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"Next Time Around The Feds Are Going To Have To Confiscate Stuff"
Submitted by James H. Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
Events are moving faster than brains now. Isn’t it marvelous that gasoline at the pump is a buck cheaper than it was a year ago? A lot of short-sighted idiots are celebrating, unaware that the low oil price is destroying the capacity to deliver future oil at any price. The shale oil wells in North Dakota and Texas, the Tar Sand operations of Alberta, and the deep-water rigs here and abroad just don’t pencil-out economically at $45-a-barrel. So the shale oil wells that are up-and-running will produce for a year and there will be no new ones drilled when they peter out — which is at least 50 percent the first year and all gone after four years.
Anyway, the financial structure of the shale play was suicidal from the get-go. You finance the drilling and fracking with high-yield “junk bonds,” that is, money borrowed from “investors.” You drill like mad and you produce a lot of oil, but even at $105-a-barrel you can’t make profit, meaning you can’t really pay back the investors who loaned you all that money, a lot of it obtained via Too Big To Fail bank carry-trades, levered-up on ”margin,” which allowed said investors to pretend they were risking more money than they had. And then all those levered-up investments — i.e. bets — get hedged in a ghostly underworld of unregulated derivatives contracts that pretend to act as insurance against bad bets with funny money, but in reality can never pay out because the money is not there (and never was.) And then come the margin calls. Uh Oh….
In short, enjoy the $2.50-a-gallon fill-ups while you can, grasshoppers, because when the current crop of fast-depleting shale oil wells dries up, that will be all she wrote. When all those bonds held up on their skyhook derivative hedges go south, there will be no more financing available for the entire shale oil project. No more high-yield bonds will be issued because the previous issues defaulted. Very few new wells (if any) will be drilled. American oil production will not return to its secondary highs (after the 1970 all-time high) of 2014-15. The wish of American energy independence will be steaming over the horizon on the garbage barge of broken promises. And all, that, of course, is only one part of the story, because there is the social and political fallout to follow.
The table is set for the banquet of consequences. The next chapter in the oil story is more likely to be scarcity rather than just a boomerang back to higher prices. The tipping point for that will come with the inevitable destabilizing of Saudi Arabia, which I believe will happen this year when King Abdullah ibn Abdilaziz, 91, son of Ibn Saud, departs his intensive care throne for the glorious Jannah of virgins and feasts. Speaking of feasts, just imagine how the Islamic State (or ISIS) must be licking its chops at the prospect of sweeping over an Arabia no longer defined as Saudi! The Saudis are so spooked that they announced plans last week for a kind of super Berlin-type wall to be constructed along the northern border with Iraq. But that brings to mind a laughable Maginot Line scenario in which the masked invaders just make an end run around the darn thing. In any case, Saudi Arabia will already be disintegrating internally as competing clans and princes vie for control. And then, what will the US do? Rush in there shock-and-awe style? Bust up the joint? That’ll make things better, won’t it? (See American Sniper.)
Meanwhile, there will be plenty to contend with state-side. The next time there is a pratfall in the stock and bond markets and the TBTF banks — and there is sure to be — the rescue tricks are liable to be a whole lot more severe than the TARP, ZIRP, and QE hijinks of 2008-2015. Next time around, the federals are going to have to confiscate stuff, break promises, take away things, and rough some people up. The question is how much of this abuse will the public take? I take a certain comfort knowing how heavily armed America is. And not just the lunatic fringe. The thought of Hillary and Jeb out there beating the bushes for big money makes me laugh. They are so not going happen. Just wait. For now, take this MLK holiday break to reflect on the fragility of our own country, and gird your loins for the week to come.
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Kaboom! Bitchez!
That's it.
I gonna go right out and fill up my gas tank.
If they wanna confiscate about 90% of the crap I own that clutters up my house and my garage, they can fuckin' have it.
If they confiscate my crap I don't have to do any work to get rid of it.
" A lot of short-sighted idiots are celebrating, unaware that the low oil price is destroying the capacity to deliver future oil at any price. "
TOTAL BULLSHIT.
Oil can either be extracted and brought ot market with a positive or negative net yield of energy or a negative net yield of energy.
These financiers like Kunstler are hustling the public with this nonesense.
The base problem with energy production is that the monetary system is all fucked up and 'price' discovery is being impeded by counterfeiting and check kiting and phony insurance/derivatives games, etc..
Get the Debt Merchants and the Speculators and the Profit Skimmers the fuck out of the system and 'price' discovery will occour.
THEN it can be seen whether or not a particular venture yields more energy than required to bring the product to market -and thus a margin of profit- or not.
There is plenty of Oil. The ONLY question is whether it takes more Energy/CALORIES to extract than it contains.
Throxx beat me to it. Price and value in 2015 have nothing to do with each other.
This is so important to understand. Price is a bullshit number pulled outta yellens ass. Value is a real thing that can be accuratly measured. An ounce of gold or a gallon of milk.
Dont think in fiat. It comes down to the things actual value. Pricing is a trick.
"Pricing is a trick. "
Worse than a trick; it's a dirty trick.
Credit has never been cheaper and there has been a glut of bond issuance.
Inflation adjusted wages are at 30-year lows.
It has probably never been cheaper to finance extraction in nominal terms.
Low hanging fruit already picked? Cry me a river. Same as in every industry.
Fattest profits pocketed but ya didn't bitch about those margins when they lasted.
Get with the program that has been jammed up labor's ass for the last 30+ years: raise your productivity or starve.
So Throxx what do you think of a coin with a fixed value measured in joules of energy or booze? A real value that can be measured.
I've talked about a calorie basis for money in the past. It presents it's own set of challenges.
IF a currency is to have a calorie basis that calorie basis must be:
1. exchangeable
2. divisible
3. storable
4. available to provide upon demand of conversion from the derivative 'coin'
Unless a stable portable energy storage unit is devised a currency based upon calorie would in effect be nothing more than a derivative or forward contract.
Gas or booze in the can could be thought of as such; but, at present nominal valuations you wouldn't be able to carry much of it around...
Uranium coinage?
Rare earths metals?
Whoops! -You end up right back to gold and silver coinage without trying very hard -and again with the same problems of debasement/purity, divisibility, etc. that gold and silver posed.
We haven't the tech for converting energy to money yet. In concept it solves the inflation problem to some degree; but, I fear that any attempt that is imperfect would merely be another fiat construct regime.
Thanks that is a fine answer.
My take is its basicaly barter. So a chit for whatever being redeamable for a specific amount should work fine. As long as we are freee to accept any chit we choose and also refuse any we dont like. I would take an Oban 1/5th chit as payment. To me it seems the issue is value must be measurable. A gallon of milk chit is = a gallon of milk.
The other issue is force. We are forced to use this.
Perfection does not exsist. Choice is the only solution.
When Andrew Jackson was a young lawyer, barter and lack lack of specie was the rule in the 'west' out in Tennessee. They survived. Not saying it's great, but folks figure out to get things done.
Partly his fight against Nelson Biddle was to provide honest money for the states. Biddle and company could inflate and deflate the economy like we see nowadays. None of this is new. Biddle bribed legislators, etc etc.
Now, we will never know if the guy who shot at him twice was sent by the Red Shield or if he was just a nut.
The point is, the chance of both pistols failing was astronomical. A Higher Power was protecting the president, imo.
Stay honest. The Higher Power respects honesty in a Man.
The base problem with energy production is that a cartel is setting the price. Saudi Arabia and a few others can still pump oil profitably at $20/bbl (IIRC, Saudi's extraction cost is less than $5/bbl). OPEC artificially constricted supply, and set a price level that was ridiculous (i.e. high rents that wouldn't be possible in a competitive market) before the banksters got involved and manipulated it even more ridiculously higher.
So what does a cartel do when its supply dominance is threatened by new entrants WHO ARE ONLY PROFITABLE AT VERY HIGH PRICES? Classic economic theory says you let them invest millions/billions in their operations, and then cut the price and watch them fail. Classic economic theory then says the cartel will let the price settle at a rate that discourages new entrants and exploration, but still delivers massive rents. After the shale boys, and their investors, have lost billions, all the rigs are shut down, and the existing wells are dry, the cartel will raise the price back up to $60-80/bbl. Lather, rinse, repeat. Who is going to be stupid enough to invest in high-cost oil production when a bunch of towelheads can massacre your investment in a few minutes?
Of course, I don't discount the possiblilty of stupid governments, like America's, mandating a price floor for oil that encourages shale and other production domestically, along with tariffs on imported oil from, say, OPEC. (Canada and Mexico, due to NAFTA, would be exempt, which is good because they supply roughly one quarter of America's oil.) I'm sure they'd make the argument that it's better for consumers to pay a few extra dollars per fillup and have 'ENERGY SECURITY', just like they made the argument that we'd all submit to groping and fondling when boarding airplanes in the name of 'HOMELAND SECURITY'. I'd like to think I'll be wrong about this, but past history suggests this is coming.
A tarrif to protect the national intrests would keep that stunt from working.
Damn, land and home sales are going to skyrocket in Panama, Belize and Costa Rica! There's going to be a whole new meaning to the term "Wetback" - as Yanks and Gringos flock SOUTH across the border to escape the sinking ship USA.
I suspect they will confiscate what you have by blowing up the currency. I wonder how many pension funds blew up when the shale bubble popped? Seniors vote. You can’t have them starving it would be political suicide.
They get to elect one of the candidates selected for them...if it mattered it wouldn't be allowed already.
Seniors vote.
Electronic voting machines flip votes.
So, you're saying elections still matter? That our votes count? That any unconventional (read: honest, forthright, and uncompromised by skeletons in closets) candidate won't get run off, slandered or marginalized by the MSM?
That by electing a new dem or rep that anything will change.
I beg to differ with all due respect.
The only change I've seen in my life is that everything the government does accelerates, grows, and worsens the quality of life for people like you and me.
OT _ I think I know you from another board, when your username was a whole number. :)
Tie this up with another ZeroHedge story about the problem with bail-ins.
Everyone immediately worries about their own money.
For the not so rich - Government guarantee
For the rich - you will hear and move your money
Companies with money for stock, payroll, etc ...... its goodbye Vienna.
Companies randomly drop out of the system and this destroys supply chains and other complex networks.
Everything falls in on itself.
So in Kunstler's world, shale drillers have 1-year tap lives, the entire US petro industy was financed by beggars and thieves, we're all idiots, and ISIS is going to overrun Saudi Arabia. But y'all believe the rest of his body of work, right? And his answer to for everyone to just bug out, arm themselves and do what -- shoot your neighbor and steal what we can and heck, kill a banker on our way to the bunker?? Nuts to the bored "intellectuals" of the world on MLK day. Me, I'm gonna read a few of the great speeches including I Had a Dream and remember the fights we had 50 years ago as well as our current battle to get Mr. Kunstler the right to be as boorish as he likes.
Is newt the preezy cause he promised " drill here drill now Pago manos
Oh... Here let me give you everything I have spent my life working for while I swallow my hopes and dreams. God wants this. :: eye roll ::
We ripped off some folks...
Confiscation could be viewed as canceling Social Security.
Make rooms in your basements for your parents.
And if you weren’t a nice parent, prepare for homelessness.
The rooms in your basements are already filled with your recently degreed kids..
Saudis knock out overleveraged producers and gain market share. The US gangsters may not like it because some of their doner pals lose but on the other hand, it puts Russia and Iran in a bind so they'll tolerate a shakeout as long as it works to their geo-political advantage.
Their big buddies can take a dent in profits from low oil prices and the scorched earth carnage to small business doesn't really mean a thing to them in a lame duck presidency.
Eventually supply and demand will come back in line to $80-100 bbl because marginal producers will be gone or hibernating and the cheap oil producers regain majority market share.
Anyone remember the Japanese electronics dumping in the 70's? Where's your American made electronic consumer goods today?
Same story.
It worked so well, world electronics production moved to China, Vietnam and Korea. I can't wait for the local plumber to get smart and drive all the other plumbers out of business by charging below his cost for a few years. I'd like to renovate my bathroom.
The public will 'take it' as they always do, guns or no guns, and have we mentioned the whole MC plan to have them all 'go postal' in the near future so that the feds have their next 'Pearl Harbor' moment to declare martial law et al.?
These false flags continue to work. Look how the Charlie Hebdo intelligence operations has all of Europe being lead around by their noses believing the official story. Guns of no when people believe the false narrative, they are as good as disarmed.
I'm here to tell ya' this Kunstler fellow is sharp as a whip. Gotta be the closest thing to sheer genius that I have read in quite awhile:
Exactly. Because all the smart people know that the low oil price is attracting alien mother ships from across the galaxy, which are transporting earth's idle drilling rigs into outer space where they will be lost forever.
Oh, the humanity.
The politicians are going to meet the promises that they have made, to the full extent of your wealth. And anyone or anything else they can catch.
Kunstler doesn't celebrate a corrupted market getting back to actual fundamentals like supply and demand. Because HE's NOT AN IDIOT.
Ooookkkkk
We should be demanding to pay, right Kunstler? Who you working for buddy?
More people need to remember the Battle of Athens, TN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
A really good movie was made about that.
US Vets recapture their town from crooks.
Such a twat. I've been hearing how lower prices for fuel will 'destroy the economy'.
Maybe for the uber-wealthy.
In reality it means 'they' will lose control of the middle class and poor who will be able to afford things other than bare essentials, who may be able to waste a tank of gas and go for a ride in their car. The ultimate freedom we had was granted to us by the automobile. On the Road! It is our freedom.
Fuck this clown.
He also has his facts wrong. "You drill like mad and you produce a lot of oil, but even at $105-a-barrel you can’t make profit." Really? In 2013, the big 5 cleared $93 bil in profit. In 2012, $120 billion. From the start of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, big oil saw their profits soar for 7 consecutive years and they used that money to drill. Douchebag.
You do realize how the compute profit, don't you? They borrow $100M, they spend $50M drilling fancy horizontal fracking wells (and whatever is the latest breakthrough wonder-well approach). Finally the oil starts coming out of the ground and they are able to sell $10M worth per year (whoops, now $4M per year). The yearly payments on that $100M is $5M, which is a nice juicy profit at $10M revenue, but not so hot at the new $4M per year run rate.
In other words, they book a profit if their revenue covers their loan payments, not repayment of the loan. And the hope was, that $100M would let them squeeze enough oil out of those quick-depleting wells to make those payments for the term of the loan. Which might work at $100 oil, but definitely not at $40 or $50 oil.
In other words, just because you can "earn a profit" for one or two or three years after they borrow $100M, doesn't mean they can "earn a profit" after several more.
To be fully clear, think about it this way. A company borrows $100M. They do no work, just stick the cash under the CEO mattress. They can make their $5M yearly payments for 20 years, and still have money in the mattress. And they can report a profit for those 20 years too. Which is a better situation than they are in now, because they already blew a lot of that investment on machinery and talented human beings.
Though these example exaggerate the point slightly, they also make the point.
I came here to Z/H to learn, and I must say that I find I learn quite a bit by reading what you write. You are a very good teacher, honestann.
Thanks for spelling that all out for the less well versed such as myself.
cheers
The same technique is how they make so-called GDP grow. Borrow a trillion bucks, then pretend the GDP grew $10-billion dollars (the rest being skimmed by the predators-that-be). Works great when you own the mainstream media, and have turned 99% of the population into abject morons.
The savings at the pump are going to do nothing for the poor unless they're a complete idiot. For me, saving a couple dollars filling up my tank doesn't make much of a dent in the damage done by the rise in cost of everything else. If you go out and spend like you have more money because gasoline is cheaper, you're a tool.
What a bunch of twaddle and naked scare mongering. Shutting down a producing well does not mean it can't be re-opened. This twit makes it sound like that shutting down a wells means they are filling the holes back up. Same thing applies to injection wells that are used to increase pressure in the oil pool to make it easier to pump out. Clearly the author has never worked in an oil field.
Oh, they might be re-opened, but they might also be plugged and abandoned (p&a). Those wells don't stay out there shut in forever, waiting on favorable markets, ya know. They can remain shut in for a "while" but, practically, they do have some dormancy limitations. More and more states are requiring periodic costly pressure test documentation. In addition, many operators, or their successors, want their state performance bonds redeemed and they need to p&a their wells to swing it. You just never know how environmentally obnoxious they might become if they aren't put to bed permanently at some point.
"The next chapter in the oil story is more likely to be scarcity rather than just a boomerang back to higher prices. The tipping point for that will come with the inevitable destabilizing of Saudi Arabia."
"Samsara" is right, the tide is going out before the tsunami. Oil is so cheap right now that it's being stored on tankers and those tankers are contracted by China, India and even Japan. This little game cannot last. The euro is facing serious challanges and probably will not survive. The currency wars are the pretty (toxic) shells on the beach. The whole world is sick of the US making money with their eternal for profit wars and most want the US to just go away. They're going to get their wish sooner than you dream. Oil production in the US is a bad joke and all we have to rely on, full production or not. The oils sands in Canada are sold to China and will be loaded on to tankers from either Texas via the XL pipleine or from a new deep water port in Canada. The US wil not see a single drop from the XL unless it's to befoul the environment. The US obtains approximately 17% of their oil from the Middle East. We were getting some from central and South America and Africa. Soon enough the Middle East will not be an option. Remember the lines at the pumps in the 70's? The new small cars that came so conveniently soon afterward?
Ask yourself WHY oil prices are suddenly even brought so clearly to our attention? Why are countries repatriating their gold? The Swiss bank dropping the euro peg was the first official shot fired. It's gonna get ugly. The next regime in Saudi Arabia will be happier working with the Russians, Indonesia, India, Malaysia and even the Chinese as their alliance with the US was about defense, which is no longer needed or wanted due to white US neocons pumping Armegeddon, Zionism and Israel.
And it wasn't the US who just made the criminals in the Chinese stockmarket puke blood but it was somebody who knows how to make that happen.
Obama wants to be able to decrypt secure communication.
Obama Sides with Cameron in Encryption Fighthttp://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/16/obama-sides-with-cameron-in-encry...
Kunstler the dreamer, America is armed (rusty shotguns?) and Jeb and Hillary, (who the hell else is there who can get the mass audience?) the best you can hope for JK is that is all becomes irrelevant, but that takes decades, centuries. the Romans hung on, they call it Italy.
Not really. "They" call it the Vatican or more geerally, the Roman Catholic Church, which has more adherents than the original Roman Empire ever did.
Make of that what you will, I am just stating fact.
Also, interestingly, it is all on again with the Eastern Orthodox Empire which Constantine founded in opposition to Rome.
We live during interesting and very dangerous times and I no longer think that I will ever make sense of them, so I am just expressing some random thoughts.
You might want to track AR sales and ammunition sales. I was at one of the biggest annual gun shows in central Florida Saturday. There was a definite scarcity of powder and primers. A segment of the population is sitting on millions of guns and billions of rounds of ammunition. Go to Midway.com and check out the availability of powder.
There are more deer hunters and hog hunters in this country than Europe’s standing armies. Three percent will resist any who come to disarm them.
Martin Luther King was a great American and a fantastic human being.
All the best from CANADA on this day, USA.
MOU
Another rambling rant from Kunstler.
DIDN'T TAKE LONG. ANOTHER DEAD BANKER. Forex trader who worked for HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland and as head of Forex Trading for National Australian Bank, walks into the mountains on the day Swiss dump the Euro, found dead four days later.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11386699
I've sad it before, will say it again, the least-bad losers will be the winners.
I therefore expect GS, JPM et al to take some light damage, while the small guys who've put money into funds get wiped out. It matters not how many $zillion it says you as an individual investor have gone bust for - bust is bust and most of the so-called money owed would be no more than a function of the derivatives. The big boys seem quite happy to simply facilitate that action, take their cut, and be around after it all goes to shit. At that point, having what passes for money, they can pick up whatever they want on the cheap.
Just one possible scenario.
I like Kunstler but he has a nutty take on energy and has been wrong for years. Of course, ZH’ers will be very attracted to his message since it fits with a paranoid mindset.
He’s a believer in “Peak Oil” and some of his later novels are predicated on this thesis. Essentially, he believes the world is about to undergo an apocalyptic energy scarcity driven reversion to a “World made by Hand” state in which a kind of primitive “localism” predominates. Anyone who believes in a techno fix for this is labeled a “techno triumphalist.” He continues to be completely wrong about this and his various catastrophic visions are recapitulated in his yearly (always wrong) predictions. Techno triumphalism will prevail… it’s happening already.
However, he does have a humorous and generally correct view of American “culture.” THAT is where he shines.
Occasionally, even a blind squirrel finds a nut.
Agreed on both counts. He seems unable to put the kool-aid down and, I suspect, cannot tell the difference between climate change and "global warming". Curious, since he otherwise writes well.
Senators like Feinstein will protect us from the FED and Banksters ...oh wait: from NY Post..
"My report Sunday on the lucrative deal Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s husband has to sell 56 post office buildings barely scratched the surface of her conflicts of interest.
The California Democrat’s financier husband, Richard C. Blum, is estimated to be a billionaire from his shrewd investments in companies that profit from federal policies.
“For at least 15 years, Feinstein has appeared to support government contracts that push federal funds toward companies co-owned or governed by her powerful, billionaire husband, Richard C. Blum,” Breitbart News reported.
CBRE, the global commercial real estate company Blum co-owns, took issue with my report that CBRE stood to make $1 billion in commissions from the sale of the post office buildings.
“CBRE won the USPS assignment in a competitive bid process. The revenue that CBRE stands to earn from the USPS account — if we are successful in selling the buildings — is de minimis,” a CBRE spokesman told me. “Mr. Blum personally does not earn any compensation from this or any other account.”
Blum has bigger deals with the University of California.
“After Mr. Blum was appointed to the Board of UC Regents in 2002, UC invested $748 million in seven private equity deals in which he or his firm, Blum Capital Partners, was a major investor,” investigative reporter Peter Byrne said.
CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System, invested more than $5 billion in Blum’s funds.
Blum’s representative had no comment on the California deals.
Byrne said, “It almost goes without saying that the Blum-Feinstein family fortune is founded upon its uncanny ability to command billions of dollars in publicly owned capital.”
I love oil wars. Thay really bring out the Quentin Tarantinno in captilasts, speculators and financial experts.
Its amusing to read what the perception is from the other side of the aisle :
ZH's arch enemy has this to say : It's righteousness that has killed the green shoots of the economic revival after the great recession of 2008.
ANd who does "righteousness" refer to ?
Of course to the doomers n gloomers and austerians who can't understand that debt deleverage is a very dangerous exercise as your debt is my revenue. So we can't ALL deleverage together all at once.
ZH, you and the Mutti clan in Europe, are clearly in his sights !
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/opinion/paul-krugman-how-righteousness...
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/20/news/economy/paul-krugman-china/index.ht...
Lets see. The Saudis are afraid of ISIS. ISIS is a US creation. When the king of SA dies ISIS (the US) will try to take over SA. Hmm. What could possibly go wrong?
As the man said, "Events are moving faster than brains now". Besides, I'm sure the Saudi family is entirely aware of the relationships in play here and are already engaged in the process of circumventing that possibility by yanking the rug out from under the dollar. Expect an announcement soon that they will begin accepting virtually any currency for their oil -- as long as it is convertible to the yuan or gold.
China, for one, will NOT be pleased.
"Next time around, the federals are going to have to confiscate stuff, break promises, take away things."
Didn't they just do that?
and who will enable this, well one person would be the AG of dept of Justice who might well be this lady:
from National Review..
"It should go without saying that the U.S. attorney general, as our nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, is expected to wield the Justice Department’s full powers to fight for those victimized by crime. It should also go without saying that federal prosecutors routinely make deals with criminals to secure convictions for other, larger crimes, or to save themselves time and the taxpayers’ money — and that those criminals’ victims sometimes come out the losers in such deals. Yet new evidence suggests that Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s pick to take DOJ’s reins from Eric Holder, may have gone beyond the accepted norms of prosecutorial conduct in her time in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. Lynch’s office appears to have let self-professed criminals walk free in exchange for their cooperation with her office, watched impassively as they committed further crimes, and intentionally kept the victims of those crimes in the dark — denying them their chance to seek tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution in direct contravention of federal law."
You mean - same old shit, different day . . . . .
There is already high level theft going on. What's new about this? When they confiscate 1% of bank balances over 100k who is going to to complain? If they come for mom and pop's retirement plan and pensions or try to take 1% of someones life's savings things will get interesting. But this will be done gradually ... little by little until everyone gets used to the idea. Meanwhile, the Republicans will rale at Obama publicly while they vote for it privately. Obfuscate and blame ... that's the strategy going forward. Neoliberals and neocons ... What's the difference?
I see zero long term thinking by about anyone on what the long term effects will be. One of our so called leaders problems is,no long term thinking.
My personal opinion would be that we should be funding Tesla institutes in every town and city, building Wardenclyffe's everywhere and leaving the filthy black shit where it belongs, in the ground. It is a dated resourse (probably always was) which made a few people money at the expense of alternatves which didn't.