The Center’s Got To Give
I was thinking about something along the lines of The Center Cannot Hold and Something’s Got To Give earlier, but then I thought there’s no way I haven’t used those titles before. And then it occurred to me that The Automatic Earth started 7 years ago this month. Just looked it up, it was January 22, 2008. Party next week!
Of course Nicole and I had been writing before that on the Oil Drum, who then didn’t want us to write about finance. They claimed we didn’t have the – academic, they were big on academic – credentials, as if that would ever stop me. Economists, the only people with the ‘proper’ credentials, are the last ones anyone should listen to, they engage in goal-seeked analysis only (no worries, Steve, you’re still no. 1 in our blogroll).
So we started The Automatic Earth, where we could write about what we wanted and thought needed to be addressed. In 2005 it may not have seemed important to the energy crowd, but they’ve all since seen that what we insisted on talking about back then was indeed a big event. 2007 brought Bear Stearns, and 2008 gave us Lehman. Not a minor trifle to write about in 2005. Plus, that means we’ve been doing this for 10 years already. No minor trifle either.
Meanwhile, peak oil has moved way back in the line of pressing events, the Oil Drum went so far south it’s out of sight and shale oil has just about everyone believing the peak oil theory was wrong all along. It wasn’t, not for conventional oil, which was all it addressed to begin with, but so things go. The financial casino trumped energy. But now those days seem over.
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