BLOG Links and Tweets of
the Week: October 31, 2009 (Scary Hallowe'en Edition)
PREPARING
FOR CIVILIZATION'S COLLAPSE
Here
Comes the End of Debt:
Stoneleigh from Automatic Earth, in an interview with The Oil Drum
Europe, argues that we're in for an unprecedented and prolonged
deflationary period, and that while wages will plunge, so will prices
of everything, even oil and gold as demand falls faster than supply:
Credit
bubbles [see chart above] are inherently self-limiting, proceeding
until the debt they generate can no longer be supported. We have
already passed that point and we are now two years into a contraction
phase that is about to accelerate. As the aftermath of a credit bubble
is typically proportional to the scale of the excesses that preceded
it, we
should be in for the largest economic contraction for at least several
hundred years, and it will be global.
Real estate, which is a major focus of the mania, should do
particularly badly in the coming years (in fact the coming decades or
longer)...
As demand falls, and with it prices, investment in the energy sector is
likely to dry up. Many projects will be uneconomic at much lower
prices, meaning that the projects which might have cushioned the
downslope of Hubbert’s curve (and the much steeper net energy
curve), are unlikely to be developed. In this way a demand collapse
sets the stage for a supply collapse that could place a hard ceiling on
any prospect of economic recovery. That is a recipe for extremely high
energy prices in the future…
The scale of the problem has been temporarily concealed by a market
rally and the shovelling of tens of trillions of dollars of
taxpayer’s money into a giant black hole of credit
destruction. This has done nothing to reignite lending, but the
temporary (and entirely irrational) resurgence of confidence has
restored a measure of liquidity. As that confidence evaporates with the
end of the rally, that liquidity will also disappear.
Deflation is ultimately psychological. Without trust we will see
hoarding of the cash which will be very scarce in the absence of the
credit that currently comprises the vast majority of the effective
money supply. The combination of scarce cash and a very low velocity of
money will be toxic.
Money is the lubricant in the economic engine and without enough of it
that engine will seize up as it did in the 1930s, when farmers dumped
milk they couldn’t sell into ditches while others were
starving for want of the money to buy food. There was plenty of
everything except money, and without money, one cannot connect buyers
and sellers…
The
Copenhagen targets are basically completely
illusory. There's no way to hit those targets and it would be
very silly to think that we can...
The world does not have the scale, time frame or economics to
devote to the complete eradication of carbon emissions from sources of
fuel within the next four decades...
Nuclear doesn't have the flexibility to be a suitable option...
Globally [renewables] will be too small to make a real dent in the
targets...
Just wait for one catastrophe and that will be the end of nuclear. And
who really thinks biofuels will really work in the long run? You can't
have food as an energy source.
Civil
Liberties Watch: The Civil
Liberties Defense Center (boy those Americans spell funny!) fights to overturn laws that
outrageously restrict personal freedoms,
such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (making it illegal to
protest animal cruelty), aggressive use of tasers by police, and an
Oregon law that made it illegal to protest old-growth forest
destruction (they just succeeded in getting that ruled unconstitutional
-- yay)! Thanks to Tree
for the link.
Why do you love
animals called pets, and eat animals called dinner?
Be nice to America, or
we'll bring democracy to your country.
(perfect one for a
bicycle or car, for different reasons) This Too Shall Pass
From Lydia Davis (in last week's New Yorker):
HEAD, HEART
Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again:
You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth
will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head. Help heart.
MY GRAVITATIONAL COMMUNITY People
who have inspired or informed me frequently over the past few months.
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