy deflation. Debt is now all that money has become. There is so little productive capital left we won't be able to convert even 1% of the rolling fleet. Even converted to use natural gas -- a well known technology available in some quantity at the moment -- there simply is no money left for it.
Nothing is going to change. This ship sinks exactly as it is now rigged.
Debt based money is the problem. Cheap money has distorted markets of every shade including energy markets, creating massive towers of malinvestment. In a static system, I'd agree with you. However, humanity is a complex system relying on feedback loops of information to make decisions. These feedback loops have been tampered with by governments and crony corporations. The malinvestment must be cleared out. That is the terrifying problem we face. Innovation will happen, thing will get better over time.
People are resourceful. During WWII, almost the entirety of Europe converted their cars to run on wood gas, from junk parts. There are all sorts of ways people could respond in the face of higher prices. Gold has no debt, or counterparty. There is wealth, but the debt old wood needs to be cleared out.
Energy isn't our biggest worry, government is. Individuals always find a way to make things work better.
If you are meaning to imply that 100 million suburban drivers across de-industrialized America are now going to convert their SUVs and vans to run on wood alcohol so they can commute 40 miles to work, then you are absolutely 100% certifiably insane.
Yank our chain for fun if you want, but that's all it is.
" It's complicated by the fascist cartel forces that manage the oil supplies and delivery. There is not a shortage of oil any more than there is a shortage of copper, water, seawater or farmland. "
This is blind faith in the markets. If there is an impending asteroid strike the market will recognize the opportunity in creating anti-asteroid devices and competition will ensure the best one will win.
"As prices rise for a given problem due to scarcity, individuals change their behavior"
I suppose be cold and starve is a type of behaviour.
I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.*
Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.
You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, "We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
I, PencilMy Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read
""peak oil" is largely an economic problem, not a depetion problem. It's complicated by the fascist cartel forces that manage the oil supplies and delivery. It's just a matter of price."
Not true, because it also depends on EROEI. if it takes 2 barrels of oil to extract 1 barrel of oil its a problem of physics too.
"Innovation happens to develop new sources."
What you think they are going to harvest Hydrocarbons from the Gas Giants or thier moons? They are scraping the barrel of the bottom just to maintaine BAU.
"If individuals are able to participate in a free economic system with real money;"
Try locking them in the same room with a limited number of resources. With in a few hours they be at each other thoats trying to secure the remain resources left.
"Will driving automobiles become cheaper in the long-term? Abolutely."
Yes, with the return of Rickshaw and Buggy-whip manufacturers!
You're painting all the oil resources with the same brush. Some oil is still being produced at $30-50 a barrel. There is still a metric shit ton of sweet crude that is easily drillable. The challenge that faces us at this point is run-rate, daily production. Demand is simply out-stripping the ability to extract it cheaply on a day by day basis.
As I said before, if some people find it more economical to use alternate forms of energy to run their passenger cars or scooters, this daily production problem goes away. Prices cause people to make different decisions, ration existing supplies, etc.
Please read Julian Simon's work "Ultimate Resource II" If anything, it will challenge your beliefs and help you see another point of view.
"There is still a metric shit ton of sweet crude that is easily drillable."
Bullshit. Just 100% class-A bullshit.
Anyone out there talking about easy oil? Shit no. There isn't any anywhere. There is nothing but tight oil left and most of it cannot be had for love nor money. Because the EROEI sucks big wind it will now sit in the rock for evermore, unless the military gets their grunts out there wildcatting that shit to motor the next great war for democracy.
Fuck who cares. Think what you want. The curtain is rising on a new show even as we sit on our asses and critique the last show, and there is nothing anyone here or anywhere else can do about it. Go or go not but this race will go to the swift just like every other race did.
I should have clarified, The existing old reserves are producing oil at 20-30 per barrel. Granted, many are in decline. But it's still being produced cheaply. I'm guessing that there's going to be a electric car breakthrough very soon, probably graphene based. The batteries are a very expensive component, but making a battery using essentially the same process as making paper will be disruptive technology to ground based transportation.
Trucks, ships, and planes will still use diesel and kerosene, but if it's cheaper to run your car off of electricity, there will be plenty of oil to run the other stuff.
"You're painting all the oil resources with the same brush. Some oil is still being produced at $30-50 a barrel. There is still a metric shit ton of sweet crude that is easily drillable."
Yeah, That's why billions are being poured into deepwater and shale! Are these drillers simply are tough guys looking for hard challenges? Give it a rest.
"some people find it more economical to use alternate forms of energy to run their passenger cars or scooters"
Sure, like when rickshaws swing back into fashtion again. I am sure you'll find that alternate form of transportation more economical.
"Please read Julian Simon's work "Ultimate Resource II""
Sorry, I am afraid its pure BS, and you bought it, hook, line and sinker!
Well if you're like many reading this site, you may respect the ideas of F.A. Hayek. He loved Simon's work. So don't take my word for it.
<Sigh>......
It's not peak oil. It's peak cheap energy. It's not about how much you suck out of the ground....it's how much it cost to suck it out in the first place and how much it costs to turn that heavy sour shit into something sweet.
I see though that it doesn't cost a thing for your suckage. You give it away for free and it's abundant.
"Peak Oil" IS "Peak Cheap Energy." It's exactly the same f'n thing.
In terms of living through it - it all boils down to EROEI and the implications it has for our debt-based consumer economy.
btw BTUs produced per capita peaked somewhere in 1977.
Bullshit. The concept in the minds of those originally espousing the idea of the end of the forever energy spigot was the same. But the media and cornucopians like to poo-poo "Peak Oil" because of a few nut-burgers proposing the imminent "Olduvai Gorge" theory of utter and sudden collapse. They like to say we were talking about running out of oil altogether.
Once again.....bullshit.
"The concept in the minds of those originally espousing the idea. . . "
Hubbert's initial observation was from the viewpoint of a geologist - his goal was not to try and predict the impact peak oil would have on the economy or on energy venture capitalists.
Guys like Matt Simmons, however, looked at Hubbert's observations and understood that from the peak forward, the price of production would increase, flow rates would decline requiring more development that was also more expensive,, the quality of the product would go down, and that this would squeeze the debt-based monetary system to the breaking point.
Nobody, not even Richard Duncan, ever said we were going to "run out of oil," just that economical production could not keep up with demand and the prospect of either ever-increasing prices, ever decreasing supply, or both - would ravage our ability to maintain our infrastructure (huge stretch, right?).
Right because the US total production is up since 1971.../sarc
Good luck with that hopium.
Hey dimwit, peak oil has never been about declining production. It is about a levelling off of production as costs to get the oil out of the ground increase and as the "easy" big discoveries diminish. Try learning something instead of just being a smart-ass.
Production hasn't "leveled off" since the early 70's - its declined. Yes I agree it ultimately comes down to bouncing along the point of marginal returns, but the point at which it started to decline WAS the peak for the US. Even the small tick up in 89 when the North Slope came online never surpassed the 70' "Peak".
Ob1knob,
Sorry about your difficulties with arithmetic. There are pleny of sites where the answers are worked out for you but let me summarize:
1) Oil production in the USA is on the upswing and will be for the next few years. In about 11. 2 years, it's no longer worth bothering with unless the price gets very, very high. And it might.
2) Energy production is not the same thing as oil production. Not all oil is energetically equal. Texas light crude from shallow straight wells in the 1960s had energy returns of 100:1 or greater. These days, we're lucky to get 12:1. In another 50 years, nobody will bother.
3) Bad energy return shows up as higher prices and more material and effort are needed to product the same amount of oil.
4) Peak oil isn't about the quantity of oil left. It's about net energy return and price for a given unit of oil. There's no shortage of oil, in quantity. There's a shortage of oil that's energetically and economically profitable enough to extract for the kind of cheap transportation fuel that keeps the world's interdependent web of supply chains running. Once that's gone, oil price feedback guarantees that supply chain decay occurs rapidly. We'll probably go from normal to completely broken in less than a decade.
Thanks for your attention. Should you choose to purchase a calculator, you might want to start educating yourself here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil.
Emergency stsrted in 1913.
Actually with Hamilton.
We've always been at war. Western Massachusetts, then upper Mid West, Carolinas, Florida, west into the Rockies, New Mexico. Then outside of the big Fed Camp to Mexico, Philippines, Two Europe tours plus the Burma-China-Japan. Others. Past Europe to Iraq and almost meeting up from the other direction in Afgan Park.
Always at war, always an emergency
Its like a fedgov oath or something. " I swear to always be at war, domesticly or foreign, to faithfully uphold the perminate Military Financial Corporation so help me God."
If not for war, people would eventually realize that there isn't a need for government.
"You go to war with the government you have. And luckily for us, you will never get another."
-Darth Rumsfeld
War is the health of the state
Bismarck
The Upper Hudson used to be the home of numerous GE manufacturing plants and other sites of industry - all gone now, leaving behind a legacy of PCB pollution and dying towns.
This is as much about the opffshoring of American industry and jobs as anything else and is all too common in the smaller towns of America. Their corporate employers shut plants and sent the jobs overseas after 'free trade' agreements let them chase the lowest possible labor costs, leaving behind a wasteland. Those small towns that once were centers of farming before 'the plant' opened cannot reabsorb the manpower left idle when 'the plant' closed because agribusiness has put small farmers out of business.
Funny how meth was the predominant drug - made in Mexico or locally - but now heroin has become an epidemic. Recent artricle in the NYT about it hitting hard in Vermont. Though this article DOES follow the death of famous actor Seymour Phillip Hoffman a couple weeks ago in NYC and a few deaths in the northern Westchester burbs (well-off SUBURBAN kids doing HEROIN?!?!? - used to be they were focused on lacrosse to better their chances at good colleges)
I guess the supply increased and the transport costs dropped after the Taliban were ousted from Afghanistan..... of course it might only be a coincidence that this new epidemic coincides wtith the American presence there ...
Government issued SOMA is perhaps a bit TOO obvious (and would face objections from Congress). Funding Oxy prescriptions has gotten expensive so once you've gotten people hooked......... better to let the masses self medicate? Cuts government costs (though cutting into big pharma profits) though it has the side benefit of providing additional stock for the prison-industrial complex.
The only jobs left in some places in upstate NY is working at the local State Prison (makes SO much sense to put those places in the Airondacks or elsewhere, a couple hundred miles from NYC where most of the prisoners come from, not like family ties mean much, right?)
Plus, with heroin you have the added benefit of the useless eaters offing themselves more regularly. No regulation noone knows how strong it is. "I usually do this much and I'm fine"
Under Bush there was an attempt to eradicate Opium production in Afghanistan. Within a few weeks of taking office Barrack Obama stopped those efforts. If anyone is to blame it is Obama for the increase from that area.
Please... the Bush Syndicate is neck deep in the CIA and its efforts running drugs. Iran CONTRA was a HW effort and the US presence in Afghanistan reversed the suppression of Opium growing carried out by the Taliban.
ANY 'efforts' to eradicate drug production are PR - or efforts to eliminate competition.
"The Geography of Nowhere" is also worth a look.
Agree - I read it last year and I had to check the publish date - he was so totally DEAD ON with all his predictions I thought he must have written this after 2008.
Long Emergency and End of Growth (Heinberg) are the definitive books on understanding the energy crisis --- which is the cause of the Financial Crises
Also follow this blog ourfiniteworld.com
his nickname when he was growing up was "mr. sunshine"
Tattoos and heroin = sound investment compared to the rigged markets for stawks
Since March of '09, you would be up 180%...
Amittedly, dealing heroin would have higher margins....
On paper you'd be up.
Try to get it out and you'll be taxed out the ass.
Leave it in and it will be raked away or stolen, 30 to 1 on 6-6's.
Stocks and their paper profits are drugs, just a different kind.
15% is hardly getting your ass raped...
So you would be up ~160% net of taxes...
vote for me I vill phix it vor vooooo
XX00 hillary
We don't need da' gaz anyway ...global warmin' is gonna take care of it 4 us!
Comparing NY with Ukraine isn't really fair because Ukraine has had external forces acting on it.
NY on the other hand has pushed out just about everyone that could leave with their suffocating rules, smothering taxes, and crony government.
Toss in a shitty ass 6 months of winter and anyone that can move out of that miserable place has moved.
I would say 3/4s of my graduating class is no longer up there.
Sorry, but they can keep their high taxes, 4-8 rounds in a magazine, smoking nazis, texting nazis, numerous other rule making nazis, and shitty climate.
pods
GE outsourcing jobs over the past 40 years has a lot to do with the demise of upstate NY, at least around Albany....
Where I was it was IBM (founded there), Singer link, Loral, Lockheed and numerous other defense oriented places.
Local govs soaked them for taxes until the money trucks stopped coming in.
Now it is all slowly dying.
pods
The end of the cold war is what killed the defense industry. They've been agitating for a reason to live since Ronald Reagan left them behind.
Yep, and many Upstate NY towns are sitting around like a cargo cult waiting for what was there to come back. There was a lot of money coming in with defense and tech. Now it has all left and it is just money velocity that is keeping it from imploding. But pensions, and bloated local govs are taking more out of a smaller pool.
Local governments have been merging and dissolving.
I loved the outdoor activities, but too many restrictions on anything and everything up there anymore.
The people up there are institutionalized as well. I didn't notice that when I grew up, but now it punches you in the face how much blind allegiance there is to authority up there.
pods
STFU! Defense companies are at all time highs....guess why
Wasn't all defense and tech. Lots of basic electrical infrastructure equipment - transformers and such - made by GE. Schenectady was once the center of manufacturing for GE and he worlld capital in manufacturing railroad engines. Troy NY was the center of steel manucacturing (before the Civil War). Some of this was a shift elsewhere in the US and then out of th country, some of it was the death of obsolescent industry but a good amount of it was the neverending pursuit of the cheapest possible labor - which led to overseas after 'free trade' agreements were passed.
In Albany you work for NY State or Niagra Mohawk (the power utility). Half the towns along the northway make their money off speeding tickets. The tourism and summer homes in Lake George and the Adirondacks were geared towards blue collar working folks. Lots of places up for sale now on the way to summer camp. Upper NY state was never all that well off but is sinking deep into poverty now. Adirondacks is bad but Catskills is just as bad off - all the resort motels are filled with welfare. The jobs at the dying racetracks are held by illegals willing to work for near nothing (and casinos are supposed to HELP? who has any money to lose?)
The sad thing is that the agricultureal base in these places was strong a century ago - they fed Albany, NYC and elsewhere. How far away is the food for these places grown now? In Europe you start runnig into farms not too far outside major cities, not in the US.
cougar_w
Could you? Did you? REALLY?
F-ing believe that RONALD RAYGUN killed the defense industry?
He was an ACTOR .
Eviscerating the defense industries unlimited liquidity; WAS an ACT.
There were many in the cast.
Some played themselves.
A "Ripley's Believe it or Not" Subtitled, Raping by Dollars.
The names... and numbers on the screen blaH BLAH.
Holy CRAP!
Ronnie was an actor. He could deliver a line. The defense industry loved him and his "evil empire" act while he was US president.
But then Ronnie went and lost is mind, leaving them beached without a spokes-troll.
The illusion did not survive the death of the illusionist.
Such is the cost.
Offense industry.
There is nothing defensive in Tomahawks.
Point.
Ronnie learned his trade as a spokesperson for GE - pushing 'patriotism' as a counterbalance to unionism. As Prez he had NO interest in foreign affairs - left all that to HW Bush.
Funny how when Ronnie started to actually start paying attention he got shot.
And why did GE feel the need to outsource?
I hope that question was asked with a heaping diaper full of sarc.
They figured out they could buy politicians who would let them move the dirty factories off shore and use slave labor to boost profits? Then when they realized they could even get those same "bought" traitor politicians to even reduce or eliminate tarrifs on their goods, they were tripping all over themselves to speed up the process?
Am I getting close?
"I live in Cape Caad, but I love New York!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gsyQeV2aR8
Hyannis, Cape Cod is slowly becoming Detroit. Welfare, heroin, stabbings, gov admin papershufflers, Section 8 and shelters. We call it Brockton-By-The-Sea.
Sure your not talking about Jersey?
Everything Pods says about NY is correct. NJ, however, doesn't look quite as bad. Yet. Taxes, regulations, constitution-free zone, yeah, we're there.
Jersey still has ample Wall Street money flowing in though correct?
Not talking about Camden, but the nice areas. Camden I won't even do Google Streetview.
pods
That was funny as hell.
Camden Streetview is like doomer porn - *fo' reelz.*
Ditto Illinois.
NYC politicians have ruined the state. The winter weather is the final nail in the coffin.
The finger lakes are beautiful in the summer though...
This thread is full of dislike of taxes, regulations, government services etc and attributes the wasteland that is upstate NY to that.
I'll suggest something less political and two parts. One is oil scarcity and the draining of effort/energy to get oil, which is absolutely required for life in a world of 7 billion. The other is automation. The insidious effect of automation is that it appealed to people as being benign. "You have to change with the world. You lose one job, another opens for you, building the machines that took your job."
The problem with that is IQ. The left side of the IQ distribution can't go back to school to be software engineers because of IQ (to say nothing of age, not too many bachelor degree in comp science candidates aged 55). Those people are going on government benefits. They have to eat. They have no choice. And they'll be on them forever, not because they are lazy slobs, but because there is no work for them that pays enough to live.
The other side of the distribution pays for their lives. Someone has to. It is they who do. That means they pay for their own lives and those of the displaced as well. There is no fix for this, or oil scarcity.
We sent our whole manufacturing base to China - GAVE them manufacturing planst in exchange for 'cehap labor' - building their GDP and killing the US. 'Free Trade'
There are NO JOBS in 'software' - they all went to India. The guys in DP and systems in NYC - with degrees from great schools - were put out of work 20 years back. 'Retraining' was a myth. Call centers for credit cards and banks also went overseas - no heavy educational requirement there.
They're offshoring basic accounting jobs now - A/P, A/R in the major banks.
Why didn't government REQUIRE that jobs be BROUGHT BACK to the US as a condition of accepting TARP money? Would''ve been contrary to corporate wishes.
The real irony is THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY (or more) IS PAID TO U.S. 'WORKERS' NOW. Just that a few hundred million goes to a few top EXECUTIVES instead of a few thousand workers in the US.
THAT is what people don't realize. THAT has had more of an effect than taxes or anything else.
"We sent our whole manufacturing base to China"
Correction, we sold it to them for cheap manufactured, "printed," capital from the FedRes so as to stymie the price inflation the FedRes' "printing" would have caused.
"My wife doesn't yet see how the guillotine in the backyard is really a garbage disposal."
And the vast majority of the old folks retire OUT of NY INTO the SOUTH - SS is paid by us all last I checked.
Soon enough, NY will be empty and Georgia & Florida will be full? But those SS benefits - they will keep on coming? Or not?
This is too confusing :)
How can there be no jobs?!
Obama reports monthly that unemployment is only around 6%
I still head up a couple times a year to fish Otisco lake. Best Tiger Muskie fishing around.
Couldn't live there though.
pods
The Ukraine has a lot fewer Trayvons.
Yankee stay home, please.
Thanks but I will take my freedom of movement.
Been here for quite some time already.
You could call me a Yankee, I like to think of myself as Southern by Choice.
pods
This article makes no sense.
Leave the Central Banks, EPA and the the Federal Government out of it, and people will invest in gas-drilling until it is no longer profitable. End of Story
No wonder Upstate NY is worse than Appalachia. They have an pre-1989 Eastern European government and society.
Gas drilling is already no longer profitable. Dutch Shell (about as bad-ass as they get) bailed out at a loss. The rest are due to follow.
Those guys own government. If there was money to be made in drilling they would be in there sucking on the subsidy teat and handing out bribes to get around so-called regulations. But there is nothing left.
This ponzi is falling apart. The early money is out. Another year or two and there will be mutual fund managers jumping out of windows.
Gas drilling is still going on. At a slower rate, but that should be expected. E&P companies would rather sell more at $11/MMcf than at $4.50/MMcf. Oil is up, gas is down, and capital follows price. There's no reason to bribe anyone in NY when the regulatory climate is so much better everywhere else. I'm going to predict that oil and gas wells will continue to be drilled.
I'm going to predict that you are correct -- they will continue to be drilled -- but the majors will be working on contract for the US government and taxpayers will be paying full freight for every foot of bore hole. And might be already. Like they would ever tell you.
You are simply delusional, government pays for none of the drilling.
Too much heroin or young men.
Either the government will do it for the reasons that governments do anything, or it's not going to get done.
Because the major oil companies are gasping their last.
Well, cougar, you're not even close to the truth, which is frankly disappointing. After 2008, I'd love to see those managers fly.
It's quite clear you have no idea what you're talking about. Shell pulled out of one play in the US and you think that means drilling is unprofitable? Please.
Yes that is exactly what it means.
Just get over it. You better have you life-style-adjusted Plan B in place.
In fairness, when was upstate NY never not a total hellhole?
Shh, we're having a moment here.
Being from Ontario (Kanada), I was SHOCKED at the decay the first time I drove through upstate NY, and upstate Ohio as well.
That was 30 years ago...
30 years? geez. we've progressed. we've 'recovered' all across the united states. bernake is a genius, and we all sing his blessings. you should come visit again, everything looks like 'leave it to beaver' times, all over.
perfect world, the dream model for the rest of the world. (and if they don't like the dream, we can bomb them until they do.)
Yea, my heart just stopped for a minute there. But later it kept on spinning fluid.
Compared to what...that NYC shithole? The rest of NY state (and most of the nation) will rejoice when a superstorm wipes Wall St, UN HQ, and the NY Fed off the map. Maybe global warming will drown it? Burn that coal bitches...warm it up...drown the rotten apple.
Only a psychopath would celebrate such destruction and suffering.
I agree...the NYC politicians have destroyed the state. Glad to have you on board.
Oh, I see, you weren't being serious. Who would confuse political and economic hardship with death and pain? Ha ha ha...
Lighten up Francis
Let's not drill much in the USA. Let's use up everyone else's supply first. Then the price will shoot up and domestic drilling will be economical, if shortlived. At least that way we keep a reserve in our ground.
That makes sense.
You will be among the first to have his balls tased in the re-education camps...
Jim you crack me up. No wait I think you heroin me up. Anyway good stuff as usual.
I'm still getting up the nerve for a tattoo. I think I'll start with a Navy diesel mechanic "MOM" or is that outdated?
Hey I wrote a new story. About an accountant wanting to jump off a building. Diamond makes him an offer he simply cannot refuse. Maybe he should have just gone out and got the tattoo instead?
Jeeze, the looney left never sleeps.
Re: looney left
Whaaa, what, the what, who?? Where did I wake up, who's blog bed am I in... (don't move yet).
The most amazing part of the current story is that US political leaders are so ignorant of the facts.
Since when have political leaders mattered in the United States? At least, not since November 22, 1963:
The revelations of CIA spying on Congress underscore the fact that America is run by an unelected, unaccountable military/intelligence apparatus. It is this apparatus, in conjunction with the corporate-financial elite, that dictates official policy in Washington, irrespective of which political party is in power.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/10/pers-m10.html
What a depressig POS article.
The truth usually is depressing. Which is why so many people don't deal with it.
More and more so.
My understanding is only Marcellus shale is any hope for longevity in US.....And that not so long.
Otherwise it looks Basheron is hugest shale area potential so far.
Never heard of Basheron?
The most depressing thing about the truth is how many don't or won't see it.
"In a criminal and corrupt society, your firearm is your vote."
With the NSA, Total Situational Awareness and Drones.....you'll get to vote once....if you make it to the "polls" in the first place.