Intersting articles. Good analysis, Make good sense to me.

My only reservation is, and perhaps I am seeing a tendancy that isn't really there , I need to read more, – but I see no need to be fundamentalist in proclaiming 'the one true cause'. Oil depletion is surely a major and fundamental part of the whole problem. As is population growth. Or available fresh water. Or wage declines in western countries. Or an out of control shift to debt backed money and a shadow banking system that uses it. One can draw causal lines this way or that way. And they are all happening over the samem time frame.

Did energy depletion and incremental loss of return cause a bubble in shadow banking or were they coincident? I don't know. But unitary causes make me suspicious.

I shall read more with great interest. Thank you for pointing them out.

Seeing a number of new customers around your gaff, and quite right too .

One of the probs on comments is that if you do 3 or 4 posts a day it's impossible for you to follow all ,and I've over time not had a reply to item1 of 'yesterday' because there are 7 articles since . But people are clustering now, as we see.

Maybe you could have an 'Open' Comment thread for all comments , so people can read back as far as they wish instead of backpaging and opening again 'X' times ?

A bit like a forum !

With a bit of self-discipline–EX — RichGB re your 11/9 14.07h it manages itself, and you can see at a glance the latest ones adressed to you .

Coping with Information Overload/Anxiety is the question . Macrosocial level, people are blasted with media-consumerist trivia and general disinfo, but the lines are still becoming clearer .

A quick glance at the online frontpages of Gdn,Times,Telegraph,Indie, FT, without opening ANY stories is most revealing .

—————————————–
Gdn- New Food Crisis

Telegraph –
Food self-sufficiency lowest since 1968. Cameron will cut middleclass taxes, some day …
ICB inquiry could include a look at the role of 'shadow banking'.
Luxury London homes hit -First prices fall in 18 months signals slowdown in housing market. 'Property golden era is over'
Britain in 'mortgage famine'

The Times- Divisions emerge in banking commission

Indie – Hamish McRae: Taxpayers should not have to bankroll another meltdown

FT – Norway’s central bank sues Citigroup
Stuart Gulliver is credited with protecting HSBC from the ravages of the subprime crisis
Spain unveils ‘austere’ 2011 budget
Income tax for rich increased and ministerial expenditure slashed
Profits drop sharply at Spanish cajas Bond sale affirms investors’ faith in Spain (hehe !)
Outside Edge: the imaginary diary of a high frequency trader. As told to Tim Harford
—————————————
Also the stuff about Terrism, the Far Right, and Bank chiefs getting more bonuses, BUT we do see shadow banking for about the first time . I won't read the articles, no time, but the picture is not pretty:)

Don't look at the Mail, Express, Sun, Mirror, Star !

You do have to read between the lines quite often, but it is obvious that there are many Golem-type thinkers around at the Torygraph,FT, and the crew around at the Guardian Business page . Izabella Kaminska, FT — the elephant in the room is the ECB on Sovereign bonds …

As you said the other day, the System is not necesarily going to fall over, BUT it is still on a knife-edge .

PS a bit muddled, just saying Bonjour really !

frog2

1) if you burn 12MJ of fuels, in any society, you create about 1 USD of GDP.

2) 1 USD of GDP will extract, process and deliver to you about 35 MJ of fuel

1) -> 2) -> repeat = increasing GDP

recent 'growth' is due to the use of ever increasing per capita amounts of fuel (first human labour, then coal, now oil).

But the amount of fuel you get for your USD in 2 is decreasing – all the stuff has been extracted, now you have to dig/drill deeper, search harder etc..

The problems come when the cost of the fuel or its availability changes, so that you can buy less. Eventually 1)->2) makes you poorer.

Some argue that the current contraction is based on this – fuel became constrained from 2005/6 on and the only way to get more GDP was by financial innovation to effectively borrow from the future, based on the assumption that the future will always be bigger than the present. Only it won't be. Hence the 'great unwinding'.

A couple of examples of relevant and lucid posts on the possible interactions between decreasing energy availability and financial contraction:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6542#more

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6574#more

and a plausible but extremely negative outlook here:
http://www.feasta.org/documents/risk_resilience/Tipping_Point.pdf

We were probably both there at the Poll Tax. Do you think people were better then? I don't. There was a moment when they thought they understood the problem enough to say no. Today they don't think they understand. But if they come to a point when once again they think they have grasped enough, then all bets will be off.

Until then you and I have to speak clearly and simply so that people come to see that they can and do understand.

That's how I see it. T

The things i know happened for certain, I cannot tell you. If I did I'd have to shoot myself.

Sorry, unrewarding for you. But better for me.

Thanks for the reading list, they sound like my kind of books so I will read with interest.

What outlandish things outside spy novel do you know have happened for certain?

Don't worry about the financial advice, I don't have any money to invest in gold anyway! I am just interested to see how different people perceive these things.

When I asked about bankers preparing for the worst I was imagining them buying up property in a safe country but I suppose when you have that much wealth you can do these things last minute. Also, the financial world moves so slowly they have additional time!

I do not live or move in any part of that world. I can tell you that a lot of money is being moved from one off-shore to other off-shores which are even less within the reach of government's who might one day try to claw back some of that wealth. That I can say.

Wave power could be and in my opinion SHOULD be a significant part of the solution for the UK. Waves around the Uk carry about 75 kilo watts per meter length. Think of that multiplied up by the most energetic parts of our coustlines and mulitplied again as a constant 24/365 power source.

As you know I believe some sort of fusion is essential. Thorium seems from what I konw to be worth a look. I do not pretend to be an expert. All I do know is from the other end as it were. I look at what we can say we have no choice about – the things we absolutely must do or persish. One of them is break away from hydrocarbon energy. The other is tackle senility and the debilitating diseases of longevity.

We cannot allow people to live longer and longer in a state of debilitated and dependant senility. Longevity has to be healthy longevity. As such another area I believe we should be investing in much more than we are, is stem cell research.