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…and can potentially become highly explosive

When it comes to energy these years, bad news seem to be popping up like mushrooms on a shiitake-farm. A recent flurry of articles on “The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News”, Oilprice.com, is a case in point. Wind farm projects going for broke. War in the Middle-East. Solar panels collecting dust in warehouses. Renewables businesses losing their profitability. What is still missing though is much needed context, the connection of these dots beyond the obvious political considerations. Join me in this quick sit-rep of sorts to see where are we with this energy crisis of ours in this tumultuous moment in history… Or shall I say, in the next chapter of The Long Emergency? Decide it for yourself.

Our globalized economy seems to be experiencing ever more “problems” taking an ever higher amount of investment to “solve”. And while governments all around the world could print and conjure up all the money they dared to imagine, all these efforts have achieved was an almost unprecedented wave of stagflation — a persistent combination of economic stagnation (or even decline) combined with record high inflation and debt levels. It certainly looks like the world economy has reached a point of diminishing returns on almost every front. Despite all the money and investment, the “problems” we were trying to “solve” just got bigger — and not a tad bit smaller. What’s wrong with you, World?

Well, what long time observers of the real economy of goods and services have seen coming is finally here. Actually, it has been knocking on our door since the middle of 2021. The world economy was sleepwalking into a deep energy crisis, affecting all sectors all at once…

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Gold Or Silver?

January 21, 2023

Gold Or Silver?

You want both, obviously, but how much of each and why?

At first glance, gold and silver seem pretty fungible. They’re both hypnotically pretty. Their prices tend to rise and fall according to the same financial/political forces. They’re both seen as real money by a tiny (very wise) fraction of the population and as atavistic relics by the vast, ignorant majority. And – most important – they will both preserve their owners’ purchasing power when today’s fiat currencies evaporate like the fever dreams they always were.

So you definitely want some (and maybe a lot) of each. But gold and silver are not identical. They have different strengths and weaknesses in various “monetary reset” scenarios. And their prices don’t move in lockstep. Sometimes one is cheap relative to the other.

So how much of each should we own now, and how quickly should we plan to load up the truck? The answer is different for each person, but a few things are generally true.

The gold/silver ratio
The relative prices of gold and silver tend to fluctuate within a broad but discernable range. This gold/silver ratio is expressed as the number of ounces of silver it takes to buy an ounce of gold and tends to rise and fall along with the emotional state of precious metals investors. When those investors don’t foresee imminent inflation or other monetary disruptions, they gravitate towards gold’s safety and stability, and shy away from silver’s volatility. Gold’s price rises relative to silver’s, producing a high gold/silver ratio.

When investors expect rising inflation or other kinds of currency instability, they buy precious metals generally, but gravitate towards silver’s greater upside potential. Gold and silver both rise but the gold/silver ratio falls as buyers push silver’s price up more quickly than gold’s.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Next Energy Crisis with Dr. Anas Alhaggi

May 9, 2022

The Next Energy Crisis with Dr. Anas Alhaggi

Fourth Turning 2022–Bad Moon Rising (Part 2)

January 25, 2022

FOURTH TURNING 2022 – BAD MOON RISING (PART 2)

In Part 1 of this article I laid out how the global elite have used this covid flu to manipulate the weak minded into a fear induced mass psychosis as a key element in their Great Reset plan to control the world and keep you technologically enslaved under lock and key. Now I will try to decipher how this mass hysteria might play out over the course of 2022 and beyond.

“Americans today fear that linearism (alias the American Dream) has run its course. Many would welcome some enlightenment about history’s patterns and rhythms, but today’s intellectual elites offer little that’s useful. Caught between the entropy of the chaoticists and the hubris of the linearists, the American people have lost their moorings.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

Federal Reserve Just Declared the American Dream is Dead for Most Americans

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ― George Orwell

The American Dream, where all Americans, no matter the circumstances of their birth, had a legitimate opportunity to live a better life than their parents, based upon their own intelligence, work ethic, and good fortune, is an illusion in today’s world. The ruling elite have stolen the wealth of the nation and its citizens. This was not an accident, but a plan implemented over many decades, accelerating after Nixon closed the gold window and opened the door to unlimited amounts of debt being created out of thin air and backed by nothing.

One of the Fed’s only mandates was to maintain a stable currency. Since its inception in 1913 to 2020, the USD had lost 96% of its purchasing power. The USD has lost 7.5% of its purchasing power since 2020, as Powell and his cronies have lost control of inflation.

Visualizing the Purchasing Power of the U.S. Dollar Over Time

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Fourth Turning 2022 — Bad Moon Rising

January 10, 2022

FOURTH TURNING 2022 – BAD MOON RISING

“Try to unlearn the obsessive fear of death (and the anxious quest for death avoidance) that pervades linear thinking in nearly every modern society. The ancients knew that, without periodic decay and death, nature cannot complete its full round of biological and social change. Without plant death, weeds would strangle the forest. Without human death, memories would never die, and unbroken habits and customs would strangle civilization. Social institutions require no less. Just as floods replenish soil and fires rejuvenate forests, a Fourth Turning clears out society’s exhausted elements and creates an opportunity.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

“Institutions will be increasingly bossy, limiting personal freedoms, chastising bad manners, and cleansing the culture. Powerful new civic organizations will make judgments about which individual rights deserve respect and which do not. Criminal justice will become swift and rough, trampling on some innocents to protect an endangered and desperate society from those feared to be guilty. Expect a loss of personal privacy. Fourth Turnings can be dark times for the free spirit: Just as one kind of official may have new authority to do something for you, another kind—some hastily deputized magistrate—may have new authority to do something to you.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

It’s been almost a year since my annual look ahead at the upcoming year. Last year’s article FOURTH TURNING DETONATION was a big picture overview of where we stood during the thirteenth year of this ongoing Fourth Turning Crisis. I had given up trying to make specific predictions because the twenty-year length of a Crisis period does not lend itself to specificity within a given year. My comment at the beginning of the article was:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch

December 9, 2021

The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch

UK Energy Crisis Shows Danger of Net Zero Emissions Policies: Aussie Senator

September 30, 2021

The United Kingdom from space. (Anton Balazh/Adobe Stock)

UK Energy Crisis Shows Danger of Net Zero Emissions Policies: Aussie Senator

The push for Australia to legislate a net zero emissions target has spurred discord from some government officials who firmly believe the climate policy could harm Australia’s energy security and industry amid the UK’s own unravelling energy crisis.

Australia has faced criticism for not setting a 2050 net zero target—a goal already undertaken by many of the world’s developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

But Nationals Senator Matt Canavan suggested that the UK’s unfolding energy crisis is a direct consequence of its “net zero” emissions plans via a shift to so-called renewables and banning coal power.

“The UK has been trying to reach net zero. They’ve passed legislation to do that,” Canavan told 2GB radio. “They’re not there yet, but they’re on the path. And already down that path, they are seeing a situation where industry is being asked to shut down just to keep the lights on.”

Over the last 50 years, the UK has weaned itself of coal generation and become more dependent on gas as its primary source of electricity generation—much of which is imported from Europe.

Further, heavy investment into renewables over the last decade has also boosted wind output, contributing to 24 percent of total generation in 2020.

Epoch Times Photo — The United Kingdom’s coal, gas, nuclear and renewable energy consumption from 1965 to 2019. Source: Our World in Data. (The Epoch Times)

However, the UK has recently experienced a 400 percent spike in gas prices, and a 250 percent price rise for electricity after a confluence of unforeseen factors throttled the country’s supply—including record low wind levels, a fire at a major France-UK electricity interconnector, nuclear plant outages, and a gas shortfall sweeping Europe.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The European Energy Crisis Is About To Go Global

September 24, 2021

The European Energy Crisis Is About To Go Global

It was only a matter of time, really. In a globalized world, energy crunches can hardly remain regionally contained for very long, especially in a context of damaged supply chains and a rush to cut investment in fossil fuels. The energy crunch that began in Europe earlier this month may now be on its way to America. For now, all is well with one of the world’s top gas producers. U.S. gas exporters have enjoyed a solid increase in demand from Asia and Europe as the recovery in economic activity pushed demand for electricity higher. According to a recent Financial Times report, there is a veritable bidding war for U.S. cargos of liquefied natural gas between Asian and European buyers—and the Asians are winning.

Coal exports are on the rise, too, and have been for a while now, especially after a political spat had China shun Australian coal. But supply is tightening, Argus reported earlier this month. In July, according to the report, U.S. coking coal exports dropped by as much as 20.3 percent from June. The report noted supply was constrained by producers’ limited access to funding and a labor shortage that has plagued many industries amid the pandemic.

All this should be good news for U.S. producers of fossil fuels. But it may easily become bad news as winter approaches. The Wall Street Journal’s Jinjoo Lee wrote earlier this week high energy prices could be the next hot import for the United States. Lee cited data showing gas inventory replenishment was running below average rates for this season, and gas in storage in early September was 7.4 percent below the five-year average.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The UK is racing towards a winter energy crisis

September 21, 2021

The UK is racing towards a winter energy crisis

Gas prices are spiking and the energy markets are coming under increasing pressure. The combination may lead to a bleak winter

Winter is coming – and it looks like it’s going to be a rocky one. The price of natural gas in the UK has increased more than 420 per cent year on year. In mainland Europe, prices are tracking a similarly sharp trajectory. And a perfect combination of other factors – including environmental conditions and unpredictable accidents – is putting the industry under further strain.

These price fluctuations have a knock-on effect: the price of electricity – often generated from gas – is spiking, while household suppliers are hitting the wall as catastrophically high wholesale prices make their businesses uneconomical. Seven UK supply firms have gone out of business so far this year. Bills for end users are forecast to rise 20 per cent, according to Citigroup.

It all makes for grim reading – particularly as gas remains a key source in powering our homes and business. But we should get used to it. According to some experts, it’s just the first flashing warning light on the dashboard of a car heading headlong into a prolonged, painful crash.

Almost everything that could go wrong with the energy markets is currently going wrong – and there are few easy fixes. First, take the climate crisis: our fixation on low-cost fossil fuels has engendered a situation that makes us more susceptible to supply shocks as we try and wean ourselves off the thing that helped cause the problem in the first place. “We always had these geopolitical risks,” says Adi Imsirovic, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, and a former oil trader with 30 years’ experience. “Now we have climate change risks that are essentially a premium on the prices.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Energy Crisis During the Panic of 1873

December 8, 2020

The Energy Crisis During the Panic of 1873

Humans are not the only species to get viruses. A real energy crisis hit the United States that began in 1872 and expanded into 1873, which contributed to the Panic of 1873. This was a flu virus they called distemper that shut down the US economy by infecting horses. It was in 1872 that the US economy was hit by influenza during the autumn which paralyzed the economy and social life. It was the 19th-century version of an energy crisis even before fossil fuels which these global warming fanatics want to return to. Instead of this influenza infecting people, it was a virus that spread among horses and mules. It began in Canada, and with free trade, it spread into the United States and then down into Central America.

Before fossil fuels, horses provided essential energy to build and operate cities. The steam engine led to the development of trains, but they were limited to long distances. Horses were the backbone of how cities operated just as cars today once filled the streets of major cities. But the equine flu made exposes just how important horses were to modern civilization. When horses became infected, they stopped working and it revealed just how dependent the entire economy was upon horsepower. The distemper, as they called it, spread infecting virtually every horse, and owners did not understand diseases back then and forced their horses to still work and they were dropping dead in the streets.

The influenza first appeared in Canada during late September in horses pastured outside of Toronto. The flu’s symptoms were cough and fever; ears drooping, they staggered and often dropped in the streets from exhaustion…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Since 9/11, the Government’s Answer to Every Problem Has Been More Government

September 3, 2020

Since 9/11, the Government’s Answer to Every Problem Has Been More Government

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”—Anonymous

Have you noticed that the government’s answer to every problem is more government—at taxpayer expense—and less individual liberty?

The Great Depression. The World Wars. The 9/11 terror attacks. The COVID-19 pandemic.

Every crisis—manufactured or otherwise—since the nation’s early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government to expand its reach and its power at taxpayer expense while limiting our freedoms at every turn.

Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts.

To the police state, this COVID-19 pandemic has been a huge boon, like winning the biggest jackpot in the lottery. Certainly, it will prove to be a windfall for those who profit from government expenditures and expansions.

Given the rate at which the government has been devising new ways to spend our money and establish itself as the “solution” to all of our worldly problems, this current crisis will most likely end up ushering in the largest expansion of government power since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

This is how the emergency state operates, after all.

From 9/11 to COVID-19, “we the people” have acted the part of the helpless, gullible victims desperately in need of the government to save us from whatever danger threatens. In turn, the government has been all too accommodating and eager while also expanding its power and authority in the so-called name of national security.

As chief correspondent Dan Balz asks for The Washington Post, “Government is everywhere now. Where does it go next?”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Covid-19: Phase 1 of the “Permanent Crisis”?

July 18, 2020

Covid-19: Phase 1 of the “Permanent Crisis”?

Let’s assume that the events of the last five months are neither random nor unexpected.

Let’s say they’re part of an ingenious plan to transform American democracy into a lockdown police state controlled by criminal elites and their puppet governors.

And let’s say the media’s role is to fan the flames of mass hysteria by sensationalizing every gory detail, every ominous prediction and every slightest uptick in the death toll in order to exert greater control over the population.

And let’s say the media used their power to craft a message of terror they’d repeat over and over again until finally, there was just one frightening storyline ringing-out from every soapbox and bullhorn, one group of governors from the same political party implementing the same destructive policies, and one small group of infectious disease experts –all incestuously related– issuing edicts in the form of “professional advice.”

Could such a thing happen in America?

What’s most astonishing about the Covid-19 operation is the manner in which the elected government was circumvented by public health experts (connected to a power-mad billionaire activist.) That was a stroke of genius. Most people regard the US as a fairly stable democracy and yet, the first sign of infection triggered the rapid transfer of power from the president to unelected “professionals” whose conflicts of interest are too vast to list.

Equally fascinating is the fact that the lockdowns were not the brainchild of Donald Trump but the mainly Democrat governors who shrugged-off any Constitutional limits to their power and arbitrarily ordered people to stay in their homes, wear masks and avoid close physical contact with other humans.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Cultural Preparation for Crisis

July 16, 2020

The Cultural Preparation for Crisis

Coronavirus is a foretaste of the future challenges to come. We have been offered a wake-up call with supermarkets having empty shelves and being forced to change the routine. We will need more resourcefulness, capacity for divergent thinking, and self-initiative in future events related to climate change and economic slowdown.

As it is too late to sign insurance once you had an accident, similarly, culture is something that we need to hone well in advance before we realize that we need it urgently.

What is culture? It is this invisible force in our heads. We do not see it but we see the results of it. And people from outside see it more clearly then the ones inhabited by it. The culture makes us interpret events in certain way and choose certain solutions. It makes us prioritize some activities over others. It influences our ideas about what to pursue to be happy even though it may lure us into wrong directions. It decides how we shape human relations. It makes us more prone to have certain ideas rather than others. For example, the focus on progress and technology rather than preventive health is part of the current culture.

We are shaped by the economic system we are part of. It generates and reinforces a culture that is adapted to its functioning.

In the times of new challenges, we need to develop a new culture to be able to survive. This is what Rebecca Solnit has observed about catastrophes such as a hurricane. Their way of being adapts spontaneously to the situation. We have it in our instincts.

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The One Skill That Will Help During ANY Crisis: Self-Reliance

July 11, 2020

The One Skill That Will Help During ANY Crisis: Self-Reliance

In the past several years, my family has been taking as many steps forward as possible when it comes to self-reliance. This is the one skill that will come in handy in every single imaginable crisis.

Other than not having an existence on this planet anymore, knowing how to rely on yourself and your skills will take you far when something goes wrong. Learning, researching, and reading are all great ways to boost your knowledge about self-reliance, but I’ve found that the only way to improve, is to just do it. Jump in with two feet!

All of our properties, homes, climates, and family structures are different, so there is no one size fits all plan that I could give you and everyone would have immediate success with. Unfortunately, trial and error are how we became more self-reliant. Our first garden on this property was an abject failure. I mean that with love and gratitude, however, because we learned what we had done wrong and how to correct it for future plantings. Our second garden was almost ruined because of a late frost in mid-June, however, once again, we were were grateful for that experience because we were able to scrounge up parts and build an almost free greenhouse from items we already had on hand. (It’s a collapsed horse shelter that didn’t survive the first snow here. We salvaged the metal and turned it into a greenhouse since we do not have horses.)

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Permaculture and Money – Part 1

April 29, 2020

Permaculture and Money – Part 1

Cash, conflict and crisis: How is money connected to limited and violent beliefs, and how can we transcend these beliefs?

Permaculture design is about finding ways in which parts of a system can harmonise together, creating regenerative patterns and structures which can help us to develop as part of an interconnected whole⁽¹⁾. We can use permaculture design not only to help us to change physical systems such as in gardening, but also with less visible social structures. One of the most universal and destructive of these ‘invisible structures’ can be seen as the globalised, competition-driven economy, and more specifically, the concept of money which upholds it.

Back in 1949, physicist Albert Einstein said “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive” ⁽²⁾. Decades of environmental destruction, characterised by the perpetuation of a seeming disconnection between humans and nature, along with the current global “crisis” catalysed by people’s reaction to the Corona Virus, seem to show these words as more pertinent now than ever.

This article series will explore some ways in which money itself can be seen as the destructive element encouraging this disconnection. This part will look at some theories of how money, violence and psychology are closely inter-related, while subsequent parts will go into detail about alternative ways of using or relating to money, and some practical ways to achieve this in your own life.

Money & Mind

Many proponents of a moneyless society, such as Sacred Economics ⁽³⁾ author Charles Eisenstein and Moneyless Manifesto ⁽⁴⁾ author Mark Boyle, have theorised that money itself is perpetuating violent and destructive behaviour in human society ^{(3, 4)}. That is not to say that we should necessarily get rid of money, though there are many ideas for how we could do that (more about this in part 2).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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