Category Archives: 2) Overshoot

The polycrisis/overshoot, collapse of the financial system, breakdown of supply chains, blackouts, end of being able to make computer chips, and so on are symptoms of the underlying cause: peak energy and peak everything, especially peak diesel since trucks, rail, and ships make this one-time only fossil fueled civilization possible. Wind, solar, nuclear, and so on also need fossil fuels for every single step of their life cycle, so that is a dead end. It is back to before the 15th century — wood world. Whether the house of cards collapses from chokepoints in the middle east such as the Suez canal, the financial shock of a natural disaster or from debt and corruption, Export Land Model, or nuclear war — there is certain to be a series of dislocations that ultimately bring population down to 400 million (population before fossil fuels) or less (due to overshoot factors such as top soil erosion, pollution, etc) Let’s hope there are some islands of sanity and that you are living on one of them!

Fannie & Freddie started the mortgage crisis

Reckless Endangerment. How outsized ambition, greed, and corruption led to Economic Armageddon 2011 by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner This book makes the case that Fannie & Freddie started the mortgage crisis and then Wall Street got in on the … Continue reading

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A book review of “Russia’s Food Policies and Globalization”

Preface.  Today Russia exports a substantial percent of wheat, and now that oil prices are surging is in much better shape than after the Fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.  But with peak oil likely in 2018, and money … Continue reading

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Gordon Long Extend & Pretend

Gordon Long has interesting ideas about what’s going on and how to invest accordingly.  I don’t agree with all that he writes, but what he has to say sure is interesting and a good overview of the incredibly widespread corruption … Continue reading

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We’ve been “Bankalized” Banks rule and always will

Ilargi Nov 8, 2010 I read an article Ashvin Pandurangi, our by now greatly valued roving reporter, sent me, entitled “Plutocracy Now”. Ashvin writes about that first notion I was pondering: the nationalization of US banks, though for him it’s … Continue reading

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Foreclosuregate

Back-Office Blues  Nov 8, 2010. James Surowiecki. The New Yorker. In the late 1960s, Wall Street was crippled by an unlikely nemesis: unfinished paperwork. Thanks to a booming stock market, trading volume had soared in the course of the decade; … Continue reading

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Why do people fall for Ponzi and other schemes?

Fooled by Ponzi (and Madoff). How Bernard Madoff Made Off with My Money  Dec 23, 2008. Stephen Greenspan. Skeptic.com There are few areas of functioning where skepticism is more important than how one invests one’s life savings. Yet intelligent and … Continue reading

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Sovereign Default predictions

Martin Weiss on why there will be a sovereign default someday: Diversification across asset classes didn’t help in the 2008 crash. Stocks fell. Most bonds fell. Real estate fell. Commodities fell. And most currencies fell, with only risk-aversion trades working. … Continue reading

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One year Moratorium on Mortgages

Ilargi Feb 2, 2009   http://www.theautomaticearth.com/ [As Dmitry Orlov points out in Dmitry Orlov: How Russians survived the collapse of the Soviet Union “In the Soviet Union, nobody owned their place of residence. What this meant is that the economy could … Continue reading

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Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz

Haidar, Suhasini. Jan 29, 2017. Trump makes sense to a grocery store owner. thehindu.com Economist-mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb is seen as something of an oracle, given that he saw the 2008 economic crash coming, predicted the Brexit vote, and the … Continue reading

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What derivatives are and why you’re screwed

You are the Crisis Feb 2, 2009 by Ilargi at theautomaticearth Oh no, we’re not rid of the bad bank drivel yet, are we? I started out trying to make a point about the character of the paper a bad … Continue reading

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