But this graph which shows the steep curve from 1890 does not take into consideration the same steep curve increase in population. If you extrapolate that so many more people are chasing the same amount resources, then this steep curve is hardly surprising?
After all, is this just what everyone on this forum is predicting? The price of oil is just going one way. If we eat oil in the food we consume and live in oil (construction energy intensive) in the houses we live in.
Then surely these commodities are only going one way as well?
Have you seen the oversupply of houses in the US? I saw something the other week which basically was saying the biulders over the could shut down for 10 years and they'd just about be about right. That's pretty different to oil I think. Sure one day there may not be the materials to build them and we may run out of useful land in the UK.
But I don't think we're there yet.
Honestly, if there really was a shortage of housing over here, why have the UK house builders been losing 60%+ of their values this year? Because the people with smart money know that they aren't going to be building and selling many houses pretty soon. Eventually the dumb money will notice as well and head for the exits too.
Deutsche Bank got a hard shock a few days ago when a judge in the state of Ohio in the USA made a ruling that the bank had no legal right to foreclose on 14 homes whose owners had failed to keep current in their monthly mortgage payments.
The Judge asked DB to show documents proving legal title to the 14 homes. DB could not. All DB attorneys could show was a document showing only an ?intent to convey the rights in the mortgages.? They could not produce the actual mortgage, the heart of Western property rights since the Magna Charta of not longer.
That was in 2005. The most Sub-prime mortgages written with Adjustable Rate Mortgage contracts were written between 2005-2006, the last and most furious phase of the US bubble. Now a whole new wave of mortgage defaults is about to explode onto the scene beginning January 2008. Between December 2007 and July 1, 2008 more than $690 Billion in mortgages will face an interest rate jump according to the contract terms of the ARMs written two years before. That means market interest rates for those mortgages will explode monthly payments just as recession drives incomes down. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners will be forced to do the last resort of any homeowner: stop monthly mortgage payments.
Here is where the Ohio court decision guarantees that the next phase of the US mortgage crisis will assume Tsunami dimension. If the Ohio Deutsche Bank precedent holds in the appeal to the Supreme Court, millions of homes will be in default but the banks prevented from seizing them as collateral assets to resell. Robert Shiller of Yale, the controversial and often correct author of the book, Irrational Exuberance, predicting the 2001-2 Dot.com stock crash, estimates US housing prices could fall as much as 50% in some areas given how home prices have diverged relative to rents.
The $690 billion worth of ?interest only? ARMs due for interest rate hike between now and July 2008 are by and large not Sub-prime but a little higher quality, but only just. There are a total of $1.4 trillion in ?interest only? ARMs according to the US research firm, First American Loan Performance. A recent study calculates that, as these ARMs face staggering higher interest costs in the next 9 months, more than $325 billion of the loans will default leaving 1 million property owners in technical mortgage default. But if banks are unable to reclaim the homes as assets to offset the non-performing mortgages, the US banking system and a chunk of the global banking system faces a financial gridlock that will make events to date truly ?peanuts? by comparison. We will discuss the global geo-political implications of this in our next report, The Financial Tsunami: Part 2.
Schools in America are being forced to seek emergency loans to pay teachers after a multi-billion dollar state-run investment fund was forced to freeze withdrawals as the credit crisis takes hold.
Revelations that the Florida-based Local Government Investment Pool held $1.5bn of downgraded and defaulted debt led to a run on the fund with $13bn (?6.5bn) withdrawn last month. Jefferson County school district was one of at least six school districts in Florida forced to take out last-minute loans to pay teachers after their requests for withdrawals were refused.
With the size of the fund reduced to $14bn and continuing uncertainty about the level of sub-prime mortgages the fund was exposed to, its manager, the Florida State Board of Administration, was forced to close the books.
...
Other states have also been hit. Over the past three days $250m has been withdrawn from Montana's $2.4bn investment pool by school districts. continued
mikepepler wrote:And the dominoes continue to fall....
Schools in America are being forced to seek emergency loans to pay teachers after a multi-billion dollar state-run investment fund was forced to freeze withdrawals as the credit crisis takes hold.
Revelations that the Florida-based Local Government Investment Pool held $1.5bn of downgraded and defaulted debt led to a run on the fund with $13bn (?6.5bn) withdrawn last month. Jefferson County school district was one of at least six school districts in Florida forced to take out last-minute loans to pay teachers after their requests for withdrawals were refused.
With the size of the fund reduced to $14bn and continuing uncertainty about the level of sub-prime mortgages the fund was exposed to, its manager, the Florida State Board of Administration, was forced to close the books.
...
Other states have also been hit. Over the past three days $250m has been withdrawn from Montana's $2.4bn investment pool by school districts. continued
That sounds like Russia in the early '90's. The acid test is, do the teachers carry on teaching without their wages? The Russian ones, apparently, did.
RenewableCandy wrote:
That sounds like Russia in the early '90's. The acid test is, do the teachers carry on teaching without their wages? The Russian ones, apparently, did.
Okay a teacher here... I would keep teaching....... for a bit anyway.
I think at first I would believe it was simply a glitch that would get sorted and that backpay would follow.
After a bit longer though I would begin to get concerned, and then once I was certain that pay would not be forthcoming I would no doubt quit. (Although, I have to say that if it were close to completion time for students I would likely finish provided college was still open.)
Tough one, but in the end few can afford to work totally for charity long term.
If such a situation were to come to pass, quitting and moving to another, non-charity job, might not be an option. The school down the road may not be able to pay you either. The choice is between going in to work in the hope that you might get paid one day and digging the garden.
RenewableCandy wrote:
That sounds like Russia in the early '90's. The acid test is, do the teachers carry on teaching without their wages? The Russian ones, apparently, did.
Okay a teacher here... I would keep teaching....... for a bit anyway.
I think at first I would believe it was simply a glitch that would get sorted and that backpay would follow.
Sound as a pound. Will have to ask about whether back-pay was eventually forthcoming, but I think the no-pay situation didn't last that long (few months), after that their government stepped in. Might explain why the Russians are often quoted as saying they 'like a strong government'. It's not the posing overseas they're after, it's the ability to steer the way through disasters at home.
I think I would still go to school but teach what I felt was important. No more damn SATS nonsense. First job; dig up the school field and get planting
I think I would still go to school but teach what I felt was important. No more damn SATS nonsense. First job; dig up the school field and get planting
So have you said "Peak Oil" to a class yet?
Last year I was cautious and just talked about non-renewables etc. This year (Fri) I actually said Peak oil.... .... and then moved quickly on to teaching about hydrocarbons, distillation of crude, alkanes, alkenes etc... all the safe boring stuff!
They're still paying the teachers at the moment - it's just coming from emergency loans. I guess the point is that the decline in housing is sucking in money from everywhere else. The seriousness of it to me is that a state job is considered "safe" - the government can not afford to let them not get paid, so the pain will be passed on to someone else, though no doubt the schools will have to make some cuts.
.... and then moved quickly on to teaching about hydrocarbons, distillation of crude, alkanes, alkenes etc... all the safe boring stuff! 
