Perfect Storm

[RenewableCandy]

I bet they will and I bet it'll belong to some obscenely rich twazzock for whom an uninsulated house is a status symbol...

[vtsnowedin]

I bet they will and I bet it'll belong to some obscenely rich twazzock for whom an uninsulated house is a status symbol...

Now your being cynical. The human race does have a learning curve and the hard lessons of shortages before us should be excellent teachers.

[Blue Peter]

Says we'll see hyperinflation, whereas the Automatic Earth suggest deflation....

My understanding of why we'll get inflation rather than deflation:

For the various reasons discussed, the money economy has decoupled from the energy economy. The money economy has continued on a course which assumes growth which the gradual slowdown in growth / fall in net energy means cannot be paid. There “should” be a contraction of the money economy (deflation) to bring it more into line with the energy economy. However, rather than face this, governments and central banks have taken the short-falls upon themselves and printed money to cover them.

Consequently, we have too much money chasing too few goods, which means that the value of money is falling/the price of goods is rising (inflation).

We are now in a bind because:

1. With the continual decrease in growth / fall in net energy, the strategy of kicking the can down the road until growth picks up must fail;
2. The debts have been transferred to the governments of the world and so cannot be repudiated without bringing them down.

That is, our strategy can’t succeed, but we must continue with it, because any failure will be catastrophic (Lehmann’s to the nth power).

And, things will get worse (more inflation) because the gap between where the money economy is and where the energy economy is will keep growing (the former expands exponentially, the latter is beginning to/will soon contract, and is definitely slowing.

Didn't like the way it was unreferenced, yet appears to have drawn in large part form Martenson's crash course, himself only one of several writers - Kunstler, Orlov, Heinberg, Greer et al all linking economics to energy. Martenson just got a nod in the text. Failed to mention the Export Land Model, yet comes to the conclusion that declining EROEI alone has us doomed inside a decade.

Whether they used those sources or not, I don't know. There are a lot of other routes to the same conclusions,


Peter.

[Blue Peter]

Whether they used those sources or not, I don't know. There are a lot of other routes to the same conclusions,


Peter.

FWIW:

Phil, I've been startled for some time at the level of common sense coming out of Tullet Prebon -- this piece is better even than their last, with its frank discussion of the disaster of globalization and the role of faked statistics in fostering a lethal blindness to reality in governments.

Peter

[Blue Peter]

Whether they used those sources or not, I don't know. There are a lot of other routes to the same conclusions,


Peter.

It seems that perhaps you hit the wrong target, MMM:

That has been posted before. There's some discussion in the previous Drumbeat.

The report swipes a lot of graphs from this site without citation, and I gather the staff is not pleased.

Leanan


Peter.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

Whether they used those sources or not, I don't know. There are a lot of other routes to the same conclusions,


Peter.

It seems that perhaps you hit the wrong target, MMM:

That has been posted before. There's some discussion in the previous Drumbeat.

The report swipes a lot of graphs from this site without citation, and I gather the staff is not pleased.

Leanan


Peter.

Well, I suppose 'et al' would definitely include TOD, while these guys are presenting their work as original thought. Sadly, appears to be just another bunch of consultants who'll use your wristwatch to tell you the time, for a modest fee. Never underestimate the power of a glossy presentation, eh...

[frank_begbie]

Just goes to show, if we hadn't had all the big increases in energy over the past few years we would already be at the tipping point.

All we've done is buy a few more years of austerity.

We're not exactly living high on the hog while we wait for the shutters to finally come down.

I'm not talking about the 1% here.