Will rational people discover solutions?

Robert Rapier has posted a peak oil piece based on a German military think tank study. The new report sees significant risks arising from an unavoidable peak in oil production:

1. Economies stop functioning: In addition to the gradual risks, there might be risks of non-linear events, where a reduction of economic output based on Peak Oil might affect market-driven economies in a way that they stop functioning altogether, leaving the range of a relatively steady downward trajectory.
2. Slow decline of trade: Such a scenario could pan out by an initially slow decline of trade and economic activity, combined with higher stress on government budgets from lower tax income, higher social cost and growing investment into alternative technologies.
3. Crash of markets: Investment will decline and debt service will be challenged, leading to a crash in financial markets, accompanied by a loss of trust into currencies and a break-up of value and supply chains – because trade is no longer possible.
4. Famine and total collapse: This would in turn lead to the collapse of economies, mass unemployment, government defaults and infrastructure breakdowns, ultimately followed by famines and total system collapse.

Overall, the authors expect a reduction of ‘free market’ mechanisms in oil trade, and a rise in more protectionism, exchange deals, and political alliances between suppliers and customers, which could lead to significant geopolitical shifts.

Equally, the authors expect this interdependency to shape foreign affairs of oil importers, making them more tolerant towards rogue behavior of suppliers out of sheer need.

Higher volatility and loss of trust are seen as possible outcomes in a world where oil supplies are limited, increasing the need for ‘oil related diplomacy’ and thus increasing risks for moral hazard among all actors, which in turn decreases

Obama & Buffet are related

Barack Obama and Warren Buffett are blood relatives. The president’s ninth great-grandfather—and Buffett’s sixth great-grandfather—is French immigrant Mareen Duvall.

Snippet discovered at this link.

Pitched with moralistic topspin

Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her.

Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author delves into the surreal new world Palin now inhabits—a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family—and the sadness she has left in her wake.

Michael Joseph Gross at VanityFair:

The Palin machine is supported by organizations that do much of their business under the cover of pseudonyms and shell companies.

In accordance with the terms of a reported $1 million annual contract with Fox News, Palin regularly delivers canned commentary on that network.

But in the year since she abruptly resigned the governorship of Alaska, in order to market herself full-time—earning an estimated $13 million in the process—she keeps tight control of her pronouncements, speaking only in settings of her own choosing, with audiences of her own selection, and with reporters kept at bay. She injects herself into the news almost every day, but on a strictly one-way basis…

Warm and effusive in public, indifferent or angry in private:

Of the many famous people who have stayed at the Hyatt in Wichita (Cher, Reba McEntire, Neil Young), Sarah Palin ranks as the all-time worst tipper: $5 for seven bags. But the bellhops had it good in Kansas, compared with the bellman at another midwestern hotel who waited up until past midnight for Palin and her entourage to check in—and then got no tip at all for 10 bags. He was stiffed again at checkout time. The same went for the maids who cleaned Palin’s rooms in both places—no tip whatsoever.

No sophisticated math involved

A new regime can only arise after all current economists are dead. – Goldilocksisableachblonde

stunney said in reply to Goldilocksisableachblonde:

Yes, the best sustained period in U.S. economic history—best rates of output expansion, best real median wage growth, best employment figures, best poverty reduction rates, best expansion of higher education, best patterns of economic security, best infrastructure improvements, best progress in civil rights, most stable inflation rates, biggest reduction in national debt as a percentage of GDP etc—coincided with the least free market, least unregulated, most unionized, least floating currency exchange regime, highest tax rate period in U.S. economic history.

And to make sure America never has to endure such an affront to the genius of the most right wing conventional wisdom among economists, and to the naked avarice of the richest members of the citizenry, and to the most statesmen-like of our political scumbags, and to to the bright, shining lie that is our mainstream media, it is to be earnestly hoped that the Republicans win big in this election cycle, and begin at once to destroy this legacy, beating the crap out of the voting public in the process, so that said public will, in its rabid stupidity, blame it even on the big-eared black man in the White House.

Brought to you by:

The GOP Seniors Dementia Alliance

and by

The Ungrateful Undead Boomers Coalition

and by

The Free Market Fiction Association

and by

The Palinomics Anti-Refudiation League

Crude is crushing the USA

Everything you want to know about placards and signs you do not see at a Tea Party rally.

Please notice America’s trade balance. Our economy is scooped out and scrubbed raw by crude oil. It isn’t the worn-out worry about China filling shopping malls that’s our deficit, but also Nigeria, Canada, Mexico, Angola, Kuwait, Venezuela and wherever there’s a contract for crude!

Steve Ludlum at Economic Undertow:

The majority of analysts believe that crude oil is simply another input like copper or wheat. If crude becomes in short supply, another fuel of some kind will replace it, all that is required is high enough prices to fund the replacement.

They believe our economies are declining because we are carrying unserviceable debt. They suggest debt remedies will cure the economic disease and allow a return to growth.

Undertow?! The oil industry is an economic rip current!

Residing in the minimums

Technology has advanced almost all aspects of our lives, except in the design of cities.

Innovations in design and development have only automated the process of building to the minimums.

Those sitting on planning commissions and councils blame the developer for blandness, but the reality is those same commissioners and council members approved the ordinances that enforce unsustainable development in the first place.

Still tilted to damnation

not a quote It is because of the body that we can speak of morality. The material body is what we share most significantly. Of course it is true that our needs and sufferings are cultural. But our material bodies are such that they are. It is on this that fellow-feeling is founded and on this dependency on each other. Angels would not be moral beings like we.

terry eagleton via amardeep singh via zo

over-ambitious hegemon

Oh the ‘bizarreries’ of modern America!
The man gets out of jail and arrives on a stump:

For decades, I have been a militant anti-declinist in terms of America’s place in the world. – Conrad Black

I can see it now. Black & Palin 2012. Fuse penitent wealth with folksy anxiety. Something too classical to ignore. Commiserating with the persecuted. Another frame is Mormon & Pentecost. Or is it Baptist & Taliban? White Fright is so hard to follow. I swear I’ve lost track.

^{anti-declinist}
Well maybe that’s a bumper sticker I could use.

"Eggs is kinda like a luxury kind of thing."

The trouble, maybe the premier trouble with the American Dream, is we fail to see it’s not.

It’s not just the unemployed who are hurting.

Workers are barely scraping by on wages. A single person needs about $400/week pretax to pay bills, to eat. Tens of millions of American workers fall short.

Every day is a rainy day.

You’ll find many of them in food prep, where more than 11 million Americans command a median hourly wage of $8.24. There are another 4.5 million workers doing maintenance-related tasks for $10.18 an hour, 3.3 million in “personal care” at $9.50, and 14.5 million in retail jobs that pay $11.41.

The Bush Years: Meager wages pushed 6.2 million more Americans into poverty between 2000 and 2007. And that was before the banking industry imploded. More than 28 million people are on food stamps, up from 17 million in 2000. Republicans. Phooey.

I would like to take this opportunity to say a word about the American spirit in this time of trial.

In the most critical periods of our nation’s history, there have always been those fringes of our society who have sought to escape their own responsibility by finding a simple solution, an appealing slogan, or a convenient scapegoat.

Financial crises could be explained by the presence of too many immigrants or too few greenbacks.

War could be attributed to munitions makers or international bankers.

Peace conferences failed because we were duped by the British or tricked by the French or deceived by the Russians.

It was not the presence of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe that drove it to communism, it was the sell-out at Yalta. It was not a civil war that removed China from the free world, it was treason in high places. At times these fanatics have achieved a temporary success among those who lack the will or the vision to face unpleasant tasks or unsolved problems.

But in time the basic good sense and stability of the great American consensus has always prevailed.

Conspiracy Theories Speech, November 18, 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy