oilslick wrote:Wow...it's almost scary, sort of religion-like in the way people here can only reference everything back to oil / energy!
People / computers created too much imaginary money based on debt (ie, people's ability to work in the future). They realised that people couldn't do all that work and now the system is broken.
Energy's in there somewhere but so are many other things. Get a grip!
Ha ha, and I thought this was a peak oil forum
No, seriously. What allowed that imaginary money based debt driven economy to thrive? Cheap energy (oil, gas, coal) in my opinion.
What happened when the oil started to get very expensive? it all came collapsing down like a house of cards.
Call it peak oil, peak cheap oil, or whatever you like, but there does seem to have been a temporal relationship between the massively inflated oil price in the summer and the subsequent economic collapse.
I like Richard Heinberg's idea of "The perfect Storm" - see his youtube video on the subject
I think that's where you've got it all back to front. The oil price went stupidly high because of the crashing financial system - it's been proven by the fact the oil price has collapsed now most of the leverage has been removed. It was driven high by speculators and the herd instict - there was no physical shortage.
I totally agree the high oil price on its own would have caused a recession even with a perfect backdrop. But in this case the system was collapsing already.
This, from a long piece in yesterday's Observer caught my eye. Nice article.
One of the most amusing - if that is the word - things to emerge from the current anxiety is the persistence of those analysts, commentators and politicians who say things like: "The recession will bottom out in October 2009 and we will start to see recovery in the housing market at the beginning of 2010." Or: "Unemployment will rise by one million before it starts to fall." How, you ask yourself, having almost universally failed to call the most cataclysmic financial event of our lifetimes, do they suddenly know these things? Have they no shame? And why do they think we will believe them?
One of the most amusing - if that is the word - things to emerge from the current anxiety is the persistence of those analysts, commentators and politicians who say things like: "The recession will bottom out in October 2009 and we will start to see recovery in the housing market at the beginning of 2010." Or: "Unemployment will rise by one million before it starts to fall." How, you ask yourself, having almost universally failed to call the most cataclysmic financial event of our lifetimes, do they suddenly know these things? Have they no shame? And why do they think we will believe them?
It keeps them in work for a bit longer, and it's always possible they might be right, so they've got to try. After all, our esteemed leader is still in his job, and I think his poll ratings have gone up. After 10 years as an arsonist busily lighting fires, now he's got a good blaze going he's become an heroic fireman, attempting to put them out. But is he using water, or petrol?
And just to be clear, the ones who did predicit this disaster, years ago, arent predicting a recovery until major political changes are made.
That would a shrinking of government, not an expansion.
But hey, an ex member of the MPC who lead us into this crisis has said today its all americas fault and the markets will soon reflect that, as the Pound and Euro both dip against the dollar, as did gold.
DominicJ wrote:And just to be clear, the ones who did predicit this disaster, years ago, arent predicting a recovery until major political changes are made.
That would [mean] a shrinking of government, not an expansion.
It is not at all clear that your conclusion should follow.
DominicJ wrote:The people who predicted this crisis are calling for a massive reduction in the size of government.
Its there conclusion, not mine.
I predicted the crisis. I don't remember saying that there should be less government (except, to be fair, simplifying the benefits system so as not to have to employ an army of people whose sole job is to explain it to us oiks!)
DominicJ wrote:The people who predicted this crisis are calling for a massive reduction in the size of government.
Its there conclusion, not mine.
I think the laws of maths, physics and anything else you can think of are calling for a smaller government.
Quite scary really - without all that pen pushing and health and safety inspecting, what are 25 million odd workers to do?
We all know that no political party can really tackle this in any meaningful way - it doesn't win votes to suggest cutting 10 million workers. So we will have to take this as far as it will go before the debt burden goes over the edge and UK Plc collapses. There's no recovery in our finances until this has happened and even then it will be a recovery from a much, much lower standard of living (in consumption / GDP terms anyway).
Not sure about digging up the M4, but surely some of the £600b the government plans to spend next year could find its way to something useful?
A working railway system?
