Financial topics

[Lily]

Shoshin - I agree with you. As far as I'm concerned, these generational cycles, though real and powerful, are at best very subtle and weird effects, and you can't properly make rulings about what is implied by the cycles without a good basis in other, non-generational empirical reasoning. Generational Dynamics has a *ton* of really interesting implications, but it is not an ironclad physical law and does not apply mechanically at ALL. The British Empire did not have a genocidal war during its 19th-century crisis period - what's up with that? The Soviet Empire did not have a genocidal war during its most recently completed crisis period; it just collapsed instead. The British Empire didn't fully collapse until well after the end of a crisis period, while their French competitors two cycle earlier did neither, simply shedding their skin and morphing into a different constitutional form right at the end of a crisis period instead. The Soviets fought the closest thing to a 'genocidal' war they ever fought during an austerity period, not a crisis, which fact I'd argue decisively aided them in the war. I think a good argument can be made that most of the Napoleonic wars were fought during an austerity period, too. It doesn't 'prove' much, but it does go to show that these cycles aren't at ALL laid down in stone, and events take their own course depending on what people do and what nature does, NOT on a cosmically predetermined schedule. Believing anything else invites either hubris or indifference, or both. I suspect this moment is much too dangerous to the human race to permit either.

I'm cautious of grand schemes, too, but not so cautious that I'm unwilling to employ them as a tool of understanding - so long as they hold water. If they lose empirical validity, I'm out, but otherwise I don't mind using four or five grand narratives at once at least, as suited to the moment. Why not? Generational dynamics is a pretty decent narrative, but it isn't the only one in the chorus.

The only way to understand things *objectively* is to look through many, many different lenses; GD happens to be a particularly powerful one, as far as it goes.

There is no way that the 2001 Nasdaq crash was a generational crash.
The S&P 500 P/E index didn't even go below average, let alone to
crash levels:

Sure, I know. But do we know for a fact that there always has to be a generational stock market crash, regardless of the actions of those in power and the structure of the economy concerned? How can we know this? Are its features predetermined? By what? How can you be sure? What kind of sample size do we have here to lend credence to the idea that this phenomena has a unitary presentation across divergent cases? Like four or five max? That is not enough to be conclusive evidence that events will now proceed in a certain pattern. How many counterexamples are there of societies that go through a crisis period but do not have generational stock market crash? Surely hundreds at least? Surely we can agree that it depends largely on the nature of the society and the economy involved - more simple economies behaving differently from advanced ones, and more centralized ones behaving in an often less volatile and more controlled fashion.

In that case I have a question for you, John - do you think that the United States had a free market economy by the time we got near the end of the last unraveling period? I think that it did not. I would argue that that the characteristics of our post-post-modern corporate cartel-dominated, inverted-totalitarian state and the economy that sustained it now bear more relation to a fuedal or command economy than to the kind of free market economy that we used to have. It's just that the commanders were somewhat hidden in the shadows - though nowadays they are everywhere coming into the open. Our economy has or at least had many lucrative free-market zones, but in total character it was an imperial economy, controlled by powerful corporate interests for their own benefit alone, fundamentally distorted for decades by the expense and corruption of a massive geohegemonic military machine and runiously expensive plebian bread and circus entitlements.

I submit that you can not predict or fully understand the behavior of such a beast on the basis of two or three data points from widely divergent, often inapplicable eras.

If there SHOULD have been a generational crash around 2000, then there
WOULD have been a generational crash around 2000. Greenspan would not
have been able to change that.

Methinks thou lovst thy lovely work too much, and setst too much 'pon it. The cycles are not set in stone, your understanding of how they operate is finite, and the imperial regime has been extremely powerful for a long time.

A stock market crash around 2001 would have ruined some very long-laid plans; of course no such thing was permitted to happen. But do you really think that what did happen was the 'natural' result of inevitable market cycles operating mechanically, rather than the progression of a unique but long-developed imperial machine, created and operated each moment by oft-confused human intention? The earth goes 'round forever and ever on its own, but history has to walk.

Nenner just did an interview that's posted on Youtube. I watched it last night. He started out by saying the Dow is going to 5000 within the next year or two. The interviewer asked him why and he said well, I hate to give you the bad news but a major war is due late 2012, early 2013.

I doubt it will be any later than that, but I will be watching for it this winter and early next year, too. I'm not convinced we won't be well into a a war by 'late' 2012.

I think there's a major long term global crisis era coming that we are on the cusp of, but the world as a whole hasn't tipped over into crisis mode. The current situation might be similar to being in the month of September when an ice age is coming. There might be some very cold nights and even a dusting of snow a couple months early, but it still really is Fall. So I don't see this as being a crisis era yet and I think the world is working very hard to keep the short term generational cycle in unraveling mode in order to avoid tipping over into that larger crisis period.

Well, let's clarify one point at least. 'Crisis mode' in the current context would mean near-complete economic collapse, spreading global famine and subsequent disease, war between great powers, apocalyptic climate change, rampant critical resource shortages, widespread social breakdown, small-scale local anarchy and large-scale political power grabs by entrenched powerful interests. I.E, the 'crisis' starts when the Shit Hits The Fan and we enter a cascading series of interlocking massive clusterfucks that essentially destroy society as we know it. This period will likely only last for a few years before the new constitutional order emerges to replace it. I suspect it will likely stretch approximately from 2012-2013 to 2018-2019, with a climax around 2016-2017. (If we can carry through a far-sighted, wise, and peaceful revolution in the United States in some kind of timely fashion, it is concievable that the new order will be much better and vastly more livable than the current one. In the more likely default scenario that this does not happen, the new order will be far, far darker and more malevolent than the current one.)

That is NOT the same as the 'generational crisis' period, which typically lasts 15-20 years and is often marked by genocidal wars and stock market crashes. The US unraveling period ended in 2000 or 2001 for sure, so we are definitely well into the generational crisis period now. We just haven't reached the even worse pitch of full SHTF-level crisis. Yet.

In keeping with that idea, I believe China realizes any struggle is likely to be quite protracted and complex. China, I believe, sees the US as more vulnerable economically and strategically than militarily.

This is unfortunately dead wrong. I will provide more data to back this assertion in just a sec. Draw your own conclusions, but do the research in depth and read everything skeptically. China expects and intends to prevail in a short, sharp "local war under high-technology conditions" against the United States. They have been preparing for this kind of high-end assymetrical war intensively at least since after Desert Storm, and they have raised it to an art form. China could almost certainly prevail over the US military in a matter of weeks or months, as of this very moment, now. The military balance has already tipped; but the artists of war on the other side have deftly hidden their prepared hand. What they have created is the next major world revolution in military affairs, at least comparable to that of the Nazi blitzkrieg. This tends to happen during crisis periods. During the modern era, not a saeculum seems to go by without a quite world-historically consequential revolution in military affairs. Not to say that they were responsible alone of course, but the renaissance Italian princes, Gustavus Adolphus, Fredrick the Great, Washington, Napoleon, Bismark, Sherman, Hitler, and Truman all reinvented warfare anew to strike down their opponents during a crisis generation. The same will happen this cycle, but it is the Chinese who have reinvented war and we who have fallen so dangerously behind their new understanding. Fortunately there is at least one more subsequent military revolution waiting in the wings that even they remain greviously unprepared for...

Why do you think that? Because they're running out of food? Maybe I missed it, but do you have a few links describing whatever critical situation they may be facing in the upcoming Winters?

I'll just throw up some scattershot articles and see if I can prick your interest. This is a wide topic, and this is just a fly-by selection of much more out there.
http://caps.fool.com/blogs/china-is-basically/190038
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1632841/posts
http://seekingalpha.com/article/232631- ... u-s-stocks
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... er-and-oil

On the military front, here's some data for you to mull over. It's going to have to be a lot, sorry. If you piece together the mosaic, it's very striking and original, but absolutely horrific, terrifying, and loathsome.

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu ... napt1.html
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu ... napt2.html
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu ... napt3.html

The above is not the methodology of a state with only 'peaceful aspirations!' This is a treatise on highly advanced geopolitical kung-fu. The US State department can barely wipe its own ass, but the Chinese are preparing with no small subtly, scholarship, and artistry to shatter foreign powers for ever, soon. Fear this knowledge in the hands of the arrogant and mighty. Some fairly seriously powerful ancient wisdom has managed to percolate into the hands of the Chinese state, now combined with modern scientific knowledge and technological power. The 'dialectical of defeating the superior with the inferior' is especially worrisome. I wish they were as stupid as we are...our (I mean, American) military thinkers are not up to the same caliber, not having had to think their way out of a disadvantaged position in two hundred years. I hope to god those of us on the side of liberty and peace can somehow manage to beat the Chinese at thier own creepy lethal art. Fortunately, this at least is a task for scholars rather than soldiers.

A summary of China's military preparations:
http://www.ipcs.org/pdf_file/issue/1577 ... f-No48.pdf
Some good information
http://irchina.org/en/xueren/china/view.asp?id=678
This book is really good and very eye-opening.
http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Scenarios- ... 0553805398
(I might have a .pdf to send you if you don't want to or can't buy the book. )
This is good stuff, too.
http://books.google.com/books?id=9Z9js_ ... ns&f=false
Check out the bit about 'willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons!'
Even our idiotic military thinks China's military buildup is 'aggressive'.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... led-worry/
Reuters realizes the obvious fact that thier military buildup is aimed at us.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2009/05/0 ... 3X20090504

The problem is, they are preparing not just to fight the US but to overwhelmingly, rapidly, and decisively defeat us. Our own preperations are more...abstract.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... hina/3959/

This is a good piece, but read this and consider if the security aparatus we've molded through the last 10 paranoid imperial years has the intellectual maturity, intuitive savvy, diplomatic cleverness, and operational agility to pull off a complex, interdependant, multilevel, multipolar, polyglot, weaving defense strategy on the other side of the world in conjunction with a shifting and fragile network of manipulative, ruthless, and calculating Asian allies. We can barely even find people to *speak* Arabic when we're invading a muslim country, let alone oppose China with any effectiveness in southeast Asia. There is a viable strategy for opposing China, but we will be far too stupid to pull it off unless there is political change.

Speaking of political change, a classic technique well-known in Chinese military history is striking fiercly and suddenly at weak, indecsive, or unpopular rulers, in expectation that moral collapse at the top and consqeuent strategic paralysis will disarm them with a minimum of exertion. Obama is the classic weak imperial leader, and if the economy melts down before the 2012 election, he will lose for sure. All of the alternatives will be at least more aggressive, decisive, and consolidated than Obama, which means that his remaining rule is precisely the right time for China to strike. Then let the next team figure out what the hell to do!

To digress a little, India is more intelligent and observant than us, and thus much more scared. But not any more well-prepared.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/nervo ... rt/488349/
http://www.peopleforum.cn/viewthread.ph ... a=page%3D1
http://www.topix.com/forum/world/pakist ... GMP1V7CEP6

India is preparing for a 2.5 front war, very soon, against Pakistan and China and an internal terrorist insurgency.

http://www.pakalertpress.com/2010/11/07 ... taneously/

"“A major leap in our approach to conduct of operations (since then) has been the successful firming-up of the cold start strategy (to be able to go to war promptly),” said Army chief General Deepak Kapoor, at a closed-door seminar on Tuesday."

http://www.pakalertpress.com/2010/01/06 ... rmageddon/

Specifically, they are preparing to suddenly, descisively annihilate the Pakistani army before anyone can intervene or stop them. Only a simultaenous Chinese attack could slow them down, but even so they might manage to pull this off. Whether they could pull it off without initiating a cascade of nuclear strikes, who knows, but they at least don't seem too worried about it. (!) Of course, if they did somehow destroy the Pakistani Army and Intelligence Service and avoid a nuclear attack from the Pakistani state, the resulting insurgency/anarchy/social collapse/islamist revolution/environmental catastrophe/massive humanitarian crisis/civil war/ would make Iraq pale to insignificance, and in Pakistan, there really ARE plentiful WMDs...

Or then again, maybe their whole plan is insanely wishful thinking, and the country really has NO viable plan to deal with the outbreak of hostilities in a measured way...
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2010/01/03 ... venturism/

Anyway, the point is, China absolutely sees the US as deeply and uniquely weak not just socially and economically, but militarily. By 2013, our historically-unprecedentedly weak leader will be replaced by one who is both more aggressive and decisive, and who has a more consolidated plutocratic power base. If China does not attack in 2012, by 2013 the impulse for the US to invade Iran will be overwhelmingly strong for many reasons. China will want to cripple us before we have a chance to maul their ally, so my money is still unfortunately on a dollar dumping move sometime next winter, followed by military strikes in Taiwan and SE Asia either immediately or (I'd guess more likely) within 2-6 months thereafter.

See, the thing is, the Chinese rulers aren't playing a careful Bobby Fischer style chess game. Think of it more like Hannibal Lector - stealthy, ruthless, manipulative, insanely savage and fast, unreasonably well-informed, precisely scientfic, and pragmatically limited in focus.

The when it stops working part is pretty critical as far as knowing what happens next, I think.

Any takers for theory of a stock market crash by this Christmas? It seems pretty solid to me, but I hope I'm wrong...

[Higgenbotham]

I think there's a major long term global crisis era coming that we are on the cusp of, but the world as a whole hasn't tipped over into crisis mode. The current situation might be similar to being in the month of September when an ice age is coming. There might be some very cold nights and even a dusting of snow a couple months early, but it still really is Fall. So I don't see this as being a crisis era yet and I think the world is working very hard to keep the short term generational cycle in unraveling mode in order to avoid tipping over into that larger crisis period.

That is NOT the same as the 'generational crisis' period, which typically lasts 15-20 years and is often marked by genocidal wars and stock market crashes. The US unraveling period ended in 2000 or 2001 for sure, so we are definitely well into the generational crisis period now. We just haven't reached the even worse pitch of full SHTF-level crisis. Yet.

This still doesn't yet look like a full blown generational crisis period. I found an interview with Neil Howe (linked below) where he seems to indicate we're still on the cusp of the generational crisis era. He seems to think we're a little further along than I do, but not by much, and perhaps the dividing line between the unravelling and crisis might be best placed at 2008.

To determine or define that, it makes sense to go to Strauss and Howe, Chapter 10, p. 272, and look at their list of potential crisis catalysts. The first one starts with,

Beset by a fiscal crisis, a state lays claim to its residents' federal tax monies. Declaring this an act of secession, the President obtains a federal injunction. The governor refuses to back down. Federal marshalls enforce the court order. Similar tax rebellions spring up in other states. Treasury bill auctions are suspended. Militia violence breaks out. Cyberterrorists destroy IRS databases. U.S. special forces are put on alert. Demands issue for a new Constitutional Convention.

By comparing the current situation with this list of crisis catalyst events, it's pretty evident to me we're still mostly or at least partly in the "business as usual" phase of the unravelling. In this excerpt, Strauss and Howe indirectly define what that means. Some or many things that are usual like treasury bill auctions stop happening when the crisis hits, while other things like emergency responses that don't normally happen, start happening. I mentioned the suspension or reduction of transfer payments - same type of thing.

http://www.financialsense.com/financial ... -neil-howe

Link to an October 2010 interview with Neil Howe. He said that 2008 was perhaps the beginning of the Fourth Turning and also said, "We're still to some extent in a Third Turning," and "This is the prequel to the Fourth Turning."

In keeping with that idea, I believe China realizes any struggle is likely to be quite protracted and complex. China, I believe, sees the US as more vulnerable economically and strategically than militarily.

This is unfortunately dead wrong. I will provide more data to back this assertion in just a sec. ..

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu ... napt1.html
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu ... napt2.html
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu ... napt3.html

Ok, I tried to open up your first set of links and they don't open. These web pages no longer exist. I read some of the other links and I don't see anything earth shattering that isn't known. There's an old link about the Chinese post bipolar shift. And another to a book describing one of 7 potential war senarios which involves China taking Taiwan back.

Why do you think that? Because they're running out of food? Maybe I missed it, but do you have a few links describing whatever critical situation they may be facing in the upcoming Winters?

I'll just throw up some scattershot articles and see if I can prick your interest. This is a wide topic, and this is just a fly-by selection of much more out there.
http://caps.fool.com/blogs/china-is-basically/190038
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1632841/posts
http://seekingalpha.com/article/232631- ... u-s-stocks
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... er-and-oil

One recent article (Seeking Alpha) said the amount of arable land in China was decreasing a lot, but since 2006 has leveled off just above the minimum requirements to feed their population and they are now working to manage the situation. That doesn't look to be a rapidly deteriorating situation.

In the last article I see something that pertains to deteriorating present conditions:

Some of China's most important agricultural areas are experiencing the worst droughts that they have seen in 200 years. Authorities are warning that two-thirds of China's wheat crop could be in danger.

Wouldn't China use the surplus funds they've accumulated from their positive trade balance with the US to buy the wheat they need? Or am I missing something? Any idea how much this will cost them?

March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Wheat futures extended the biggest advance in a week on unexpected demand from China for exports from the U.S., the world’s largest shipper.

China, the biggest consumer, bought 116,000 metric tons from the U.S. in the week ended March 17, the most for any week since July 2005, Department of Agriculture data showed. Wheat in Zhengzhou jumped to a record last month on speculation that drought in the country’s growing areas would cut supplies. Rains and irrigation have partly eased concerns since then.

“Imports will rise by more than 30 percent this year to top 2 million tons, because we suspect that the local harvest may be 11 million tons short of the government estimate,” Li Qiang, managing director of Shanghai JC Intelligence Co., said in a phone interview today.

Production will be little changed at 115.1 million tons in the year ending June, the China National Grain and Oils Information Center predicted this month.

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid ... V56j5QxJ2Y

Wheat averages 36 bushels per ton, so the cost is minor (for the Chinese) at about $250 million per million tons.

[Higgenbotham]

here is an excerpt....
The most generous conclusion Tetlock could draw was that some experts were less awful than others.

Having made some awful forecasts myself in the past 2 years, I've come to some conclusions. I think any forecast should be thought through from a number of angles, similar to what Lily said. The thought process should be very rigorous and nothing immediately dismissed that contradicts it. A forecast should be made with the idea that data will be actively sought that might prove the forecast wrong. The forecaster should have some firm ideas as to what that data will show if the forecast is wrong.

As an example, Vince has been linking the MIT billion price index to show the ongoing real time inflation. I look at it almost every day and the price increases are astounding. While goods prices are not everything and inflation has many indicators and definitions, it's necessary to take a step back and ask myself, "When you initially predicted there would be deflation would you ever have entertained the idea that there could be deflation while goods prices are increasing at a rate of 1 per cent per month for 3 months?" My answer to that is no. Therefore, my forecast cannot be correct given what is happening at present. The next step would be to ask myself, "What would you expect to see if the trend is likely to reverse to deflation?" Having some ideas as to why good prices are in fact increasing would help to determine that. One thing that I think really helped push the inflation is the fact that all forms of bankruptcy and writedowns were put on hold. The Fed and the government were really able to control all aspects of that and Europe was able to control most aspects. One bottom line is this economy is much more controlled and much less of a free market than I thought it was.

[Higgenbotham]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... hina/3959/

This is a good piece, but read this and consider if the security aparatus we've molded through the last 10 paranoid imperial years has the intellectual maturity, intuitive savvy, diplomatic cleverness, and operational agility to pull off a complex, interdependant, multilevel, multipolar, polyglot, weaving defense strategy on the other side of the world in conjunction with a shifting and fragile network of manipulative, ruthless, and calculating Asian allies. We can barely even find people to *speak* Arabic when we're invading a muslim country, let alone oppose China with any effectiveness in southeast Asia. There is a viable strategy for opposing China, but we will be far too stupid to pull it off unless there is political change.

Speaking of political change, a classic technique well-known in Chinese military history is striking fiercly and suddenly at weak, indecisive, or unpopular rulers, in expectation that moral collapse at the top and consqeuent strategic paralysis will disarm them with a minimum of exertion. Obama is the classic weak imperial leader, and if the economy melts down before the 2012 election, he will lose for sure. All of the alternatives will be at least more aggressive, decisive, and consolidated than Obama, which means that his remaining rule is precisely the right time for China to strike. Then let the next team figure out what the hell to do!

Here's what I wrote again:

"In keeping with that idea, I believe China realizes any struggle is likely to be quite protracted and complex. China, I believe, sees the US as more vulnerable economically and strategically than militarily. For now (5 years let's say), I believe they want to get as close to equality militarily as possible just in case while continuing to bleed the US economy out very slowly so as to not collapse it and provoke a military struggle. I believe the chess game they are playing would be the equivalent to what Bobby Fischer called gaining "an accumulation of small advantages" because that's what will work best for them at this time. I don't think that's going to work, but I don't know how soon it will stop working. The when it stops working part is pretty critical as far as knowing what happens next, I think."

And these are some excerpts from The Atlantic article you linked above which are directly consistent with my comments:

While stateless terrorists fill security vacuums, the Chinese fill economic ones. All over the globe, in such disparate places as the troubled Pacific Island states of Oceania, the Panama Canal zone, and out-of-the-way African nations, the Chinese are becoming masters of indirect influence—by establishing business communities and diplomatic outposts, by negotiating construction and trade agreements. Pulsing with consumer and martial energy, and boasting a peasantry that, unlike others in history, is overwhelmingly literate, China constitutes the principal conventional threat to America's liberal imperium.

Given the stakes, and given what history teaches us about the conflicts that emerge when great powers all pursue legitimate interests, the result is likely to be the defining military conflict of the twenty-first century: if not a big war with China, then a series of Cold War—style standoffs that stretch out over years and decades. And this will occur mostly within PACOM's area of responsibility.

Our stance toward China and the Pacific, in other words, comes with a built-in stability—and this, in turn, underscores the notion of a new Cold War that is sustainable over the very long haul.

There are many ways in which the Chinese could use their less advanced military to achieve a sort of political-strategic parity with us.

The Chinese are far better off in my opinion chipping away at us economically as long as they can do so while approximating asymmetric military parity; it's the same thing the Russians tried (by stealing our technology) but the Chinese have the ability to make it work better.

[OLD1953]

Lily,

I'm not sure what you are reading into my posts but it's certainly not what I'm writing. I haven't railed against "hippies", nor have I brought Rush Limbaugh into anything, he said his last matter of interest to me about 1992, since then I've ignored him. If you can point out anywhere I"ve said global warming doesn't exist, I'd like to see it, given this discussion,

http://generationaldynamics.com/forum/v ... f=20&t=178

You might particularily note the post on Nov 23, where I pointed out that mercury poisoning of streams in the southern US due to mercury traces in coal is becoming a serious problem, even ignoring CO2 we've reached a point where further increases in burning of coal is simply not going to be viable, as the expense of cleaning the stack gas is going to be outrageous. This will get worse each year as the quality of coal drops, if you want to discuss that let me know, I do understand the geology of coal fairly well from a field experience point of view.

The reference to the oil drum was kind of funny in a way, given that at least one of their basic documents, the Hirsch report on peak oil and mitigation strategies actually came originally from my own personal store of data that I don't want to lose. A regular over there happens to be a personal friend, and he was griping that the Hirsch report was hard to come by, so I gave him copies. I was working for SAIC at the time, and the Hirsch report is in the company archive, like all their govt funded scientific data that isn't classified. My issue with the oil drum is they tend to take the worst outlook possible. Peak oil by the old definition (actual liquid oil pumped from the ground by pumps) in terms of potential production will probably occur in 2012, (sans production drops due to civil unrest and war, that is, which could either hasten peak oil or delay it)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/steo/ (The important paragraph is a bit in, where they admit that non OPEC sources will be falling off after 2012. OPEC keeps oil figures as top secret, so that's as close as you'll ever get to an admission that peak has passed from an official source. And if you ask monkeyfister - more on him later - you'll find that I pegged 2012 as the likely date for peak traditional oil production with an estimated fuzziness of +- 3 years back about 2005 or 2006 and have stuck to it ever since. That's because all the good data was slowly dropping towards 2012 and the bad data was rising towards it over time, as people corrected their errors. It's a goofy sounding technique, averaging others errors against each other, but it works for me.)

The peak of actual production may occur a few years before or after that date due to economics, which is all pretty much on the same timeline due to the "fuzziness" introduced by actual demand vs potential top production. IOW, right now there is about 3 or 4 million BPD that could be pumped that is not being pumped because of the destruction of demand due to high prices. It is hardly beyond imagining that this reserve capacity could drop to near zero before the demand recovers. There are however, good reasons to believe the "tail" will be a good bit longer than some expect, most of the figures aren't properly adding in improved recovery techniques, I don't believe they are handling the math properly on adding a large number of curves that rapidly peak, rapidly drop and then slowly tail off (it's complex math, really), and demand destruction will happen much faster than projected in a crisis era - which is responsible for that drop in production noted in your links - people do not travel as much under economic stress. However, I do expect to see government rationing of transportation fuels in the not distant future, first military, then agriculture, then business and the ordinary citizens can fight it out over what's left for them - which may not be much.

The issue with solar/wind power is simply that it can't be used for baseline power, it's not reliable at night and the wind doesn't blow constantly or steadily in enough locations. Plus, there are people fighting both over appearance. To make full use of solar or wind would require some huge power reserve stores to be built, TVA has the biggest I know of currently in operation at Raccoon Mountain:
http://www.tva.gov/sites/raccoonmt.htm
I doubt there are enough locations in the US where such could be sited to solve the storage problems for switching wholly to solar or wind. We need a really good energy storage device, but so far, nothing good enough has been developed. Ideally, such would be the size of a small briefcase and capable of holding 1000 kilowatt hours - and that's just not on the market yet.

Ok, my issue with Gore. Let me put it this way, if I was sitting on the board of a large coal company, and I got to pick the person I wanted to be the spokesperson for reducing carbon emissions, I could not have done better than Gore. He makes terrible mistakes, to the point of being called down at conferences by scientists who tell him he's misrepresenting their data. He's shown slides in public meetings that try to connect all natural disasters with global warming (on pressure from actual scientists, he's removed those). He loves it when the press calls him a scientist, and he's no way qualified to be called anything like that, he's got a BA in government. Good grief, back years ago I actually had a paper on lunar atmospheres accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, and that was based on and referenced Vondrak's work on atmospheres that forms the basis of all the global warming models! By no means do I consider myself qualified to call myself an atmospheric scientist (though far more qualified than Gore), but I AM qualified to tell when someone is way out of line and full of crap, and Gore qualifies for that. He was a very good Vice President, but he's a horrible front person for getting anything done about carbon emissions.

I have very seriously wondered if he's either the victim of perception management or actively involved in it for some reason, that is, he wants to discredit atmospheric science for some reason that I don't understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_management

Don't bother mentioning Beck or O'Reilly or Limbaugh or Gore or Maddow to me, they are all in the same pot as far as I'm concerned, polarizing figures that are used to distract the public from important issues.

I don't have a problem with people who popularize science, but they have to do it with accuracy. It's a rare person who is able to actually learn several scientific fields well enough to competently explain them to the public. And people believe anyone who claims to be an authority! Lord, how my kids screamed when I'd correct the horrible errors in their math texts.

Ok, back to the land movements. I've got two problems with this, one simple math, one is in the observed execution. The observed execution problem is simple enough, I spent years watching em' come and go, and I've seen maybe TWO of dozens that stuck it out and actually farmed. Most yell "OMG, this is hard work" and run back to the city. The net effect was simply to take land out of production for a time, and build over part of it. Typical was the guy who wanted "rich farm land" which is what he asked for. So somebody sold him about 30 acres (don't really remember exactly, long time ago) of prime river bottom land. Nobody asked him where he intended to build a house and he didn't ask questions. He built that sucker right in the exact middle of the plot. Of course, it flooded in the spring, that being in the definition of prime river bottom land. So he was all shocked, moved out and waited for the water to go down, and got it fixed up to live in just before the fall rains, when it flooded again, of course, just as it did every year in that field. He finally went to the neighbors and asked why nobody told him that land flooded twice a year, and everyone said the same thing, that's what river bottom land does. Just a suggestion, ask about problems before you build. Or maybe just observe that every house on that road was on a hill, not in the bottoms? That's typical, really typical.

You want to see one of the two that has managed to make it work, go to blogspot and look for monkeyfister. He's a close friend, though he's so depressed over the developing crisis he's almost quit blogging.

The other issue is simple math. Let us suppose that we are going to put ten million families on small sustainable farms, and do the math.

CIA World Factbook says the USA has 9,161,966 sq km of land. Arable land is listed at 18.01% of the total. Therefore, we have 1650070 sq km of arable land.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/us.html
Ok, assuming we intend to put 50% of the population on the land, we'll divvy it up by population amounts (you do realize this is going to throw congress totally to rural domination as it was in the 1800's?) normalized to that figure. So our ten million families of four represent 40 million of 313 million, so they get 40 million shares normalized to half of 313 million. So to normalize to half, we take half of 313 million, divide 40 million by that figure, and multiply the result by the amount of arable land, then multiply that by four to get back to our ten million families. I make it .042 sq km per family. That works out to 10.6 acres, which isn't a lot but that's not really the problem. The problem is that they will need shelter, cooking areas, storage areas for food and tools and animals , and service or access roads, plus easements for water and electricity. With the best of good will, I cannot imagine this as totaling less than an acre for each family (in rural KY, my share of the access roads to the farm could not possibly have been less than 50 acres, but that was on a large farm, not a ten acre dot). And that's the problem. Simply in service and access roads, plus living and work and storage areas, you just used up nearly ten percent of the arable land. Roads and buildings covering crop land is a huge problem now, and you are going to need ten times as many. How do you maintain production by doing that? And the short answer is, you can't. (Note to any civil engineers reading this, yes, I know you are laughing at the pitifully small allotment of land for service, access and easements, but this is just for demonstration.)
Now, during Mao's time ruling China, they did indeed face a similar problem, which they got around by creating very large farms with a single access road, one large barracks and one dining facility, but that was Mao's resettlement program. The US, of course, did have a similar system in the South prior to the Civil War. This is much more efficient, but not usually what people are talking about when they want to return to the land.
Cuba, on the other hand did manage to create a limited transportation agriculture with very little oil use, but they sure didn't do it by creating tiny farms. They managed with green roofs, and a lot of work managing exactly where things were grown and how things were planned to move from place to place. If you'll check that CIA world factbook link for Cuba, you'll find they employ 20% of their population in agriculture, and that's where the "move 15% to farms" figure in my earlier post came from, comparison to a very low oil use country I happen to know the figures for, namely Cuba, assuming the people already in agriculture in the US stay put and 15% more moved to join them or work on green roofs, etc.
Sustainable agriculture GENERALLY is taken to mean more people farming, less machinery, if that's not what you meant, Ok, explain a bit more clearly, and I'll listen. Don't bother telling me about building soils and so forth, I know all that very well from both experience and education and it's all old news. Now, if you want to discuss methane digestion as an improvement to green manure based land enhancement by digesting the green manure with a mix of animal droppings, thus increasing the nitrate content of the total mass while also producing fuel, that's a fascinating subject and the work done on pumping different levels of the material away from the natural separations in a static column is very interesting, but we probably need to discuss that one on a separate subject, it's really not connected to financial matters.
Regards,
Old1953
PS: In so far as I'm aware, all current global warming models predict increased rainfall worldwide. The "weather" will be more uncertain as is natural in a thermal system with increased input, but overall the climate will be wetter. Which is what I was referring to. In fact, the models are being worked over to modify them to show a greater increase in rainfall than they were showing previously, as they've fallen short in predicting the observed rainfall over the last decade.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -rain.html

I think we might see a shift back to the wetter North Africa prevalent at the turn of the Christian Era, but that's by no means certain, due to the chaotic nature of the weather patterns themselves. Currently there's debate going on as to where the shifts will end up, and there aren't any good answers yet, and may never be. These folks are trying to make predictions based on models of feedback loops into a chaotic system, and that's something that takes more guts than I've got.

[Carl Lieberman]

FYI, I too found the Nenner you tube interview interesting. He is as apocalyptic as anyone on this list. But, his methodology revolves around cycles of sunspots. A generational collapse waits in the wings. The moment of its onset is completely unpredictable. Simplistic, magical, pseudo-scientific analysis is not going to explain the evolution of events. John's analysis has always pointed to the long term waves of history. The system is way to complex to be controlled by any single variable.

[OLD1953]

The reason the sunspot cycles and the generational cycles often line up is not very mysterious, seven sunspot cycles are pretty close to the same length as one complete generational cycle, 80 years. I'd lay it to chance myself. (Come to think of it, the Halley family of comets have an average period of about 80 years, they range from 20 to 200 years generally. And I just had a WTF moment, this list http://www.physics.ucf.edu/~yfernandez/ ... st.html#hf gives several comets with periods of about five years as Halley family comets? How do they get that, families are determined by the orbital parameters which determines the period. Okay, got some reading to do to figure out what the cometeers have been up to while I wasn't looking!)

For me, the big question about WWIII is whether or not the USA will join in at the beginning, or wait it out until someone attacks the US or a US base directly. We waited it out in WWII, as the US was simply tired of war. The "end" date of the Spanish American War was hardly the "end", fighting continued in the Philipines until the US simply pulled out for WWII, then we sailed right back into it and I personally know people who were involved in putting down Moro uprisings in the 90's. The US economy did pretty well supplying weapons and so forth for the allies up to the point where Japan attacked the US, which changed everything.

[John]

Maybe in some obscure way, the 80-year sunspot cycle
affected human evolution, leading to an 80-year
lifespan.

John

[Lily]

Yipe, lots of things to respond to. I'll address all of these many interesting things in the detail they need when I get back later today, but for now, don't the markets look awfully crashy? It seems like they're getting pulled sharply in two different directions these last few days.

[vincecate]

[...] but for now, don't the markets look awfully crashy?

Ya, but many of us have thought so for some time now. I got March and June puts on the S&P and the March expired worthless.

I think interest rates are going to go up and the P/E ratios will have to go down. The most recent interest rate trend is up again, but we are not reaching new highs yet.

http://www.fxstreet.com/rates-charts/bond-yield/