{"id":42675,"date":"2019-01-13T10:49:53","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T15:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42675"},"modified":"2019-01-13T10:49:53","modified_gmt":"2019-01-13T15:49:53","slug":"2019-world-economy-is-reaching-growth-limits-expect-low-oil-prices-financial-turbulence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42675","title":{"rendered":"2019: World Economy Is Reaching Growth Limits; Expect Low Oil Prices, Financial\u00a0Turbulence"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ourfiniteworld.com\/2019\/01\/09\/2019-world-economy-is-reaching-growth-limits-expect-low-oil-prices-financial-turbulence\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">2019: World Economy Is Reaching Growth Limits; Expect Low Oil Prices, Financial\u00a0Turbulence<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Financial markets have been behaving in a very turbulent manner in the last couple of months. The issue, as I see it, is that <strong>the world economy is gradually changing from a growth mode to a mode of shrinkage.<\/strong> This is something like a ship changing course, from going in one direction to going in reverse. The system acts as if the brakes are being very forcefully applied, and reaction of the economy is to almost shake.<\/p>\n<p>What seems to be happening is that the world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as predicted in the computer simulations modeled in the 1972 book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.donellameadows.org\/wp-content\/userfiles\/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf\"><em>The Limits to Growth<\/em><\/a>. In fact, <strong>the base model of that set of simulations indicated that <em>peak industrial output per capita<\/em> might be reached right about now. <em>Peak food per\u00a0capita<\/em>might be reached about the same time.\u00a0<\/strong>I have added a dotted line to the forecast from this model, indicating where the economy seems to be in 2019, relative to the base model.<sup>1<\/sup><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_43506\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" data-shortcode=\"caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-43506\" src=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line.png?w=640\" sizes=\"(max-width: 607px) 100vw, 607px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line.png 607w, https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line.png?w=150 150w, https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line.png?w=300 300w\" alt=\"\" data-attachment-id=\"43506\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/ourfiniteworld.com\/2019\/01\/09\/2019-world-economy-is-reaching-growth-limits-expect-low-oil-prices-financial-turbulence\/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line.png?w=640\" data-orig-size=\"607,553\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"1972 base limits to growth forecast with 2019 dotted line\" data-image-description=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line.png?w=640?w=300\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line.png?w=640?w=607\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. Base scenario from <em>The Limits to Growth<\/em>, printed using today\u2019s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.esf.edu\/efb\/hall\/2009-05Hall0327.pdf\">Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil<\/a><\/em> with dotted line at 2019 added by author. The 2019 line is drawn based on where the world economy seems to be now, rather than on precisely where the base model would put the year 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The economy is a self-organizing structure that operates under the laws of physics. Many people have thought that when the world economy reaches limits, the limits would be of the form of high prices and \u201crunning out\u201d of oil. This represents an overly simple understanding of how the system works. What we should really expect, and in fact, what we are now beginning to see, is production cuts in finished goods made by the industrial system, such as cell phones and automobiles, because of <strong>affordability<\/strong>\u00a0issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2019: World Economy Is Reaching Growth Limits; Expect Low Oil Prices, Financial\u00a0Turbulence Financial markets have been behaving in a very turbulent manner in the last couple of months. The issue, as I see it, is that the world economy is gradually changing from a growth mode to a mode of shrinkage. This is something like [&hellip;]<\/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":[2,7],"tags":[1752,23913,1233,391,5176,485,7479,1232],"class_list":["post-42675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-survival-2","tag-economic-contraction","tag-financial-turbulence","tag-gail-tverberg","tag-growth","tag-growth-limits","tag-limits-to-growth","tag-low-oil-prices","tag-our-finite-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42675","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=42675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42676,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42675\/revisions\/42676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}