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California: Entering Inflationary Depression

Gregor, did you mean "deflationary" depression. Rising gas prices are not enough to call it inflation.

International Energy Association: Forced to Eat Their Optimistic Data on Future Oil Supply?

JeffDB has it exactly right. Peak Oil is/was Peak Economic growth. The curves post peak will closely follow each other. Energy does work, mines minerals and metals, moves goods, becomes products. As cheap energy disappears,, so does cheap economic growth, subsidized by cheap energy and no amount of more expensive alternative energy will change that fact.The sectors harddest hit by this fact IMHO seem obvious, transportation, Big Ag and real estate. Positioning an investment strategy to take advantage of this shift is alas, less certain, made difficult by massive debt and deficits and statistical lies and distortions emanating from the government and the large corporations.

Is There Enough Natural Gas?

Thanks Mike for putting a lot of effort into buttressing your position of a switch to gas from oil. There are some strengths to your case and many weaknesses. Your underlying assumption if I am reading you correctly is that we can keep the American dream(nightmare?) alive my switching our transportation model to CNG. I don't see where the money would come from unless you taxed one of the fossil sources. Tax oil but not gas? Tax coal but not oil? I never see you addressing transportation as the issue and then deciding how to move people on that network. My other quibble are your quoted "reserves". Reserves from formations that are not economic are not reserves any more than the oft repeated statement that the US has more oil in oil shale than Saudi Arabia. It is pretty hard to build asphalt roads with gas, much less drill and transport especially boats and planes. I know, it is done and can be done but the scale of this switch and the dubious reserve numbers make this switch risky and not likely to pay off. I think a better strategy is to use electricity as your transport fuel. Use gas or oil or coal or wind or water to generate electricity and move people by rail instead of one by one in their 3000 psi suv bombs. Use less oil of course because we're running out. I would rather see you devote your good mind to waking up to the fact that a gas switch solution is no solution in an energy constrained future. We need to use less of all energy sources, conserve more and think about energy sources we can use not 20 or 50 years hence but 200 or 500 years hence. Your scheme would buy us a decade or two if we had the money to do it which we don't. Any switch to an energy source which is not renewable is a doomed strategy and I hope you will realize that soon.You are a little picture guy and I hope you grow up to become a big picture guy. The world could use more bright big picture guys.

Jim Rogers Believes World Is Heading for Depression

I like Jim and listened to him last year and bought Chinese companies and commodities and I'm down 50%. Maybe you listened to another Jim Rogers.


On Apr 02 09:24 AM MarkitWacha wrote:

> I listened to this guy last year, before the collapse.
>
> He made sense then, convinced me, and now my kids will have money
> to go to college. And, I'm not bankrupt like some of my neighbors.
>
>
> Thank you, sir.

Next Oil Crisis Window Just Two and a Half Years Away

Gregor is likely correct on a price spike. You will have to subscribe to his newsletter for details.I don't. His estimate of a crunch in 2.5 years is approximate which he should have noted. If you look at IEA and EIA data on depletion,production and consumption going forward you can extrapolate curves of supply and demand crossing within the next 3 years and of course those curves are subject to economic and political variables. What is different and what could cause the spike to possibly be very abrupt is the delay and cancellation of exploration and drilling projects meaning that production will likely lag behind demand and price will shoot up. Oil sands production will hold up as long as canadian gas can meet demand but all signs point to a decline in that resource up north. $147 oil was largely a function of traders and speculators but traders and speculators are in all markets and they will be back. Of that you can be sure. One can make a case for containing and regulating traders in the oil market because it is the most important commodity but that is off topic. The American model of light density distant suburbs and exurbs accessed by private auto transport will become untenable in the decades to come as oil output drops.

Seven Uncomfortable Predictions for the Economy

Your comments are a necessary counterpoint to the frat boy cheerleaders on beerkeg TV. I think you could have added issues of unemployment consequences to societal stability, derivative risks, pension and medicare-aid obligations, failure of the american suburban/carcentric transport model and a peak oil pinch in the next 2 or 3 yrs. Good job and your writing style is tidy and sure. let see more!

America Is Becoming a Banana Republic

Thanks again for another great post Tim with good supporting data and concise writing.You did fail to mention that Barak's administration is doing nothing to change the policies of the last 30 years and IMO is running this country off a cliff.

Great Depression 2.0 and the Benefit of Alternative Views

Some good comments to Mikes post. Thank you. The idea of a depression is more scary to TPTB than to us the participants and so they will use every tool at hand to obscure or minimize the reality and it is sad to see the new president who pretended to be one of "us" rather clearly one of them. These tools range from outright lies and obfuscation to statistical lies like employment, inflation and consumption data etc. The unemployment figures are obviously bogus as a myriad of folks have pointed out as are most of the government statistics. The problem as I see it is that the so called growth of the last at least 30 years has not been much creation of real wealth which would in fact be true growth but has instead been debt fueled consumption mascarading as growth and now that hardly anyone can assume any more debt this bogus growth is over for now . But like many cancers this debt cancer has sent metastases to all areas of our financial society and yes while it is true that this depression may not be exactly like the 1930's, it could in fact be far worse because the societal structure of extravagant energy consumption, distant sprawling exurbs accessed by automobile commuters to jobs which may never return will likely collapse the American consumption dream.

Geithner's Plan - Who Passed It?

what makes you think you live in a democracy? The Fed and Treasury are beyond any realistic control of anyone. They control Fiscal and monetary policy and the Fed and influence congressional elections and appointments and the creation of law. The Fed is basically an association of private bankers. You are correct in your article on almost all points. After the south sea credit collapse in England, a resolution was introduced in Parliament to have the bankers thrown into a sack filled with angry snakes and pitched into the Thames. Timmy, step over to this sack, would you please?

Inside Obama's Economic Braintrust

Volker may be the only brain in the trust. How can you trust people who look at you from under their eyebrows(Tim) or have constantly shifty eyes(Larry)?!

Is the Econoblogosphere Decoupling from Reality?

Very true Paul. I think I am one of the screechers as well! Comments probably follow a Gaussian distribution and are likely to exaggerate to the downside and upside. The data is there. Pick your interpretation. If a new paradigm is operating, most of the bipeds blogging are likely to miss it.

U.S. Credit Debt 1929-2008, by Sector

I have read that the updated debt is closer to 450% of GDP and this obviously is an increase in the government component. Comment?

U.K. Begins Quantitative Easing

Im confused about this quantitative easing. Is BoE printing money to purchase privately held bonds(gilts) or issuing bonds so they can print money? "Quantitative easing"....what a deceptive term!

Recession vs. Collapse

Gregor: everyone is asking the same question: connect the dots to explain inflation to deflation> It seems that "quantitative easing" can produce inflation if it can escape the black hole of the banks which it has not. It is SO bizarre to borrow money to pay off bank debts to protect the entire western banking systems losses. The world economonic over expansion came about fueled by cheap abundant energy. With that ending, so goes economic hyperexpansion IMO.

Historical Patterns Predict This Crisis Will Last Through 2025

"strong social science?"s an oxymoron. Economics is another one of those "strong" social sciences!