The western world is entering a Dark Age

[clv101]

Erm if he didn't know about PO, why did he think Growth was over? What mechanism?

Bad Debt.
The Uk is indebted to the tune of about £8 trillion, before you count things like state pension entitlements and the 80% of life time healthcare costs that occur in the last two years of life.
Look around, what do you see?

Do you see a brand new state of the art power plant with 30 years of fuel?
Or do you see a 40 year old plant that was obsolete before it was turned on supplemented by a few chocolate teapots that are currently generating 0.1% of energy demand and 1.81% of their installed capacity?

Do you see a state of the art integrated transport network that can shrug off nuclear war? Or do you see a transport netowrk thats inadequate on a good day and all but shuts down for the four months of winter?

Do you see legions of highly trained highly skilled motivated young people ready and willing to take on the world? Or do you see Millions of people who cant read, have never had a job and have no intention of ever getting one, with a supporting cohort of people with a 3.2 from Bolton Institute in "The Merits of Veganism, Lesbianism and Socilaism" who want nothing more than a low paying (£30k) job with the local government as an awareness officer, and are prepared to kill for it.

Do you see a dynamic and world beating business sector with strategies to dominate global comerce for the next 50 years?
Or do you see a few clapped out industrial units where the employees have an average age of 50 and no intention to train replacements?

We dont need an energy crisis to send us off the edge.

That's a very jaded view of the country you have. Every thought of writing for the Daily Mail?

[Bandidoz]

+1

[PowerswitchClive]

Seriously though, it doesn't need a mind tuned into oil depletion to realise that we are on a path to currency worthlessness.
Personally I wish and hope that we have another 20 years...
I know some of you will disagree with this because of climate change....
At the moment things are pretty much normal, most of us still have jobs and the ability to pay the rent or mortgage and put food on the table.
Hopefully this will continue for some time to come.

[emordnilap]

Erm if he didn't know about PO, why did he think Growth was over? What mechanism?

Bad Debt.
The Uk is indebted to the tune of about £8 trillion, before you count things like state pension entitlements and the 80% of life time healthcare costs that occur in the last two years of life.
Look around, what do you see?

Do you see a brand new state of the art power plant with 30 years of fuel?
Or do you see a 40 year old plant that was obsolete before it was turned on supplemented by a few chocolate teapots that are currently generating 0.1% of energy demand and 1.81% of their installed capacity?

Do you see a state of the art integrated transport network that can shrug off nuclear war? Or do you see a transport netowrk thats inadequate on a good day and all but shuts down for the four months of winter?

Do you see legions of highly trained highly skilled motivated young people ready and willing to take on the world? Or do you see Millions of people who cant read, have never had a job and have no intention of ever getting one, with a supporting cohort of people with a 3.2 from Bolton Institute in "The Merits of Veganism, Lesbianism and Socilaism" who want nothing more than a low paying (£30k) job with the local government as an awareness officer, and are prepared to kill for it.

Do you see a dynamic and world beating business sector with strategies to dominate global comerce for the next 50 years?
Or do you see a few clapped out industrial units where the employees have an average age of 50 and no intention to train replacements?

We dont need an energy crisis to send us off the edge.

That's a very jaded view of the country you have. Every thought of writing for the Daily Mail?

'Joyless' is an even nicer word.

[Lord Beria3]

Accurate is a better one. The West has gone nowhere in the past 30 years, look at the progress of China and other Asian tigers. They are rapidly emerging as the new first world.

I don't agree everything with hedgie, I think that certainly in the short-term Chinese real estate is overvalued but he views are similar to Marc Faber, that the fundamentals are strong for Asia and Latin America.

[kenneal - lagger]

If Chinese growth continues at about 10%pa, they will double their resource consumption in 7 years. On that basis, we have maybe 3 years before their demand for fuel soaks up any surplus production capacity in the world and fuel prices rocket to the point where it precipitates the second of the recessions to end all recessions. That should be enough to polish off the PIGS, break the Euro and Europe and finish off the dollar with another massive round of QE required.

So four years outside, Clive (subject to China's growth rate continuing).

[Lord Beria3]

If Chinese growth continues at about 10%pa, they will double their resource consumption in 7 years. On that basis, we have maybe 3 years before their demand for fuel soaks up any surplus production capacity in the world and fuel prices rocket to the point where it precipitates the second of the recessions to end all recessions. That should be enough to polish off the PIGS, break the Euro and Europe and finish off the dollar with another massive round of QE required.

So four years outside, Clive (subject to China's growth rate continuing).

Good points. I think that there is room for demand destruction in America for a few years, but longer term the likely trajectory will be war between the USA and China over oil.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec20 ... -d22.shtml

This year’s US Joint Forces Command’s Joint Operating Environment (JOE) report—a strategic guide to perceived threats and future deployments of the US military—includes the chilling warning, “The course that China takes will determine much about the character and nature of the 21st Century—whether it will be ‘another bloody century,’ or one of peaceful cooperation.”

It goes on to sketch out potential scenarios for US-Chinese military conflicts, including the possibility of a war for oil between the world’s two largest economies. The document warns that “China’s concern for protecting its oil supplies [in the Sudan]… could portend a future in which other states intervene in Africa to protect scarce resources. The implications for future conflict are ominous, if energy supplies cannot keep up with demand and should states see the need to militarily secure dwindling energy resources.”

In other words, should China’s actions cut across US imperialism’s own attempts to militarily assert its hegemony over the world’s key energy producing regions, the result could be war.

The implications of such a war, between two nuclear-armed powers, are beyond horrific.

Curiously, last week the New York Times ran an article entitled “US Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable,” which dealt with the latest thinking within policy circles on the survivability of a nuclear war.

“We have to get past the mental block that says it’s too terrible to think about,” W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the Times. “We have to be ready to deal with it.”

An article that appeared last December in the influential foreign policy journal Foreign Affairs indicated that such consideration of the “unthinkable” has been directly focused on China. It cited a study by US nuclear weapons analysts on the “consequences of a US nuclear attack using high-yield warheads” to knock out China’s own intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal.

“Even though China’s silos are located in the countryside,” the article reported, “the model predicted that the fallout would blow over a large area, killing 3-4 million people.”

Two decades after the end of the Cold War, the danger of a nuclear conflagration is greater than ever and is growing, driven by the historic crisis of US and world capitalism. This danger carries with it a threat to the future of all humanity.

[Totally_Baffled]

The interesting thing about the issue of China fighting the US for oil is that, as it stands, they would be doing so to export oil based product to the west. A large chunk being for the US.

I cannot remember the exact numbers but of the Chinese 8mpd of oil consumption I think circa 60-70% is for manufacturing and the rest for transport. In the west it is the other way around.

How bizarre to start a nuclear war with your best customer(s)?

Likewise the US would be nuking supplier of lots of key products and materials too! (rare earths being one of many?)

[clv101]

There's not going to be a war between China and America over oil... that's crazy talk.

[Totally_Baffled]

There's not going to be a war between China and America over oil... that's crazy talk.

Agreed! I was being glib

[DominicJ]

There's not going to be a war between China and America over oil... that's crazy talk.

The Japanese American war started because the US broke trade deals to supply Japan with oil.

Chinese military procurement is wildly tilted towards the speedy destruction of anything closer than Guam, from airbases to carrier battle groups.

Googling Rand, Hagen, Anti Access and project airforce should get you a fair bit of info.
In brief, Republican antaganism to START has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with China.
In a US/China War the US could easily cut off Chinas access to tanker oil (and other raw materials) and shut the country down in weeks, Chinas military strategy has been to render the east asian islands unsurvivable to, well, the US Fleet in its entirety, in theory.

[Lord Beria3]

Well the Pentagon doesn't think its crazy talk...

[clv101]

Well the Pentagon doesn't think its crazy talk...

It's there job to take everything seriously, an have a plan for everything. Doesn't stop it being crazy talk.

[thecoalthief]

There's not going to be a war between China and America over oil... that's crazy talk.

Consider this,
1.The US spreading it's missile defence shield through Europe,possibly keeping Iran and North Korea simmering as a pair of convenient 'rogue nations'.
2.Increasing number and strength of US and South Korean naval excersises maybe less aimed at North Korea and more at strangling the massive volume of Chinese imports.
3.Increasing amount of US aid and arms sales to India who have border issues with China.Indeed,on the day North Korea shelled the island of Yeonpyeong,India announced an extra 36,000 troops being moved to it's border with China.
4.China has an estimated 180 strategic nuclear warheads while the US has around 2,000.
So you see,the chess pieces are being aligned for possible conflict between the US and China.With a working missile defence shield,a first strike option would clearly be viable,there would be your means.
Shrinking resources could clearly be the motive.Could the opportunity be an increasingly desperate US,unable to honour it's debts with a worthless currency.Bankrupt countries can be irrational,especially with the biggest military in the world.

[ziggy12345]

The last time there was a huge bankrupt country with a very large militay it put its political system in reverse.

With the USA gov owning 70% of the once private banks are we about to see it becoming communist?

Nope is the short answer