Financial topics

[OLD1953]

Dilbert's "pointy haired boss" is sadly too close to reality for comfort. I've worked for the guy.

[Higgenbotham]

http://www.camse.org/andy/oil/Soviet_Advice.pdf

But very few of them have ever heard of the real operative "ism" that dominated Soviet life: Dofenism, which can be loosely translated as "not giving a rat's ass." A lot of people, more and more during the "stagnation" period of the 1980's, felt nothing but contempt for the system, did what little they had to do to get by (night watchman and furnace stoker were favorite jobs among the highly educated) and got all their pleasure from their friends, from their reading, or from nature.

This sort of disposition may seem like a cop-out, but when there is a collapse on the horizon, it works as psychological insurance: instead of going through the agonizing process of losing and rediscovering one's identity in a post-collapse environment, one could simply sit back and watch events unfold. If you are currently "a mover and a shaker," of things or people or whatever, then collapse will surely come as a shock to you, and it will take you a long time, perhaps forever, to find more things to move and to shake to your satisfaction. However, if your current occupation is as a keen observer of grass and trees, then, post-collapse, you could take on something else that's useful, such as dismantling useless things.

The ability to stop and smell the roses — to let it all go, to refuse to harbor regrets or nurture grievances, to confine one's serious attention only to that which is immediately necessary, and not to worry too much about the rest — is perhaps the one most critical to post-collapse survival. The most psychologically devastated are usually the middle-aged breadwinners, who, once they are no longer gainfully employed, feel completely lost. Detachment and indifference can be most healing, provided they do not become morbid. It is good to take your sentimental nostalgia for what once was, is, and will soon no longer be, up front, and get it over with.

[jdcpapa]

I plan to stay in the US.

The mind boggles.

He is a person until self. Lucid energy points are forwarded but irobot as means until self is just another product stream
of defined Utility. In the final analysis it is the ability of the firm to maintain the productive value of its basic abilities,

I would like to say that I am going down with the ship. But,I do not have a clear vision of the horizon. I leave my options open. After years of advising on issues of fiscal responsiblity, I concluded that you can "bring a horse to water but you cannot make it drink". Consequently, those matters will repeat and I adjust my life accordingly. The life experience is a "product stream of defined utility" that we are destined to complete. "In the final analysis"...........well, have we followed our bliss?

[aedens]

There are people out there that do not worship cargo cult
delivery mechanisms. Things do run there course and
more than not products get to market. Some things
cannot be conveyed. Thats there problem at the
helm. We just do our watch port or starboard.
https://solutions.mckinsey.com/catalog/ ... rowth.html

Things are not slowing down in some areas.
http://www.nanotechproject.org/inventor ... sis_draft/

And the truth shall you free even if it took him decades:
http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-re ... 1314907779

[Higgenbotham]

Things are not slowing down in some areas.
http://www.nanotechproject.org/inventor ... sis_draft/

As Figure 5 indicates, there is a small set of materials explicitly referenced in nanotechnology consumer products. The most common material mentioned in the product descriptions is now silver (313 products).

These silver based health products aren't true nanotechnology.

NASA scientists drew on half-century-old German technology to advance silver hydrosols for water purification and astronaut protection. The modern products have been medically scrutinized for decades in vitro and clinically.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/cienc ... pons35.htm

Based on my knowledge, the other categories of products are not true nanotechnology either. Since the silver based products constitute the greatest number of claims, I documented that above, but the other claims are similar.

The social implications are interesting. To claim "nanotech" or not to claim "nanotech".

The National Science Foundation (a major distributor for nanotechnology research in the United States) funded researcher David Berube to study the field of nanotechnology. His findings are published in the monograph Nano-Hype: The Truth Behind the Nanotechnology Buzz. This study concludes that much of what is sold as “nanotechnology” is in fact a recasting of straightforward materials science, which is leading to a “nanotech industry built solely on selling nanotubes, nanowires, and the like” which will “end up with a few suppliers selling low margin products in huge volumes." Further applications which require actual manipulation or arrangement of nanoscale components await further research. Though technologies branded with the term 'nano' are sometimes little related to and fall far short of the most ambitious and transformative technological goals of the sort in molecular manufacturing proposals, the term still connotes such ideas. According to Berube, there may be a danger that a "nano bubble" will form, or is forming already, from the use of the term by scientists and entrepreneurs to garner funding, regardless of interest in the transformative possibilities of more ambitious and far-sighted work.[38]

Very well said. I added the underline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology

[Higgenbotham]

Edmund Burke

http://books.google.com/books?id=_hOjo5 ... utput=text

ON THE PROPOSALS FOR PEACE WITH THE REGICIDE DIRECTORY OF FRANCE.

1796.

LETTER I.

My Dear Sir,

...

In all speculations upon men and human affairs, it is of no small moment to distinguish things of accident from permanent causes, and from effects that cannot be altered. It is not every irregularity in our movement that is a total deviation from our course. I am not quite of the mind of those speculators, who seem assured, that necessarily, and by the constitution of things, all states have the same periods of infancy, manhood, and decrepitude, that are found in the individuals who compose them. Parallels of this sort rather furnish similitudes to illustrate or to adorn, than supply analogies from whence to reason. The objects which are attempted to be forced into an analogy are not found in the same classes of existence. Individuals are physical beings, subject to laws universal and invariable. The immediate cause acting in these laws may be obscure: the general results are subjects of certain calculation. But commonwealths are not physical but moral essences. They are artificial combinations; and in their proximate efficient cause, the arbitrary productions of the human mind. We are not yet acquainted with the laws which necessarily influence the stability of that kind of work made by that kind of agent. There is not in the physical order (with which they do not appear to hold any assignable connection) a distinct cause by which any of those fabrics must necessarily grow, flourish, or decay; nor, in my opinion, does the moral world produce any thing more determinate on that subject, than what may serve as an amusement, (liberal indeed, and ingenious, but still only an amusement,) for speculative men. I doubt whether the history of mankind is yet complete enough, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory on the internal causes which necessarily affect the fortune of a state. I am far from denying the operation of such causes: but they are infinitely uncertain, and much more obscure, and much more difficult to trace, than the foreign causes that tend to raise, to depress, and sometimes to overwhelm a community. It is often impossible, in these political inquiries, to find any proportion between the apparent force of any moral causes we may assign and their known operation. We are, therefore obliged to deliver up that operation to mere chance, or more piously (perhaps more rationally) to the occasional interposition and irresistible hand of the Great Disposer. We have seen states of considerable duration, which for ages have remained nearly as they have begun, and could hardly be said to ebb or flow. Some appear to have spent their vigor at their commencement. Some have blazed out in their glory a little before their extinction. The meridian of some has been the most splendid. Others, and they the greatest number, have fluctuated, and experienced at different periods of their existence a great variety of fortune. At the very moment when some of them seemed plunged in unfathomable abysses of disgrace and disaster, they have suddenly emerged. They have begun a new course and opened a new reckoning; and even in the depths of their calamity, and on the very ruins of their country, have laid the foundations of a towering and durable greatness. All this has happened without any apparent previous change in the general circumstances which had brought on their distress. The death of a man at a critical juncture, his disgust, his retreat, his disgrace, have brought innumerable calamities on a whole nation. A common soldier, a child, a girl at the door of an inn, have changed the face of fortune, and almost of nature.

PS I don't subscribe to this theory.

[aedens]

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) came to power in France in 1799. The conflicts lasted until 1815

Lord Acton"s and General Lee reply of correspondense is also a fitting dialog for context in the overarching theme.

"I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the representatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism."

Goes back to wisdom I will thinly frame as blessing and curse and the discourse of events that transpired century's ago.
In the American circle of interest the Federalist papers in a secular vein presented despostional affairs.
I mentioned some pages ago the view that Thucydides and will only add a view as in a mere blink to Greeces intertia to wit.
This compiled corpus was from Robert Strassler I utilize. It was a noted as event the retirement of affairs imposed.
Oaths of reconciliationsbeing offered to meet an immediate difficulty. This was the 5th year/summer 427BC
The point mind you provided is a smaller brush to causation of larger events to wholesale slaughter.
The year of the plague was later that summer.
Tribes that exiled "groups who went to mountains" under the full extent of exclusionary trade.
The east learned from Cyrus' error and the mirror of the past is supported from the formation of new capital to hostile ventures.
I will posit again as I have before in the forums the 2016 SDR window to currency and floating peg to manage wayward measures as chastisements.
Business can only seek parity of markets as they already are aware. I wish not today to convey the mechanisns already noted in the forums to the
naive firms plight to balance since the levity of wisdom is lacking. I channel that to Lord Actons conveyance to moderation and warning. IMO
Franklin gave three choices to interpet. Yes, No, or you better hope not.
I know you did not miss this. http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-re ... 1314907779
I can supply additional formation as can you to this predicated business cycle of observation but many are not under
historical interia for various bent of reason.

I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognised. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp ... but now a dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

[OLD1953]

That thing from camse is pretty out of date. Iraqi oil production is on the upswing, as is US oil production. People keep ignoring the fact that the US is the world's third largest oil producer, and most of the oil we use is just people driving around. WWII type rationing would change all that in a big hurry, but it requires the crisis to make that possible.

Because a friend of mine was obsessing over peak oil back in 2005, I did some heavy work finding out everything I could about it. During that, I found fairly clear evidence that there are plans made at the federal level, but these plans go in about four directions, depending on how fast the decline actually is. (Note that the USA has already HAD its decline, we dropped off peak production quite a while ago in US oil fields.)

A slow decline in oil production would mean a market transition as people shift to electric cars and various power plants are built to take up the power needed for the change. Lots of lithium mining from Great Salt Lake. This is the usual "official" picture you get if you ask nosy questions.

A modest yearly decline in oil production would mean some govt forcing to push mass transit in cities, especially electric as subways and electric light rail. Biodiesel (algae and waste) and better ethanol (corn to whiskey to fuel is silly) production would mark this one. Think I already linked to a bunch of those documents a few months back, some of which are on the (public) web because I passed them along after I found them in various databases.

A fairly rapid decline in production would mean rationing and govt support for farmers to get food to cities, and yes, there is fairly clear evidence that some of this is in place. Lot of public domain seizures to make things happen fast. You'll get to find out just what all that riot gear bought by the various emergency agencies was for, and just what those curious razor wire "campsites" are all about. (Some of the folks after Katrina found out all about being in those spots - and wow, did that cause a short news cycle.)

The US being shut off from all oil imports - aside from the war (and you better believe, that's a casus belli if there ever was one), US prisoners will be shipped into the desert southwest and introduced to the jojoba plant. Why jojoba? It's a desert plant, and it does not take over land needed for food production. Why hand cultivation? Because it takes no oil and we are assuming oil is in short supply. Jojoba produces a lot of oil, but I hope it doesn't come to this. Still, go look up USDA studies on jojoba as fuel, and then wonder just why they studied something like that from the standpoint of hand cultivation. Doesn't make sense unless it's part of a plan they were told to make.

Now, understand that "decline" in the above really means "shortfall below market demand at a given price". Thus, you could have a production increase that was still a "decline". Which is probably why we are following a road closer to #2 than #1, as the market for oil just keeps growing.

Really, things do not change rapidly outside a full blown crisis, and then they change as fast as people can sign their names to orders or bills. Rioters and looters are treated with great harshness after a crisis has begun, as in Detroit in 1943 where federal troops were sent in to put down the rioters. During a crisis, deviations from the expected norm are not regarded with kindness. And during our coming crisis, I fully expect people to accept their ration tickets for fuel and behave as their neighbors are behaving, cooperating and trying to move things forwards.

[vincecate]

The US runs a trade deficit and normally the rest of the world increases their Treasury holdings every month. However, last month the Foreign treasury holdings went down $17 billion. A new report comes out on the 15th or 16th. If Foreign holdings drop again, I think it will be very significant news. I think they will drop.

Part of the usual hyperinflation situation is that people stop rolling over bonds and get their cash as the bonds come due, and the central bank ramps up cash production. So I have been expecting this. Plenty of people like Pettis and Mish have claimed that the world has to keep buying Treasuries, but I don't think that is true at all. If the world stops buying, then the Fed will buy more Treasuries with newly made money. The more the Fed makes money the less people will want to hold US debt. The less people want to hold US debt, the more the Fed will have to buy with newly made money so that the US government can continue to cover their expenses. This is the kind of positive feedback loop that drives hyperinflation till the currency is destroyed.

So I will watch the following URL this week with great interest:
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center ... ts/mfh.txt

More on positive feedback loops in hyperinflation:
http://pair.offshore.ai/38yearcycle/#hy ... onfeedback

Update: I made a blog post from this post:
http://howfiatdies.blogspot.com/2011/09 ... ollar.html

[Higgenbotham]

The report by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance says the dramatic expansion of sophisticated cyber-attacks has moved beyond acceptable losses for government and businesses that simply threaten finances or intellectual property.

"The impact has increased in magnitude, and the potential for catastrophic collapse of a company has grown," said the report, which is slated to be released later this month. It adds that it is not clear that the business community understands or accepts that.

The report comes amid growing worries the U.S. is not prepared for a major cyberattack, even as hackers, criminals and nation states continue to probe and infiltrate government and critical business networks millions of times a day.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09 ... z1XkWXxPil