One discovery really can change everything. What we are now discovering is that the economy – the system which supplies material products and services to society – has stopped growing, and has started to contract.
What this discovery means is that everything affected by economic conditions – including finance, politics, and the balance of forces within society – is going to change in ways that are only now starting to become apparent.
This is isn’t a difficult discovery or, even remotely, a new one. It has been known since at least as far back as 1972, when the authors of The Limits to Growth gave us a remarkably prescient picture of how events would pan out.
Far from being a hard concept to grasp, the reality is the simple impossibility of infinite economic expansion on a finite planet. That energy is at the core of everything material – which of necessity includes the economy – is day-one knowledge for every student of biology, chemistry or physics.
What falsified the gloomy predictions of Thomas Malthus was the omission of energy from his calculus. He didn’t, and arguably couldn’t, have foreseen how the harnessing of energy from coal, oil and natural gas was going to transform everything, including the production of food.
We cannot conclude, as an absolute certainty, that the fading out of the fossil fuel impetus is going to compress society back to a pre-industrial scale and simplicity.
But we are entitled to conclude that the economy will contract unless and until a successor form of energy is discovered. That successor energy must match or exceed the energy density of fossil fuels. Neither renewables nor – in our current state of knowledge – nuclear power can deliver on that requirement.
The idea that the economy is entirely under our control is nothing more than formalised hubris. The “dismal science” of economics may or may not be dismal, but it certainly isn’t a science. The “laws” of economics are nothing more than behavioural observations about the human artefact of money, and are in no way analogous to the laws of the physical sciences.
We are inching, painfully slowly, towards a new conception of economics. This will be built on a combination of disciplines. Thermodynamics will answer material questions, such as the creation, operation, maintenance and replacement of the productive system. Behavioural analysis will address questions of human interaction within the monetary parallel of the material economic system.
There’s a prior analogy for this duality, though in that instance the disciplines drew apart rather than converging. This dates from a time when the study of the material was known as “natural philosophy”, as distinct from the “moral philosophy” of studying behavioural issues in society. From this duality emerged the separate concepts of “natural sciences” and philosophy as the study of the human condition.
Economics, which has to try to balance the relationships between the “natural” (science) and the human (“philosophy”), has managed, in its orthodox or classical form, to get this duality hopelessly mixed up.
No apology need be made for reiterating that the banking system cannot lend energy or other resources into existence, and that central bankers can’t conjure them from the ether. When we pore over the latest puffs of smoke from the Federal Reserve, or mull over the promises and pronouncements made by politicians, what we’re considering is finance, which isn’t remotely the same thing as economics.
However painful and protracted the process may be, fact always wins out over fiction.
The facts of the economy are that we use energy to extract raw materials and convert them into products and services. This, like so much else, is a duality. Just as energy is used to convert materials into products, so energy itself is converted from a dense to a diffuse form. This diffuse form is waste heat, and, when fossil fuels are the dense energy input to the system, this waste heat contains climate-harming gases.
These productive and diffusive systems are inseparable, and of corresponding length. If we switch to energy inputs of lesser density, we truncate (shorten) the dissipative process. This means that the productive sequence, too, is shortened, resulting in a smaller economy.
This applies just as much to services as it does to products. We cannot deliver parcels without a vehicle, or provide technological services without hardware. In both cases, energy is required to operate the hardware, as well as to create it and, in due course, replace it.
Economic supply is thus a productive-dissipative equation. It becomes a dissipative-landfill system when we choose to accelerate the cycle of creation, disposal and replacement.
Hitherto, this dissipative-landfill model, which is the basis of consumerism, has been feasible because we’ve had the material abundance of the energy needed to make it work, and the assumed abundance of the ability of the environment to absorb the by-products of this behaviour.
Time is being called on the dissipative-landfill model, and this call is coming from two directions.
It is surely clear beyond dispute that we are testing, and probably over-taxing, the absorption tolerances of the natural environment.
Meanwhile, our past exploitation of the easiest, lowest-cost sources of fossil fuel energy has put us onto a decline path, where each new source of oil, gas or coal has a lesser ex-cost value than the one that it replaces.
My approach to the duality of economics has been to propose the concept of “two economies”. One of these is the “real economy” of material products and services, a system driven by energy. The other is the parallel “financial economy” of money, transactions and credit.
SEEDS – the Surplus Energy Economics Data System – interprets and projects the economy on the basis of this duality. It reveals that numerous economic problems are traceable to imbalances in the relationship between the “two economies” of the material and the monetary.
The linkage between the two is hierarchical. At least in theory, the “real” economy could exist without its financial counterpart. It is at least possible for us to operate the material economy on the basis of sharing, barter or centralised allocation.
But the “financial” economy cannot exist without its material corollary. Having no intrinsic worth, money commands value only as an exercisable “claim” on the material products and services for which it can be exchanged.
Beyond efficiency of exchange, what the financial economy brings to the party is temporal distinction. Money can be spent now (“flow”), or it can be set aside for the future (“stock”). We measure the stock of the material in days or weeks of forward demand (or, in the case of electricity, in minutes or seconds). With the stock component of money, we can enter into transactions extending decades into the future.
Critically, though, the choice between flow and stock does not change the fundamental monetary characteristic of exchange value as “claim”. We can make promises ranging far into the future, but we cannot honour them if, at the due date, there is an insufficiency of material products and services required for the process of exchange.
As a human artefact, money is vulnerable to fakery, even if there is no malign intent.
In the world of fine art, fakery is deliberate if it involves knocking up a picture at home and trying to pass it off on an unsuspecting buyer as a Rembrandt. Fakery can be unintentional if we’ve always believed – mistakenly – that the painting that’s been hanging in the drawing room for generations is a genuine Gainsborough.
The same applies to financial commitments. When we enter into transactions whose closure will not occur until decades have passed, the best we can do is to either calculate – or simply assume – that, when that day comes, the material wherewithal required will be available.
The financial economy, in its stock function of assets and liabilities, is based on a set of assumptions which are – in most cases inadvertently – false. The idea that the economy is an infinitely-expanding system powered by money is a fallacy. The economy is, in reality, an energy system, limited by the finality of resource value and the finality of environmental tolerance.
This, ultimately, is why we’ve been using fakery – perhaps innocent, perhaps intentional – to keep the financial system from toppling over. We tried to counter the deceleration (“secular stagnation”) of the 1990s by ramping up the supply of credit to the system. When this led, not to the nirvana of accelerating material growth, but to the crisis of 2008-09, we opted to turbocharge the credit flow with monetary gimmickry.
The result has been the simultaneous creation of an “everything bubble” in asset prices (which is destined to burst) and a liabilities mountain (which must collapse because it cannot possibly be honoured).
This has turned into a version of the old childhood game of “pass the parcel”. We don’t know when the music will stop, but we do know that it will. What we need to find, in the rubble of the detonated asset bubble and the debris of the exploded credit mountain, is a way of understanding the economy, not as we might like it to be, but as it really is.
81 thoughts on “#268: At the end of the last delusion”
I think you need to factor in human energy/demographics.
It is the knock on effect of birth control, abortion and break down of marriage that has lead to economic stagnation. It takes 40 years for this damage to become clearly apparent, hence Japan’s economy hit the wall in 1989, 40 years after legalising abortion in 1948. Europe legalised abortion in the late 60s to early 70s which points to hitting the economic wall in 2008.
Immigration is always just a temporary patch.
If we’d not introduced birth control, presumably the population would be bigger now than it is. That would have increased the human energy input but, in terms of energy units, that’s a tiny proportion of the energy used in the economy. We’d also need more food supply, which uses input energy to supply nutritional energy.
The surplus energy from human labour – output minus input – is tiny. A few years back, I tried to work out how much manual labour contributes to the energy used in a single industrial economy and came out with less than 1%. Even this assumed that a high proportion of work is manual, which most of it isn’t.
As I see it, the human task in the industrial economy is the direction of energy rather than the supply of it.
If we’d lived within our means the market would be birth control……….
Think of all the people who currently exist because we expanded credit the way we did. If use of credit is pulling resources from the future into the present, why can’t we assume that it would do the same for population?
@Biocoal
Hmmmmm…… I’m not convinced on the role of abortion or failed marriages in economic decline.
It’s oil, or the lack of. Pure and simple.
The blame game has begun!
When I say “human energy” I don’t actually mean Joules, I mean the desire to achieve things. It is well known that the typical nuclear family husband with several children is the most driven to work hard and creates the household that spends the most (real) money.
The divorce bubble temporarily increased housing demand and consumerism but was debt supported.
You cannot escape the fact that all successful societies and civilizations grow out of the surplus created by patriarchal society that values marriage, family and child rearing.
Current western decay is a result of generational family dysfunction epitomized by fatherlessness and the resulting reduction in IQ and conscientiousness.
Maynard Keynes who pushed the parasitic fake money economy was homosexual and childless.
You can not have strong economy that doesn’t value family and children, it is impossible, it is how we are hardwired.
For example
So, economic decline is also due to homosexuals as well as abortion, failed marriages, decline of patriarchy etc etc etc……
It’s much more simple than that. It’s a decline in oil.
One of my fears, as we start on the road to energy descent, is that all sorts of prejudices will come to the fore.
The blame game will start as people need someone ELSE to blame for their declining living standards. Ripe for manipulation by snake oil salesman like Trump.
Make America Great Again.
Not unless new, 1950’s levels, of crude oil can be found somewhere.
Building border walls etc aren’t going to stop the slide.
You ignore human overshoot that is destroying the biosphere. Typical anthropogenic mentality.
Although it’s not that, I think there is a relationship between cheap energy and those things you mention.
While I don’t know the next thing about history, I strongly suspect women used to have fewer rights because they couldn’t “afford” them (I’m suspicious of charitable narratives about how we have evolved to be more tolerant). Now they have more power because they earn as much as men and thus have more leverage in a capitalist system sustained by cheap energy. Each gender has a reproductive strategy and our current social structure must be favorable to women’s strategy. The things you mention such as birth control, abortion and break down of marriage must be part of it.
I don’t know if I sound like a cavemen. I’m trying to be as matter-of-factly as possible.
It will be interesting to see how society changes after the cheap energy era. Many of us won’t be around to see it. Society has some inertia and its changes lag the changes of the forces behind them.
“This is isn’t a difficult discovery or, even remotely, a new one. It has been known since at least as far back as 1972, when the authors of The Limits to Growth gave us a remarkably prescient picture of how events would pan out.”
LTG had no speculations on post peak, it assumed there would be no advances. Starship appears to work, there is endless energy in the solar system and the universe does expand. Personally following LTG lead to missing huge opportunities over the last forty-fifty years.
Collect metals in space, refine them in space, do solar on a large scale(Musk looks at a 10k sq mile solar farm, store energy as hydrogen(yes it has problems, deal with them). Toyota and others are working on hydrogen engines, metals from space make fuel cells cheap and recycling Pt is a breeze compared to Li.
We must stop looking at what cannot be and look for what will be.
Earth is our spaceship and incredibly well designed. We are developing cheap transportation to space, we can move our pollution off earth.
It will be bumpy, but to date, betting on everything not working has been a bad bet.
Dennis L
“ … we can move our pollution off earth.”
Ah, yes. A redux of that moronic 60s mantra – ‘The solution to pollution is dilution.’
Have a look at the sea surface temps on this chart for Jan 1 – 12 2024 (the short black line) vs the record breaking 2023 temps (orange line). It would appear time is up.
There will be no space mining. Too much chaos to come on the ground.
It would be interesting to explore what part of technology and science can be “locked in”. I can’t quite explain it but I suspect technology is somewhat “alive”: if research stops, it can go in reverse and obviously there will be less resources devoted to research, which is a product of economic development. If some technology can be kept, the future won’t be a mirror image of the past.
I understand it won’t serve for a higher prosperity, just a different way of life.
I’m also curious as to what credit will look like in a new system.
While quite an eclectic individual, J. M. Greer has written cleverly about this issue in his non-fiction, fiction, and posts (and, of course, many others have wondered if there is a positive “ratchet effect” when it comes to human innovations. Ruth DeFries “The Big Ratchet” being an example from the eco-moderists).
On the “save” notion, he writes, “One of the common consequences of the fall of civilizations is that cultures get shredded, and many things of value that aren’t needed for immediate survival get lost. Arts, crafts, music, literature, sciences, technologies, religious and philosophical traditions – none of them are invulnerable. When they make it through the dark age that follows the breakdown of a civilization, nearly always it’s because someone cared enough to keep them going as living traditions. Between the immense cultural legacies of our present civilization, and the extreme vulnerability of most of those legacies to the effects of decline and fall, such people will be desperately needed in the years to come.”
If we do those three things then history might not repeat itself?
Thank you again Dr. Morgan,
Apt title I might add. I guess it must be expected that peoples responses will get weirder and weirder as the reality, but without the understanding of, depletion sets in like the sudden stop from a fall. Looking for scapegoats will be only one of many responses
I cannot see us collectively dealing with this well. Just the size and momentum of the consumer landfill economy and the employment involved. Hard and sharp corrections to a reality of less of everything will never win an election. How does this transition when leadership is invested and somewhat forced into the continuation of the current situation or face being removed from office? Could leaders grasp it even if they knew it was real?
What would they choose to do? What would they be allowed to do?
I used to believe people in mass had the power to choose our way forwards. Every dollar spent was essentially a vote for what kind of future we wanted. I believe this only holds partially true and we have chosen our future but we will not be very happy with it. I also realize today that people are far more influenced by malignant information if it closely matches their desires and aides in the denial of their own culpability. Making good and very, very hard decisions isn’t something we are good at.
I have mentioned it before but Low-tech magazine has got to be the best place to find good options for a possible future living with less energy. His topics are varied and vast, new tech and old. Worth the time to take a dive.
All the best,
David McCoy
Yes, unfortunately, I pretty much completely rely on “money”, the financial economy, to intercede on my behalf with the material economy, for basically all my needs in life. I think this is the case for the vast majority of people on earth today, 8 billion plus.
How to keep resources flowing in my direction? Is the only real question on the mind(s) of all 8 billion. I guess.
Money is certainly a necessity for the half of the world’s population that lives in cities, but there a several billion people, mostly in the Global South, who self-provision a significant fraction of their necessities (food, water, shelter). These poor rural farmers are least likely to be affected by economic contraction (even while they are most likely to be affected by environmental disruption and climate change). But poor farmers in the Global South and elsewhere have the least to fear from the disconnect between the real economy and finance.
The people who live in cities have the most to fear from this disconnect, but they have become trapped by it and trapped by simply living in a city. It is very difficult to leave a city and live in the country, mostly because access to land is so expensive. So the vast majority of city people can never leave. This inability for city folk to extract themselves from being trapped is their biggest risk of premature death. If you depend on money to purchase your necessities and money gradually loses its value you just gradually become poorer. If its disconnect with the real economy causes money to completely lose its value, you starve.
Prudence is the process of minimizing risk. I suggest that prudence now requires leaving the city and preparing oneself to live without money. Only a tiny fraction of people living in cities can make this transition. Will you be one of them?
@Joe
Please provide sources that state illegal immigrants pay more in taxes then citizens and use less government services. Thanks!
@Joe
No, I will not make the transition. I am a product of the industrial system, and I will die along with it, or so it seems.
In fact, I’m almost tempted to say that finance v. “real” economy is a false dichotomy. They’re both part of the same, industrial, system. If you look at the manipulations of finance, at least on a macro scale, they’re all about trying to push and prod the material economy to produce and keep producing “more”, of whatever. Kinda like whipping a dead, or dieing, horse, with the same predictable results.
In regard to billions of “self sufficient” third world farmers, there was not billions of them before industrial agricultural inputs, and there won’t be billions of them after industry dies. I’d say.
Ah yes an NGO who butters their bread with this issue. Looking at the about us section, everyone who works for them appears to be affiliated with some other left leaning organization, such as the Chanzuckerberg initiative…… Can you come up with someone or a site that is a bit more objective?
“Our talented staff — which includes a number of experts directly impacted by these issues — is a diverse group hailing from many states, countries, and professional backgrounds. What unites us is our shared commitment to improving lives and making America a stronger, safer place.”
They don’t even have a mission statement on the about us page, i find that odd. So you’re essentially citing the people who call everyone who disagrees with them racist. I’m not surprised. In fact i would argue that everything that has passed the last 40 or 50 odd years could be described as “progressive”.
On the last post Diego mentioned that he finds the “right” populism to be more organic and Dr. Morgan is confused as to why “right” populism is more popular. Could it be because everything that the government has initiated and instituted the past 40 years has nothing to do with the “right” or “conservative” viewpoints and people are tired of being called racist for disagreeing?
Do you have any other sources that might be more objective? If so thanks in advance.
But this fits into the larger discussion Don and myself were having on the last post, and i’d ask that you both consider and perhaps provide examples of all the racism and prejudice you guys are fighting? (I’m assuming you both lean left, please correct me if i’m wrong)
It is rather entertaining how the “left” have alienated so many people over the past four to seven years. They do far more damage to their own causes then anyone on the “right” could ever dream of doing.
Everything cited on that site is funded by .gov………….
TOP OCCUPATIONS WITH HIGHEST SHARE OF IMMIGRANT WORKERS
#1 Manicurists and pedicurists74.6% #2 Graders and sorters, agricultural products57.5% #3 Plasterers and stucco masons56.0% #4 Taxi drivers54.4% #5 Drywall installers, ceiling tile installers, and tapers53.2%
So again, the people who advocate for immigration are not competing with those immigrants for jobs. Can you see where anger builds up? Isn’t it the very same attitude of bailouts for the rich and austerity for every one else? Can you understand how the “left” is losing the working class?
FWD.us is a 501(c)(4) immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy organization.[3][4][5][6] It is based in the United States and headquartered in Washington, D.C. [7], and it advocates for prison reform, status for undocumented immigrants, particularly for DACA recipients, and higher levels of immigration visas, particularly for H-1B visas for foreign workers in STEM fields.[8][9][10]
The president of FWD.us is Todd Schulte, replacing previous president Joe Green in 2014.[7][11] FWD.us was founded by leaders in Silicon Valley in 2013, including Mark Zuckerberg, who wanted to advance immigration reform.[1] The group aims to build a bipartisan consensus around its proposed policies.[1][12] However, it has garnered criticism for its connections to large technology companies, its support of the Keystone XL pipeline, and what critics have described as its “questionable lobbying practices”.[13]
The organization describes itself as “bipartisan”[14] and includes both Republicans and Democrats, however, it has been described as being “backed by liberal-leaning tech CEOs and investors.
@Joe
Can you give me examples from your own mind of why in a declining economy and declining available energy its smart to add more people to your bottom line?
and other outrages that are beyond the scope of SEE and not wanted in the comments. Judging from what I see daily, global south certainly has a target for and good reason for hatred, not just fear of the West (or should we say global north). So, as BRICS (the Global South, the Global Majority) grows, and they use the dollar less and less, there will be an endpoint – or if you prefer a maximum point for economic separation and a minimum of dollar usage.
Russia has already demanded payment in Rubles for oil, and the US said, “If that is the case, Europe will not buy Russian oil.” Which more-or-less worked, as stupid as it sounds.
A French official has recently stated that the policy for the French will be to double down on their fission reactors. From where will the yellow cake come? Russia? Mali? Niger? (I don’t think so.)
The Houthis have shut down 90% of all traffic through the Suez Canal.
So, what exactly will two separate economies look like? Or, will it be 4 economies – “One of these is the “real economy” of material products and services, a system driven by energy. The other is the parallel “financial economy” of money, transactions and credit.” Two each in both halves of the planetary economy.
No oil from the global south will reach the US or Europe?
No lithium, no rare-earth metals, no copper, no phosphate will reach the US or Europe?
What does the US or Europe have, or produce that can’t be duplicated or substituted in the south?
I have not seen anywhere a compilation of what is and isn’t owned by the two competing(?) economies.
Competing? Would they simply be separate?
Can SEEDS see de-dollarization happening?
Is de-dollarization just a myth?
Do you see any impact this decade?
“So, what exactly will two separate economies look like? Or, will it be 4 economies – “One of these is the “real economy” of material products and services, a system driven by energy. The other is the parallel “financial economy” of money, transactions and credit.” Two each in both halves of the planetary economy.”
An excellent question and very forward looking. I think those that currently rule us think they can just Cold War 2.0. On the face of it, it does look like that but with a huge caveat. To continue to hold onto power in their own countries, those in the west have destroyed any unity the countries had. I think they truly thought the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union was the “end of history”. So what worked in the past they threw out and now they’ve got nothing. Don’t they strike you as that arrogant. Would be very interested to hear Dr. Morgans thoughts on this. But with regards to what will the two separate economies look like, i’d suggest it will look just like it did in the Cold War. Two competing blocks, except the West is in disarray and sold its manufacturing base (at least in the United States) to China. So even if they were to compete, along with declining oil reserves in the West, it would take at least a decade or more to revive manufacturing.
“Do you see any impact this decade?”
I think Hemingway said it best when asked how did you go bankrupt? To which he responded: Very slowly and then all at once. We are out of the very slowly phase and very quickly approaching in the all at once phase in my opinion.
I think it might be time to look at de-dollarization and related issues, including geopolitics.
SEEDS can see de-dollarization happening, and I think it can shed some new light on this. I’ll have to do a lot of stats work before I can present it, though.
Thank you Mr. House all three links appear interesting and are appreciated.
Thank you Dr. Morgan. I am looking forward to hearing more.
Dr. Tim I too would be very interested in any light that SEEDS can shed on whither de-dollarization as depending on the answer this will potentially have a huge impact on US hegemony and the global political landscape. Current analysis is replete with conflicting viewpoints. Thin end of the wedge examples such as the Chinese/Saudi agreement to settle oil sales in yuan lead me to think defenders of the US $ as reserve currency are blinded by wishful thinking and the seductive influence of precedence.
Yes, de-dollarization is high on my “to do” list. I’ll tell you, if I may, about some other things on that list.
One is a new tool I’m developing called the Transactional Curve. This is a technique for projecting trends in monetary activity (business sectors, for instance) using an anchor to material value. I’m more excited about this than anything since RRCI (Realized Rate of Comprehensive Inflation). I may or may not write up the Transactional Curve, or simply use it in the background.
Second, I’m increasingly concerned about what’s happening in the broader Middle East. I’m the last person to be alarmist, but I think there’s real oil crisis risk in this situation. We have a template for this – 1973-74 as ‘years that changed the world’.
Third, I’m trying to interlock fiscal and monetary trends on an underlying value basis. This will take time.
So yes, de-dollarization might well be next up. The real issue isn’t so much the reserve currency, but flows of trade and finance, and America’s ‘exorbitant privilege’. The latest $1 trillion addition to US government debt happened in only fourteen weeks. It’s easy to report “growth” if you can pour borrowed liquidity into the system at this rate of knots.
I have been following the peak oil discussion for the last 20 years, and here are my last two presentations of this
This was 2 years ago
This was about 40 days ago.
17.50 mark there is some interesting data from Saudi Arabia
23.50 mark is an important observation.
Thanks again for facilitating the conversation about the state of our economic system and how we need to look for a new way if we are to navigate the ‘pass-the-parcel’ game we are currently playing. Two recent books – The Wealth Supremacy by Marjorie Kelly & Less Is More by Jason Hickel – have brought home to me just how urgent this need is, but also how our current system is so deeply ingrained and virulently protected by those that benefit from its mantra of infinite growth. We no longer have democracies, but plutocracies or the term that I prefer – thugocracies – that will use any means, however unethical or violent, to protect their hegemony.
Our need goes much deeper than a just a new economic system, but a complete mindset shift from the duality enshrined by Bacon and Descartes, where most of the world is objectified, to one of animism where all of nature is subjectified as a world full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationships with others.
We face a stark choice: either we proactively make this mindset shift before the music stops, or we enter a new Dark Age where it is forced on the surviving humans. Mother Earth is reminding us that we are not her masters, but her guests for as long as we respect and nurture all her subjects. There are encouraging signs that the message is being heard and acted on, but time is not on our side, which makes the dialogue that you and others are leading all the more important.
Our need goes much deeper than a just a new economic system, but a complete mindset shift from the duality enshrined by Bacon and Descartes, where most of the world is objectified, to one of animism where all of nature is subjectified as a world full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationships with others.
I meant to add, thank you for posting this comment, it’s an important point missing from so much discussion.
Please refrain from this Mother Earth / Captain Planet sentimental nonsense. The earth is not your mother, is not even conscious , and at best is indifferent to your existence. At worst, as has been throughout history, it’s a hostile environment which is likely to kill or injure you in a hundred different ways. Mankind’s triumph has been to survive the many trials and tribulations which our existence has thrown at it.
Several years ago after studying our resource predicament and trying to formulate some sort of estimation on the time when my world will fall apart, I came up with a theory I call the “fluff crash” which I think will emerge as the first stage (or stair step if you will) in the coming de-growth trajectory.
I propose that approximately 30% of our current resource consumption is used for “fluff” activities which offer no use to the basic needs of the world.
Some examples (although hundreds more abound):
-Cruise lines
-Vacation air travel
-Auto, boat, motorcycle racing
-Many professional sports and the required air/land travel
-Plastic “throw away” toys from other lands.
-Recreational vehicle purchases/travel of which the construction and use are a big energy hog.
-Basically the whole Landfill mentality of manufacturing with little care for recycling or repair possibilities.
Some of those points are touchy subjects for those who participate, but never-the-less, the world would survive just fine without them.
Granted, if they were to disappear, millions would be put out of work, but those “fluff jobs” are currently supported by the fluff portion of the economy. The hardship would be massive because of the spin-off effects such as the hotel and tourism industry falling apart.
So I propose that the first step in the de-growth trend will be a Fluff Crash that will happen over approximately a decade where one-by-one sectors of this part the energy consumption mix get their lights turned out.
This phase will be non negotiable due to it’s coming un-affordability.
In my opinion the fluff crash began 1 to 2 years ago. Slowly at first.
It may free up another 30% of the available oil for use in agriculture and other required industries therefore buying us another decade.
It won’t be pretty, and governments will attempt bailouts for various collapsing industries in the assumption that the free money will tide them over until “things get better” and growth returns, but that growth won’t come back. So there will be unemployment and money printing.
Yes, I too live and operate in the current fluff based system, but I am prepared (and fully expect) to lose some non-essentials one by one.
PS: The share values in the industries noted above may suffer greatly.
I think you are right on, but 30% as the portion of the Fluff Economy may be conservative: the Convenience Industrial Complex has us all on the hamster wheel of mindless consumerism and needs to keep us there to feel its desire for perpetual growth.
In his book ‘Less Is More’, Jason Hickel goes into this in great detail and also comes up with practices that can move us into a post growth – or steady state – economy while mitigating the huge social dislocations we are concerned about. Yes, we will lose some of our shiny toys, but we will live in a society where human wellness is the norm, not the exception it is today.
It’s been reported to me that a reader has been unable to place a comment here because the send button is greyed out. Before I contact WP, can anyone else who has had this problem let me know using the Contact page? Thanks.
> Before I contact WP…
Let’s see if said send button (mis)behaves 😇
Maybe because he hasn’t logged in.
This is from expatriate UK blogger, previously journalist, John Ward, residing in The Gambia, after being driven out of the French countryside by neoliberal “banking” and the exsanguinating new-ways of French bureaucracy.
“Gambia is further down the road to impoverished perdition…and this why I contend that Brits in particular and the EU in general would do well to use my adopted country as a yardstick for what the coming Apocalypse might entail.
Ultimately, neoliberal capitalism is a cul de sac economic system doomed to eat itself.”
From its definition V=G/M, where G is the gross domestic product and M is the money supply and since most of the money is lent into existence by banks, taking the logarithmic differential of this gives
(1/V)dV/dt = (1/G)dG/dt-(1/M)dM/dt
where the terms now represent percentage changes of each, does this equation basically explain what is happening. Namely, money supply i.e. debt has grown much faster that G (the GDP) and this is the reason for the drastic drop in the velocity of money, now faster and deeper than as we entered the Great Depression. The chart is for the US dollar but ought to apply to other economies as well.
You don’t need to look at anything but the original V=G/M equation to see what is happening. If the devisor grows faster than the dividend then the quotient declines. This is what has been happening for a long time, but so what?
The definition of the velocity of money is so simple and close enough to a tautology that I have difficulty seeing how it matters, but perhaps the experts in monetary policy that comment here can tell me why the velocity of money is important.
“This paper has suggested a simple model that can account for the key anomalies of the traditional monetary approach. It disaggregates the quantity of credit into a ‘real’ and a financial circulation. In time periods, when the ratio of credit in the financial circulation to credit in the real circulation rises, the simple quantity theory must be expected to disappoint, as it is a special case of the more general quantity theorem of disaggregated credit. In such time periods, a financial boom is likely, as asset prices are driven up by speculative borrowing on the back of collateralised assets. This explains why the traditional monetary quantity theory was not popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and again in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Then the traditionally defined velocity of money declines and excess credit creation can ‘spill over’ as foreign investment. However, during time periods such as the 1950s, when in many countries credit was mainly channeled into the real economy, asset prices remained stable and the traditional quantity theory could be expected to hold. The fact that the model can account for the major anomalies observed in many countries over many time periods demonstrates generality and robustness.
The empirical results for the Japanese case have been unambiguously supportive. The Japanese asset bubble of the 1980s was due to excess credit creation by banks for speculative purposes, largely in the real estate market. The apparent velocity decline is shown to be due to a rise in credit money employed for financial transactions, while the correctly defined velocity of the real circulation is found to be very stable“
In response to the comment by Joe Clarkson, yes, the ratio tells trivially what happens qualitatively, but the differential form allows one to quantify it, by knowing the trajectory of the money supply and GDP, one can then check whether the velocity has decreased the way it has. Since the drop in the velocity of money is from 2.2 to 1.2 since 1997 to 2000, and this kind of drop has not happened before, even during the era from 1900 to 1932, I would think that significance of this ought not be ignored. Of course, there is issue of how much of the FED is creating and how much of this is created into existence by commercial banks, needs to be sorted out, but I would think this is a second order effect, as most of the money is lent into existence by commercial banks.
I have two problems with the conventional measure of velocity.
First, I don’t think the components are discrete – since GDP is a measure of transactional activity, if the supply of money is increased, surely activity measured as GDP rises as well?
Second, what are we trying to measure? What might interest us could be how long people hold on to money before spending it. In times of high inflation, they might be minded to spend money more quickly, before it loses value. This is an important thing that we need to know, the classic example, of course, being Weimar.
What I think we’ve been seeing is the transition from industrial to finance capitalism. That would imply a rise in capital flows as a proportion of economic activity.
An Example from British Medicine Illustrating the Curse of Complexity
I’ll also add that it illustrates the curse of MBO. If the reward is tied to the objective to reduce legal costs, then complexity will be heaped up, as we see. Total costs will increase, quality will decline, and the burden, in a declining ECoE environment, will break the back of the donkeys paying the bill.
Don Stewart
Federal Reserve Losses
As Wolf Street reports, the Fed can print money, so gains and losses are irrelevant to it. Any gains are paid to the Treasury. What impact do the losses actually have?
“The losses do matter to the Treasury Department though – which is no longer getting the remittances from the Fed. And so the Fed’s losses are swelling the deficit and the debt indirectly via the absence of remittances for years to come.”
Don Stewart
“29:10 the central bank steps in goes to the
29:14 banks and purchases the non-performing
29:16 assets at face value and the problem is
29:19 solved there’s no cost and this is
29:20 exactly what Bernanke did that’s why in
29:24 September October 2008 the balance sheet
29:27 of the Federal Reserve Quadrupled in
29:29 one month this doesn’t create inflation . . .
30:05 . . . because you’re not creating money
30:07 you’re solving the problem in the
30:09 banking system the banks are healthy
30:12 again have strong balance sheets and can
30:14 lend again and they did in America is
30:15 the first country to get out of the
30:17 crisis . . . “
Read an interesting article in a Gas Fitting trade magazine this week.
Here in the UK, the government is imposing new rules on boiler manufacturers.
4% of each boiler manufacturer’s annual sales will have to be of heat pumps.
If they fail to reach the 4% target, then they will be fined £3,000 for every heat pump they are short!!!!!!
I don’t see how boiler manufacturers can make the public buy heat pumps. With the “cost of living crisis”, people can’t afford their existing heating bills, never mind replacing has boilers with heat pumps.
Be interesting to see how that one plays out.
They really are degenerates.
Trying to control all markets.
Getting sick of it to be honest.
The UK is not far from becoming a third world nation the way it is going.
It does seem odd that a supplier will be getting penalized for not selling enough products.!?!?!?!
I think the government has postponed the start date of the ban on the installation of new gas boilers. Was going to unpopular with the voters when they find out how much a heat pump would costs or all those modern houses that have combi boilers but no space for a hot water cylinder.
Better to put pressure on manufacturers than buyers, or so they think.
My neighbour is getting a heat pump fitted. He is paying £3,500 and getting a government grant for £7,500 to pay the rest.
Seems like the government will have to pay (create new money) for a big chunk of the transition to heat pumps.
So basically the UK now has a boiler tax. Didn’t it a few centuries ago have a window tax?
This film is very relevant, Dr. Tim – spotted via Tim Watkins.
I notice in my daily work the implications of a declining birth rate. One could almost argue that this has directly caused the broad collapse in defined benefit pensions more than anything else. Of the dozen or so couples who became close friends of ours in the mid-90s, only one have become grandparents so far. My mother was 21 when she had me, not so unusual in the 1960s. The strong link with financial crisis and declining populations is stark.
@Mark………596a
Thanks for the link to the video.
All very interesting.
I’m with Bob on this.
In the video, the one common factor that triggers a big increase in the number of people having NO children, was an economic shock. Each country has very different social norms but they all registered steep increases in the amount of women having no children over their lifetimes, during/after faltering economies
Understandable really. If you are struggling financially to keep your head above water, then why would you add to your problems by having children????
It wasn’t that long ago that British tabloid newspapers would vilify working class people that had large families and being unable to support them and so claiming State Benefits.
Maybe the only way working class families (the majority of the population) can afford to have kids is to be on State Benefits!!!????
Interesting dynamic that will play out even more as the economy goes into degrowth big time!!!!
The other eye opener in the video was that it’s not just the “developed world” that has a declining birth rate. It is happening everywhere other than sub Saharan Africa.
The declining population is not causing any financial crisis – more likely it’s the other way round.
If people can’t afford a house they might choose not to have children.
As has been established, surplus energy is the driver of economic growth. Most jobs are unnecessary yet people get paid anyway, all thanks to the economic growth ultimately due to FF.
Pensions invest in (gamble on) stuff which might hit trouble in the near future (like stock markets, mining operations, FF etc., or, even worse, ‘green’ technologies). The threat to these things is not dependent on population size but on resource limits (which are now (or soon will be) being reached).
It is true that too much money has been promised by pensions and they may well collapse instead of paying out.
It is deomgraphics more than population as well as per capita stuff including but not limited to energy.
P and K are a problem, lack or high cost of either will deal a blow to population.
I find much to agree with in this essay. I don’t find either side of the US legislative aisle to be grasping reality.
Don Stewart
In regard to Ukraine: How many human lives are the NATO countries willing to sacrifice in order to prevent the partition of the country along lines which the residents choose themselves?
Don Stewart
A good essay about the narratives of contemporary politics.
Somebody told me at college it was safer not to read The Lord of the Rings, because “Tolkein is hobbit-forming”.
@Don Stewart
Enjoyed reading that. Thanks for the link.
The SF/Fantasy phenomenon, is just another incarnation of a very old human habit.
The ability to imagine things that don’t actually exist.
It’s at the core of what makes us human. For good or for bad.
We imagine all kinds of things into existence that didn’t exist before.
Both physical (cars, phones, etc etc etc) and mental (gods, demons, double entry book keeping, mathematics, good and evil, heaven and hell)
Technology vs. Energy for Dominance?
Some provocations:
*Indi from Sri Lanka: https://indi.ca/why-america-is-losing-to-yemen/
*Donald Trump vs. the Republican Party and the Legal System and Mainstream Media
*What YouTube, or it’s AI incarnation, chooses to show me
Indi’s argument is that the enormously expensive aircraft carriers of the US cannot effectively fight against drones. Donald Trump is intentionally creating chaos in order to capture the zeitgeist of a significant segment of the American population. Lawyers may think he is losing, but his base think he is winning. Trump has claimed that MAGA now totally dominates the Republican Party.
And finally, I scrolled through about 200 links that the YouTube AI chooses to put on my desktop this morning. I won’t say it is every fad in the known universe, but they seem to cover the bases pretty well. It’s curious to try to parse out why they are choosing to send me many links to women claiming that women want dominant men. Because I check in on some legal analysts and the Trump rape case is currently a hot topic in those circles?
One thread connecting all these observations is that they are low energy. They don’t involve tanks or aircraft carriers, and big buildings and factories are not the first thing one notices. They don’t put food on the table, or keep my house warm as the Arctic Vortex crumbles.
Just my observation on 1/18/24….Don Stewart
I saved this part-
…..”It’s their land and it’s their sea and these Ferenghi, these Carbon Crusaders need to just fuck off and stop bothering everybody. “….
We got a break from the cold spell yesterday. The “old timer’s” ash got removed and the unit is up and running in time for an expected 12+” of snow and 0F minus wind chills over the next few days. Between the old timer and the jotul b vent propane stove we can get by without grid power for a day or so before I need to pull the dual fuel generator out of the garage to get some juice to keep the well etc. operating Ok.
Thanks for the link.
I was interested to see one my of charts pop up here. The discussion of energy is very good, and the statement that “The economic cost of producing energy has gone up 5X since 1980” presumably references ECoE rising from 2% to 10% over that period………….
Egon has referenced your work a few times in the past I have noticed.
I always listen to what he has to say. He has vast experience in finance/banking and has been warning people for many years now.
It seems to me as each day that goes by that the West is close to actual collapse.
I don’t use that word lightly.
The national debts are notionally extremely high. The last 15 years has seen so much debt issued way out of proportion to GDP or actual productivity.
The USA is getting close or is at the stage where they need to borrow currency to just pay off the interest on their debt.
Immigration is out of control and inflation has still not been controlled and now we have a few wars going on.
2024/25 is going to be chaotic. Something is going to blow and soon.
Don’t know what it will be or when but it is coming.
Yes, he has referenced my work, and used my charts, before this, but without acknowledging his source (maybe I’m just being tetchy about this).
The West is in very big trouble. The US added its latest trillion of government debt in just fourteen weeks. The UK can’t afford to invest to stop untreated sewage contaminating its rivers, and can’t afford to repair crumbling schools and hospitals. But “can’t afford” is odd for a country whose government has borrowed (at today’s values) £1.6tn since the GFC, £900bn of it created (“printed”) by the BoE.
I saw this posted on the web, idk if it is genuine or setup, but it expresses the zeitgeist,
Surplus Energy Economics 
I think you need to factor in human energy/demographics.
It is the knock on effect of birth control, abortion and break down of marriage that has lead to economic stagnation. It takes 40 years for this damage to become clearly apparent, hence Japan’s economy hit the wall in 1989, 40 years after legalising abortion in 1948. Europe legalised abortion in the late 60s to early 70s which points to hitting the economic wall in 2008.
Immigration is always just a temporary patch.
If we’d not introduced birth control, presumably the population would be bigger now than it is. That would have increased the human energy input but, in terms of energy units, that’s a tiny proportion of the energy used in the economy. We’d also need more food supply, which uses input energy to supply nutritional energy.
The surplus energy from human labour – output minus input – is tiny. A few years back, I tried to work out how much manual labour contributes to the energy used in a single industrial economy and came out with less than 1%. Even this assumed that a high proportion of work is manual, which most of it isn’t.
As I see it, the human task in the industrial economy is the direction of energy rather than the supply of it.
If we’d lived within our means the market would be birth control……….
Think of all the people who currently exist because we expanded credit the way we did. If use of credit is pulling resources from the future into the present, why can’t we assume that it would do the same for population?
@Biocoal
Hmmmmm…… I’m not convinced on the role of abortion or failed marriages in economic decline.
It’s oil, or the lack of. Pure and simple.
The blame game has begun!
When I say “human energy” I don’t actually mean Joules, I mean the desire to achieve things. It is well known that the typical nuclear family husband with several children is the most driven to work hard and creates the household that spends the most (real) money.
The divorce bubble temporarily increased housing demand and consumerism but was debt supported.
You cannot escape the fact that all successful societies and civilizations grow out of the surplus created by patriarchal society that values marriage, family and child rearing.
Current western decay is a result of generational family dysfunction epitomized by fatherlessness and the resulting reduction in IQ and conscientiousness.
Maynard Keynes who pushed the parasitic fake money economy was homosexual and childless.
You can not have strong economy that doesn’t value family and children, it is impossible, it is how we are hardwired.
For example
@Biocoal
So, economic decline is also due to homosexuals as well as abortion, failed marriages, decline of patriarchy etc etc etc……
It’s much more simple than that. It’s a decline in oil.
One of my fears, as we start on the road to energy descent, is that all sorts of prejudices will come to the fore.
The blame game will start as people need someone ELSE to blame for their declining living standards. Ripe for manipulation by snake oil salesman like Trump.
Make America Great Again.
Not unless new, 1950’s levels, of crude oil can be found somewhere.
Building border walls etc aren’t going to stop the slide.
You ignore human overshoot that is destroying the biosphere. Typical anthropogenic mentality.
Although it’s not that, I think there is a relationship between cheap energy and those things you mention.
While I don’t know the next thing about history, I strongly suspect women used to have fewer rights because they couldn’t “afford” them (I’m suspicious of charitable narratives about how we have evolved to be more tolerant). Now they have more power because they earn as much as men and thus have more leverage in a capitalist system sustained by cheap energy. Each gender has a reproductive strategy and our current social structure must be favorable to women’s strategy. The things you mention such as birth control, abortion and break down of marriage must be part of it.
I don’t know if I sound like a cavemen. I’m trying to be as matter-of-factly as possible.
It will be interesting to see how society changes after the cheap energy era. Many of us won’t be around to see it. Society has some inertia and its changes lag the changes of the forces behind them.
“This is isn’t a difficult discovery or, even remotely, a new one. It has been known since at least as far back as 1972, when the authors of The Limits to Growth gave us a remarkably prescient picture of how events would pan out.”
LTG had no speculations on post peak, it assumed there would be no advances. Starship appears to work, there is endless energy in the solar system and the universe does expand. Personally following LTG lead to missing huge opportunities over the last forty-fifty years.
Collect metals in space, refine them in space, do solar on a large scale(Musk looks at a 10k sq mile solar farm, store energy as hydrogen(yes it has problems, deal with them). Toyota and others are working on hydrogen engines, metals from space make fuel cells cheap and recycling Pt is a breeze compared to Li.
We must stop looking at what cannot be and look for what will be.
Earth is our spaceship and incredibly well designed. We are developing cheap transportation to space, we can move our pollution off earth.
It will be bumpy, but to date, betting on everything not working has been a bad bet.
Dennis L
“ … we can move our pollution off earth.”
Ah, yes. A redux of that moronic 60s mantra – ‘The solution to pollution is dilution.’
Have a look at the sea surface temps on this chart for Jan 1 – 12 2024 (the short black line) vs the record breaking 2023 temps (orange line). It would appear time is up.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
There will be no space mining. Too much chaos to come on the ground.
It would be interesting to explore what part of technology and science can be “locked in”. I can’t quite explain it but I suspect technology is somewhat “alive”: if research stops, it can go in reverse and obviously there will be less resources devoted to research, which is a product of economic development. If some technology can be kept, the future won’t be a mirror image of the past.
I understand it won’t serve for a higher prosperity, just a different way of life.
I’m also curious as to what credit will look like in a new system.
While quite an eclectic individual, J. M. Greer has written cleverly about this issue in his non-fiction, fiction, and posts (and, of course, many others have wondered if there is a positive “ratchet effect” when it comes to human innovations. Ruth DeFries “The Big Ratchet” being an example from the eco-moderists).
Greer wrote a piece called “Peak Oil Advice from German Poets” back in 2009 (https://www.resilience.org/stories/2009-04-09/peak-oil-advice-german-poets/). He argued that, in order to survive energy descent, we should (1) Learn one thing, (2) Give up one thing, and (3) Save one thing.
On the “save” notion, he writes, “One of the common consequences of the fall of civilizations is that cultures get shredded, and many things of value that aren’t needed for immediate survival get lost. Arts, crafts, music, literature, sciences, technologies, religious and philosophical traditions – none of them are invulnerable. When they make it through the dark age that follows the breakdown of a civilization, nearly always it’s because someone cared enough to keep them going as living traditions. Between the immense cultural legacies of our present civilization, and the extreme vulnerability of most of those legacies to the effects of decline and fall, such people will be desperately needed in the years to come.”
If we do those three things then history might not repeat itself?
Thank you again Dr. Morgan,
Apt title I might add. I guess it must be expected that peoples responses will get weirder and weirder as the reality, but without the understanding of, depletion sets in like the sudden stop from a fall. Looking for scapegoats will be only one of many responses
I cannot see us collectively dealing with this well. Just the size and momentum of the consumer landfill economy and the employment involved. Hard and sharp corrections to a reality of less of everything will never win an election. How does this transition when leadership is invested and somewhat forced into the continuation of the current situation or face being removed from office? Could leaders grasp it even if they knew it was real?
What would they choose to do? What would they be allowed to do?
I used to believe people in mass had the power to choose our way forwards. Every dollar spent was essentially a vote for what kind of future we wanted. I believe this only holds partially true and we have chosen our future but we will not be very happy with it. I also realize today that people are far more influenced by malignant information if it closely matches their desires and aides in the denial of their own culpability. Making good and very, very hard decisions isn’t something we are good at.
I have mentioned it before but Low-tech magazine has got to be the best place to find good options for a possible future living with less energy. His topics are varied and vast, new tech and old. Worth the time to take a dive.
All the best,
David McCoy
Beyond EPIC.””
Let them eat cake! 😉
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/10/wealthy-own-record-share-stock-market
Yes, unfortunately, I pretty much completely rely on “money”, the financial economy, to intercede on my behalf with the material economy, for basically all my needs in life. I think this is the case for the vast majority of people on earth today, 8 billion plus.
How to keep resources flowing in my direction? Is the only real question on the mind(s) of all 8 billion. I guess.
Money is certainly a necessity for the half of the world’s population that lives in cities, but there a several billion people, mostly in the Global South, who self-provision a significant fraction of their necessities (food, water, shelter). These poor rural farmers are least likely to be affected by economic contraction (even while they are most likely to be affected by environmental disruption and climate change). But poor farmers in the Global South and elsewhere have the least to fear from the disconnect between the real economy and finance.
The people who live in cities have the most to fear from this disconnect, but they have become trapped by it and trapped by simply living in a city. It is very difficult to leave a city and live in the country, mostly because access to land is so expensive. So the vast majority of city people can never leave. This inability for city folk to extract themselves from being trapped is their biggest risk of premature death. If you depend on money to purchase your necessities and money gradually loses its value you just gradually become poorer. If its disconnect with the real economy causes money to completely lose its value, you starve.
Prudence is the process of minimizing risk. I suggest that prudence now requires leaving the city and preparing oneself to live without money. Only a tiny fraction of people living in cities can make this transition. Will you be one of them?
@Joe
Please provide sources that state illegal immigrants pay more in taxes then citizens and use less government services. Thanks!
@Joe
No, I will not make the transition. I am a product of the industrial system, and I will die along with it, or so it seems.
In fact, I’m almost tempted to say that finance v. “real” economy is a false dichotomy. They’re both part of the same, industrial, system. If you look at the manipulations of finance, at least on a macro scale, they’re all about trying to push and prod the material economy to produce and keep producing “more”, of whatever. Kinda like whipping a dead, or dieing, horse, with the same predictable results.
In regard to billions of “self sufficient” third world farmers, there was not billions of them before industrial agricultural inputs, and there won’t be billions of them after industry dies. I’d say.
Mr House,
https://www.fwd.us/news/immigration-facts-the-positive-economic-impact-of-immigration/#:~:text=If%20the%20U.S.%20provided%20a,the%20U.S.%20economy%20per%20year.
Thank you for the link, lets see……..
Ah yes an NGO who butters their bread with this issue. Looking at the about us section, everyone who works for them appears to be affiliated with some other left leaning organization, such as the Chanzuckerberg initiative…… Can you come up with someone or a site that is a bit more objective?
“Our talented staff — which includes a number of experts directly impacted by these issues — is a diverse group hailing from many states, countries, and professional backgrounds. What unites us is our shared commitment to improving lives and making America a stronger, safer place.”
They don’t even have a mission statement on the about us page, i find that odd. So you’re essentially citing the people who call everyone who disagrees with them racist. I’m not surprised. In fact i would argue that everything that has passed the last 40 or 50 odd years could be described as “progressive”.
On the last post Diego mentioned that he finds the “right” populism to be more organic and Dr. Morgan is confused as to why “right” populism is more popular. Could it be because everything that the government has initiated and instituted the past 40 years has nothing to do with the “right” or “conservative” viewpoints and people are tired of being called racist for disagreeing?
Do you have any other sources that might be more objective? If so thanks in advance.
But this fits into the larger discussion Don and myself were having on the last post, and i’d ask that you both consider and perhaps provide examples of all the racism and prejudice you guys are fighting? (I’m assuming you both lean left, please correct me if i’m wrong)
It is rather entertaining how the “left” have alienated so many people over the past four to seven years. They do far more damage to their own causes then anyone on the “right” could ever dream of doing.
Everything cited on that site is funded by .gov………….
A cited link from the website you provided:
https://map.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/locations/national/
TOP OCCUPATIONS WITH HIGHEST SHARE OF IMMIGRANT WORKERS
#1 Manicurists and pedicurists74.6% #2 Graders and sorters, agricultural products57.5% #3 Plasterers and stucco masons56.0% #4 Taxi drivers54.4% #5 Drywall installers, ceiling tile installers, and tapers53.2%
So again, the people who advocate for immigration are not competing with those immigrants for jobs. Can you see where anger builds up? Isn’t it the very same attitude of bailouts for the rich and austerity for every one else? Can you understand how the “left” is losing the working class?
again, this is not an objective group:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FWD.us
FWD.us is a 501(c)(4) immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy organization.[3][4][5][6] It is based in the United States and headquartered in Washington, D.C. [7], and it advocates for prison reform, status for undocumented immigrants, particularly for DACA recipients, and higher levels of immigration visas, particularly for H-1B visas for foreign workers in STEM fields.[8][9][10]
The president of FWD.us is Todd Schulte, replacing previous president Joe Green in 2014.[7][11] FWD.us was founded by leaders in Silicon Valley in 2013, including Mark Zuckerberg, who wanted to advance immigration reform.[1] The group aims to build a bipartisan consensus around its proposed policies.[1][12] However, it has garnered criticism for its connections to large technology companies, its support of the Keystone XL pipeline, and what critics have described as its “questionable lobbying practices”.[13]
The organization describes itself as “bipartisan”[14] and includes both Republicans and Democrats, however, it has been described as being “backed by liberal-leaning tech CEOs and investors.
@Joe
Can you give me examples from your own mind of why in a declining economy and declining available energy its smart to add more people to your bottom line?
Some extra reading for any who are interested:
https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-biggest-crash-in-history.html
https://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2024/01/weekly-commentary-issues-2024.html
Dr. Morgan I have a question. I’ve been thinking about de-dollarization lately in the context of the outrages presented here:
https://indi.ca/israels-indictment-for-genocide/
and other outrages that are beyond the scope of SEE and not wanted in the comments. Judging from what I see daily, global south certainly has a target for and good reason for hatred, not just fear of the West (or should we say global north). So, as BRICS (the Global South, the Global Majority) grows, and they use the dollar less and less, there will be an endpoint – or if you prefer a maximum point for economic separation and a minimum of dollar usage.
Russia has already demanded payment in Rubles for oil, and the US said, “If that is the case, Europe will not buy Russian oil.” Which more-or-less worked, as stupid as it sounds.
A French official has recently stated that the policy for the French will be to double down on their fission reactors. From where will the yellow cake come? Russia? Mali? Niger? (I don’t think so.)
The Houthis have shut down 90% of all traffic through the Suez Canal.
So, what exactly will two separate economies look like? Or, will it be 4 economies – “One of these is the “real economy” of material products and services, a system driven by energy. The other is the parallel “financial economy” of money, transactions and credit.” Two each in both halves of the planetary economy.
No oil from the global south will reach the US or Europe?
No lithium, no rare-earth metals, no copper, no phosphate will reach the US or Europe?
What does the US or Europe have, or produce that can’t be duplicated or substituted in the south?
I have not seen anywhere a compilation of what is and isn’t owned by the two competing(?) economies.
Competing? Would they simply be separate?
Is there even time for this to all play out given how powerfully AGW is raging this year? (And also to troll any resident global warming deniers. LOL)
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/73/12/841/7319571?login=false
Can SEEDS see de-dollarization happening?
Is de-dollarization just a myth?
Do you see any impact this decade?
“So, what exactly will two separate economies look like? Or, will it be 4 economies – “One of these is the “real economy” of material products and services, a system driven by energy. The other is the parallel “financial economy” of money, transactions and credit.” Two each in both halves of the planetary economy.”
An excellent question and very forward looking. I think those that currently rule us think they can just Cold War 2.0. On the face of it, it does look like that but with a huge caveat. To continue to hold onto power in their own countries, those in the west have destroyed any unity the countries had. I think they truly thought the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union was the “end of history”. So what worked in the past they threw out and now they’ve got nothing. Don’t they strike you as that arrogant. Would be very interested to hear Dr. Morgans thoughts on this. But with regards to what will the two separate economies look like, i’d suggest it will look just like it did in the Cold War. Two competing blocks, except the West is in disarray and sold its manufacturing base (at least in the United States) to China. So even if they were to compete, along with declining oil reserves in the West, it would take at least a decade or more to revive manufacturing.
“Do you see any impact this decade?”
I think Hemingway said it best when asked how did you go bankrupt? To which he responded: Very slowly and then all at once. We are out of the very slowly phase and very quickly approaching in the all at once phase in my opinion.
For reference:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-budget-deficit-soars-50-crushing-estimates-fiscal-collapse-under-biden-accelerates
You may also enjoy reading Tom Luongo, he writes about the very subject you are asking about:
also related:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/houthis-vow-expanded-attacks-us-navy-bigger-tuesdays-barrage
Pintada570:
I think it might be time to look at de-dollarization and related issues, including geopolitics.
SEEDS can see de-dollarization happening, and I think it can shed some new light on this. I’ll have to do a lot of stats work before I can present it, though.
Thank you Mr. House all three links appear interesting and are appreciated.
Thank you Dr. Morgan. I am looking forward to hearing more.
Dr. Tim I too would be very interested in any light that SEEDS can shed on whither de-dollarization as depending on the answer this will potentially have a huge impact on US hegemony and the global political landscape. Current analysis is replete with conflicting viewpoints. Thin end of the wedge examples such as the Chinese/Saudi agreement to settle oil sales in yuan lead me to think defenders of the US $ as reserve currency are blinded by wishful thinking and the seductive influence of precedence.
Yes, de-dollarization is high on my “to do” list. I’ll tell you, if I may, about some other things on that list.
One is a new tool I’m developing called the Transactional Curve. This is a technique for projecting trends in monetary activity (business sectors, for instance) using an anchor to material value. I’m more excited about this than anything since RRCI (Realized Rate of Comprehensive Inflation). I may or may not write up the Transactional Curve, or simply use it in the background.
Second, I’m increasingly concerned about what’s happening in the broader Middle East. I’m the last person to be alarmist, but I think there’s real oil crisis risk in this situation. We have a template for this – 1973-74 as ‘years that changed the world’.
Third, I’m trying to interlock fiscal and monetary trends on an underlying value basis. This will take time.
So yes, de-dollarization might well be next up. The real issue isn’t so much the reserve currency, but flows of trade and finance, and America’s ‘exorbitant privilege’. The latest $1 trillion addition to US government debt happened in only fourteen weeks. It’s easy to report “growth” if you can pour borrowed liquidity into the system at this rate of knots.
I have been following the peak oil discussion for the last 20 years, and here are my last two presentations of this
This was 2 years ago
This was about 40 days ago.
17.50 mark there is some interesting data from Saudi Arabia
23.50 mark is an important observation.
Thanks again for facilitating the conversation about the state of our economic system and how we need to look for a new way if we are to navigate the ‘pass-the-parcel’ game we are currently playing. Two recent books – The Wealth Supremacy by Marjorie Kelly & Less Is More by Jason Hickel – have brought home to me just how urgent this need is, but also how our current system is so deeply ingrained and virulently protected by those that benefit from its mantra of infinite growth. We no longer have democracies, but plutocracies or the term that I prefer – thugocracies – that will use any means, however unethical or violent, to protect their hegemony.
Our need goes much deeper than a just a new economic system, but a complete mindset shift from the duality enshrined by Bacon and Descartes, where most of the world is objectified, to one of animism where all of nature is subjectified as a world full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationships with others.
We face a stark choice: either we proactively make this mindset shift before the music stops, or we enter a new Dark Age where it is forced on the surviving humans. Mother Earth is reminding us that we are not her masters, but her guests for as long as we respect and nurture all her subjects. There are encouraging signs that the message is being heard and acted on, but time is not on our side, which makes the dialogue that you and others are leading all the more important.
Our need goes much deeper than a just a new economic system, but a complete mindset shift from the duality enshrined by Bacon and Descartes, where most of the world is objectified, to one of animism where all of nature is subjectified as a world full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationships with others.
I meant to add, thank you for posting this comment, it’s an important point missing from so much discussion.
Please refrain from this Mother Earth / Captain Planet sentimental nonsense. The earth is not your mother, is not even conscious , and at best is indifferent to your existence. At worst, as has been throughout history, it’s a hostile environment which is likely to kill or injure you in a hundred different ways. Mankind’s triumph has been to survive the many trials and tribulations which our existence has thrown at it.
Several years ago after studying our resource predicament and trying to formulate some sort of estimation on the time when my world will fall apart, I came up with a theory I call the “fluff crash” which I think will emerge as the first stage (or stair step if you will) in the coming de-growth trajectory.
I propose that approximately 30% of our current resource consumption is used for “fluff” activities which offer no use to the basic needs of the world.
Some examples (although hundreds more abound):
-Cruise lines
-Vacation air travel
-Auto, boat, motorcycle racing
-Many professional sports and the required air/land travel
-Plastic “throw away” toys from other lands.
-Recreational vehicle purchases/travel of which the construction and use are a big energy hog.
-Basically the whole Landfill mentality of manufacturing with little care for recycling or repair possibilities.
Some of those points are touchy subjects for those who participate, but never-the-less, the world would survive just fine without them.
Granted, if they were to disappear, millions would be put out of work, but those “fluff jobs” are currently supported by the fluff portion of the economy. The hardship would be massive because of the spin-off effects such as the hotel and tourism industry falling apart.
So I propose that the first step in the de-growth trend will be a Fluff Crash that will happen over approximately a decade where one-by-one sectors of this part the energy consumption mix get their lights turned out.
This phase will be non negotiable due to it’s coming un-affordability.
In my opinion the fluff crash began 1 to 2 years ago. Slowly at first.
It may free up another 30% of the available oil for use in agriculture and other required industries therefore buying us another decade.
It won’t be pretty, and governments will attempt bailouts for various collapsing industries in the assumption that the free money will tide them over until “things get better” and growth returns, but that growth won’t come back. So there will be unemployment and money printing.
Yes, I too live and operate in the current fluff based system, but I am prepared (and fully expect) to lose some non-essentials one by one.
PS: The share values in the industries noted above may suffer greatly.
I think you are right on, but 30% as the portion of the Fluff Economy may be conservative: the Convenience Industrial Complex has us all on the hamster wheel of mindless consumerism and needs to keep us there to feel its desire for perpetual growth.
In his book ‘Less Is More’, Jason Hickel goes into this in great detail and also comes up with practices that can move us into a post growth – or steady state – economy while mitigating the huge social dislocations we are concerned about. Yes, we will lose some of our shiny toys, but we will live in a society where human wellness is the norm, not the exception it is today.
It’s been reported to me that a reader has been unable to place a comment here because the send button is greyed out. Before I contact WP, can anyone else who has had this problem let me know using the Contact page? Thanks.
> Before I contact WP…
Let’s see if said send button (mis)behaves 😇
Maybe because he hasn’t logged in.
This is from expatriate UK blogger, previously journalist, John Ward, residing in The Gambia, after being driven out of the French countryside by neoliberal “banking” and the exsanguinating new-ways of French bureaucracy.
“Gambia is further down the road to impoverished perdition…and this why I contend that Brits in particular and the EU in general would do well to use my adopted country as a yardstick for what the coming Apocalypse might entail.
Ultimately, neoliberal capitalism is a cul de sac economic system doomed to eat itself.”
Can Humans be Re-Wilded
https://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2024/01/can-humans-be-rewilded.html
Don Stewart
I think the folks on the Andaman Islands will be just fine.
I believe someone i used to read back around 2013 stated that when we see this, hyperinflation wouldn’t be that far away:
https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/fed-posts-largest-ever-annual-operating-loss-6e249a39
@ Dr Tim Morgan
Regarding de-dollarization a good start is this fine video by a very smart lady which I found very insightful.
Dar Tim Morgan
In the introduction section of this book appears a chart that shows
how the velocity of money has dropped between 1997 and 2020.
https://mpalmer.heresy.is/webnotes/TheGreatTaking/Introduction.html
From its definition V=G/M, where G is the gross domestic product and M is the money supply and since most of the money is lent into existence by banks, taking the logarithmic differential of this gives
(1/V)dV/dt = (1/G)dG/dt-(1/M)dM/dt
where the terms now represent percentage changes of each, does this equation basically explain what is happening. Namely, money supply i.e. debt has grown much faster that G (the GDP) and this is the reason for the drastic drop in the velocity of money, now faster and deeper than as we entered the Great Depression. The chart is for the US dollar but ought to apply to other economies as well.
You don’t need to look at anything but the original V=G/M equation to see what is happening. If the devisor grows faster than the dividend then the quotient declines. This is what has been happening for a long time, but so what?
The definition of the velocity of money is so simple and close enough to a tautology that I have difficulty seeing how it matters, but perhaps the experts in monetary policy that comment here can tell me why the velocity of money is important.
“This paper has suggested a simple model that can account for the key anomalies of the traditional monetary approach. It disaggregates the quantity of credit into a ‘real’ and a financial circulation. In time periods, when the ratio of credit in the financial circulation to credit in the real circulation rises, the simple quantity theory must be expected to disappoint, as it is a special case of the more general quantity theorem of disaggregated credit. In such time periods, a financial boom is likely, as asset prices are driven up by speculative borrowing on the back of collateralised assets. This explains why the traditional monetary quantity theory was not popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and again in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Then the traditionally defined velocity of money declines and excess credit creation can ‘spill over’ as foreign investment. However, during time periods such as the 1950s, when in many countries credit was mainly channeled into the real economy, asset prices remained stable and the traditional quantity theory could be expected to hold. The fact that the model can account for the major anomalies observed in many countries over many time periods demonstrates generality and robustness.
The empirical results for the Japanese case have been unambiguously supportive. The Japanese asset bubble of the 1980s was due to excess credit creation by banks for speculative purposes, largely in the real estate market. The apparent velocity decline is shown to be due to a rise in credit money employed for financial transactions, while the correctly defined velocity of the real circulation is found to be very stable“
Click to access KK_97_Disaggregated_Credit.pdf
In response to the comment by Joe Clarkson, yes, the ratio tells trivially what happens qualitatively, but the differential form allows one to quantify it, by knowing the trajectory of the money supply and GDP, one can then check whether the velocity has decreased the way it has. Since the drop in the velocity of money is from 2.2 to 1.2 since 1997 to 2000, and this kind of drop has not happened before, even during the era from 1900 to 1932, I would think that significance of this ought not be ignored. Of course, there is issue of how much of the FED is creating and how much of this is created into existence by commercial banks, needs to be sorted out, but I would think this is a second order effect, as most of the money is lent into existence by commercial banks.
I have two problems with the conventional measure of velocity.
First, I don’t think the components are discrete – since GDP is a measure of transactional activity, if the supply of money is increased, surely activity measured as GDP rises as well?
Second, what are we trying to measure? What might interest us could be how long people hold on to money before spending it. In times of high inflation, they might be minded to spend money more quickly, before it loses value. This is an important thing that we need to know, the classic example, of course, being Weimar.
What I think we’ve been seeing is the transition from industrial to finance capitalism. That would imply a rise in capital flows as a proportion of economic activity.
An Example from British Medicine Illustrating the Curse of Complexity
I’ll also add that it illustrates the curse of MBO. If the reward is tied to the objective to reduce legal costs, then complexity will be heaped up, as we see. Total costs will increase, quality will decline, and the burden, in a declining ECoE environment, will break the back of the donkeys paying the bill.
Don Stewart
Federal Reserve Losses
As Wolf Street reports, the Fed can print money, so gains and losses are irrelevant to it. Any gains are paid to the Treasury. What impact do the losses actually have?
“The losses do matter to the Treasury Department though – which is no longer getting the remittances from the Fed. And so the Fed’s losses are swelling the deficit and the debt indirectly via the absence of remittances for years to come.”
Don Stewart
“29:10 the central bank steps in goes to the
29:14 banks and purchases the non-performing
29:16 assets at face value and the problem is
29:19 solved there’s no cost and this is
29:20 exactly what Bernanke did that’s why in
29:24 September October 2008 the balance sheet
29:27 of the Federal Reserve Quadrupled in
29:29 one month this doesn’t create inflation . . .
30:05 . . . because you’re not creating money
30:07 you’re solving the problem in the
30:09 banking system the banks are healthy
30:12 again have strong balance sheets and can
30:14 lend again and they did in America is
30:15 the first country to get out of the
30:17 crisis . . . “
Just an analysis of Game Theory and Zero Sum
https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-curse-of-game-theory-rtf-film
Read an interesting article in a Gas Fitting trade magazine this week.
Here in the UK, the government is imposing new rules on boiler manufacturers.
4% of each boiler manufacturer’s annual sales will have to be of heat pumps.
If they fail to reach the 4% target, then they will be fined £3,000 for every heat pump they are short!!!!!!
I don’t see how boiler manufacturers can make the public buy heat pumps. With the “cost of living crisis”, people can’t afford their existing heating bills, never mind replacing has boilers with heat pumps.
Be interesting to see how that one plays out.
They really are degenerates.
Trying to control all markets.
Getting sick of it to be honest.
The UK is not far from becoming a third world nation the way it is going.
It does seem odd that a supplier will be getting penalized for not selling enough products.!?!?!?!
I think the government has postponed the start date of the ban on the installation of new gas boilers. Was going to unpopular with the voters when they find out how much a heat pump would costs or all those modern houses that have combi boilers but no space for a hot water cylinder.
Better to put pressure on manufacturers than buyers, or so they think.
My neighbour is getting a heat pump fitted. He is paying £3,500 and getting a government grant for £7,500 to pay the rest.
Seems like the government will have to pay (create new money) for a big chunk of the transition to heat pumps.
So basically the UK now has a boiler tax. Didn’t it a few centuries ago have a window tax?
This film is very relevant, Dr. Tim – spotted via Tim Watkins.
I notice in my daily work the implications of a declining birth rate. One could almost argue that this has directly caused the broad collapse in defined benefit pensions more than anything else. Of the dozen or so couples who became close friends of ours in the mid-90s, only one have become grandparents so far. My mother was 21 when she had me, not so unusual in the 1960s. The strong link with financial crisis and declining populations is stark.
@Mark………596a
Thanks for the link to the video.
All very interesting.
I’m with Bob on this.
In the video, the one common factor that triggers a big increase in the number of people having NO children, was an economic shock. Each country has very different social norms but they all registered steep increases in the amount of women having no children over their lifetimes, during/after faltering economies
Understandable really. If you are struggling financially to keep your head above water, then why would you add to your problems by having children????
It wasn’t that long ago that British tabloid newspapers would vilify working class people that had large families and being unable to support them and so claiming State Benefits.
Maybe the only way working class families (the majority of the population) can afford to have kids is to be on State Benefits!!!????
Interesting dynamic that will play out even more as the economy goes into degrowth big time!!!!
The other eye opener in the video was that it’s not just the “developed world” that has a declining birth rate. It is happening everywhere other than sub Saharan Africa.
The declining population is not causing any financial crisis – more likely it’s the other way round.
If people can’t afford a house they might choose not to have children.
As has been established, surplus energy is the driver of economic growth. Most jobs are unnecessary yet people get paid anyway, all thanks to the economic growth ultimately due to FF.
Pensions invest in (gamble on) stuff which might hit trouble in the near future (like stock markets, mining operations, FF etc., or, even worse, ‘green’ technologies). The threat to these things is not dependent on population size but on resource limits (which are now (or soon will be) being reached).
It is true that too much money has been promised by pensions and they may well collapse instead of paying out.
It is deomgraphics more than population as well as per capita stuff including but not limited to energy.
P and K are a problem, lack or high cost of either will deal a blow to population.
Dennis L.
John Michael Greer
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-three-stigmata-of-j-r-r-tolkien/
I find much to agree with in this essay. I don’t find either side of the US legislative aisle to be grasping reality.
Don Stewart
In regard to Ukraine: How many human lives are the NATO countries willing to sacrifice in order to prevent the partition of the country along lines which the residents choose themselves?
Don Stewart
A good essay about the narratives of contemporary politics.
Somebody told me at college it was safer not to read The Lord of the Rings, because “Tolkein is hobbit-forming”.
@Don Stewart
Enjoyed reading that. Thanks for the link.
The SF/Fantasy phenomenon, is just another incarnation of a very old human habit.
The ability to imagine things that don’t actually exist.
It’s at the core of what makes us human. For good or for bad.
We imagine all kinds of things into existence that didn’t exist before.
Both physical (cars, phones, etc etc etc) and mental (gods, demons, double entry book keeping, mathematics, good and evil, heaven and hell)
Art Berman has a new post about the need to reduce energy consumption.
If only this would reach mainstream media.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/climate-change-is-a-narrow-view-of-the-human-predicament/
Fixed, Average and Marginal costs, and their role in energy policy, are discussed here- https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2024/01/08/our-2023-carbon-footprint/#comments
Mark
Technology vs. Energy for Dominance?
Some provocations:
*Indi from Sri Lanka:
https://indi.ca/why-america-is-losing-to-yemen/
*Donald Trump vs. the Republican Party and the Legal System and Mainstream Media
*What YouTube, or it’s AI incarnation, chooses to show me
Indi’s argument is that the enormously expensive aircraft carriers of the US cannot effectively fight against drones. Donald Trump is intentionally creating chaos in order to capture the zeitgeist of a significant segment of the American population. Lawyers may think he is losing, but his base think he is winning. Trump has claimed that MAGA now totally dominates the Republican Party.
And finally, I scrolled through about 200 links that the YouTube AI chooses to put on my desktop this morning. I won’t say it is every fad in the known universe, but they seem to cover the bases pretty well. It’s curious to try to parse out why they are choosing to send me many links to women claiming that women want dominant men. Because I check in on some legal analysts and the Trump rape case is currently a hot topic in those circles?
One thread connecting all these observations is that they are low energy. They don’t involve tanks or aircraft carriers, and big buildings and factories are not the first thing one notices. They don’t put food on the table, or keep my house warm as the Arctic Vortex crumbles.
Just my observation on 1/18/24….Don Stewart
I saved this part-
…..”It’s their land and it’s their sea and these Ferenghi, these Carbon Crusaders need to just fuck off and stop bothering everybody. “….
We got a break from the cold spell yesterday. The “old timer’s” ash got removed and the unit is up and running in time for an expected 12+” of snow and 0F minus wind chills over the next few days. Between the old timer and the jotul b vent propane stove we can get by without grid power for a day or so before I need to pull the dual fuel generator out of the garage to get some juice to keep the well etc. operating Ok.
Thanks for the link.
I was interested to see one my of charts pop up here. The discussion of energy is very good, and the statement that “The economic cost of producing energy has gone up 5X since 1980” presumably references ECoE rising from 2% to 10% over that period………….
Egon has referenced your work a few times in the past I have noticed.
I always listen to what he has to say. He has vast experience in finance/banking and has been warning people for many years now.
It seems to me as each day that goes by that the West is close to actual collapse.
I don’t use that word lightly.
The national debts are notionally extremely high. The last 15 years has seen so much debt issued way out of proportion to GDP or actual productivity.
The USA is getting close or is at the stage where they need to borrow currency to just pay off the interest on their debt.
Immigration is out of control and inflation has still not been controlled and now we have a few wars going on.
2024/25 is going to be chaotic. Something is going to blow and soon.
Don’t know what it will be or when but it is coming.
Yes, he has referenced my work, and used my charts, before this, but without acknowledging his source (maybe I’m just being tetchy about this).
The West is in very big trouble. The US added its latest trillion of government debt in just fourteen weeks. The UK can’t afford to invest to stop untreated sewage contaminating its rivers, and can’t afford to repair crumbling schools and hospitals. But “can’t afford” is odd for a country whose government has borrowed (at today’s values) £1.6tn since the GFC, £900bn of it created (“printed”) by the BoE.
I saw this posted on the web, idk if it is genuine or setup, but it expresses the zeitgeist,
https://imgur.com/a/zbaZFQe
I’ve saved it with my favorites,
I”ve now posted my discussion on de-dollarization, which can be found here.