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A YOUNG PERSON’S GUIDE TO THE ECONOMY

Introduction

Intended for an educational documentary, The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra is a 1945 composition by Bejamin Britten. A similar title – A Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson – was used for a progressive rock compilation album released in 1976.

What we need now is a Young Person’s Guide to the Economy. The term “young” can be applied however we wish, and the main advantage enjoyed by those who are young in years is that they have less to un-learn.

What passes for economic orthodoxy is, for the most part, a set of tarradiddles determinedly rooted in the agrarian economic conditions of the 1770s. Chief amongst these tarradiddles is that the economy can be explained and managed in terms of money alone, such that natural resources in general – and energy in particular – need not be taken into account.

This, given our control of the human artefact of money, leads to the proposition that we can look forward with confidence to infinite, exponential economic expansion on a finite planet. This is an idea which – in the words of Kenneth E Boulding, co-founder of general systems theory – could only be taken seriously by “a madman or an economist”.

The main problem with conventional economic theory is that it originated at a time when virtually the only energy used in the economy was provided by human and animal labour, and the nutritional energy which made that labour possible. We hear echoes of this era every time someone measures productivity by comparing economic output with hours of human labour.

Back in the 1770s, it was reasonable to conclude that labour (remunerated financially), monetary capital investment, ingenuity and financial incentive were the factors that drove the economy….

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

#259: The way we live next

July 24, 2023

#259: The way we live next

REFLECTIONS ON THE REAL ECONOMY

“Simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions are a threat to global food security”, according to a new report published by Nature. The technical jargon here references a “meandering jet stream” but, for non-specialists, what this means is that we can no longer rely on worse-than-average crop conditions in some places being cancelled out by better-than-average conditions in others.

Commenting on this in The Guardian, George Monbiot says that only five stories about this have appeared in the global media, which he contrasts with “more than 10,000 stories this year about Phillip Schofield, the British television presenter who resigned over an affair with a younger colleague”.

“In mediaworld, a place that should never be confused with the real world, celebrity gossip is thousands of times more important than existential risk”, says Monbiot.

This is a conundrum that affects issues beyond climate change, critically important though this obviously is. We can imagine busy people, with lives to lead and issues to confront, switching off in droves when the media turns to economics.

Moreover, they’re right to do this, if all that’s being presented to them is an outdated, fallacious doctrine which promises infinite growth on a finite planet, and claims that there’s a financial fix for every economic ill.

If it’s difficult for people to find time to think about a real issue like climate change, how can we expect them to take an interest in nonsense about infinite growth and the cure-all characteristics of money?

I’m writing this as the Surplus Energy Economics project closes in on its tenth anniversary.

To be candid about it, I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do next, but I can tell you my immediate plan.

This is the first of two planned articles to appear here. The second will try to sum up what I think we now know about the economy, understood as an energy system.

Here, I’m going to reflect on some of the implications that we can draw from what we know about the economy.

Of reality and perception

There are, of course, two ways in which we might explain the disparity of coverage between hard and important scientific news and the doings of people in the “mediaworld”. One is that ‘the powers that be’ who control the world’s media don’t want us to hear about – or worry and get angry about – threats to global food security.

The other is that the general public is simply more interested in stories about ‘slebs’ than in the complicated science and gloomy prognostications of the experts, and the media have a commercial interest in covering those stories which attract the greatest attention.

#246: The Surplus Energy Economy, part 1

February 25, 2023

#246: The Surplus Energy Economy, part 1

FROM FIRST PRINCIPLES

Introduction

We have reached a turning-point at which economics and the economy have parted company. Orthodox economics continues to promise growth in perpetuity, but the economy itself is going in the opposite direction.

The explanation for this is simple. Conventional economics assumes that the economy is driven by money, which is entirely under our control. But the economy is, in reality, not a financial system, but a physical one, which uses energy to convert raw materials into the products and services which constitute prosperity. The modern economy has been built on abundant, low-cost energy from fossil fuels, but this dynamic is winding down and, as we shall see in a future instalment, we have no complete (or timely) alternative with which to replace it.

The aim with The Surplus Energy Economy is to set out a comprehensive assessment of the condition and prospects of the world economy and financial system, seen from the perspective that the economy is shaped by energy, not money. This series of articles will be as specific as possible, using data from the SEEDS economic model.

The conclusions reached here necessarily contradict the orthodox line, which is that the supposed ‘normality’ of growth will soon return, and that seamless transition to renewable energy sources will deliver economic expansion in perpetuity.

The economy is analysed here as a material system which has started to contract after reaching physical constraints imposed by the availability and cost of energy. Similar limits apply to environmental tolerance for energy-based economic activity.

Findings will come later in this series, but we are completely unprepared for the reversal of prior growth in the economy. The ending of growth has not arrived without warning, and we can identify a precursor zone, starting in the 1990s, which was characterised by deceleration, followed by stagnation.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

#243. The Great Inflexion

November 23, 2022

#243. The Great Inflexion

A SYSTEM UNRAVELS

INTRODUCTION

As everyone surely knows by now, the global economy has entered a recession which is likely to be both severe and protracted. For the most part, governments and central bankers are concentrating on the task of trying to tame inflation.

Their critics tend to argue for more expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, contending that stimulus could soften or shorten the recession. They claim, in defiance both of experience and of logic, that expansionary monetary policies needn’t contradict the effort to bring inflation under control.

Where almost everybody is in agreement is that, however long it takes, the recession will end. But there’s a striking absence of explanations for how or why growth is supposed to resume. The fall-back position is no more than an assumption – a recovery will arrive for no better reason than that all previous economic downturns have been followed by rebounds.

The underlying presumption here is cyclicality, a process accepted as routine, not just by policy-makers and central bankers, but by investors, business leaders and the general public alike. It is well understood that the Big Numbers – like economic output, and the aggregate value of the markets – oscillate in sine-wave patterns around central trends.

It’s further assumed that these secular trends are always positive – each recovery exceeds the preceding recession, and each market rebound more than cancels out the latest dip.

This latter assumption has reached the point of invalidation. What economies and markets are now experiencing is trend-inflexion. Cyclicality may indeed continue but, from here on, it will do so around downwards-inflected trends. This process of reversal can only be managed if it is recognized.

The consequences of trend inflexion are readily summarised. On an ex-inflation basis, economic output will deteriorate, whilst the real costs of necessities will carry on rising, even if there are some retreats from the severe spikes experienced in recent times.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

#242. The dynamics of global re-pricing

November 10, 2022

#242. The dynamics of global re-pricing

IN SEARCH OF EXPLANATIONS

SUMMARY

There is a growing acknowledgement that the World economy has entered a new era. We know that the cost of capital is trending upwards, with adverse consequences for asset prices. But there’s been remarkably little inclination to examine the underlying processes that are causing this to happen. Neither is there much in the way of recognition that entire sectors could be crushed, or even eliminated altogether, as re-pricing becomes more selective.

We need to dismiss any idea that this is temporary. There are some linkages connecting the resurgence of inflation with pandemic-era QE, and with the war in Ukraine, but these are little more than symptoms.

The underlying dynamic is that the economic driver of the industrial era – the supply of low-cost energy from oil, natural gas and coal – is winding down, and there is no assured replacement at hand. Transition to renewables is imperative, but there’s no guarantee that an economy based on wind-turbines, solar panels and batteries can be as large as the fossil-based economy of today. The probabilities are that it will be smaller.

Had we been prepared to do so, we could have seen this coming. The chain of causation starts in the 1990s, when the authorities responded to “secular stagnation” with deregulation programmes that made credit easier to obtain. The subsequent financial crisis forced the adoption of QE, initially to prop up the banking system, and latterly as a self-standing form of stimulus. We were assured, quite wrongly, that QE would not be inflationary, but it has created a systemically-dangerous “everything bubble” in assets.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

#241. Behind the crisis

October 4, 2022

#241. Behind the crisis

UNCOVERING THE HIDDEN DYNAMIC

As you would expect, both the mainstream and the specialist media have been giving us minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow coverage of the financial crisis which began with the British government’s 23^rd September “fiscal event”.

Unfortunately, this coverage and analysis is founded on a conventional school of economic thought which insists – rather, simply assumes – that all economic events can be explained in terms of money alone.

This assumption is fallacious. The fact of the matter is that we can immerse ourselves entirely in monetary theories and financial analyses until the proverbial “cows come home” without understanding more than the surface manifestations of the underlying situation.

As a corrective, let’s remind ourselves of something that ought to be self-evident. This is that the economy is a system which delivers those material products and services which together constitute prosperity. Money is simply a proxy for these products and services, a means of exchange and distribution which does not, of itself, determine the availability of this material prosperity.

This ‘money-only’ fallacy delivers false comfort, in at least two ways.

First, it enables us to explain away the current crisis in terms of idiosyncrasies – there’s a surface narrative which assures us that, if we can avoid the kind of bungling in which the new British leadership has become enmeshed, we can similarly avoid the kind of crisis now unfolding in the United Kingdom.

We might, indeed, be persuaded that even Britain can find a way out of this crisis through ‘rationalization’, which, in this case, might mean ‘finding rational people to manage its economic affairs’.

Now that growth has reversed

The second source of false comfort is the mistaken assumption that finding the right blend of fiscal and monetary policies can deliver the nirvana of perpetual growth.

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

#238. Money and the end of abundance

September 3, 2022

#238. Money and the end of abundance

A FINANCIAL CRISIS PRIMER

Amongst the world’s decision-makers, French president Emmanuel Macron has come closer than anyone to spelling out the reality of the current economic situation, saying that “we are in the process of living through a tipping point or great upheaval”, and referencing “the end of abundance” (my emphasis).

If his words are taken seriously – as they should be – a major crisis looms. The global financial system is entirely predicated on perpetual economic growth.

As important as what Mr Macron has said is what he didn’t say. He didn’t say that abundance is over ‘for a year or two’, or that we’ll have to live through this ‘until better times return’. He didn’t make fatuous promises of ‘sunlit uplands’ or ‘a new golden age’.

Some of us have long known that an age of abundance made possible by low-cost energy was coming to an end. Until now, though, decision-makers have fought shy of this conclusion, taking refuge in the tarradiddle of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’ proffered by a deeply flawed economic orthodoxy.

What should concern us now isn’t when, or whether, other leaders will arrive at this same conclusion. The trend of events is going to impose that emerging reality upon them.

Rather, we need to be prepared for what happens when market participants arrive at the same conclusion as Mr. Macron.

The nature of the crisis

Preparedness requires clarity, and we need to be in no doubt that what we’re witnessing now is an unfolding affordability crisis. This means two things – and both of them point towards a major financial slump.

First, the ability of consumers to make discretionary (non-essential) purchases is in structural decline. This spells relentless contraction, not just in obvious discretionary sectors like leisure, travel and entertainment, but in ‘tech’ and consumer durables as well.

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

#228. In the eye of the Perfect Storm

July 31, 2022

#228. In the eye of the Perfect Storm

A GUIDE TO THE SURPLUS ENERGY ECONOMY

FOREWORD

The title of this report makes intentional reference to the Perfect Storm paper published by Tullett Prebon back in 2013, when I was head of research at that organization.

Since then, my efforts have been concentrated on (a) promoting discussion (at Surplus Energy Economics) about the energy basis of the economy, and on (b) building an economic model (SEEDS) founded on these principles.

Whilst theoretical debate will continue, and models can always be further refined, time has run out for the purely intellectual contest between conventional and energy-based interpretations of the economy.

Accordingly – and with due apology to those to whom much of this is already familiar – what follows is a comprehensive summary of what we know about the economy as an energy system, and what we can reasonably infer about the future based on this understanding.

INTRODUCTION

Faced with rising inflation, worsening pressure on living standards and significant nervousness in the markets, we’re at liberty – if we so choose – to ascribe all of these problems to the combined effects of the coronavirus crisis and the war in Eastern Europe, and to assure ourselves that the ‘normality’ of never-ending economic growth will return once these temporary vicissitudes are behind us.

The alternative is to face facts.

These are that prior growth in material prosperity has gone into reverse, and that a financial system erected on the mistaken presumption of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’ faces challenges of a magnitude which eclipse all past experience.

Understood as a system supplying the goods and services which constitute material prosperity, the economy is a dynamic propelled by the supply, value and cost of energy.

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

#234. Britain on the brink

July 22, 2022

#234. Britain on the brink

THE PRICE OF EXTREMISM

Whether the country’s leaders know it or not, the United Kingdom is now at serious risk of economic collapse.

We must hope that this doesn’t happen. If it does, it will take the form of a sharp fall in the value of Sterling which, in these circumstances, is the indicator to watch.

A currency crash would cause sharp increases, not just in the prices of essential imports such as energy and food, but also in the cost of servicing debt. In defence of its currency, Britain could be forced into rate rises which would bring down its dangerously over-inflated property market.

This risk itself isn’t new. Rather, it results from a long period of folly, and can’t be blamed entirely on the current administration, inept though the Johnson government undoubtedly is. What we’re witnessing now seems to be a government on the edge of panic. The official opposition doesn’t offer a workable alternative programme, and mightn’t be electable if it did.

We need to be clear that the root cause of Britain’s problems is long-term adherence to an increasingly extreme ideology sometimes labelled ‘liberal’.

It’s one thing to recognize the merits of the market economy, but quite another to turn this into a fanaticism which judges everything on its capability of generating short-term private profit.

Extremism is divisive, and creates winners and losers to an extent that moderation does not. If solutions still exist for Britain’s worsening problems – and that’s a very big “if” – there are two reasons why such solutions mightn’t be adopted.

The first is that these solutions would anger a very vocal group of winners under the existing system.

The second is that those in charge would have to make a public admission of the failures of extremism.

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

#235. The affordability crisis

July 22, 2022

#235. The affordability crisis

WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING

What might be called the ‘consensus narrative of the moment’ is that our near-term economic prospects depend on the ability of central banks to tame inflation without tipping the economy into a severe recession. There are numerous complications, of course, but this is the gist of the story.

What these officials need to find, we’re told, are Goldilocks interest rates (‘not too hot, not too cold’), and all will be well if they succeed. If they err too far in one direction, inflation will run higher, and for longer, than is comfortable. If they lean too far the other way, a serious (though, by definition, a time-limited) recession will ensue.

Inflation itself, the narrative runs, has been the product of bad luck. First came the pandemic crisis, which impaired production capacity and severed supply-chains. Before we’d finished dealing with this, along came the war in Ukraine, disrupting supplies of energy, food and other commodities. There are some who add, sotto voce, that we might have overdone pandemic-era stimulus somewhat.

Our hardships, then, can be put down to a run of bad luck. Those in charge know what they’re doing.

It’s conceded, in some quarters, that we might face some sort of crisis if these challenges aren’t managed adroitly. This, though, shouldn’t be as bad as the GFC of 2008-09, and certainly won’t be existential.

We’re navigating choppy waters, then – not going over Niagara in a barrel.

The affordability reality

There is some truth in each of these propositions, but explanation in none.

What we’re really encountering now is an affordability crisis. The aim here is to explain this, without going into too much detail, and with data confined to two sets of SEEDS-derived charts at the end of this discussion.

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

#231. Short and sharp

June 9, 2022

#231. Short and sharp

A SYNOPSIS OF DETERIORATION AND RISK

Might we very soon face a major financial crisis, at a scale exceeding that of 2008-09?

Are we heading for a global economic slump, or can current problems be explained away in terms of ‘non-recurring events’, such as the war in Ukraine?

Do the authorities have the tools and the understanding required to navigate the current economic storm? And what is the outlook for inflation?

These are valid questions, and I’m well aware that, whilst many visitors to this site are interested in economic principles, theory and detail, others prefer succinct statements of situations and prospects.

That’s understandable – these are deeply worrying times.

The aim with what follows is to (a) set out a brief summary of the economic and financial outlook, as seen through the prism of the SEEDS economic model, followed by (b) a succinct commentary on how these conclusions are reached.

Accordingly, what we might infer from these conditions is left for another day. Like me, you will have your own views on the political and other implications of what’s going on and what is to be expected, but the plan with this discussion is to stick to a strictly objective analysis of economic and financial conditions and prospects.

Data used here by way of illustration is a ‘top-line’ summary at the global level. We might, at a later date, look at some of this material in greater detail, and examine the circumstances of some of the 29 national economies modelled by SEEDS.

Where both the theoretical and the ‘succinctly-practical’ are concerned, urgency is being increased by what we can only call the ‘uncertainties and fears’ generated by current conditions.

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

#225. Gravitational pull

April 3, 2022

#225. Gravitational pull

MANAGING THE REALITY OF ‘LIFE AFTER ORTHODOXY’

A new ‘heavenly body’ has entered the cosmology of political and corporate decision. This new influence is the emerging reality that the economy is turning out, after all, to be an energy system, and that long-accepted ideas to the contrary are fallacious.

The concept of limits is replacing the paradigm of ‘infinite growth’.

Where decision-making is concerned, this emerging reality isn’t likely to have an immediately transformational effect. Established nostrums can have a tenacity that long out-lasts the demonstration of their falsity.

We’re not, then, about to see sudden, open and actioned acceptance of the fact that the economy is an energy rather than a monetary system.

Rather, we can expect to see energy reality exert an increasing gravitational pull on the tide of decisions and planning, most obviously in government and business. Policy statements may not change, but the thinking that informs planning and strategy undoubtedly will.

This gravitational effect is starting, as of now, to re-shape perceptions of the present, change ensuing “narratives” of the future, and trigger a process of realignment towards the implications of a world with meaningful constraints.

The aim here is to examine the practical consequences of a contest of interpretations which, whilst it has already been decided at the theoretical level, leaves ‘everything to play for’ in political and commercial practice.

And then there was one

There are, essentially, two ways in which we can seek to explain the working of the economy.

One of these is the conventional or orthodox school of thought, which presents economics as a process determined by the behaviour of money, and acknowledges no limits to the potential for growth.

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

#223. Trading with the (common) enemy

March 8, 2022

#223. Trading with the (common) enemy

THE SHARED CONSEQUENCES OF RESOURCE CONSTRAINTThe tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, as well as being horrific in itself, has brought us face-to-face with a brutal fact whose reality we’ve always, hitherto, managed to ignore.

This fact is that the world has become accustomed to a standard of living that its energy resources can no longer support.

This is as true of, for example, China as it is, more obviously, of Western Europe. Indeed, once forward trajectories – and the all-important matter of ECoE – are taken into account, the United States has the self-same problem.

Neither can we assume that countries favoured with extensive indigenous energy resources are insulated from this problem. It simply isn’t possible for Russia – or, for that matter, for the oil-rich states of the Middle East – to pull up the drawbridge and let the rest of the world ‘freeze in the dark’.

The people of Ukraine are the obvious victims of this crisis, but the hardship being inflicted by the underlying issue stretches, in varying degrees, into most corners of the world.

Westerners – hit by rising living costs, and fearing that their trinket-laden lifestyles and their penchant for foreign holidays may be receding into the past – might spare a thought for citizens of the world’s poor and poorest nations, where the harsh realities of energy constraint are already showing up in the worsening unaffordability of food and other necessities.

The current crisis is bringing us ‘up close and personal’ with a string of fundamental issues.

First, the emergence of energy constraints is destroying the long-favoured illusion that we can enjoy ‘growth in perpetuity’.

To paraphrase Kenneth Boulding, idiots and orthodox economists might continue to believe in the tarradiddle of infinite growth on a finite planet, but the rest of us have to face facts.

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

#222. The Forecast Project

February 15, 2022

#222. The Forecast Project

PREDICTING THE ECONOMY OF THE FUTURE

In the Western world, at least, there’s an almost palpable sense of public uncertainty, anxiety and discontent which might be attributed to a variety of causes.

Some ascribe it to specific issues, some to the over-reach and incompetence (or worse) of governments, and others to widening inequality between “the elites” and everyone else.

The view taken here is that the deteriorating public mood has a more straightforward explanation, which is that prior growth in economic prosperity has gone into reverse.

The cessation of growth and the onset of involuntary economic contraction are, of course, denied by governments, but this makes popular dissatisfaction worse.

If the economy as a whole is supposed to be growing, but the individual finds that his or her economic circumstances are deteriorating, it’s easy to assume that there must be some kind of bias in the system.

In fact, we don’t need to posit conspiracy theories, or look to ‘the machinations of the mighty’, to explain worsening hardship.

The simpler reality, hidden in plain sight, is that the prosperity of the average person is eroding and so, at the same time, is his or her sense of economic security. Efforts to use financial innovation at the macroeconomic level to stave off this trend have failed, driving people ever deeper into the coils of debt and other financial commitments.

In short, the average person is getting poorer, and feeling less secure. He or she doesn’t like it, and is baffled and suspicious over official assurances that it isn’t happening at all.

Projection – the land of hazard

Forecasting involves entering territory ‘where angels fear to tread’. But the publication of projections has now become imperative, made so (a) by the rapid worsening in the public mood, and (b) by the incomprehension that continues to inform policy decisions.

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

#221. Strategies for a post-growth economy

February 8, 2022

#221. Strategies for a post-growth economy

PART ONE: BUSINESS IN A NEW ERA

Under current conditions, it’s increasingly hard to understand why the inevitability of economic contraction remains so very much a minority point of view.

Many of us have long understood why past growth in material prosperity has gone into reverse.

Here, with the SEEDS economic model, we can go still further, quantifying past trends, and charting a future in which economies get poorer, living standards are squeezed by rises in the real cost of energy-intensive essentials, and the financial system buckles under the weight of its own contradictions.

None of this has to be a disaster, but the management of involuntary economic ‘de-growth’ requires innovative strategies, most obviously in business and government.

The aim here is to concentrate on the PNFC (private non-financial corporate) sector, evaluating strategies that could mitigate the worst effects of economic contraction.

Other sectors – government, households and the financial system – may be the subject of future instalments, whilst the role of technology might merit separate discussion.

Don’t over-simplify

Readers are reminded that this site does not provide investment advice, and must not be used for this purpose.

In any case, it would be an over-simplification to assume that the decline in prosperity must crush discretionary sectors whilst leaving suppliers of essentials largely unscathed.

In fact, suppliers of intermediate (and intermediary) services are at even greater risk than businesses which supply products and services that the consumer might want, but doesn’t need.

Rather, future trends will be more nuanced than a simple decline in all forms of discretionary consumption.

What emerges from this analysis is that businesses will need – and will be pressured by market forces – to front-run the process of de-complexification that will parallel contraction in the size of the material economy.

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

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