Ajit Varki: Our Only Hope is Legitimate Fear-Mongering

Nice to see William Rees, a retired UBC professor that I respect, writing again.

Part 1: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/11/Climate-Change-Realist-Face-Facts/

If we divide 2018 into energy segments, oil, coal and natural gas powered the globe for 309 out of 365 days, hydro and nuclear energy gave us 41 days, and non-hydro renewables (solar panels, wind turbines, biomass) a mere 15 days. If the race is towards a decarbonized finish line by 2050, we’re still pretty much stalled at the gate.

Fact: Despite the hype about the green energy revolution and enhanced efficiency, the global community in 2019 remains addicted to fossil energy and no real cure is on the horizon.

Part 2: Memo from a Climate Crisis Realist: The Choice before Us
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-Realist-Memo/

So, where might we go from here? A rational world with a good grasp of reality would have begun articulating a long-term wind-down strategy 20 or 30 years ago. The needed global emergency plan would certainly have included most of the 11 realistic responses to the climate crisis listed below — which, even if implemented today would at least slow the coming unravelling. And no, the currently proposed Green New Deal won’t do it.

Here, then, is what an effective “Green New Deal” might look like:

1. Formal recognition of the end of material growth and the need to reduce the human ecological footprint;

2. Acknowledgement that, as long as we remain in overshoot — exploiting essential ecosystems faster than they can regenerate — sustainable production/consumption means less production/consumption;

3. Recognition of the theoretical and practical difficulties/impossibility of an all-green quantitatively equivalent energy transition;

4. Assistance to communities, families and individuals to facilitate the adoption of sustainable lifestyles (even North Americans lived happily on half the energy per capita in the 1960s that we use today);

5. Identification and implementation of strategies (e.g., taxes, fines) to encourage/force individuals and corporations to eliminate unnecessary fossil fuel use and reduce energy waste (half or more of energy “consumed” is wasted through inefficiencies and carelessness);

6. Programs to retrain the workforce for constructive employment in the new survival economy;

7. Policies to restructure the global and national economies to remain within the remaining “allowable” carbon budget while developing/improving sustainable energy alternatives;

8. Processes to allocate the remaining carbon budget (through rationing, quotas, etc.) fairly to essential uses only, such as food production, space/water heating, inter-urban transportation;

9. Plans to reduce the need for interregional transportation and increase regional resilience by re-localizing essential economic activity (de-globalization);

10. Recognition that equitable sustainability requires fiscal mechanisms for income/wealth redistribution;

11. A global population strategy to enable a smooth descent to the two to three billion that could live comfortably indefinitely within the biophysical means of nature.

“What? A deliberate contraction? That’s not going to happen!” I hear you say. And you are probably correct. It should by now be clear that H. sapiens is not primarily a rational species.

But in being correct you only prove me correct. Disastrous climate change and energy shortages are near certainties in this century and global societal collapse a growing possibility that puts billions at risk.

Antonio Turiel is manning a booth at COP25 in Madrid and discusses the absurdity of the entire affair. No one is discussing the real issues: resource depletion, overshoot, and the need for rapid contraction. The issues that are being discussed, like the Green New Deal, are pure fantasy and will not help our predicament.

He also reminds us that diesel, the blood of our civilization, will probably contract first, and there are signs that diesel has already started to decline.

http://crashoil.blogspot.com/2019/12/escondida-y-la-vista-de-todos.html?m=1

Doug Nolan provides a nice historic perspective on our modern monetary system. He doesn’t go so far, but one can rationally argue that industrial civilization is by definition a bubble inflated by fossil energy. Today the bubble wants to naturally deflate but we are resisting by pumping it with printed money trying to make it larger. One way or the other the bubble will be a lot smaller soon.

http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2019/12/weekly-commentary-crazy-extremis.html

As the late Dr. Kurt Richebacher would often repeat, “the only cure for a Bubble is to not let it inflate.” Certainly, the longer Bubbles expand the greater the underlying fragilities – ensuring timid central bankers unwilling to risk reining in excess. This was the problem in the late-twenties and in 2006/2007. I would argue this has been a fundamental dilemma for central bankers persistently now for going on a decade. Especially after the Bernanke Fed targeted risk assets as the key system reflationary mechanism, central banks have been loath to do anything that might risk upsetting the markets. Recall the 2011 “exit strategy” – promptly scrapped in favor of another doubling of the Fed’s balance sheet to $4.5 TN (by 2014).

From my analytical perspective, things have followed the worst-case scenario now for over three decades. Alan Greenspan’s assurances and loose monetary policy after the 1987 crash spurred “decade of greed” excesses that culminated with Bubbles in junk bonds, M&A and coastal real estate. The response to severe early-nineties bank impairment and recession was aggressive monetary stimulus and the active promotion of Wall Street finance (GSEs, MBS, ABS, derivatives, hedge funds, proprietary trading, etc.).

Once the boom in highly speculative market-based Credit took hold, there was no turning back. The 1994 bond bust ensured the Fed was done with the type of rate increases that might actually impinge speculation and tighten financial conditions. The Mexican bailout guaranteed fledgling Bubbles would run wild in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. The LTCM/Russia market “bailout” ensured Bubble Dynamics turned absolutely Crazy in technology stocks and U.S. corporate Credit. Things took a turn for the worse following the “tech” Bubble collapse. With Wall Street cheering on, the Federal Reserve fatefully targeted mortgage Credit as the key mechanism for system reflation. A doubling of mortgage debt in just over six years was one of history’s more reckless monetary inflations. The panicked response to the collapsing mortgage finance Bubble fomented by far the greatest monetary inflation the world has ever experienced: China; EM; Japan; Treasury debt; central bank Credit; speculative leverage everywhere…

The “global government finance Bubble” saw egregious excess break out at the foundation of finance – central bank Credit and sovereign debt. It was a “slippery slope”; no turning back. The sordid history of inflationism has been replayed: once monetary inflation commences it becomes virtually impossible to stop. There was barely a pause following the ECB’s $2.6 TN QE program before the electronic “printing presses” were fired up again. The Fed’s balance sheet inflated from less than $1.0 TN pre-crisis to $4.5 TN. After contracting to $3.7 TN this past August, it’s now quickly back above $4.0 TN. The Bank of Japan hasn’t even attempted to rein in QE, with assets at a record $5.3 TN – up from the pre-crisis $1.0 TN.

Tim Morgan on trends for 2020…

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2019/12/07/159-the-perils-of-equilibria/

The first of the two narrative-shaping issues that I’m anticipating for 2020 is a marked slowdown in the emerging market (EM) economies.

The second critical issue is financial disequilibrium, and the ‘devil or the deep blue sea’ choice that it poses.

Here’s an example of what this ‘disequilibrium’ means. In nominal terms, the value of equities around the World increased by 139% in a decade (2008-18) in which nominal World GDP expanded by 33%. Applying inflation to both reduces the numbers, of course, but it leaves the relationship unchanged. What’s true of equities is also true, to a greater or lesser extent, of the prices of other assets, including bonds and property.

What matters here is the relationship between asset prices and incomes, with ‘incomes’ embracing everything from wages and pensions to dividends, corporate earnings and coupons from bonds.

This divergence is, of course, a direct result of monetary policy. But the effect has been to stretch the relationship to a point from which either surging inflation (by driving up nominal incomes), or a crash in asset prices, is a necessary element of a return to equilibrium.

We may have to choose between these, with inflation the price that might need to be paid to prevent a collapse in asset markets.

The critical point going forward is the inevitability of a return to equilibrium, meaning that the relationship between incomes and asset values must revert back towards past norms.

You see, if equilibrium isn’t restored – if incomes don’t rise, and prices don’t fall – markets cease to function. Property markets run out of ‘first-time buyers’; equity markets run out of private or institutional new participants; and bond markets run out of people wishing to park some of their surplus incomes in such instruments.

To be sure, markets might be kept elevated artifically, even in a state of stasis, without new money being put into them from the earnings of first-time buyers and new investors. But the only way to replace these new income streams would be to print enough new money to cover the gap – and doing that would destroy fiat currencies.

This means either that incomes – be they wages, bond coupons or equity dividends – must rise, or that asset prices must fall.

My conclusions on this are in two parts.

First, the authorities will indeed do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop an asset price collapse (and they might reckon, too, that the ‘soft default’ implicit in very high inflation is the only route down from the pinnacle of the debt mountain).

My second conclusion is that it won’t work. Investors, uncomfortably aware that only the Fed and ‘unconventional’ monetary policy stand between them and huge losses, might run for the exits.

They know, of course, that when everyone rushes in a panic for the door labelled ‘out’, that door has a habit of getting smaller.

Richard Reese on total war….

Becoming present in reality transforms you into a peculiar weirdo. The herd will move away from you, as you move away from it. Congratulations! You are outside the fence, outside the cult, outside the mass hysteria. You can think for yourself, question everything, and begin unlearning all the garbage that has been poured into your brain over the years. You can seek better paths.

A week ago, I snapped. I read the latest paper by William E. Rees, the professor who was co-creator of the ecological footprint concept. He warns us that we are deep into overshoot, and idiotically hippity-hopping down the path to catastrophe. “Half the fossil energy ever used (and half the fossil CO2 ever produced), has been burned (emitted) in just the past 35 years!” This is not a path with a long future. Rees has come to the conclusion that humans are not “primarily a rational species.” I agree.

http://wildancestors.blogspot.com/2019/12/total-war.html

Another blogger’s going quiet, this time Mac10. The money printers and the billions in denial who cheer them on have won another round. But they will eventually lose the war, and they will be responsible for many more causalities than was necessary.

http://ponziworld.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-end-of-ponzi-world-as-we-know-it.html

Excellent 2012 interview with Dennis Meadows, one of the wisest men on the planet.
h/t James @ megacancer.com
https://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/there-is-nothing-we-can-do-meadows/

3/6/2012 FORMAT interviews Dennis Meadows, author of “The Limits to Growth”, about the shocking position of the planet. 40 years ago, Dennis Meadows presented the best seller “The Limits to Growth”. In it, he predicted, not the exact date of the apocalypse, but the U.S. researchers showed by means of computational models, that by mid-century, the resources of planet Earth will be depleted.

The book sold 30 million copies and Meadows is now regarded as the most famous “Sunset prophet” of the world. FORMAT’s writer Rainer Himmelfreundpointner met Meadows on a visit to Vienna for an exclusive interview. The message of the nearly 70-year-old is now no more optimistic as then, and is not for the faint of heart.

FORMAT: Mr. Meadows, according to the Club of Rome, we are currently facing a crisis of unemployment, a food crisis, a global financial and economic crisis and a global ecological crisis. Each of these is a warning sign that something is quite wrong. What exactly?

Meadows: What we meant in 1972 in “The Limits to Growth”, and what is still true, is that there is simply no endless physical growth on a finite planet. Past a certain point, growth ceases. Either we stop it … by changing our behaviour, or the planet will stop it. 40 years later, we regret to say, we basically have not done anything.

FORMAT: In your 13 scenarios the end of physical growth begins – that is, the increase in world population, its food production, or whatever else they produce or consume – between 2010 and 2050. Is the financial crisis part of that?

Meadows: You cannot compare our current situation that way. Suppose you have cancer, and this cancer causes fever, headaches and other pain. But those are not the real problem, the cancer is. However, we try to treat the symptoms. No one believes that cancer is being defeated. Phenomena like climate change and hunger are merely the symptoms of a disease of our earth, which leads inevitably to the end of growth.

FORMAT: cancer as a metaphor for uncontrolled growth?

Meadows: Yeah. Healthy cells at a certain point stop growing. Cancer cells proliferate until they kill the organism. Population or economic growth behave exactly the same. There are only two ways to reduce the growth of humanity: reduction in the birth rate or increase the death rate. Which would you prefer?

FORMAT: No one wants to have to decide.

Meadows: I don’t either. We have lost the opportunity of choice anyway. Our planet will do it.

FORMAT: How?

Meadows: Let’s stay on diet. Do the mathematics, take food per person since the 90s. The production is growing, but the population is growing faster. Behind every calorie of food that comes to the plate, ten calories of fossil fuels or oil are used for its production, transportation, storage, preparation and disposal. The less oil reserves and fossil fuels, the more the increase in food prices.

FORMAT: So it’s not just a distribution problem?

Meadows: Of course not. If we share it equitably, nobody would starve. But the fact is, it needs fossil fuels such as oil, gas or coal for food production. But those supplies are running low. Whether or not new shale oil and gas reserves are exploited, peak oil and peak gas are past. This means tremendous pressure on the entire system.

FORMAT: According to your models the population, which in 2050 will be around 9.5 billion people, even with a stagnation of food production for another 30, 40 years.

Meadows: And that means that there will be a lot of very poor people. Considerably more than half of humanity. Today we can not feed a large portion of humanity sufficiently. All the resources that we know of are declining. One can only guess where this will lead. There are too many “ifs” for the future: If people are smarter, if there is no war, if we make a technological advancement. We are now already at the point where we cannot cope with our problems, how we should do it in 50 years, when they are bigger?

FORMAT: And blame is our way of doing business?

Meadows: Our economic and financial system, we do not just get something. It is a tool that we have developed and that reflects our goals and values. People do not worry about the future, but only about their current problems. That is why we have such a serious debt crisis. Debt is the opposite of that, worrying about the future. Anyone who takes on debt says: I do not care what happens. And when for many people the future does not matter, they will create an economic and financial system that destroys the future. You can tweak this system as long as you want. As long as you do not change the values of the people, it will continue. If you give someone a hammer in his hand and he uses it, and it kills his neighbour, it helps nothing to change the hammer. Even if you take away the hammer, it remains a potential killer.

FORMAT: Systems that organise the kind of coexistence of people come and go.

Meadows: But man remains the same. In the U.S., we have a system in which it’s okay that a few are immensely rich and many are damned poor, yes even starve. If we find this acceptable, it does not help to change the system. The dominant values are always the same result. This value is reflected in climate change enormously. Who cares?

FORMAT: Europe?

Meadows: China, Sweden, Germany, Russia, the United States all have different social systems, but in each country rising CO2 emissions, because the people really don’t care. 2011 was the record. Last year there was more carbon dioxide produced than in all of human history before. Although all want it to decrease.

FORMAT: What is going wrong?

Meadows: Forget the details. The basic formula for CO2 pollution consists of four elements. First, the number of people on Earth. Multiplied by the capital per person, so how many cars, houses and cows per man, to come to Earth’s standard of living. This in turn multiplied by a factor of energy use per unit of capital, ie, how much energy it takes to produce cars, build houses and to supply or to feed cows. And finally multiply that by the amount of energy derived from fossil sources.

FORMAT: Approximately 80 to 90 percent.

Meadows: Approximately. If you want the CO2 burden to decline, the overall result of this multiplication must decline. But what do we do? We try to reduce the share of fossil energy as we use more alternative sources like wind and solar. Then we work to make our energy use more efficient, insulate homes, optimise engines and all that. We work only on the technical aspects, but we neglect the population factor completely and believe that our standard of living is getting better, or at least stays the same. We ignore population and the social elements in the equation, and focus totally on just trying to solve the problem from the technical side. So we will fail, because growth of population and living standards are much greater than we would save through efficiency and alternative energy. Therefore, the CO2 emissions will continue to rise. There is no solution to the climate change problem as long as we do not address the social factors that count.

FORMAT: You mean the Earth will take things into its own hands?

Meadows: Disasters are the way to solve all the problems of the planet. Due to climate change, sea levels will rise because the ice caps are melting. Harmful species will spread to areas where they do not meet enough natural enemies. The increase in temperature leads to massive winds and storms, which in turn affects precipitation. So, more floods, more droughts.

FORMAT: For example?

Meadows: The land which today grows 60 percent of wheat in China will be too dry for agriculture. At the same time it’s going to rain, but in Siberia, and the country will be more fruitful there. So a massive migration from China to Siberia will take place. How many times have I told people this in my lectures in Russia already. The older people were concerned. But the young elite has merely said: Who cares? I just want to be rich.

FORMAT: What to do?

Meadows: If I only knew. We come into a period that calls for a dramatic change in practically everything. Unfortunately, changing our society or government system is not done quickly. The current system does not work anyway. It did not stop climate change, or prevent the financial crisis. Governments are trying to solve their problems by printing money, which will almost certainly result in a few years of very high inflation. This is a very dangerous phase. I just know that a person has, whenever he in uncertain times, has the choice between freedom and order, and chooses order. Order is not necessarily right or justice, but life is reasonably safe, and the trains run on time.

FORMAT: Do you fear an end of democracy?

Meadows: I see two trends. On the one hand, the disruption of states into smaller units, such as regions such as Catalonia, and on the other hand a strong, centralised superpower. Not a state, but a fascist combination of industry, police and military. Maybe there will be in the future even both. Democracy is indeed a very young socio-political experiment. And it does not currently exist. It produced only crises that it cannot solve. Democracy contributes nothing at the moment to our survival. This system will collapse from within, not because of an external enemy.

FORMAT: You talk of the “tragedy of the commons”

Meadows: This is the basic problem. If in a village everyone grazes his cows on the lush meadow – called in old England “Commons” – the short term benefit goes most to those who choose to have more cows. But if that goes on too long, all the grass dies, and all the cows.

FORMAT: So you have here an agreement, such as the best use of the meadow. That can be democracy at its best.

Meadows: Maybe. But if the democratic system can’t solve this problem on a global level, it will probably try a dictatorship. After all, it’s about issues such as global population controls. We are now 300,000 years on this planet and we have ruled in many different ways. The most successful and effective was the tribe or clan system, not dictatorships or democracies.

FORMAT: Could a major technological development to save the earth?

Meadows: Yes. [But] Technologies need laws, sales, training, people who work with them – see my above statement. Moreover, technology is just a tool like a hammer or a neoliberal financial system. As long as our values are what they are, we will [try to] develop technologies that meet them.

FORMAT: All the world currently sees salvation in a sustainable green technology.

Meadows: This is a fantasy. Even if we manage to increase the efficiency of energy use dramatically, use of renewable energies much more, and painful sacrifices to limit our consumption, we have virtually no chance to prolong the life of the current system. Oil production will be reduced approximately by half in the next 20 years, even with the exploitation of oil sands or shale oil. It just happens too fast. Apart from that you can earn more than non oil with alternative energy. And wind turbines can be operated, with no planes. The World Bank director (most recently responsible for the global airline industry) has explained to me, the problem of peak oil is not discussed in his institution, it is simply taboo. Whoever will try to anyway, is fired or transferred. After all, Peak Oil destroys the belief in growth. You would have to change everything.

FORMAT: Especially with airlines the share of fossil fuels is very high.

Meadows: Exactly. And that is why the era of cheap mass transport by air will end soon. This will only be affordable in large empires or countries. With a lot of money you might buy the energy, and cause food shortages. But you can not hide from climate change, which affects both the poor and the rich.

FORMAT: Do you have solutions to these mega miseries?

Meadows: This would change the nature of man. We are basically now just as programmed as 10,000 years ago. If one of our ancestors could be attacked by a tiger, he also was not worried about the future, but his present survival. My concern is that for genetic reasons we are just not able to deal with such things as long-term climate change. As long as we do not learn that, there is no way to solve all these problems. There’s nothing we could do. People always say again: We need to save our planet. No, we do not. The planet is going to save itself already. It always has done. Sometimes it took millions of years, but it happened. We should not be worried about the planet, but about the human species.

Dennis Meadows, 70, shattered the belief in progress on a sustainable basis with his study, commissioned by the Club of Rome, “Limits to Growth” 40 years ago . The economist has been Director of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a visiting lecturer in the world and has taught at Dartmouth College and at the University of New Hampshire, where he now teaches.

James with a nice essay today on the purpose of life.

In other words it’s the plant’s fault (that we be). Humans in their present form are here to undo what the plants have done. The earth intercepts a tiny fraction of the sun’s energy which is meant for the great void of space and the plants use the energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen. Glucose is the food for the ATP energy system and keeps the plant metabolism humming. Plant-eating animals evolved to consume the plants and burn them with oxygen to once again release carbon dioxide, water and heat which is released back into space, the same place the sunshine should have gone in the first place. Humans can either eat the plants directly or they can eat the animals that eat plants. Did plants commit the original sin? Not likely. Chemotrophic sinners existed before the plants and used other gradients (sub-sea vents?) to temporarily thwart the natural order. So what is the purpose of life? To eat the plants and the assorted animals that also eat the plants. Anything else is extra and indeed we have extra in the form of fossil fuels. We’ve also found a way (civilization/technology) to burn plant tissues sequestered millions of years ago – fossil fuels. Of course we do this at our own peril as carbon dioxide builds in the atmosphere and oceans.

The Universe doesn’t really want us around but uses us to undo what the plants have done. And we’ve found so many things to do to get rid of plants and fossil fuels. Just look around at the kaleidoscope of wonders the humans have made. We even take over plant territory and grow our own edible plants to satisfy the human RNA that are busy using their technological tools to excavate old plant remains to burn. We even use old plant remains to fertilize new edible plant growth as we burn-up the Amazon Rainforest. We also use edible plants(ethanol) to feed our cars. It’s incredible, this frenzy of activity. But what to do when all of the old sequestered plant material is nothing more than heat on its way to a distant galaxy and the soils are depleted and ecosystem wrecked? We will no longer have a purpose for living but rather a reason to die.

http://megacancer.com/2019/12/02/original-sin/

Chris Martenson interviewed oil expert Art Berman a few days ago about his talk “Tight Oil and The Willing Suspension of Disbelief”.

I observe that most intelligent aware people usually end up discussing denial in one form or another, because once you understand what’s going on, the most fascinating thing is how is it possible that most people deny unpleasant realities?

Too bad almost none of these intelligent aware people have studied Varki’s MORT theory because then they would have a scientific explanation for the insanity we swim in.

Here’s the interview:

Here are the presentation slides:

Click to access Berman-LSU-Presentation-NOV-22-2019.pdf

Nice 2016 presentation by Tim Clarke on our oil predicament:

Click to access Systemic-Change-Rev-7.pdf

And an accompanying essay here:
https://un-denial.com/2017/02/01/by-tim-clarke-the-demise-of-the-global-oil-industry-best-case-2022/

The new 760 horsepower Ford Shelby Mustang produces enough waste heat to heat 12 homes. Party on.

David Stockman’s peak everything…

Tim Watkins on the hole in our bucket…

Lotte can’t see this, of course. If the wind turbine stops working, she tells Hans, “You just have to replace it”. But Hans objects, “Where will we get the steel and the concrete for the base? Where will we get the plastic for the blades?” Lotte suggests that Hans finds a steelworks, a cement works and a plastic factory. But Hans points out that since all three were part of the oil infrastructure that we replaced; and since none of these materials can be made without the fossil fuel feedstock or the heat that only fossil fuels can generate, the only way to manufacture them is with the fossil fuels that we need to – and ultimately will have no choice but to – cease using.

The song about Lotte and Hans was anglicised in the twentieth century, and became a nursery rhyme that most English-speaking children will have sung at some point in their upbringing. For the English version, Lotte and Hans were replaced with the American Lisa and Henry. The song – There’s a hole in my bucket – sets out precisely why too narrow an assessment of the problem can make simple – but wrong – pseudo-solutions appear plausible. Henry cannot fix the hole in his bucket because he has no straw; he can’t cut the straw because his knife is too blunt; he can’t sharpen the knife because the grindstone is too dry; and, of course, he cannot wet the grindstone because there’s a hole in his bucket…

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2019/10/28/an-anthem-for-the-post-industrial-age/

Nobody has a better handle on our global financial bubble than Doug Nolan. He writes an excellent newsletter like this once a week. And yet, if you pay attention, he has no clue what the underlying cause is. Question: How is it possible that so many smart people don’t understand limits to growth and overshoot? Answer: It’s not possible without the denial of reality explained by Varki’s MORT theory.

Any central bank head that passes through an eight-year term without once raising rates has some explaining to do. To leave monetary policy extremely loose for such an extended period comes with major consequences (can we at least agree on that?). So, what went wrong? How did policy measures not operate as expected? With the benefit of hindsight, what could have been done differently?

http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2019/10/weekly-commentary-whatever-it-takes-to.html

There are a few people out there that understand what’s going on with energy and the economy, like Tim Morgan, but none understand or talk about genetic reality denial.

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2019/10/13/156-actual-fantasy/comment-page-2/#comment-15306

With the Fed now pouring tens of billions into the system on a daily basis, China apparently doing similar, the ECB seemingly paralysed like a rabbit staring into headlights, and the whole ‘unicorn’ nonsense starting to unravel, I doubt if we have enough years of tranquility/stability to operate even a three-year plan. Unrest seems to be spreading around the world, including countries that normally are pretty stable.

The real problem is that decision-makers still don’t get it. They tried credit adventurism, and it failed. Then they tried monetary adventurism, and that is now in end-game. They still believe in the mantra of perpetual “growth”. Even those who recognise the importance of energy don’t understand its role in the economy – and seem to believe in a seamless transition to renewables.

What we’re witnessing is incomprehension – the bafflement caused by the failure of prior assumptions. One of these is that ‘everyone keeps getting more prosperous, so nobody minds a tiny minority becoming ever richer’.

This and similar paradigms are over – but decisions are being made in ignorance of this fact.

h/t James @ Megacancer.com