Thursday, February 28, 2013

bubbles

  I'm finally getting a chance to write a post.  Surely the same boring babble none of you really come here to read.  But in my world I'm king, so my subjects bow to my will.  You will read it, and you will like it.

In my last post I talked about the preparations I'm making towards a transition from living in the worlds wealthiest empire, to the stagnant, and soon declining nation we have turned out to be.  The state of the US right now is not all that dissimilar to my situation as a runner over the last 3 years.  The engine is still there, and the tools that made it perform, but a few of the key ingredients to it's success, neglect of it's infrastructure, and the problems of maintaining such a complex energy intense arrangement have all began to show themselves.  I'm now a has been. 

I wanted to move on with that a little today.  I'm not much for publicly predicting dates for our decline.  History, ecology, physics, geology....pretty much every field point to inevitable decline.  The timescale is the only thing that can be argued.  As poorly as this will be received, and as crazy as everyone will think I am for saying this....I think the sky is hanging by a thread...and in the next 3 years will begin falling. 

When I say this most people will start thinking of the sequester, and the fiscal cliff.  That's merely a symptom of what I've been pointing to all along.  Our economy hasn't grown a bit since 2008.  Unfortunately everything we were building and everything our government was paying for (our entitlements) in 2008 weren't actually being paid for.  In a time of record growth and economic abundance we were still financing to the gills.  As pops (Tom) predicted years ago, we've been in a situation similar to Japan.  While our economy hasn't grown, our debts continued.  Our only way, in declining growth, to pay for our debts was to print money.  To create growth where there was none.  The result of that is what we're seeing now. 

But that's not what I think will make the sky fall.  No, that's just a predictable symptom of the current arrangement.  What I'm guessing will be the next kick in the teeth, and will happen any day now, is the fracking bubble bursting.  You see, the same pattern of poor regulation, greed, and exploitation of the endless growth fantasy that rocked us in the housing bubble has only been repeated in the fracking bubble.  Wall Street has been cheerleading and announcing that the Marcellus and Bakken shale would soon lead to American independence from foreign oil.  What a nice sales pitch, sound similar to the belief that house prices would continue to rise forever?

 Meanwhile they've been bundling leases on undrilled shale fields.  Any place in the US where similar shale deposits were found (whether they had oil, or gas...or nothing of value at all) were bundled and flipped on the basis of grotesquely inflated claims of their income potential; newly minted investment vehicles of more than Byzantine complexity—VPPs, "volumetric production payments," are an example you’ll be hearing about quite a bit in a few months, once the court cases begin.   Yes....right when our economy is stumbling.  When zero growth has been hidden because of printing presses running at the speed of light.  When those printing presses have to stop because of global monetary situations and our debt positions.  And when the financial sequester is set to take effect. We will we get hit with another bursting bubble. 

Wall Street will position themselves to make record profits from the collapse while Joe investor who's been hearing all the cheerleading and trying desperately to put his money somewhere, anywhere that growth is still happening will lose his lot.  Not only will that much more of the masses money get funneled to the elite....We'll need to deal with the resulting rising energy prices when people realize that gas and oil....in fact...our finite resources and that we're actually going to need to start scraping the bottom of the barrel.  It's too bad, right when our economy is sitting still.  Yes...you hear that?  That's the sky, for most of us, preparing to fall.  Good luck!!

4 comments:

  1. Yes, the market is completely artificial, and based solely on money printing and zero interest policy. It will end ugly, with hyperinflation and less and less folks being able to afford large ticket items. There was an article on yahoo finance yesterday that says that the average new car cost 31 thousand dollars in 2012, and that you would need a median household income of around 86 thousand for that to be inline with how much car you can afford. They noted that the cheapest car, the kia rio at 14 thousand is inline with around 60 percent of the workforce......food and energy are inflating quickly, and if we get another summer drought, those boxes of fruity pebbles will be around 8 bucks a box........yes, the next 7 years are going to drive at least half of all americans onto the food stamp rolls....

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    1. It basically appears they bundled these future leases together without regard to geological evidence. Sort of like a mortgage was a mortgage and they all got AAA ratings. So oil rich shale deposits in North Dakota and Green River shale in the southwest (which has nothing valuable in it) were rated, bundled, and sold as the same thing. Now that depletion rates are dramatically increasing the writing is on the wall. It's going to be a rush to the exits just like mortgages were

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  3. There is a pretty good article in this month's National Geographic about the Bakken Shale deposit in North Dakota. I have not finished the article yet but the Bakken seems to be much larger than the Marcellus Shale deposit in PA. I drive up through north central PA once per year and have watched the area change due to the gas exploration. I went from paying $60 for a room at the Hampton Inn to $150. Unfortunately, I agree with your assessment of the economy. I hope your timing is off but I am afraid you are right. People are accumulating debt again and everyone needs the latest gadget even though they can not afford it. Robert Reich has been warning people on his blog that stocks are selling at inflated prices and to expect the bottom to fall out very soon. I have to admit to being very nervous about our future.

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