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There is a meme doing the rounds on social media… a picture of a vegetable patch, captioned “the time is coming when only those who know how to grow food will survive.” The idea being that, as our complex civilisation breaks down, we will be forced to return to a far simpler economy, where most people revert to roles within agriculture and food production. As with most memes, it functions as a thought-stopper… one which hides the obvious reality – backed by millennia of experience – that, in fact, “it will be the people who know how to force others to grow food,” who will be the real winners in the post-industrial economy.

At a deeper level though, the meme is an example of the way we delude ourselves into believing that a positive version of collapse – usually in the form of managed de-growth – is possible, and that those promoting such a view will be the ones who inherit whatever benefits it offers. History says otherwise, of course. Life in pre-industrial civilisations was mostly short, brutal, and often marred with chronic pain. The best most people could hope for was life in an institutional version of slavery, where at least serfdom laid some nominal responsibilities on the clergy and the nobility who ruled over them. And again, it was those with the wherewithal to protect and/or steal food by force who got to rule and to enjoy the few luxuries on offer.

Not that most of those promoting some version of the “green” techno-psychotic vision of a future of wind turbines and electric cars are likely to fare any better. Sure, the WEF neofascists and their politician acolytes are currently making a play to cling on to power as industrial civilisation collapses…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Central banks are stealing underpants

November 2, 2022

Central banks are stealing underpants

Let’s talk about supply shocks. Cast your mind back to the beginning of March 2020. Remember how everyone panic bought pasta and toilet paper? Except that it didn’t really happen – at least on a large scale. What happened was, in their usual underhand way, the establishment media paid supermarket managers to hide the toilet rolls just out of shot while they photographed the empty shelves. And then there was that time when the photographer got one of his mates to load a shopping trolley with multi-packs of toilet rolls to give the impression that this was commonplace. But there were shortages. Not from panic buying, but simply from the additional demand as we all added one or two extra items to our weekly shop. In a just-in-time supply system, that is all it takes to create a shortage.

There was more though. When lockdown began, there was a massive switch from what we might call the wholesale supply chain into the – usually much smaller – retail supply chain, as big consumers like schools, offices, factories, hotels and restaurants dramatically cut consumption even as a newly created army of homeworkers sought to increase theirs. For example, most eggs would previously have been consumed in the wholesale sector, where they are packaged in cartons of thirty or more. In the retail sector, eggs come mostly in half-dozen and dozen cartons. So that, at the beginning of lockdown there was an egg shortage because of the shortage of egg cartons. Toilet paper was affected in a similar way as demand for the large, wholesale rolls used in offices and factories slumped even as demand for household size rolls rocketed.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

In Brief: OPEC and out, Prices up – inflation down, Constructive ambiguity, The essential difference, Pet cemetery, Another fuel

October 14, 2022

In Brief: OPEC and out, Prices up – inflation down, Constructive ambiguity, The essential difference, Pet cemetery, Another fuel

OPEC and out

The political fallout from the OPEC+ decision to cut its oil production target by two million barrels a day – which would leave the world economy around six million barrels a day short of its pre-pandemic peak – is sufficient to push us closer to collapse. The Biden administration, who optimistically believed the President had secured a 200-million-barrel deal with the Saudis to replenish the USA’s strategic reserve, have treated the announcement as tantamount to a declaration of war. Although there is no law of physics that says oil producing states have to provide the west with cheap oil.

The decision is yet another Western own goal in an economic war that the west is clearly losing. It was the Biden administration’s decision to refuse new licenses for US domestic production which, despite depletion, could still fill the gap left by OPEC+ cuts (although the USA – like the UK – still needs to import heavy oil). It was also their decision to empty the strategic reserve, which is meant for dire emergencies, solely to keep pump prices down ahead of next month’s mid-term elections. Elections that Biden’s team may well lose, as Michael Shellenberger reminded Americans this week, the situation:

“… poses political risks for Democrats who, in the spring of 2020, killed a proposal by President Donald Trump to replenish the SPR with oil from American producers, not OPEC+ ones, and at a price of $24 a barrel, not the $80 a barrel that the Biden White House promised to OPEC+. At the time, Trump was seeking to stabilize the American oil industry after the Covid-19 pandemic massively reduced oil demand…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Since when did banks produce energy?

October 14, 2022

Since when did banks produce energy?

It takes a special kind of cynical self-interest to make people pay twice for something they already cannot afford, while claiming you are doing them a favour. This though, is the energy price relief package announced by Liz Truss yesterday. The package plays that old political card of being not quite as bad as it might otherwise have been, while still being a lot worse than it was.

Politically, the announcement confirms a great deal of what we suspected. In recent years there has been a growing belief that the Versailles-on-Thames technocracy pulls the strings and that incoming prime ministers are simply given their script on arrival in 10 Downing Street – this is born out by an energy package – drawn up by technocrats over the last six weeks – which is wholly at odds with Truss’s policy announcements during her leadership campaign. The announcement also demonstrates that despite her third-rate tribute act, Truss is no Margaret Thatcher, nor even the economic liberal that she claims… because a true libertarian – and likely Saint Margaret herself – would have allowed the energy companies to go bust rather than ignore the inflationary impact of state intervention… so now we know.

The package itself involves capping the average energy bill at £2,500 for the next two years, rather than the immediate rise to £3,549 and the anticipated rise above £6,000 in 2023. There is also a reduction on the regressive standing charge for electricity as the various green levies are removed. A reduction in VAT is also expected in future, and the national £400 bill reduction, together with the £650 for people on low incomes remains and may be extended next year.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Nobody could have seen it coming

September 7, 2022

Nobody could have seen it coming

Eighteen months ago, the UK average annual combined gas and electricity bill was £1,287. Later this week, we expect to learn that it will rise to £3,582 in October and to £4,266 in January 2023. Not, in reality, that anybody is going to pay that amount. All but those at the very top of the income ladder will instead cut back on energy use, with those at the bottom forced to self-disconnect. The problem is far worse for business users, who are not “protected” by the price “cap” imposed by the regulator. Energy is often the third largest cost – after wages and taxes – to businesses which have already been struggling with higher input and debt-servicing costs. What this is pointing to is a major affordability crisis this winter, with growing concerns for public health and the likelihood of a recessionary wave of business insolvencies.

As with the 2008 crash, the Versailles-on-Thames establishment are keen to point out that “nobody could have seen it coming.” After all, “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” coming just as the economy was staggering out of a two-year pandemic – itself arriving just months after the UK finalised Brexit – amounts to a combination of events which would have been considered outlandish in a work of fiction… except that a work of partial fiction – a docudrama – accurately set out the main causes of the UK’s current energy woes eighteen years ago.

In 2003, BBC programme makers began work on a series called “If… ,” which aimed to explore the future crises which required political leaders to act immediately, using drama to make the point. The three series, which were broadcast between March 2004 and May 2006, tackled issues like the impact of obesity on public health, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and intergenerational conflict between the boomers and millennials…

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

Those who the gods wish to destroy…

July 21, 2022

Those who the gods wish to destroy…

The UK is already in a de facto recession – only the fiddling of the data to count GP appointments as a value-adding activity led to a paltry 0.5 percent GDP growth in May. Discretionary spending has already plummeted, and it is only a matter of time before we see widespread business failures and debt defaults. Indeed, this is likely to be one reason why Britain is experiencing a wave of strikes – provoking a strike to save on energy costs and the wage bill was a common response to inflation in the 1970s and is likely to be one of the few similarities today (the big difference being that we no longer have nationalised industries, so nobody is going to give in to workers’ demands).

Internationally, there is a global dollar shortage – which the Federal Reserve is exacerbating – which threatens a sovereign debt implosion beginning with developing economies dependent upon a single commodity for foreign exchange, but eventually dragging down any economy which trades in dollars… which brings us to the ill-advised sanctions salad imposed on Russia and China in response to the war in Ukraine. This has brought forward the establishment of an alternative BRICS currency system which will cover around a third of global trade, and in the process crush the economies of Europe. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Russia seems to be finally responding by halting its supply of gas to Europe, causing capital flight and industrial closures – including of the wind turbine industry which is supposed to save the day – across the continent.

In Britain, the “curse of oil” means that the unfolding collapse will be all the harder – since the 1980s, Britain’s neoliberal governments have used oil and gas revenues to underwrite the explosion of debt – and profits for the few – generated in the City of London…

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

Bigger than you can imagine

July 15, 2022

Bigger than you can imagine

What I “remember” of the 1970s is actually very limited. Most of what I think of as “my memories” have, in fact, been generated by various retrospective media coverage of the period which provide the framework into which my scraps of memory have been slotted. And the younger someone is, the more their view of the 1970s will have been shaped by media rather than memory. And so, it has been all too easy for today’s lazy news coverage to frame our current woes through the lens of an imaginary 1970s.

The crisis now unfolding, however, is entirely different to the 1970s in one crucial respect… The 1970s crisis was largely artificial. When all is said and done, the oil shock was nothing more than the emerging OPEC cartel asserting its newfound leverage following the peak of continental US oil production…

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

The great unravelling

July 14, 2022

The great unravelling

Real life Bond villain Klaus Schwab has become the focus of ridicule following crude attempts to remove articles praising Sri Lanka’s “Vision 2025” economic plan from the World economic Forum (WEF) website – the world’s leading proponent of the hi-tech fourth industrial revolution apparently not realising that nothing ever disappears from the internet.

Sri Lanka was supposed to be the poster child for the Great Green New Reset, scoring a 98 percent ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) ranking. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa winning considerable praise from globalist leaders and climate activists alike for his speech to the COP26 conference in Glasgow last November:

“Sri Lanka recently restricted imports of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and weedicides due to public health concerns, water contamination, soil degradation, and biodiversity impacts.

“Although opposed by entrenched lobbies, this has created opportunities for innovation and investment into organic agriculture that will be healthier and more sustainable in future.”

Critics of climate action have understandably focussed on this policy as “the reason” for Sri Lanka’s economic collapse and descent into political chaos – Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe having fled the country after the hungry masses invaded the presidential palace last week. In spite of praise from organisations like the WEF and the world bank, however, the Sri Lankan economy was highly indebted and vulnerable to economic shocks long before the country’s leaders decided that a mass crash diet was in order. The country’s main sources of foreign currency – without which it could not repay its debts – are tea exports and tourism. Tourism was, of course, crushed in 2020 and 2021, as countries locked down and air travel ground to a halt. In 2022, moreover, air travel is still disrupted, and far fewer consumers can afford international travel.

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

The devil is in the detail

February 20, 2022

The devil is in the detail

If you get your news from the BBC, you might be forgiven for thinking that the economic hit from the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions has come to an end. Indeed, if you merely skim through the headlines in your social media feed, you might believe that the UK is poised for an explosion of growth, the like of which we haven’t witnessed since the late 1960s. “Retail sales,” we are told, “rebound in January as Omicron eases.” The “UK economy rebounds,” they say, “with fastest growth since WW2.” Chancellor Sunak – who wants to be seen as a prime-minister-in-waiting – announced that:

“Today’s figures show that despite Omicron the economy was remarkably resilient. We were the fastest growing economy in the G7 last year and are forecast to continue being the fastest growing economy this year.”

The GDP figures are certainly better than they might have been if more businesses had been left to go bust during lockdown. Nevertheless, they are still well below February 2020, following the massive crash immediately after lockdown was ordered. As the Office for National Statistics explain:

“UK gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have increased by 1.0% in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2021… Compared with the same quarter a year ago, GDP increased by 6.5%.

“Following the large 9.4% fall in 2020 because of the initial impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and public health restrictions, UK GDP saw an annual rise of 7.5% in 2021.”

Worse still, manufacturing GDP was negative, and continues to lag well behind its February 2020 level:

“Production output fell by 0.4% in Quarter 4 2021 and is now 3.6% below its pre-coronavirus levels. The fall in production output was because of a 3.2% fall in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (energy) and a 4.5% fall in mining and quarrying.”

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

Welcome to the age of cuts

February 8, 2022

Welcome to the age of cuts

The UK government faced a barrage of criticism over its National Insurance hike this week. The tax – which theoretically pays for public services, pensions, and benefits – was in creased last autumn, before the political class became aware of the massive increase in gas and electricity prices coming later this year. However, with cost-push inflation rising across the economy, and with rises in local taxes due to be announced, millions of British households are facing a massive squeeze on their standard of living. This has given more weight to the idea that government should extend its pandemic borrowing until the economy has recovered, rather than raising new taxes at this point.

It goes without saying that nobody welcomes tax increases. Nevertheless, as a consequence of the way this currency-creation system works, the government is rapidly running out of room to manoeuvre. In the UK, around £500bn worth of government bonds are index-linked, so that as the inflation rate rises, so the cost of servicing the debt increases. As James Sillars at Sky News reported this week:

“Interest payments on government debt hit a record £8.1bn for the month of December because of surging inflation… The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the cost of servicing the country’s £2trn+ debt pile was almost 200% or £5.4bn up on December 2020.

“It is because half a trillion pounds worth of government bonds are linked to the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation which stood at 8.4% in December – its highest level since 1991.”

The problem will worsen in the spring as the new energy price cap comes into force, and as prices continue to rise across the economy. This sets up one of contemporary democracy’s greatest flaws. It is precisely during inflationary periods that the people begin to demand more government spending and less taxation…

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

Days of reckoning

February 8, 2022

Days of reckoning

Here’s something which will likely be universally unpopular: The government shouldn’t do anything to subsidise energy prices. I say this in the face of a £700 or so increase on annual bills announced today. And this is just the beginning, because, as Nils Pratley at the Guardian points out, when the price cap is raised again in October, it will add a further £300 to bills – just in time for next winter.

To be clear, I am not arguing that millions of households should be left to choose between heat and food; I am merely pointing out that there are better and more effective ways of alleviating poverty than bailing out a private energy industry which is the victim of its own past follies. Rather, I agree with Torsten Bell from the Resolution Foundation, who told this morning’s Today programme that the best way of addressing poverty is through increases in the benefits system. Restoring and adding to the £20 a week cut from Universal Credit and the triple lock on pensions would be by far the most effective way of alleviating fuel poverty.

The energy side of the crisis, however, requires sweeping restructuring which goes well beyond anything the government or the opposition are currently prepared to countenance – not least because the economic models they operate on are so out of step with the real world that they fail even to understand the problem, still less offer a workable solution.

Why the energy cap failed

The state-imposed energy cap, which is the focus of establishment media attention today, was always the wrong solution to the wrong problem. As I explained four and a half years ago:

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

It’s okay to look up

January 12, 2022

It’s okay to look up

I am told I should look into filing a copyright claim against the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up, since I wrote a version of it in my 2015 book, The Consciousness of Sheep, and for exactly the same reason:

“We’ve all seen this movie before: A giant asteroid is heading straight for us, and it looks like a big one. Although somewhat smaller than the rock that wiped out the dinosaurs – together with 90 percent of life on Earth – this one could well destroy human civilisation. If it hits a landmass, it will spew pollution into the upper atmosphere. This will initially produce a global ‘nuclear winter’ in which temperatures plummet and plant life withers as sunlight is blocked out. Those of us that survive the impact will face starvation as harvests fail. In the longer-term we face runaway global warming as the gases trapped in the upper atmosphere act like a blanket to prevent heat radiating into space. Even if the asteroid hits an ocean, things may not be much better. Super-size tsunami waves will sweep around the planet wiping out 70-90 percent of the World’s cities and causing massive damage to infrastructure. The water vapour that erupts into the sky is three times more powerful a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide that humanity routinely pumps into the atmosphere. This, too, threatens runaway global warming…

“What would we humans do if this was for real?

“The decision to act now should be obvious except for two compounding factors. First, governments in the modern world tend not to trust the people. So they have been trying to keep the lid on the whole thing while telling the population to carry on with business as usual…

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

This economy is going down

December 28, 2021

This economy is going down

UK gas prices have fallen back this week – although they are still some 400 percent higher than at the start of 2021. And the reasons for the fall in price should not breed complacency. First, the arrival of a south-westerly airflow off the Atlantic has finally begun to spin those offshore wind turbines after last week’s doldrums. At the time of writing, wind is supplying 28.5 percent of our electricity, allowing gas to fall back to 27.4 percent, and for coal plants to be switched off – although nuclear is being run flat out at 20 percent, reflecting the still too high price of gas. With stronger winds forecast for next week, demand for gas may fall even further. But the winter is only just beginning, and it is doubtful that we will get through January, February and early March without at least one more week of cold, still, high pressure air. And if we are unlucky, we could face several weeks in a row.

The second reason for the lull in price is worrying for a more complicated reason. On Wednesday, Marwa Rashad at Reuters reported that:

“At least ten cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have recently been diverted from Asia to head west drawn by Europe’s record high prices amid supply concerns ahead of peak winter demand, industry sources said…

“In addition to the above cargoes, a U.S. cargo onboard Marvel Crane had headed toward Panama bound for Asia before being diverted northeast and now signalled it was bound for the UK’s South Hook terminal, according to ICIS LNG Edge.

“Data Intelligence firm Kpler said it has listed more tankers diverting towards Europe from Asia and Other destinations like Brazil including British Contributor, Tembek, LNGShips Manhattan, LNG Alliance and are eying two more for possible route change.

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

The hidden recession of 2020

December 24, 2021

The hidden recession of 2020

After 20 months of economy-wrecking lockdowns and restrictions, 2019 is fondly remembered as a period of prosperous calm. Memories though, are deceptive. And in the days before we learned what gain-of-function meant, things were not as rosy as they now seem. Although the decade 2009-2019 was officially one of the longest periods of economic growth ever recorded, the rate of growth was anaemic – the media reporting on any quarter with more than 1.0% growth as if it heralded a return to the 1960s. And what growth there was owed more to additional debt than to improvements in productivity. The reality of the post-2008 years was of the mergence of an 80:20 economy in which the majority watched their prosperity evaporate, while a shrinking metropolitan salaried class fought a rear-guard defence of their income and status.

The political dam broke in 2016, with “the revenge of the places that didn’t matter” – aka Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. But few in the salaried class understood the economic decline which had spilled over into the political arena; preferring instead to blame it all on Russian bots. Nevertheless, whether the elites and their salaried lapdogs chose to understand the economic situation or not, the process of decline continued.

In the UK, Christmas 2018 had been the worse on record… until Christmas 2019 rolled around. And whereas Christmas 2018 had seen a big decline in discretionary spending, Christmas 2019 produced the first indicators of a decline in borderline essential spending too. We might choose to regard the humble Christmas pudding as something which can be lived without – although those who lived under Cromwell’s puritanical dictatorship might beg to differ – but a decline in sales – along with those of turkey and seasonal biscuits – points to a nation which was reining in its spending long before SARS-CoV-2 embarked upon the European leg of its world tour.

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

In Brief: Fracking back, new weather warnings, lockdown by any other name

December 21, 2021

In Brief: Fracking back, new weather warnings, lockdown by any other name

Fracking back

Anti-fracking campaigners like to flatter themselves by claiming that it was their protests which finally brought UK fracking to an end. The reality though, is that the price at which UK shale gas might be recovered was far higher than the prevailing price of gas from the North Sea. The UK’s tortured geology and its lack of unpopulated open space meant that UK fracking could never match the relatively low prices of its US counterpart. And a few years ago, when government had to decide whether to give UK fracking the green light, there was enough surplus gas on the wholesale market to justify a moratorium.

Several gigawatts of intermittent wind farms and an insane German decision to phase out nuclear, later, and Western Europe finds itself desperately short of the gas supplies required to keep the lights and heaters running this winter. The UK – which failed to model the future strength of the Gulf Stream correctly – is particularly vulnerable as it depends upon gas power stations to iron out the intermittency from its over-deployment of wind turbines. One result – which the establishment media is being surprisingly quiet about – is that the wholesale price of gas has rocketed past October’s record price of £2.93 per therm. As of this afternoon, the price is £3.49, and may well reach new highs later this week (see below).

The issue here is whether the current price increases are here to stay. Some commentators suggest that the shortage is due to Russia cutting its supply to Europe in order to pressure Germany to finalise the Nord Stream 2 pipeline…

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

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