Macondo sea floor sediment

Surveys show that the underwater plume of Deepwater’s oil is being degraded and diluted, now at low concentrations, but a ‘marine snow’ of oily sediment coats the seafloor.

Wellhead region and near shore sediments made up of grayish muddy clay and a thin layer of orange-brown oil of varying thickness. Dead worms, shrimp and other bottom-dwelling organisms in the samples.  (nm – nautical miles)

The internet might unravel

The internet was a wide-open space, a new frontier.

For the first time, anyone could communicate electronically with anyone else—globally and essentially free of charge. Anyone was able to create a website or an online shop, which could be reached from anywhere in the world using a simple piece of software called a browser, without asking anyone else for permission. The control of information, opinion and commerce by governments—or big companies, for that matter—indeed appeared to be a thing of the past. “You have no sovereignty where we gather,” Mr Barlow wrote.

Was?!

The Economist summarizes what’s ahead as firms carve up customers in order to price content and shape broadband.

Big companies are building their own digital territories.

Fifteen years after its first manifestation as a global, unifying network, it has entered its second phase: it appears to be balkanizing, torn apart by three separate, but related forces.

It is still too early to say that the internet has fragmented into ‘internets’, but there is a danger that it may splinter….

Here’s a project of Communications Workers of America:

The sooner we pass legislation, the sooner we can be sure everyone can reap the benefits of a fast and open internet. Take a moment to email your member of Congress with this easy-to-use tool, and do your part to bring broadband home.

http://action.cwa-union.org/action/speed-matters-broadband-home

To normalize, re-normalize

Competition removed any real benefit of deregulation for bank shareholders.

Re-regulation—opposed by most bankers—might be surprisingly good for banks over the long run.

Of course competition was good for borrowers, at least for a while. Lower spreads meant cheaper finance, but not dramatically cheaper. Spreads of 150bps on mortgages levered 15 times is about as profitable as spreads of 40bps levered 60 times… at the risk to the whole banking system.

Re-regulation will a) reduce taxpayer risk, b) increase spreads, and c) reduce excess leverage.

And while we’re at it, what’s to be done with sloppy media? In 2005, TIME was beside itself promoting home ownership. Exposing terrific error in 2010 is no mea culpa.

The capitalists and everyone else

I have long had this instinct that it is the interests of big corporations that determine government policy in the United States.

Economist James Kwak:

I don’t claim to know how to fix our educational system. But I have an idea about why it hasn’t been fixed, which I’m sure someone can write up as a cute two-period economic model.

Assume that society is divided into the capitalists and everyone else, and the capitalists make investment decisions for society as a whole. Until 1980, if the capitalists wanted to make more money, they needed to invest in technology, which meant they needed an increasingly educated workforce, and therefore they were willing to invest some of their profits (via taxes and public schools) in education. And, according to Goldin and Katz, from 1930 to 1980 the average educational level of Americans increased by 4.7 years.

But since 1980, and especially since 1990, the world has become more open. If the American capitalists want to make more money, they still have to invest in new technology, and they still need an increasingly educated workforce. But now, because of globalization, they can get that workforce anywhere in the world.

And an appropriate roar from the Volatility blog:

We can reply that we spit upon your lies and your claims to the mantle of America. We can refuse them, reject them and renounce them. They’re not citizens. They’re nothing to us.

Even though we know this is not our government, not our system, not our polity, we can, by the act of articulating our demands, lay bare the fraudulence of this whole usurping bastard system.

Since it’s Labor Day, we can start here: We demand of this government a jobs program. What else is this government good for if it doesn’t coordinate the economy to create sufficient jobs for all? What could capitalism be good for if it doesn’t create living wage jobs for all? What are the corporations good for if they don’t create fulfilling jobs for all? What are the rich good for if all their stolen wealth doesn’t trickle down in the form of real jobs for all?

Today the Earth has been fenced off by thieves, and the produce of our hard work is stolen every day. And now, in accordance with the new feudal war upon us, more and more of us, already almost 20% of the work force, are permanently excluded from even subsistence labor, as the jobs themselves are liquidated.

All this is nothing but crime.

“Democrats are bad enough, but Republicans block anything that will help the American people and this economy at every turn”, says Robert Oak.

Surveillance is much more than Big Brother.

How does our money become the money in others peoples’ pockets? The Economist hints at data mining. Massive-scale market demography.

If your phone records reveal quick callbacks, you do not worry about calling other people late at night, you tend to get more calls at times when social events are most often organized, such as Friday afternoons, you make long calls while the calls you take are generally short, you are a commercial target.

Criminal or enterprise if you see differences, firms are pleased to operate within the ‘spectrum of you’ because there is coin there.

JP Rangaswami:

There’s a new game in town, where the surveillance is all digital. Where everything we do is monitored and recorded and analyzed and used, ostensibly to help us. Ostensibly.

Many of the things we do are recorded, and we know about it.

Many of the things we do are recorded, and we give permission for that recording to take place.

Some of the things we do are recorded with our permission and we don’t understand enough about it.

So we need to know more about all of this.

Deepwater nears the end

Image of the infamous Macondo well head waiting for the new Blow Out Preventer.

The new BOP has been installed.

“The next step in the process is to ensure that the new BOP is working properly and then the relief well will be completed at the beginning of next week.”

Agriculture is already at maximum

Gregor Macdonald:

What’s concerning about the pressures on the global food system that have bubbled up in the past five years is that they are accompanied by the crossing of certain thresholds.

While we cannot know for certain how resilient global agricultural will be in responding to either a rise in temperature volatility, or, demand pressure on yields in a time of higher cost energy inputs, the fact that the world has already positioned itself for highly optimized food production is worrisome.

Add to this juncture the fact that regions, at a time when oil is forcing the restoration of distance, are choosing to extend and lengthen distance between themselves and their food supply, and we can start to build a better case for a food problem that is not temporary but structural.

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

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!