{"id":38215,"date":"2018-09-24T06:32:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T11:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38215"},"modified":"2018-09-24T06:32:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T11:32:00","slug":"the-worlds-fragile-economic-condition-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38215","title":{"rendered":"The World\u2019s Fragile Economic Condition \u2013 Part\u00a01"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World\u2019s Fragile Economic Condition \u2013 Part\u00a01<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

Where is the world economy heading? <\/strong>In my opinion, a large portion of the story that we usually hear about how the world economy operates and the role energy plays is not really correct. In this post (to be continued in Part 2 in the near future), I explain how some of the major elements of the world economy seem to function. I also point out some relationships that tend to make the world\u2019s economic condition more fragile.<\/p>\n

Trying to explain the situation a bit further, the economy is a networked system. It doesn\u2019t behave the way nearly everyone expects it to behave. Many people believe that any energy problem will be signaled by high prices. A look at history shows that this is not really the case: fighting and conflict are also likely outcomes. In fact, rising tariffs are a sign of energy problems.<\/p>\n

The underlying energy problem represents a conflict between supply and demand, but not in the way most people expect. The world needs rising demand to support the rising cost of energy products, but this rising demand is, in fact, very difficult to produce. The way that this rising demand is normally produced is by adding increasing amounts of debt, at ever-lower interest rates. At some point, the debt bubble created to provide the necessary \u00a0demand becomes overstretched. Now, we seem to be reaching a situation where the debt bubble may pop, at least in some parts of the world. This is a very concerning situation.<\/p>\n

Context.<\/strong> The presentation discussed in this post was given to the\u00a0Casualty Actuaries of the Southeast. (I am a casualty actuary myself, living in the Southeast.) The attendees tended to be quite young, and they tended not to be very aware of energy issues. I was trying to \u201cbring them up to speed.\u201d This is a link to the presentation: \u00a0The World\u2019s Fragile Economic Condition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Slide 1<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World\u2019s Fragile Economic Condition \u2013 Part\u00a01 Where is the world economy heading? In my opinion, a large portion of the story that we usually hear about how the world economy operates and the role energy plays is not really correct. In this post (to be continued in Part 2 in the near future), I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[195,5326,1233,366,431,7983,1232,1427,3721,9937],"class_list":["post-38215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-fragility","tag-gail-tverberg","tag-global-economy","tag-interest-rates","tag-networked-system","tag-our-finite-world","tag-supply-and-demand","tag-systems","tag-tariffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38216,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38215\/revisions\/38216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}