Putting The Cart On Top Of The Horse, Or Why Heaping Fiscal "Stimulus" Upon "Stimulus" Is Suicide For America
Every time someone mentions fiscal stimulus (and specifically the failure thereof), the conversation, after repeated empirical demonstrations that said stimulus virtually always ends in tears, will veer to the Economics 101 textbook definition of the savings-investment identity, in which Investment = Private Saving + Government Saving + Current Account (the simplistic argument goes that a surge in Government Savings, i.e. austerity, means a plunge in net investment as the private sector is unable to step up), which more than anything, seeks to provide the last possible goalseeked explanation of why Keynesian assumptions still work in post-modern monetary environments, in which monetary policy has passed into the twilight zone of global central planning (i.e., money printing is rampant and thus textbook definitions of "savings" in a ZIRP environment are completely irrelevant). The irony, as so often happens, is that those who invoke this identity (which John Hussman has done a very admirable explanation of here) mix apples and oranges, and use, incorrectly, a monetary flow concept to explain what is fundamentally a production efficiency and labor (and post facto: consumption) phenomenon. That many of said proponents also make the gross mistake in assuming that in some perverse post-Keynesian universe a reserve currency issuer (however temporary, because there is no such thing as permanent reserve) can issue an infinite amount of debt, which by implication would result in the grotesque lim interest rate=0 as debt issuance ->infinity is inconsequential: this may work in a black box vacuum, but most certainly does not work in a globalized world in which currency, and yes, binary reserve status (consisting of 1s and 0s), is fungible with a keystroke (ref: the historic August 22 start of Renminbi futures trading which the CME today disclosed the margin requirements for). What this lengthy preamble tries to say is that feeding the government monster is, contrary to what Krugman and other Keynesians will tell you, in the current regime of coincident monetary irrigation, an exercise in futility. Perhaps nobody does a better job to explain said futility than Bill Buckler in his latest edition of The Privateer, which we urge everyone, and most certainly the POTUS who just requested more fiscal stimulus, to read in order to take a step back from theoretical, and wrong, textbook formulations and to see the stimulus forest for the burning trees.
Putting The Cart On Top Of The Horse:
For a human lifetime, since the 1930s in the US and across the developed world, the health and “growth” of an economy has been “measured” by how much has been consumed. Part of this consumption, it is true, is the natural result of prior production. But over the decades, an increasing proportion of it has been done by means of borrowed money. Worse still, the calculations of economic “growth” have included consumption by government. Government, by its nature, produces NOTHING. Any government, even one which is limited to protecting life and property and issues no debt whatsoever, is a cost on the economy. The fact that this cost is necessary does not negate the fact that it is a cost.
It is one thing to measure this cost in terms of money. It is another thing entirely to measure it in terms of the real wealth which has been consumed by government. The ONLY way to increase the wealth of an individual or a nation of individuals is to produce MORE than is consumed. The difference - which is SAVINGS - can then be used to produce more real wealth with more efficient means and thus less real effort. This is the only way that an economy can genuinely “grow”. This is what transformed the US from an all but untouched potential into a continent-girdling economic powerhouse. It was not done by means of currency manipulation. It was not done by means of government borrowing. It was not done by all encompassing rules and regulations. It was done by means of political AND economic freedom.
It cannot be done in any other way. Increasing the units of the medium of exchange will NOT do it. Increasing the debt burden on generations to come will not do it. These things will do the opposite. They will and have inexorably led to capital consumption. The results of capital consumption are visible all over the world today - but in few places is the evidence more stark and obvious than it is in the US.
The century-long experiment of putting the cart on top of the horse has all but killed the horse. There is no way that the genuine productive capacity of the US economy can keep up with the government’s stampede into unrepayable debt. In reality, the US government has destroyed the productive capacity of its people. If they refuse to realise it - the economy and the markets will do it for them.
That process began on August 4 when US stock markets had their worst tumble since February 2009.
When all the wooden philosophers, tenured academics, ivy league economists and constitutional lawyers understand the message in these 5 simple paragraphs, then, and only then, can America maybe resume its way to prior greatness.
Until then, we are merely digging our way out of very deep hole, increasingly "faster" and "faster."
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this is all a game of musical chairs
enjoy it while the music is playing
these articles are so much mental masturbation by people unwilling to accept that the Era of Growth was ended by world Peak Oil. None of this monetary or fiscal shit matters, because oil cannot be printed.
Dunno which is worse, the delusions that we can restart growth by fiscally stimulating or that if we just "let the debts go" that we'll achieve a new era of growth after that. Neither side can face the hard truth.
Gold cannot be "printed" either, and it was in use long before oil was a commercial good. Posts like yours are so much mental masturbation by one who is unwilling to accept the fact that OIL is a passing energy source just like others which have dropped into obscurity or minimal use. Peat anyone?
There is some hope in Gen4 reactors and the Thorium fuel cycle. Some. And post-Fukushima it seems unlikely that anyone other than China, and maybe India, will continue work on nuclear power.
So yes, by all means, go back to peat. Peat will power your central electric plants, your car, the combine, airliners, etc. etc. I'm sure. There can't possibly be any issues of energy density or flexibility of use.
World oil reserves were like a massive inheritance. That inheritance is now largely consumed. Some of it went for good use, some neutral, much ridiculously stupid, but so much is gone.
Please, tell us how whale oil will save us. I'm sure there are a few whales left that the Japanese haven't killed.
Rocky is saying that human ingenuity will find new methods of power generation. What will they be? I don't know because I'm not a 21st century James Watt. We'll have to wait for such fellows to reveal their ingenuity but if we don't stifle the market or blow ourselves up such advances are a certainty.
Rocky is not talking about looking backwards and using peat or whale oil. Seems that you've chosen to willfully misunderstand him.
I think you don't have clue what is Rocky really said...
If you are not the 21st century James Wattt, and dreams of such are the extent of understanding of energy, then you should really sit this one out and mentally masturbate about your free markets elsewhere.
Are you implying that you are a 21st century James Watt? That must be the reason you 'understood' Rocky and feel that you have the ability to weigh in on this discussion.
Unlike most here, I do know I am not the James Watt of the 21 century. But having studied things like thermodynamics, system modelling, a little petroleum engineering, and having been a close follower of the oil markets for many years certainly does allow me to chime in....
So you you want to talk about Energy? Surprise me...
You all miss the future glory of America. We have the most disgustingly obese population on the planet, and human fat is pound for pound, as energy dense as gasoline. The slack-jawed couch potatoes can be hunted easily or trapped using corn curls for bait.
Harvesting this resource will create many jobs, and we can export our blubber globally. Human fat - the original biodiesel.
LMAO!
LOL
Killer punch line delivered in second paragraph!
Studying is fine especially when is done not by the text books. Have you studied Tesla? Do you know what Electricity is? ( Careful with this one, for even Tesla noted that he did not know that force of Electricity is )
Have you BUILD something that works by TRANSFORMING energy even with small neodymium magnets?
What is the controversy that is inherited in the second law of thermodynamic?
Do you know what is the fundamental theoretical problem that plague the physics that started with the twisted and subsequently widely accepted interpretation of the Dirac equation ( otherwise an amazing human achievement )
Do you know how many physical phenomena are in head on controversy with the standard book science, starting with Faraday's basic controversial experiment ?
When you can open your mind for what Energy is, only then there is a reason to talk about Energy. Everything else is isolating your self from Nature in mathematical formulations based on personal views, egos and misunderstanding of the Natural phenomena, although expressed in a beautiful language.
I've solved the Dirac equation....
Electricity is not a force...And please explain the "problem" with Faraday's experiment. In your own words, please.
You seem to playing word salad,...
His reply:
"Umm, duh, uhhhhh, er, ummm, can I uhhhh ...
What?"
by epwpixieq-1
on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 08:47
#1568422
Studying is fine especially when is done not by the text books. Have you studied Tesla? Do you know what Electricity is? ( Careful with this one, for even Tesla noted that he did not know that force of Electricity is )
Have you BUILD something that works by TRANSFORMING energy even with small neodymium magnets?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ha!
A 'free enetgy' nut no doubt.
Also, NO PROOF. Never has been. Unless you have a 'prime mover' (steam, wind, water) that MOVES a wire thru that magnet's magnetic field ...
Otherwise "Show me your experiment" demonstrating the effect beyond doubt. So far, NO DICE.
(NOTWITHSTANDING a plethora of YouTube vids where peak power, voltage or current are conflated for the same RMS quantities. MAKE those same tests properly iinstrumented with a scope or RMS instrumentation and get back to me.)
.
Absolutely correct A 'free energy' nut.
I am not trying to convince anyone, I left this illusion of educating people a long time ago, it is difficult to "see" something when one does not have eyes for it.
Buy the way my the magnets were mentioned with conjunction with the word "even" in the meaning of a simple device.
With magnets I agree one needs a prime mover, but this is not the case when you have waves. The movement of the magnets creates nothing more but waves. It is just the most efficient rudimentary magnetic hammer humans have discovered.
In Nature Everything is based on vibrations the rest is up to the people to who CAN to create and to build. The rest are empty words.
Hey, write a paper and submit to hep-th over at Los Alamos.... You are clearly on to something.
.... i knew james watt, i respected james watt, and you sir are no james watt. now, if you want to talk about harvesting energy, lets forget james watt and instead think of james brown. someone works out a way to bring that man back to life and we are set. ever seen the energy that man put out during a performance, we could measure browns instead of watts.
Well, I am a 21st century James Watt and then some, but will nto play the game because the gate keepers are precisely people like TRAV, whose know only simple concepts like the Second Law of Thermodynamics is inviolable.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/pre-cursor-2-and-currents/
The self fulling prophecy the MSM is trying to push just isn't working this time.
Statistically, Ron Paul is winning.
Besides, age isn't a problem these days since people are living a lot longer.
If Ron Paul wins (LOL...check the 'statistical' track record of those placing well in IA straw polls), and Medicare and SS are gutted (also LOL), that whole people living longer thing will no longer apply.
I only need to outlast you, Romer.
All you Berkeley types make a lot of assumptions about your own usefulness.
Let's test those assumptions already. Oh, I forgot to LOL.
LOL
Assuming that some form of energy production will emerge to replace fossil fuels is naive and dangerous. We should have started contingency planning, improving efficiency, and integrating large numbers of other energy producing systems 20 years ago, to mitigate the disaster that could occur when fossil fuels run out or do not produce a gain in EROEI.
The fact the the media and the government refused to accept the peak oil concept is egregious. There may be no technological wonder, technology does not produce energy by the way, that will provide for our current energy needs. Fact is even if we could produce enough electricity for commercial, residential, and transportation systems without fossil fuels, our infrastructure could not use it, it would take a decade or more to transition the transportation infrastructure to use electricity, once again something we should have started 20 years ago.
Check out ChrisMartenson.com, he sums it up best, some nice statistics on the number of alternative power producing plants it takes to replace fossil fuels, mind boggling really. He also discusses the issues with converting the transportation system to use electricity. Check it out.
oil and gold very important
go out on todays highways and by-ways it moves america...to say that it can be replaced by just anything....i don't think so and i think we are going to find that out
James Grant Suggests Life In Prison for Bernanke in WSJJim Grant also points out that The Bernank could, slternatively, be hsnged under U.S. statute:
I love the paleocon view of the world, where the US was frozen in carbonite 200 years ago and none of the laws passed or SCOTUS decisions rendered in that period ever need to be taken into account. Why not keep going backward? Claim something under the Articles of Confederation or the Mayflower Compact!
Truly; FREEDOM is such an over-rated concept and "created equal" is a farce.
/sarc
I think we would all be happy enough if the FED was abolished. I am sure there is an element that would love to see the Bernank hanged. However, just getting congressional audits of the FED would be a miracle.
I am ever so slightly less pessimistic than trav, but in about 99% agreement. Absent oil, OR some breakthrough energy source not currently in use, the current population of earth is well and truly fucked. And Peak Oil is more of a historical fact than a theory now.
Choices are a lower standard of living, a lower population, or (ding ding ding) both.
Maybe it was a load of crap but I remember reading that there is a massive amount of oil sands in Canada and can be extracted and profitable with oil north of $120. Realizing that isn't cheap but it isn't doomsday.
There is a massive amount of bitumen in Canada, you will be producing synthetic crude at ~2 mmbpd for 250 years.... The rate cannot be scaled to replace the "easy oil" that is declining... Unless of course you have a few Trillion to drop and don't mind creating Mordor in the north...
That's even a bit kind - it's already creating Mordor of the frozen north, at current rates. Economically it's an OK energy source, but the EROEI is bad, and the environmental damage is somewhere between appalling and catastrophic, barreling towards mind-blowing.
The 250 years might be a decent estimate, but it won't happen that way... in 250 years we will either have advanced nuclear (or better) energy, or we'll be hunter-gatherers.
No, it will be mined, too valuable a source of hydrocarbons that have many other uses besides burning.
that recovery, relies on cheap natural gas, and lots of it
Yes it certainly does now, but oil is all but irreplaceable as input to too much *useful* stuff that they will find the NG.
No need for too many details in a quick post
Edit: IIRC, it currently using 25% of domestic production of NG in Canada...
The issue there is not so much the amount of oil in the ground but the amount of water needed to harvest it. Northern Alberta does not have the water resources to extract all of the oil in the ground.
At the current rate of consumption it will not last that long anyway.
How much was a barrel of oil when you read that? That $120 could be a lot more now.
Oil is way too cheap in the USA. Gas is more expensive even in China!
We need $5 to $8 gas before people get serious about driving those Mega-SUVs to hair saloons and soccer games with only 1 or 2 persons on board.
Nomura predicts oil to $220 and I suspect they will be right....event hough you can't drink oil (or eat gold either!).
History, if it exists, will recall it as a mania on a level of Kindleberger proportions.
by PulauHantu29
on Tue, 08/16/2011 - 23:52
#1567865
Oil is way too cheap in the USA. Gas is more expensive even in China!
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NO. Not historically, going back to like 1979 ...
there is an equivalent to printing oil, and that is developing a meaningful alternative energy infrastructure.
"scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece
the technology exists, you just need the infrastructure to harness it. all the stimuluses just went to helping the old banks, the old systems, and the old infrastructure, and that's why it sucks.
better link to biofuel: http://www.ls9.com/about/
I appreciate your point, lucid and clear. It is an interesting (to me) human trait that we all wish to have a viewpoint that encompasses or circumscribes all others, like a 'theory of everything'.
I'm aware that my limit is access to incontrovertable information. since I don't sit in on FOMC meetings or run POMO ops, or sit in on Exxon's resource reporting meetings, I conclude that my views have to be assigned probablities, and my adaptation to possible future conditions weighted accordingly.
How much skin you have in the peak oil view, and how do manage to reconcile uncertainty as to who is really pulling the strings?
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on... or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain
Twain got it, but apparently only as far as asking the right question...
What do you gather if peak oil is just another manipulation (while believing myself its odds are 4:1 in favor of true). If it is manipulation, what is the bigger game?
One clue about Exxon is that even with the SEC mandating that tar mixed with sand is "oil" that Exxon was unable to replace its oil reserves over the past decade, down 5%... Buying existing oil production does not add to supply.
Net exports on the market are down ~10% since 2005, google Export Land Model, you'll get an idea how it will play out.
by Flakmeister
on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 00:01
#1567898
One clue about Exxon is that even with the SEC mandating that tar mixed with sand is "oil" ...
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Wow; the SEC is now involved in oil exploration geology and term definitions?
Who woulda thought ...
Trav-
Your moronic rants are tiring. Do you believe that all progress started once we found out how to pump oil? Can anyone be that stupid?
Even if oil ran out tomorrow, our accumulated knowledge would allow us to use alternative methods to extract solar/wind/tidal energy with barely a blip (a few decades at most) in reduction of global wealth.
The problem isn't oil/coal/shale, it's politics! There is more than enough food to make the world fat- it's the uneven distribution via politics that causes starvation.
Have you ever had a clue?
c'mon, give trav a break. there's a really good correlation between population growth and the successful explotation of fossil fuels for the last hundred years.
i absolutely agree with your point about uneven distribution due to politics, though.
once i looked into replacement energy technologies seriously, i understood just how difficult a proposition replacement is, and given the current population, the possibility of serious dislocations exists.
take a look at 'a century of war' by william engdahl - real eye opener onto the stage of the great game around oil.
ignore kunstler, he's pitching his own shit, somewhat over the top, and not amenable to getting any smarter, apparently.
no, don't give trav a break. he is here with an agenda to disrupt and hijack threads to throw them off the topic. he is a piece of shit waste of time to respond to.
Trav has his views about things, but his observations on oil and energy are rarely to be disputed.
If Trav had his way, 97% of humanity would be sterile and female geniuses would be lining up to be his fuck slaves "cause hes so smurt". He claims that this is somehow "humane", while never mentioning the fact that his dumb ass couldn't even predict the demographic NIGHTMARE that such a policy would create (ie the offspring of 3% of humanity have to support 97% of the population, aka old people starving to death in the streets around the world).
Just because his dumbassed ideas and crappy metaphors go unopposed by you, doesn't mean they are valid. Christ, he STILL won't accept the fact that ionic liquids extract oil from sand with very little energy input, meaning that we can extract bitumen from tar sands and restart practically every well on the planet. He demands death for all immediately, and anything that doesn't fit with that grand proclamation of his is viciously attacked with ad hominem until everyone involved is bored to death. Which I guess is where he wants them. Dead.
tm, you can do better than that....
The ionic liquid in question is 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium. I agree that it has interesting properties. I also note that related ionic liquids cost the order of $150 for 50 grams....eg:
http://www.tciamerica.com/catalog/B2194.html
here is a full list
http://www.tciamerica.com/catalog/item_list.php?site=us&lang=en&cid=3656&cname=Imidazolium+Salts+%28Ionic+Liquids%29&clang=en&cip=1
or
http://www.scbt.com/chemicals-table-ionic_liquids.html
These are complex and likely expensive to produce...I also note that the exact ionic liquid used appears not to be commercially available. At least I was not able to find it.
Now, the Penn State guys are doing interesting research, but a liquid that costs ~100 times the value of the oil that it can extract is unlikely to be scalable to ~2 mmbpd....
Edit: Also note that these ionic liquids are derived from hydrocarbons....
I deal with these types of issues all day. We make antimicrobial coatings from compounds that have to be custom synthesized. Custom synthesized compounds are EXTREMELY expensive at the lab scale. Like, $1000 a gram for ten grams. Scale up the production to 100 kilos, and the cost falls to $20 a gram. The feedstocks are not expensive, and all the price is in the labor, which decreases greatly with scale.
Economies of scale exist. But yours is a much better anti-argument than Trav's dumbshit "only one guy did it therefore it doesn't exist" line. Kudos.
Also note that the ionic liquids are 100% reusable. This makes them a CAPITAL investment rather than a MARGINAL cost.
Lets assume that you can get it down to 0.25 per gram. The volume of ionic liquids has to at least 25% of the volume of oil to separate out.... A ton of oil is ~7 barrels, 2 million barrels of oil is 285000 tons, you need at least 70,000 tonnes of this stuff and at .25 a gram you get 6 billion dollars.... less than I expected, but I was very liberal with my cost and volume estimates....
From my mining experience, liquid recovery will likely top out at around 97% so there is a marginal cost factor....Given that you still have all the heavy equipment cost of mining the bitumen, oil would have be to very expensive to amortize the capital costs of the liquids....current tar sands infrastructure is ~$125,000 per bpd capacity. This adds an additional $71,000 of capital cost per bpd capacity assuming 0.25 per gram...
You really haven't thought this through....Replacing your energy source is not plug and play...
Run some simple models, look at growth rates, replacing existing infrastructure with "whatever" etc... The capital requirements.
The world will be changing big time....
Why don' t you tell all of us how to pull an 18 wheeler from Los Angles to New York on alternative diesel?
The problem is oil
Thorium Sand Reactors, hell of a lot of them.
Mag lev trains.
Put 18 wheeler on train, electric train goes across US
18 wheeler gets off in NY and delivers load. Fuel cost cut about 90%
Infrastructure spending, say 27.3 trillion dollars worth (The amount given out by Fraud Reserve as loans etc) would have had it up and running by now assuming that banks were allowed to fail and money was put into this project. Oh and Unemployment rate would be about 2% with a 70% workforce participation rate...
When you lay mag lev track do you use gandy dancers? Just asking.
I rode a maglev prototype once.... IIRC liquid helium was used to maintain the superconduction state that was required. Look up our helium supplies.... Peak helium is passed....not to mention all the other goodies needed like rare earths....
That said, the trillions that were pissed away should have been spent on new infrastructure and electrification of the rail grid is a hell of a good idea even if maglev is a pipe dream.
How does human "progress" - technology, scientific understanding, population numbers - compare for the period from 4000 BC to 1860, vs. 1860 to present? Notice any differences?
And remember, it's not just the total energy available, it's the quality of that energy. Oil is ultra high quality stuff, directly usable in even tiny and simple devices, and scalable from the smallest to largest uses.
MM, oil has been the Gold of Midas's story in this last century and a half. Of course it is an amazing substance, like all of nature. But we tend to go from custodian to greedy gobbler in every case.
I think it might be the quality of energy of those that use/abuse oil that is key here.
ORI
We know how to replace oil, coal, and shale with clean, renewable energy (you excluded natural gas) and the only thing holding us back is politics? One of you seems to be ignorant, but I'm not sure it is Trav.
What is the basic input used to create those alternatives? Oil my friend....oil.
Oil is a basic input used to create the machines that make the alternative equipment.
Oil is a basic input used to run the machines that make the alternative equipment.
It goes much deeper, but you get the point.
So with that kept in mind, can they really be called alternatives?
Somewhere a genius isn't being born to solve our dependence on oil because his mom and dad can't afford to conceive him. The fact that corn is being burnt for fuel in yet another failed attempt at central planning, may be a contributing factor. Kind of ironic.
The ethanol subsidy may have something to do with people having less children due to higher food costs, but I doubt it is too big of a factor. Bernanke is more of a factor than the ethanol subsidy.
Very glad to see your comment. I have been saying the same thing elsewhere for over a year.
I am also working on the Grand Unified Theory of the Collapse of the Global Economy. I pin the tail on global peak oil, as you might imagine.
From Hubbert's accurate prediction In 1956 that America's would hit peak oil in 1970 ( which it did) to his prediction that Global Peak Oil would occur 1995 - 2000 (global oil production in 2005 remains the most ever produced).
It explains why Greenspan let things get out of control as the tech bubble and housing bubble inflated and burst. Why Bush/Greenspan went after Bernanke, the depression guy, putting him on the Board of Governors of the Fed in 2002, Chairman of the President's Economic Advisors in 2005,
and Chairman of the Federal Reserve System in 2006.
It explains why the Fed stopped publishing M3 in 2006 as that would be where the entries for QE funds would live.
It explains why sub-prime mortgage backed securities were invented and their twin sister, credit default swaps. As a means of destroying the world economy IN ORDER TO HALT AND DECREASE DEMAND FOR CRUDE
OIL AND HUSBAND THAT WHICH STILL EXISTED AND ON WHICH THE MILITARIES OF THE WORLD HAD FIRST CLAIM.
This trav is the story of the last two decades. No one will give you thanks
for telling them this. They'll think you a paranoid schizoid with a collection of tinfoil hats in your closet.
They can handle the fact that the sun will became a red giant or that Kohoutek will eventually strike the earth.
But tell them that there is not enough oil to live like they used to, and that
the military wants half of what's left and they "break just like a little girl."
Nice rant!
Nice
Absurd.
Come out of hiding, Grima?
I'm not hiding, douchebag.
No need to get snarky.... now run along..
You should really try to add something of substance to the discussions here; eg: #1568420
As I've told you before, your peak oil myth is based on a fallacy. Oil is not derived from dead dinosaurs. All your "knowledge" is nothing more than trivia. The myth is a syllogism. You are nothing more than a Lysenko-esque crank. Fortunately the world does not run on the assumption that peak oil is real, or cranks such as yourself could actually cause some damage.
I agree that oil is not dead dinosaurs.. Anything else you wish to add?
Maybe you could explain to us all what oil is and where it comes from and why it is not a problem. Trust me, we are dying to hear your pet theories.
"I agree that oil is not dead dinosaurs.. "
Well looks like you learned something new. Did it hurt your head? Will your buddies at the Oil Drum still talk to you? So what is oil now? In your opinion, I mean.
Still evading the questions, eh? Where does oil come from?
As I've already told you, abiotic oil.
Your turn.
Care to explain further what the production mechanism is? Or is the earth have a creamy nougat center that the creator bestowed upon us?
I would love to hear your reconcilation of the temperature at which complex hydrocarbon dissociate with the known temperatures in the interior of the earth....
Who's evading? Your turn, punk. And this is your last chance.
Lay off the tough talk, it really isn't your style....
The ball is in your court, the onus is on you to overturn 100 years of petroleum geology. I have a very open mind, Surprise me.
Just like the last time you're PWNED. Go back to the Oil Drum. Come back when you've got something.
You really are pathetic.... I've given you every chance to make your case and yet you refuse to. I ask very simple questions of you and you balk...
I'll give you the last word, Grima, I've done with wasting my time...
by bid the soldier...
on Tue, 08/16/2011 - 23:58
#1567889
...
From Hubbert's accurate prediction In 1956 that America's would hit peak oil in 1970 ( which it did) to his prediction that Global Peak Oil would occur 1995 - 2000 (global oil production in 2005 remains the most ever produced).
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No time to 'attack this at the base' and put it to rest (at the moment), but, you do not have a completely defensible position on this ...
.
Ident 7777
I am happy to wait until you find time.
I'll just recite this poem till I hear from you.
"My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light."
At least it used to.
the Era of Growth was ended by world Peak Oil
The problem was compounded by economic policies that only factored in eternal growth as a baseline condition for geopolitical stability.
Of course none of us will know until the fat lady sings, but was the "problem" compounded by economic policies or was the "problem" intentionally created by those policies?
Created to stifle the demand for oil and thereby prolong the amount of oil available to provide those necessities which the TPTB require for life.
Cheap oil to burn fast was always the policy. That's why loopholes in the law were created to allow SUVs to flaunt automobile mileage requirements. That's why Mid East dictators were put in with the help of the CIA and others. Cheap oil to burn was at the root of most of US geopolitics since the turn of the 20th century.
There was no attempt to stifle demand. Rockefeller would never have gotten so rich.
I don't think there was any thought about the demand for the finite supply of oil until Hubbert was right about American peak oil. But we solved that problem by importing oil from other countries. This was about the same time Nixon curtailed the balance of payments in gold.
Then we we went out prospecting for oil and that was successful but wasn't enough for what what was needed.
And it is my belief that by the end of the 90's we knew that economic growth was going to have to end and ten's of millions of citizens of all countries would have to be sacrificed for the statecraft of the 21st century.
Just as most of the passengers on the Titanic would have to go down with that unsinkable ship.
With the stifling of demand by this recession, there is probably 50 years of of the miserly use of oil left. Something miraculous may be discovered but there Is no such miracle right now.
Remember we really haven't improved on Watts steam turbine. We still boil water to make most electricity.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
get some history into your head. the entire 20th century was fought over a limited supply of oil, not just to have, but to deny thine enemies.
So let me ask you guys this:
WHAT IF the administration had actually spent some of those hundreds of billions on real public works jobs, that "shovel ready" stuff, would we be better off today?
Interesting question. I'll offer my $0.02.
Yes, I think we would - but we wouldn't be feeling the benefit yet.
I don't believe that "shovel ready" projects existed, nor did they need to.
A "sane" public infrastructure program would have been fairly long term (10 years - about the length of the hangover from deleveraging) and would have taken some time to plan, recognizing the downturn would be prolonged.
Public money would have to have been leveraged in an infrastructure bank from day 1 (not now, as Obama is proposing way too late in the game to be credible). A couple hundred billion in public money, with modest leverage from the Fed at 10 to one would have netted a trillion dollars or two to be spent over ten years or so.
That's with only pure public participation. Private funds could have also been attracted and leveraged - letting private investors in would enable a private layer of due diligence to identify those projects which really added economic benefit.
Private participation would have moved the whole endeavor from "central planning" to "government facilitated private development".
Stockpiling of key resources (like copper) could have been done while the prices were low in '09. China was smart enough to do this; the US, not so much.
Funds could have been spent to retrain people from building houses to building construction, from doing real estate and mortgage brokering to doing mid-level project management, etc.
Well planned investments in infrastructure would have yielded decent economic returns for the next thirty or forty years.
Not saying this would have been a panacea. The malinvestment and corruption would have still filled volumes.
But the hundreds of billions of wasted stimulus, QE.n++, and the like nonsense could have been avoided, and ten years on we'd have better infrastructure. So yeah, better off - but maybe not _yet_, only three years after the crisis.