tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-184780012024-03-05T03:30:19.706-08:00The Gulch Gallery BlogDon Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comBlogger1456125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-44738896912793496462016-03-15T09:02:00.001-07:002016-03-15T09:02:26.460-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaChkajhLp04mek6dXzqdSLNxfSCJ6-79HzRh8bQQC3gM4-Y2cGwWkzDkBkXMIBx3f0TRdh0uv1WfY2Rgf8BugcuOeiGZTK9UmtLUI4zXrBeJifH4o3UwLJJy4ILZ3LCjQi57ZFg/s1600/tumblr_nv29hrHQ5Y1qc0idao3_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaChkajhLp04mek6dXzqdSLNxfSCJ6-79HzRh8bQQC3gM4-Y2cGwWkzDkBkXMIBx3f0TRdh0uv1WfY2Rgf8BugcuOeiGZTK9UmtLUI4zXrBeJifH4o3UwLJJy4ILZ3LCjQi57ZFg/s320/tumblr_nv29hrHQ5Y1qc0idao3_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Up in Yellowstone...far far away from politics and the righteous indignation of both political party's...</div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-6753893878291455462016-03-15T08:58:00.000-07:002016-03-15T09:03:44.042-07:00<div style="border: 0px; font-family: 'ofl sorts mill goudy tt', georgia, times, serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
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<span my="my" style="border: 0px; color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">The Twitter-incited mob that shut down last week’s Donald Trump rally at the University of Illinois’ Chicago pavilion was the first skirmish in what is shaping up to be a civil war between a political Left that has lost its mind and a political Right that has lost its mind and its soul. The tensions between these two camps are so contorted and dishonest that even trying to unpack the issues puts the un-packer in jeopardy of being branded as one kind of thought-criminal or another.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span my="my" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">The Left has lost its mind in a climax of zealotry over the new religion of social justice, with its sacred “victims” (blacks, LBGTQs, etc), its sacred tenets (“diversity,” “inclusion”), and its endless charges of blasphemy (renamed “micro-aggressions”) against heretics (“racists,” “homophobes”) who object to absolutist thought policing. This was nicely described by Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University in </span><a href="https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/evolving-minds" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top;"><span my="my" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">a recent podcast with author Sam Harris</span></a><span my="my" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">. (Skip to 1 hour 30 minutes in the long discussion.)</span></span></div>
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<span my="my" style="border: 0px; color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">The religion got started on the campuses, where social science careerists ginned up an elaborate doctrine to justify the self-importance of their new departments in so-called race, gender, and privilege studies — the main point of which was to create new categories of sacred victims suffering spiritual torments (“traumas”) that could never be healed. These crypto-religious “studies” led to a multiplication of demons that had to be exorcized by an equal multiplication of diversity deans and committees aimed at punishing blasphemies — such as arguing against affirmative action (“racist”), or wearing a Mexican sombrero at a tequila party (“cultural appropriation” + “racist”), which happened recently at posh Bowdoin College.</span></div>
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<span my="my" style="border: 0px; color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">The hysteria incited by the academic diversity corps spread readily and easily into Democratic Party politics, where badly-needed minority votes could be harvested to shore up the dwindling votes of traditional supporters such as labor unions, and make up for (you might say cover up) the Party’s complete surrender to both Wall Street and the war industry.</span></div>
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<span my="my" style="border: 0px; color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">The religion of the social justice warriors, got a huge boost with the deaths, and subsequent canonization of the new mega-saints, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and other black youths who were killed under circumstances that were, at least, ambiguous, and, at most, due to their own poor judgment and misbehavior. (Pause for cries of “racist” to subside). The Michael Brown / Ferguson, Mo. incident and subsequent riots led to the “Black Lives Matter” movement, with its now secular (“the street”) and campus branches, and its vote-garnering panders (Hillary) in politics.</span></div>
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<span my="my" style="border: 0px; color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">Possibly the worst blasphemy — which I will now state — is the idea that the new religion of social justice exists to disguise the vast disappointment over the failure of the civil rights movement to uplift — that is, raise out of poverty, illiteracy, and crime — a substantial part of the black population. In fact, much of the official policy of the civil rights era only made matters worse, especially the well-known failures of the welfare system with all its disincentives to economic striving. So, the well-intentioned people of the Left — a dying breed — are left in dismay and embarrassment, fighting demons, while black America chooses more and more remain an oppositional culture, apart, antagonistic, and increasingly bent on vengeance.</span></div>
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<span my="my" style="border: 0px; color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">Enter Trump, perhaps the worst figure possible to call bullshit on this vast matrix of dishonesty, with his ugly cohort of “poorly-educated” white yahoo supporters. Why? Because the well-educated non-yahoos of both parties are too cowardly and too corrupt — too busy making money off the war racketeers and the medical racketeers, and the Wall Street racketeers, and the campus racketeers — to take on some of the central lies of our times, which Trump manages to do in the crudest possible ways.</span></div>
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<span my="my" style="border: 0px; color: white; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">What the politicians and the media and the cringing, pandering intellectuals of this country aren’t figuring is what happens when the political crisis of the moment is amped up by the financial and economic train wreck that is certain to come before the fall elections. The nation has already gone mad with the internal contradictions of its own beliefs. The next step will be when it literally goes to war with itself.</span></div>
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http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/bull-run/</div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-76628286663638658132015-10-14T14:11:00.001-07:002015-10-14T14:11:18.268-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6GhUtNQz5G_UdrqWBkqF7U7nUq89LFU3pJemM7fvZZoJ55NyTjxzQsi1uAwWF0FAtvAt_OU8VAwM5jJ5hAXkf_xiDgJYjeNrqh1A3gUo7F-0DQ_GgRuziscE3lCGYN1_n_CMfZg/s1600/_MG_6480-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6GhUtNQz5G_UdrqWBkqF7U7nUq89LFU3pJemM7fvZZoJ55NyTjxzQsi1uAwWF0FAtvAt_OU8VAwM5jJ5hAXkf_xiDgJYjeNrqh1A3gUo7F-0DQ_GgRuziscE3lCGYN1_n_CMfZg/s320/_MG_6480-2.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Up in Yellowstone National Park...</span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-87870422402068403842015-08-15T17:24:00.001-07:002015-08-15T17:24:11.316-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguCcYeVQ2avzh_JTUSdukyELrfHB08nq2LHFBog3nRlJwU-NiOwSniXvo2KIPxzavzRoykdxqrZ2HB_gKpBavKXfNJ10EDywvAGxWuRtaH7MsApV2LZ9I9pB1z8Gobiz-6VRzcFQ/s1600/_MG_4269w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguCcYeVQ2avzh_JTUSdukyELrfHB08nq2LHFBog3nRlJwU-NiOwSniXvo2KIPxzavzRoykdxqrZ2HB_gKpBavKXfNJ10EDywvAGxWuRtaH7MsApV2LZ9I9pB1z8Gobiz-6VRzcFQ/s320/_MG_4269w.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
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The Church at Lamy, NM...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi89NatlzjJDPSEGsabNv8k_0tYZJAudclEqKIKLkWDKJbRhqhZc7bkkpcgjEuznI4TPLrLh6RJ20gYKq3qnW1X2lJ7a9DNgd5dIMLvjNRJeQ_SsCGCwv72a76MKIsprV5VNvt-UQ/s1600/_MG_4276-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi89NatlzjJDPSEGsabNv8k_0tYZJAudclEqKIKLkWDKJbRhqhZc7bkkpcgjEuznI4TPLrLh6RJ20gYKq3qnW1X2lJ7a9DNgd5dIMLvjNRJeQ_SsCGCwv72a76MKIsprV5VNvt-UQ/s320/_MG_4276-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-53915855807135279152015-08-14T17:34:00.001-07:002015-08-14T17:34:48.727-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgeFEFn873o_0IXvel86Z5YnqWMhdfjMPQHmPH_jagm58ahqNabrGU79a0zMUgrrWgSp7spQK3WQJJeMfTdvwSw5oQFjrK8pK3M7L5MU_ek3Fn_87BdRFNvTOzzdI6AgT-GlbKzQ/s1600/_MG_5620bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgeFEFn873o_0IXvel86Z5YnqWMhdfjMPQHmPH_jagm58ahqNabrGU79a0zMUgrrWgSp7spQK3WQJJeMfTdvwSw5oQFjrK8pK3M7L5MU_ek3Fn_87BdRFNvTOzzdI6AgT-GlbKzQ/s320/_MG_5620bw.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Pueblo ruins, Chaco Canyon, NM</div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-87791964332839604022015-03-09T08:40:00.001-07:002015-03-09T08:40:07.634-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpiAT3gPLYRF16okyWvZWoOyEcMG_3CfjS6UL0qr07hLfFVxDzAuM-SNj7eogiWm442yxT8-ztgmu0Oc7TnmrJGrfmuyXipfDfzjnU5YOpEg_imSGSkbm16ELqj0Kq7xuJ6U-Nyw/s1600/_MG_9191-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpiAT3gPLYRF16okyWvZWoOyEcMG_3CfjS6UL0qr07hLfFVxDzAuM-SNj7eogiWm442yxT8-ztgmu0Oc7TnmrJGrfmuyXipfDfzjnU5YOpEg_imSGSkbm16ELqj0Kq7xuJ6U-Nyw/s1600/_MG_9191-2.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Along River Road, Big Bend </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">time to plan another adventure...</span></div>
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<br />Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-66567950161782998252015-03-02T10:05:00.001-08:002015-03-02T10:05:08.018-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9fnIcd_Pk9ELekZJaez0Lpjl6wfmhEL0h-wnqxGWKY2UUORhS0_EU-y7M2kKZmGrAO0GqJJxPD-px90CjZUPvI4tJ1vyPzpRQ87pogO4cLYRWd9KfjFX8qq45Lkjn3MFOdK-9dQ/s1600/_MG_9177-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9fnIcd_Pk9ELekZJaez0Lpjl6wfmhEL0h-wnqxGWKY2UUORhS0_EU-y7M2kKZmGrAO0GqJJxPD-px90CjZUPvI4tJ1vyPzpRQ87pogO4cLYRWd9KfjFX8qq45Lkjn3MFOdK-9dQ/s1600/_MG_9177-2.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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Contrabando movie set in Big Bend...</div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-39449151971335265482015-01-27T11:14:00.005-08:002015-01-27T11:14:42.092-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDr7B9HLyuR1CcSvuwM-PiL6aJQ7L1I9eUqjzPDRo1Gfuba-mD9lSgI3DpeFbqWPRhd8mFy-hi4fogXcBMwuzjvt4SIDVFup5QgeqnOWZTaPx9t0OVZhm-pa_MWUZLJP_Hvv-fxg/s1600/_MG_2061bwsm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDr7B9HLyuR1CcSvuwM-PiL6aJQ7L1I9eUqjzPDRo1Gfuba-mD9lSgI3DpeFbqWPRhd8mFy-hi4fogXcBMwuzjvt4SIDVFup5QgeqnOWZTaPx9t0OVZhm-pa_MWUZLJP_Hvv-fxg/s1600/_MG_2061bwsm.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Half Dome, Yosemite National Park...</span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-86243954090692301052015-01-22T06:09:00.003-08:002015-01-22T06:09:12.397-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVvcNE4ogecl88s_UZC34x7fZns1F8X-f65JQ_rFA81FG8Mg5ktuW5ZT4YI-ksP1rMT-RlC0m6gUHfQ85Fu8nodDvbEZ_T8wnPfGBPuPIgKk-SFdEN1rbottLeJZHTR_gw49CKVA/s1600/_MG_2158bwsm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVvcNE4ogecl88s_UZC34x7fZns1F8X-f65JQ_rFA81FG8Mg5ktuW5ZT4YI-ksP1rMT-RlC0m6gUHfQ85Fu8nodDvbEZ_T8wnPfGBPuPIgKk-SFdEN1rbottLeJZHTR_gw49CKVA/s1600/_MG_2158bwsm.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">from a recent trip to Muir Woods in California...</span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-33322079496504516582015-01-20T16:56:00.002-08:002015-01-20T16:56:17.837-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVA7nMd7EtzYyROMvSIhsp8NxAoMRsKnEPgaQNfa0t3zP1UGZxH1_1S5H9QKGEHAl0H0ejWC6xLoST2dwCCsPyDuyBX5h3ns8_TSJnorUyWoJ4cE7Z1FoWWbl53yQGilxqTMj4Rw/s1600/_MG_2527w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVA7nMd7EtzYyROMvSIhsp8NxAoMRsKnEPgaQNfa0t3zP1UGZxH1_1S5H9QKGEHAl0H0ejWC6xLoST2dwCCsPyDuyBX5h3ns8_TSJnorUyWoJ4cE7Z1FoWWbl53yQGilxqTMj4Rw/s1600/_MG_2527w.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Near Koperl TX...</span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-82317085021908482652014-01-07T14:34:00.001-08:002014-01-07T14:35:53.251-08:00<h4>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Forecast 2014 - Burning Down the House </span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Many
of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded
brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our
national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock
our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these
forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet.
It’s like being buried alive in Jell-O. It’s embarrassing to appear so
out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a
just war.</span></span>
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Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops
of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything,
accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is
mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the
regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online
pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news
media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical “recovery”
and the “shale gas miracle” on a credulous public desperate to believe,
the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a
tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth
of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of
posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations.</span></span></div>
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Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed,
vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt —
with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process
retaining the better qualities of our heritage. Some of us are anxious
to get on with the job, to expel all the rats, bats, bedbugs, roaches,
and lice, tear out the stinking shag carpet and the moldy sheet-rock,
rip off the crappy plastic siding, and start rebuilding along lines that
are consistent with the demands of the future — namely, the reality of
capital and material resource scarcity. But it has been apparent for a
while that the current owners of the house would prefer to let it fall
down, or burn down rather than renovate.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">
Some of us now take that outcome for granted and are left to speculate
on how it will play out. These issues were the subjects of my recent
non-fiction books, </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Long-Emergency-Converging-Catastrophes-Twenty-First-ebook/dp/B0015KGXR8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1388255262&sr=1-1&keywords=the+long+emergency+by+james+howard+kunstler"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The Long Emergency</span></a><span style="font-size: 100%;"> and </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Too-Much-Magic-Thinking-Technology-ebook/dp/B0085MG89W/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Too Much Magic</span></a><span style="font-size: 100%;">
(as well as excellent similar books by Richard Heinberg, John Michael
Greer, Dmitry Orlov, and others). They describe the conditions at the
end of the cheap energy techno-industrial phase of history and they laid
out a conjectural sequence of outcomes that might be stated in
shorthand as collapse and re-set. I think the delay in the onset of
epochal change can be explained pretty simply. As the peak oil story
gained traction around 2005, and was followed (as predicted) by a
financial crisis, the established order fought back for its survival,
utilizing its remaining dwindling capital and the tremendous inertia of
its own gigantic scale, to give the </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">appearance</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> of vitality at all costs.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">
At the heart of the matter was (and continues to be) the relationship
between energy and economic growth. Without increasing supplies of cheap
energy, economic growth — as we have known it for a couple of centuries
— does not happen anymore. At the center of the economic growth
question is credit. Without continued growth, credit can’t be repaid,
and new credit cannot be issued honestly — that is, with reasonable
assurance of repayment — making it worthless. So, old debt goes bad and
the new debt is generated knowing that it is worthless. To complicate
matters, the new worthless debt is issued to pay the interest on the old
debt, to maintain the pretense that it is not going bad. And then all
kinds of dishonest side rackets are run around this central credit
racket — shadow banking, “innovative” securities (i.e. new kinds of
frauds and swindles, CDOs CDSs, etc.), flash trading, insider flimflams,
pump-and-dumps, naked shorts, etc. These games give the impression of
an economy that seems to work. But the reported “growth” is phony, a
concoction of overcooked statistics and wishful thinking. And the net
effect moves the society as a whole in the direction of more destructive
ultimate failure.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">
Now, a number of stories have been employed lately to keep all these
rackets going — or, at least, keep up the morale of the swindled masses.
They issue from the corporations, government agencies, and a lazy,
wishful media. Their purpose is to prop up the lie that the dying
economy of yesteryear is alive and well, and can continue “normal”
operation indefinitely. Here are the favorites of the past year:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>
<ul style="text-align: center;">
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Shale
oil and gas amount to an “energy renaissance” that will keep supplies
of affordable fossil fuels flowing indefinitely, will make us “energy
independent,” and will make us “a bigger producer than Saudi Arabia.”
This is all mendacious bullshit with a wishful thinking cherry on top.
Here’s how shale oil is different from conventional oil:</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">A “manufacturing renaissance”
is underway in the US, especially in the “central corridor” running from
Texas north to Minnesota. That hoopla is all about a few chemical
plants and fertilizer factories that have reopened to take advantage of
cheaper natural gas. Note, the shale gas story is much like the shale
oil story in terms of drilling and production. The depletion rates are
quick and epic. In a very few years, shale gas won’t be cheap anymore.
Otherwise, current talk of new manufacturing for hard goods is all about
robots. How many Americans will be employed in these factories? And
what about the existing manufacturing over-capacity everywhere else in
the world? Are we making enough sneakers and Justin Beiber dolls? File
under complete fucking nonsense.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The USA is “the cleanest shirt
in the laundry basket,” “the best house in a bad neighborhood,” the
safest harbor for international “liquidity,” making it a sure bet that
both the equity and bond markets will continue to ratchet up as money
seeking lower risk floods in to the Dow and S & P from other
countries with dodgier economies and sicker banks. In a currency war,
with all nations competitively depreciating their currencies, gaming
interest rates, manipulating markets, falsely reporting numbers, hiding
liabilities, backstopping bad banks, and failing to regulate banking
crime, there are no safe harbors. The USA can pretend to be for a while
and then that illusion will pop, along with the “asset” bubbles that
inspire it.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The USA is enjoying huge gains
from fantastic new “efficiencies of technological innovation.” The truth
is not so dazzling. Computer technology, produces diminishing returns
and unanticipated consequences. The server farms are huge energy sinks.
Online shopping corrodes the resilience of commercial networks when only
a few giant companies remain standing; and so on. Problems like these
recall the central collapse theory of </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1388259578&sr=1-1&keywords=joseph+tainter"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Joseph Tainter</span></a><span style="font-size: 100%;">
which states that heaping additional complexity on dysfunctional
hyper-complex societies tends to induce their collapse. Hence, my
insistence that downscaling, simplifying, re-localizing and re-setting
the systems we depend on are imperative to keep the project of
civilization going. That is, if you prefer civilization to its known
alternatives.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Notice that all of these
stories want to put over the general impression that the status quo is
alive and well. They’re based on the dumb idea that the stock markets
are a proxy for the economy, so if the Standard & Poor’s 500 keeps
on going up, it’s all good. The </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">master wish</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> running through the American zeitgeist these days is that we might be able to keep driving to Wal-Mart forever.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The truth is that we still
have a huge, deadly energy problem. Shale oil is not cheap oil, and it
will stop seeming abundant soon. If the price of oil goes much above
$100 a barrel, which you’d think would be great for the oil companies,
it will crash demand for oil. If it crashes demand, the price will go
down, hurting the profitability of the shale oil companies. It’s quite a
predicament. Right now, in the $90-100-a-barrel range, it’s just slowly
bleeding the economy while barely allowing the shale oil producers to
keep up all the drilling. Two-thirds of all the dollars invested (more
than $120 billion a year) goes just to keep production levels flat.
Blogger </span><a href="http://seekingalpha.com/author/mark-anthony/instablog"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Mark Anthony</span></a><span style="font-size: 100%;"> summarized it nicely:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>
<div style="padding-left: 60px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">…the
shale oil and gas developers tend to use unreliable production models
to project unrealistically high EURs (Estimated Ultimate Recovery) of
their shale wells. They then use the over-estimated EURs to
under-calculate the amortization costs of the capital spending, in order
to report “profits”, despite of the fact that they have to keep
borrowing more money to keep drilling new wells, and that capital
spending routinely out paces revenue stream by several times… shale oil
and gas producers tend to over-exaggerate productivity of their wells,
under-estimate the well declines…in order to pitch their investment case
to banks and investors, so they can keep borrowing more money to keep
drilling shale wells.</span></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> As stated in the intro,
these perversities reverberate in the investment sector. Non-cheap oil
upsets the mechanisms of capital formation — financial growth is stymied
— in a way that ultimately affects the financing of oil production
itself. Old credit cannot be repaid, scaring off new credit (because it
is even more unlikely to be repaid). At ZIRP interest, nobody saves. The
capital pools dry up. So the Federal Reserve has to issue ersatz credit
dollars on its computers. That credit will remain stillborn and
mummified in depository institutions afraid of lending it to the likes
of sharpies and hypesters in the shale gas industry.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> But real, functioning
capital (credit that can be paid back) is vanishing, and the coming
scarcity of real capital makes it much more difficult to keep the
stupendous number of rigs busy drilling and fracking new shale oil
wells, which you have to do incessantly to keep production up, and as
the investment in new drilling declines, and the “sweet spots” yield to
the less-sweet spots or the not-sweet-at-all spots… then the Ponzis of
shale oil and shale gas, too will be unmasked as the jive endeavors they
are. And when people stop believing these cockamamie stories, the truth
will dawn on them that we are in a predicament where further growth and
wealth cannot be generated and the economy is actually in the early
stages of a permanent contraction, and that will trigger an unholy host
of nasty consequences proceeding from the loss of faith in these fairy
tales, going so far as the meltdown of the banking system, social
turmoil, and political upheaval.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The bottom line is
that the “shale revolution” will be short-lived. 2014 may be the peak
production year in the Bakken play of North Dakota. Eagle Ford in Texas
is a little younger and may lag Bakken by a couple of years. If Federal
Reserve policies create more disorder in the banking system this year,
investment for shale will dry up, new drilling will nosedive, and shale
oil production will go down substantially. Meanwhile. conventional oil
production in the USA continues to decline remorselessly.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> <b><span style="font-size: 100%;">The End of Fed Cred</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> It must be scary to be a
Federal Reserve governor. You have to pretend that you know what you’re
doing when, in fact, Fed policy appears completely divorced from any
sense of consequence, or cause-and-effect, or reality — and if it turns
out you’re not so smart, and your policies and interventions undermine
true economic resilience, then the scuttling of the most powerful
civilization in the history of the world might be your fault — even if
you went to Andover and wear tortoise-shell glasses that make you appear
to be smart.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The Fed painted itself into
a corner the last few years by making Quantitative Easing a permanent
feature of the financial landscape. QE backstops everything now.
Tragically, additional backdoor backstopping extends beyond the QE
official figures (as of December 2013) of $85 billion a month. American
money (or credit) is being shoveled into anything and everything,
including foreign banks and probably foreign treasuries. It’s just
another facet of the prevailing pervasive dishonesty infecting the
system that we have no idea, really, how much money is being shoveled
and sprinkled around. Anything goes and nothing matters. However, since
there is an official consensus that you can’t keep QE money-pumping up
forever, the Fed officially made a big show of seeking to begin ending
it. So in the Spring of 2013 they announced their intention to “taper”
their purchases of US Treasury paper and mortgage paper, possibly in the
fall.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Well, it turned out they
didn’t or couldn’t taper. As the fall equinox approached, with everyone
keenly anticipating the first dose of taper, the equity markets wobbled
and the interest rate on the 10-year treasury — the index for mortgage
loans and car loans — climbed to 3.00 percent from its May low of 1.63 —
well over 100 basis points — and the Fed chickened out. No September
taper. Fake out. So, the markets relaxed, the interest rate on the
10-year went back down, and the equity markets resumed their grand ramp
into the Christmas climax. However, the Fed’s credibility took a hit,
especially after all their confabulating bullshit “forward guidance” in
the spring and summer when they couldn’t get their taper story straight.
And in the meantime, the Larry-Summers-for-Fed-Chair float unfloated,
and Janet Yellen was officially picked to succeed Ben Bernanke, with her
reputation as an extreme easy money softie (more QE, more ZIRP), and a
bunch of hearings were staged to make the Bernanke-Yellen transition
look more reassuring.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> And then on December 18,
outgoing chair Bernanke announced, with much fanfare, that the taper
would happen after all, early in the first quarter of 2014 — after he
is safely out of his office in the Eccles building and back in his bomb
shelter on the Princeton campus. The Fed meant it this time, the public
was given to understand.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The only catch here, as I
write, after the latest taper announcement, is that interest on the
10-year treasury note has crept stealthily back up over 3 percent.
Wuh-oh. Not a good sign, since it means more expensive mortgages and car
loans, which happen to represent the two things that the current
economy relies on to appear “normal.” (House sales and car sales =
normal in a suburban sprawl economy.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> I think the truth is the
Fed just did too darn much QE and ZIRP and they waited way too long to
cut it out, and now they can’t end it without scuttling both the stock
and bond markets. But they can’t really go forward with the taper,
either. A rock and a hard place. So, my guess is that they’ll pretend to
taper in March, and then they’ll just as quickly un-taper. Note the </span><a href="http://www.aei.org/article/economics/monetary-policy/federal-reserve/a-stock-market-paradox-fed-taper-followed-by-a-rally/"><span style="font-size: 100%;">curious report</span></a><span style="font-size: 100%;">
out of the American Enterprise Institute ten days ago by John H. Makin
saying that the Fed’s actual purchase of debt paper amounted to an
average $94 billion a month through the year 2013, not $85 billion.
Which would pretty much negate the proposed taper of $5 billion + $5
billion (Treasury paper + Mortgage paper).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> And in so faking and
so doing they may succeed in completely destroying the credibility of
the Federal Reserve. When that happens, capital will be disappearing so
efficiently that the USA will find itself in a compressive deflationary
spiral — because that’s what happens when faith in the </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">authority behind credit</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">
is destroyed, and new loans to cover the interest on old loans are no
longer offered in the non-government banking system, and old loans can’t
be serviced. At which point the Federal Reserve freaks out and
announces new extra-special QE way above the former 2013 level of $85
billion a month, and the government chips in with currency controls. And
that sets in motion the awful prospect of the dreaded “crack-up boom”
into extraordinary inflation, when dollars turn into hot potatoes and
people can’t get rid of them fast enough. Well, is that going to happen
this year? It depends on how spooked the Fed gets. In any case, there is
a difference between high inflation and hyper-inflation. High inflation
is bad enough to provoke socio-political convulsion. I don’t really see
how the Fed gets around this March taper bid without falling into the
trap I’ve just outlined. It wouldn’t be a pretty situation for poor Ms.
Janet Yellen, but nobody forced her to take the job, and she’s had the
look all along of a chump, the perfect sucker to be left holding a big
honking bag of flop.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> We’re long overdue for a
return to realistic pricing in all markets. The Government and its
handmaiden, the Fed, have tweaked the machinery so strenuously for so
long that these efforts have entered the wilderness of diminishing
returns. Instead of propping up the markets, all they can accomplish now
is further erosion of the credibility of the equity markets and the Fed
itself — and that bodes darkly for a money system that is essentially
run on faith. I think the indexes have topped. The “margin” (money
borrowed to buy stock) in the system is at dangerous, historically
unprecedented highs. There may be one final reach upward in the first
quarter. Then the equities crater, if not sooner. I still think the Dow
and S &P could oversell by 90 percent of their value if the
falsehoods of the post-2008 interventions stopped working their hoodoo
on the collective wishful consciousness.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The worldwide rise in
interest rates holds every possibility for igniting a shitstorm in
interest rate swaps and upsetting the whole apple-cart of shadow banking
and derivatives. That would be a bullet in the head to the TBTF banks,
and would therefore lead to a worldwide crisis. In that event, the
eventual winners would be the largest holders of gold, who could claim
to offer the world a trustworthy gold-backed currency, especially for
transactions in vital resources like oil. That would, of course, be
China. The process would be awfully disorderly and fraught with
political animus. Given the fact that China’s own balance sheet is
hopelessly non-transparent and part-and-parcel of a dishonest crony
banking system, China would have to use some powerful smoke-and-mirrors
to assume that kind of dominant authority. But in the end, it comes down
to who has the real goods, and who screwed up (the USA, Europe, Japan)
and China, for all its faults and perversities, has the gold.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The wholesale transfer of
gold tonnage from the West to the East was one of the salient events of
2013. There were lots of conspiracy theories as to what drove the price
of gold down by 28 percent. I do think the painful move was partly a
cyclical correction following the decade-long run up to $1900 an ounce.
Within that cyclical correction, there was a lot of room for the
so-called “bullion banks” to pound the gold and silver prices down with
their shorting orgy. Numerous times the past year, somebody had laid a
fat finger on the “sell” key, like, at four o’clock in the morning New
York time when no traders were in their offices, and the record of those
weird transactions is plain to see in the daily charts. My own theory
is that an effort was made — in effect, a policy — to suppress the gold
price via collusion between the Fed, the US Treasury, the bullion banks,
and China, as a way to allow China to accumulate gold to offset the
anticipated loss of value in the US Treasury paper held by them,
throwing China a big golden bone, so to speak — in other words, to keep
China from getting hugely pissed off. The gold crash had the happy
effect for the US Treasury of making the dollar appear strong at a time
when many other nations were getting sick of US dollar domination,
especially in the oil markets, and were threatening to instigate a new
currency regime by hook or by crook. Throwing China the golden bone is
also consistent with the USA’s official position that gold is a
meaningless barbaric relic where national currencies are concerned, and
therefore nobody but the barbaric yellow hordes of Asia would care about
it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Other nations don’t feel
that way. Russia and Switzerland have been accumulating gold like crazy
at bargain prices this year. Lat year, Germany requested its sovereign
gold cache (300 tons) to be returned from the vaults in America, where
it was stored through all the decades of the cold war, safe from the
reach of the Soviets. But American officials told the Germans it would
take seven years to accomplish the return. Seven years ! ! ! WTF? Is
there a shortage of banana boats? The sentiment in goldville is that the
USA long ago “leased” or sold off or rehypothecated or lost that gold.
Anyway, Germany’s 300 tons was a small fraction of the 6,700 tons
supposedly held in the Fed’s vaults. Who knows? No auditors have been
allowed into the Fed vaults to actually see what’s up with the
collateral. This in and of itself ought to make the prudent nervous.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> I think we’re near the end
of these reindeer games with gold, largely because so many vaults in the
West have been emptied. That places constraints on further shenanigans
in the paper gold (and silver) markets. In an environment where both the
destructive forces of deflation and inflation can be unleashed in
sequence, uncertainty is the greatest motivator, trumping the usual
greed and fear seen in markets that can be fairly measured against
stable currencies. In 2014, the public has become aware of the bank
“bail-in” phenomenon which, along with rehypothication schemes, just
amounts to the seizure of customer and client accounts — a really new
wrinkle in contemporary banking relations. Nobody knows if it’s safe to
park cash money anywhere except inside the mattress. The precedent set
in Cyprus, and the MF Global affair, and other confiscation events,
would tend to support an interest in precious metals held outside the
institutional framework. Uncertainty rules.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> <b><span style="font-size: 100%;">Miscellany</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> I get a lot of email on the subject of Bitcoin. Here’s how I feel about it.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 100%;"> It’s an even more abstract form of “money” than fiat currencies or securities based on fiat currencies. Do we need </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">more</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">
abstraction in our economic lives? I don’t think so. I believe the
trend will be toward what is real. For the moment, Bitcoin seems to be
enjoying some success as it beats back successive crashes. I’m not very
comfortable with the idea of investing in an algorithm. I don’t see how
it is impervious to government hacking. In fact, I’d bet that somewhere
in the DOD or the NSA or the CIA right now some nerd is working on that.
Bitcoin is provoking imitators, other new computer “currencies.” Why
would Bitcoin necessarily enjoy dominance? And how many competing
algorithmic currencies can the world stand? Wouldn’t that defeat the
whole purpose of an alternative “go to” currency? All I can say is that
I’m not buying Bitcoins.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Will ObamaCare crash and
burn. It’s not doing very well so far. In fact, it’s a poster-child for
Murphy’s Law (Anything that can go wrong, </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">will</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">
go wrong). I suppose the primary question is whether they can enroll
enough healthy young people to correct the actuarial nightmare that
health insurance has become. That’s not looking so good either now. But
really, how can anyone trust a law that was written by the insurance
companies and the pharmaceutical industry? And how can it be repealed
when so many individuals, groups, companies, have already lost their
pre-ObamaCare policies? What is there to go back to? Therefore, I’d have
to predict turmoil in the health care system for 2014. The failure to
resolve the inadequacies of ObamaCare also may be a prime symptom of the
increasing impotence of the federal government to accomplish anything.
That failure would prompt an even faster downscaling of governance as
states, counties, communities, and individuals realize that they are on
their own.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Sorry to skip around, but a
few stray words about the state of American culture. Outside the
capitals of the “one percent” — Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston,
Washington, etc. — American material culture is in spectacular
disrepair. Car culture and chain store tyranny have destroyed the
physical fabric of our communities and wrecked social relations. These
days, a successful Main Street is one that has a wig shop and a
check-cashing office. It is sickening to see what we have become. Our
popular entertainments are just what you would design to produce a
programmed population of criminals and sex offenders. The spectacle of
the way our people look —overfed, tattooed, pierced, clothed in the
raiment of clowns — suggests an end-of-empire zeitgeist more disturbing
than a Fellini movie. The fact is, it simply mirrors the way we act, our
gross, barbaric collective demeanor. A walk down any airport concourse
makes the Barnum & Bailey freak shows of yore look quaint. In short,
the rot throughout our national life is so conspicuous that a fair
assessment would be that we are a wicked people who deserve to be
punished.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 100%;">Elsewhere in the World</span></b> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Globalism, in the Tom
Friedman euphoric sense, is unwinding. Currency wars are wearing down
the players, conflicts and tensions are breaking out where before there
were only Wal-Mart share price triumphs and Foxconn profits. Both
American and European middle-classes are too exhausted financially to
continue the consumer orgy of the early millennium. The trade imbalances
are horrific. Unpayable debt saturates everything. Sick economies will
weigh down commodity prices except for food-related things. The planet
Earth has probably reached peak food production, including peak
fertilizer. Supplies of grain will be inadequate in 2014 to feed the
still-expanding masses of the poor places in the world.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The nervous calm in finance
and economies since 2008 has its mirror in the relative calm of the
political scene. Uprisings and skirmishes have broken out, but nothing
that so far threatens the peace between great powers. There have been
the now-historic revolts in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other Middle East
and North African (MENA) states. Iraq is once again disintegrating after
a decade of American “nation-building.” Greece is falling apart. Spain
and Italy should be falling apart but haven’t yet. France is sinking
into bankruptcy. The UK is in on the grift with the USA and insulated
from the Euro, but the British Isles are way over-populated with a
volatile multi-ethnic mix and not much of an economy outside the
financial district of London. There were riots in — of all places —
Sweden this year. Turkey entered crisis just a few weeks ago along with
Ukraine.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> I predict more colorful
political strife in Europe this year, boots in the street, barricades,
gunfire, and bombs. The populations of these countries will want relief
measures from their national governments, but the sad news is that these
governments are broke, so austerity seems to be the order of the day no
matter what. I think this will prod incipient revolts in a rightward
nationalist direction. If it was up to Marine LePen’s rising National
Front party, they would solve the employment problem by expelling all
the recent immigrants — though the mere attempt would probably provoke
widespread race war in France.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The quarrel between China
and Japan over the Senkaku Islands is a diversion from the real action
in the South China Sea, said to hold large underwater petroleum
reserves. China is the world’s second greatest oil importer. Their
economy and the credibility of its non-elected government depends on
keeping the oil supply up. They are a long way from other places in the
world where oil comes from, hence their eagerness to secure and dominate
the South China Sea. The idea is that China would make a fuss over the
Senkaku group, get Japan and the US to the negotiating table, and cede
the dispute over them to Japan in exchange for Japan and the US
supporting China’s claims in the South China Sea against the other
neighbors there: Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The catch is that Japan may
be going politically insane just now between the rigors of (Shinzo)
Abenomics and the mystical horrors of Fukushima. Japan’s distress
appears to be provoking a new mood of nationalist militarism of a kind
not seen there since the 1940s. They’re talking about arming up,
rewriting the pacifist articles in their constitution. Scary, if you
have a memory of the mid-20</span><sup>th</sup><span style="font-size: 100%;">
century. China should know something about national psychotic breaks,
having not so long ago endured the insanity of Mao Zedong’s Cultural
Revolution (1966-71). So they might want to handle Japan with care. On
the other hand, China surely nurtures a deep, deadly grudge over the
crimes perpetrated by Japan in the Second World War, and now has a
disciplined, world-class military, and so maybe they would like to kick
Japan’s ass. It’s a hard one to call. I suspect that in 2014, the ball
is in Japan’s court. What will they do? If the US doesn’t stay out of
the way of that action, then we are insane, too.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> That said, I stick by my
story from last year’s forecast: Japan’s ultimate destination is to “go
medieval.” They’re never going to recover from Fukushima, their economy
is unraveling, they have no fossil fuels of their own and have to import
everything, and their balance of payments is completely out of whack.
The best course for them will be to just throw in the towel on
modernity. Everybody else is headed that way, too, eventually, so Japan
might as well get there first and set a good example.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> By “go medieval” I mean re-set to a pre-industrial </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">World Made By Hand</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">
level of operation. I’m sure that outcome seems laughably implausible
to most readers, but I maintain that both the human race and the planet
Earth need a “time out” from the ravages of “progress,” and
circumstances are going to force the issue anyway, so we might as well
kick back and get with the program: go local, downscale, learn useful
skills, cultivate our gardens, get to know our neighbors, learn how to
play a musical instrument, work, dine, and dance with our friends.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> As it happens, the third in the series of my </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">World Made By Hand</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">
novels, set in upstate New York in the post-collapse economy, will be
published in September by the Atlantic Monthly Press. It’s a ripping
yarn. Whether anyone will have enough money to buy a copy, I can’t
predict. Happy 2014, Everybody!</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/forecast-2014-burning-down-the-house/">http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/forecast-2014-burning-down-the-house/</a> </span></span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-58366522166859665952014-01-01T19:49:00.004-08:002014-01-01T19:49:46.294-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrB2p-Uo6pgOEXVWzDWS8axkCQaPuObSm5iLSITEdCwds3GIDUZdsj-fDGO-YoKBzDT0vphdj4cWg6hilfmyf_BuCNu6G_j7oRPeNrzKDsUSCc-atSHyAyL826AschCO5noOtkBw/s1600/_MG_9047w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrB2p-Uo6pgOEXVWzDWS8axkCQaPuObSm5iLSITEdCwds3GIDUZdsj-fDGO-YoKBzDT0vphdj4cWg6hilfmyf_BuCNu6G_j7oRPeNrzKDsUSCc-atSHyAyL826AschCO5noOtkBw/s320/_MG_9047w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">A couple from a recent trip to Big Bend with Roddy and Steve...</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDM8cUAnerVL28HIRiZx9_KVkcluYdNrpwpuWN2lwn009DNVd7BEJg9meaDYF9pIOxkrGTEdVPVc6zk7cwNUJgi6d8WUBt7SIubBV_27DB1eOvPwndECV7JZGF6l9wj5OTp7gO8Q/s1600/_MG_9273w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDM8cUAnerVL28HIRiZx9_KVkcluYdNrpwpuWN2lwn009DNVd7BEJg9meaDYF9pIOxkrGTEdVPVc6zk7cwNUJgi6d8WUBt7SIubBV_27DB1eOvPwndECV7JZGF6l9wj5OTp7gO8Q/s320/_MG_9273w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-67196512517991681172014-01-01T19:47:00.000-08:002014-01-01T19:47:03.501-08:00<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The End of Pretend</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">If being wealthy was the same as
pretending to be wealthy then people who care about reality would have a
little less to complain about. But pretending is a poor way for a
society to negotiate its way through history. It makes for accumulating
distortions which eventually undermine the society’s ability to
function, especially when the pretending is about money, which is
society’s operating system.</span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> The distortion that even
simple people care about is that the gap between the rich and the poor
is as plain, vast, and grotesque as at any time in our history — except
perhaps during slavery times in Dixieland, when many of the poor did not
even own their existence. We’ve had plenty of reminders of that in pop
culture the last couple of years, including Quentin Tarantino’s fiercely
stupid movie <i>Django Unchained</i> and the more recent melodrama <i>12 Years a Slave</i>.
But you have to wonder what young adults weighed down by unpayable
college debt think when they go to see them, because without a rebellion
that millennial generation will not own their own lives either. They
must know it, but they must not know what to do about it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> The pretense and
distortions start at the top of American life with a President who
broadcasts the message that some kind of “recovery” has occurred in the
economic affairs of the country. Either he just wants the public feel
better, or he is misled by the people and agencies in his own
government, or perhaps he just lies to keep the lid on. To truly recover
from the dislocations of 2008, we would have to make a consensual
decision to start behaving differently in the process of adapting to the
new circumstances that the arc of history is presenting to us. We’d
have to decide to leave behind the economy of financialization, suburban
sprawl, car dependency, Wal-Mart consumerism, and prepare for a
different way of inhabiting North America.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> The dislocations of 2008
when the banking system nearly imploded were Nature’s way of telling us
that dishonesty has consequences. The immediate dishonesty of that day
was the racket in securitizing worthless mortgages — promises to pay
large sums of money over long periods of time. The promises were false
and the collateral was janky. It got so bad and ran so far and deep
that it essentially destroyed the mechanism of credit creation as it had
been known until then, and it has not been repaired.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Since then, we have
pretended to repair the operations of credit by falsely substituting
bank bailouts and Federal Reserve “quantitative easing” (QE) or digital
money-printing for plain dealing in borrowed money between honest
brokers at the local level. The unfortunate consequence is that in the
process we have distorted — and possibly destroyed — the value of our
money and the various things denominated in it, especially securities,
bonds, stocks and other money-like paper.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> The crash of the mortgage
racket occurred not just because of swindling and fraud among bankers;
in fact, that was only a nasty symptom of something larger: peak oil. I
know that many people have come to disbelieve in the idea of peak oil,
but that is only another mode of playing pretend. Peak oil, which
essentially arrived in 2006, undermined the basic conditions of credit
creation in an advanced techno-industrial society dependent on
increasing supplies of fossil fuels. Most people, including practically
all credentialed economists, fail to understand this. There is a
fundamental relationship between ever-increasing energy supplies >
economic growth > and credit-based money (or “money,” if you will).
When the energy inputs flatten out or decrease, growth stops, wealth is
no longer generated, old loans can’t be repaid, and new loans can’t be
generated honestly, i.e. with the expectation of repayment. That has
been our predicament since 2008 and nothing has changed. We are
pretending to compensate by issuing new unpayable debt to pay the
interest on our old accumulated debt. This pretense can only go on so
long before our economic relations reflect the basic dishonesty of it.
Reality is a harsh mistress.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> In the meantime, we amuse
ourselves with fairy tales about “the shale oil revolution” and “the
manufacturing renaissance.” 2014 could be the year that the forces of
Nature compel our attention and give us a reason to stop all this
pretending. I’ll address this question in next week’s annual yearly
forecast.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-end-of-pretend/">http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-end-of-pretend/</a> </span></span><br />
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-42305257834826722722013-12-08T12:49:00.000-08:002013-12-08T12:49:14.852-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWO68IImHfS7D41yM7sDQ7deeEuiqn8BM2R-AuJPOFgMtVlJ2f1h7REQPboEgKbML4_X3ZkrXrfxMQJT14Kuz7QQjG4V2aunR-fJwhHSPPZP2YYQVVDsRW56vCgmti7VvDBAWoAQ/s1600/IMG_8834-2w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWO68IImHfS7D41yM7sDQ7deeEuiqn8BM2R-AuJPOFgMtVlJ2f1h7REQPboEgKbML4_X3ZkrXrfxMQJT14Kuz7QQjG4V2aunR-fJwhHSPPZP2YYQVVDsRW56vCgmti7VvDBAWoAQ/s320/IMG_8834-2w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Winter Wonderland here for the last few days, it can go away now!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-83604768089537534632013-10-14T10:41:00.004-07:002013-10-14T10:41:34.583-07:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Creepily Close</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #181818; font-size: 17px;"></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">by James Howard Kunstler</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> Things that can’t go on, the prophet Herb Stein once observed, go on until they can’t. Criticality eventually bushwhacks credulity. The aggregation of rackets that American life has become is rolling over like a great groaning wounded leviathan and the rest of the world is starting to freak out at the spectacle. Instead of a revolution, we’re having a suicide party.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> But don’t worry, a revolution would not be far behind. My guess is that it would kick off as generational rather than regional or factional, but it would eventually incorporate all three. A generation already swindled by the college loan racket must be chafing at the bureaucratic nightmare that ObamaCare instantly turned into at its roll-out, with a website that wouldn’t let anyone log in. Isn’t technology wonderful? I wonder when the “magic moment” will come when all those unemployed millennials join a Twitter injunction to just stop paying back their loans. If that particular message went out during this month’s government food fight, it would do more than just get the attention of a few politicians. It would crash the banks and snap the links in every chain of obligation holding the fiasco of globalism together.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> So far, the millennials have shown about as much political inclination as so many sowbugs under a rotten log, but it is in the nature of criticality that things change real fast. In any case, the older generations have completely disgraced themselves and it is only a question of how cruelly history will treat them in their unseating. The last time things got this bad, the guys in charge divided into two teams with blue and gray uniforms, rode gallantly onto the first fields of battle thinking it was a kind of rousing military theatrical, only to find themselves in a grinding four-year industrial-scale slaughter in which it was not uncommon for 20,000 young men to get shot to pieces in a single day — one day after another.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> Of course, things are a bit different now since we became a nation of overfed clowns dedicated to getting something for nothing, but despite the abject futility of American life in its current incarnation, there is room for plenty of violence and destruction. The sad and peculiar angle of the current struggle is that both sides in government wish heartily to keep all the rackets of daily life going — they just disagree on the distribution method of the vig.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> What amuses me at the moment is the behavior of the various financial markets and the cockamamie stories circulating to explain what they are doing in this time of perilous uncertainty. One popular story is called “the energy renaissance.” This is a fairy-tale that pretends that we have enough oil at a cheap enough price to keep driving to WalMart forever. Of course, shale oil wells that cost $12million to drill and produce 80 barrels-a-day for three years before crapping out altogether do not bode well for that outcome, but the wish to believe over-rides the reality. Another laughable story du jour is “the manufacturing renaissance.” This story proposes that the “central corridor” of the USA, from North Dakota to Texas, is about to give China a run for its money in manufacturing. The catch is that any new factory opening up in this scenario will be run on robots — leaving who, exactly, to be the customers paying for what these factories produce? Think about it for five minutes and you will understand that it is just a story calculated to goose up a share price here and there, and only for moment until it is discovered to be just a story. What interests me most is what happens when the stories lose their power to levitate the legitimacy of the people who tell them.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> Well, Christine LeGarde, chief of the IMF, tried to read the riot act to the American clownigarchs over the weekend, but they’re not paying attention to her. What has she done for her own country, France, lately anyhow. They’ve got their own set of rackets running over there. The Chinese are getting a little prickly, too, since they are sitting on a few trillion in US promises to pay cash money in the not so distant future. The Chinese are beginning to apprehend that future perhaps never arriving.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> In case you haven’t heard: America is “in recovery.” We can play all the games we want with money, or what passes for money these days. And then the moment will come when we can’t. That moment begins to feel creepily close.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><a href="http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/creepily-close/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/creepily-close/</span></a></span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-21603609251366976782013-10-05T17:45:00.004-07:002013-10-05T17:45:33.511-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLktuZ0XCWSN4oUaOk4MS0QsU7EeqwM-wzl2PKUMPEpbl7htGDV4vF7HVT9Kn0a8JGZi2PRvc6Vq8yjG5I_O5g17zAVwLrU5kyuN3AbM9KXWXzWZrwjVM1pkiOnPWqm-Dmp7rOng/s1600/IMG_8577w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLktuZ0XCWSN4oUaOk4MS0QsU7EeqwM-wzl2PKUMPEpbl7htGDV4vF7HVT9Kn0a8JGZi2PRvc6Vq8yjG5I_O5g17zAVwLrU5kyuN3AbM9KXWXzWZrwjVM1pkiOnPWqm-Dmp7rOng/s320/IMG_8577w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hula Girl!...</span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-29460494964610106002013-09-22T12:16:00.001-07:002013-09-22T12:16:24.894-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYxvYk67RquXHVpuvR2PHL0zoUUUbC-PsIj-TbeyjiUDuxYz15X5HBwCMJDoT9j8SRmbE5FhFJN-UU0PNbvY3mCuTTYiObYYab5KtCsen7lGhpuC9GtZ5ewYyMO2BhbUL5d5VcQ/s1600/20130804-IMG_6506-Editsm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYxvYk67RquXHVpuvR2PHL0zoUUUbC-PsIj-TbeyjiUDuxYz15X5HBwCMJDoT9j8SRmbE5FhFJN-UU0PNbvY3mCuTTYiObYYab5KtCsen7lGhpuC9GtZ5ewYyMO2BhbUL5d5VcQ/s320/20130804-IMG_6506-Editsm.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Arches National Park...Utah...</div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-43631194780258657862013-09-16T11:15:00.002-07:002013-09-16T11:15:38.058-07:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Posted For Fair Use And Discussion.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://kunstler.com/cluster****-nation/commotion/" style="color: #000066; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://kunstler.com/cluster****-nation/commotion/</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><b><u>Commotion</u></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">by James Howard Kunstler</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Now that Lawrence Summers has removed himself from consideration as Federal Reserve chairman, President Obama is free to launch him into Syria as the first human rehypothecation weapon of mass destruction, where he can sow enough confusion between Assad’s Alawites and the Qaeda opposition to collateralize both factions into contingent convertible capital instruments buried in the back pages of Goldman Sachs’s balance sheet so that the world will never hear of them again — and then the Toll Brothers can be brought in to develop Syria into a casino / assisted living complex that will bring hundreds of good jobs to US contractors in the region.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">No doubt the stock markets will fly like eagles today. Nobody knew what monkeyshines Mr. Summers might have pulled over at the Fed and it was making investors nervous, as well as the big banks who employed Mr. Summers occasionally as some kind of policy bagman. So a big sigh of relief blew over the Northeast Region of the nation like the gusts of autumn air that swept away a fetid hump of stale, wet tropical weather that ruined all the ladies’ party hair in the Hamptons this month.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Now that Syria has been disposed of — that is, indefinitely consigned to failed state purgatory — the world can focus its remaining attention on the almighty taper. I’m with those who think we’ll get a taper test. That is, the Fed will cut back ten or fifteen percent on its treasury bond purchases to see what happens. What happens is perfectly predictable: interest rates shoot above 3 percent on the ten-year and holders of US paper all the world round fling them away like bales of smallpox blankets and… Houston, we’ve got a problem. After a month (or less) of havoc in the bond market, and the housing market, Mr. Bernanke will issue an advisory saying (in more words than these) “just kidding.” Then it will be back to business as usual, which is to say QE Forever, which might as well be saying “game over.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">One must feel for poor Mr. Bernanke. He’s tried to run a long-distance foot-race against reality and now it’s breathing down his neck near finish line. The idea was to pump enough artificial “money” into the economy to give it the appearance of motion, but all he accomplished in the words of my recent podcast guest, Eric Zencey, was a commotion of money, and the commotion was pretty much limited to a few blocks of lower Manhattan, two ribbons of real estate running up the East Side and Central Park West, and a subsidiary disturbance out on the South Fork of Long Island. Everybody else in the country was left to stew in a tattoo-and-malt-liquor torpor at the SNAP Card application office.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">The Fed can only pretend to try to get out of this self-created hell-hole. The stock market is a proxy for the economy and a handful of giant banks are proxies for the American public, and all they’ve really got going is a hideous high-frequency churn of trades in conjectural debentures that pretend to represent something hidden in the caboose of a choo-choo train of wished-for value — and hardly anyone in the nation, including those with multiple graduate degrees in abstruse crypto-sciences, can even pretend to understand it all.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">When reality crosses the finish line ahead of poor, exhausted Mr. Bernanke, havoc must ensue. All the artificial props fall away and the so-called American economy is revealed for what it is: a surreal landscape of ruin with nothing left but salvage value. Very few people will get a living off of the salvage operations, and there will be fights and skirmishes everywhere by one gang or another for control of the pickings. The utility of money itself may be bygone, along with the legitimacy of anyone or anything claiming institutional authority. This is what comes of all attempts to get something for nothing.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><u>By the way, for those of you still watching the charts, notice that gold and silver may bob up and down week-by-week, but the price of oil remains stubbornly above $105-a-barrel no matter what happens. That is the only number you need to know to predict the fate of industrial economies.</u></span></span>Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-81683653549911580762013-09-12T13:09:00.005-07:002013-09-12T13:10:48.710-07:00<span style="font-size: large;">Gassy Politics</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">First: Paul Sabin’s </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/opinion/sunday/betting-on-the-apocalypse.html?_r=1&" target="_blank" title="Betting on the Apocalypse -- The New York Times Sat Sept 7"><span style="font-size: 100%;">stupid op-ed</span></a><span style="font-size: 100%;"> in </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">The New York Times</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">
Saturday shows how intellectually bankrupt and pusillanimous the
“newspaper of record” has become, in step with the depraved and decadent
empire whose record-keeper it supposedly pretends to be. Sabin is
flame-keeper for the theories of the late cornucopian demi-god Julian
Simon, a business school professor whose </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">great idea </span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">stokes
the wishful thinking that has overtaken a class of American leaders who
ought to know better, and spread through the public they serve like a
fungal infection of the brain. The core of Julian Simon’s </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">great idea</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> is that material resources don’t matter; human ingenuity will overcome all limits.</span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Maybe that’s a temporarily
comforting thought for leaders in business, media, and politics, who
don’t want to face the realities of peak resources and climate change,
but it guarantees a harsher economic outcome since the wishful public
will do nothing to prepare for the very different terms of daily living
that are already shoving them into hardship and desperation.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Julian Simon, who died in 1998, is best remembered now for a bet he made in 1980 with biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">The Population Bomb</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">.
The bet was supposed to determine whether the converging difficulties
of our time should be taken seriously. The two men picked a menu of
commodity metals and bet whether the price would rise or fall by 1990.
Ehrlich bet that scarcity would drive the price up; Simon bet that they
would go down. Simon won the bet only for temporary circumstantial
reasons, namely that the last great discoveries of cheap, easy-to-get
oil ramped into full production by the mid-1980s and pushed a final orgy
of global industrial development until 2008, when things really started
falling apart. By then, Julian Simon has been dead for a decade.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Simon’s idea lives on in
the wishful thinking around shale oil and gas, which have led the
American public and their leaders to believe that we’re in an “energy
renaissance” that will lead to “energy independence.” Just the other
day, Senator John McCain made the inexcusably dumb remark that the US is
now a net oil exporter. This is a man who ran for president five years
ago, talking completely out of his ass.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Now oil is well over $100 a
barrel, a price that the American economy, as currently configured,
cannot endure. That price is crushing the kind of activity we have
depended on lately: the house-building and lending rackets associated
with the creation of suburban sprawl. $100 oil is especially corrosive
to the problems of capital formation, because without more racket-driven
“growth,” we can neither generate new credit, nor pay the interest on
old credit. We’ve used accounting fraud in banking and government to
cover up this failed equation. But it has only led to greater
deformities in markets and a general fiasco in the management of money
all around the world, and it is spinning out of control right now. If
these conditions were to crash the global economy and the price of
everything fell in a deflationary depression, with oil back under $60 a
barrel — then it would not pay enough to frack the shale rock, or drill
miles under the ocean, or do any of the very expensive operations of
what’s called unconventional oil recovery.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> For </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">The New York Times</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">
to keep hauling out the sorry-ass figure of Julian Simon to “prove” a
specious and dangerous point surely shows the limits of one thing:
intelligence in the media. Because of that and other related failures in
the transmission of ideas, this is now a nation that cannot construct a
coherent narrative about what is happening to it.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Now, second: Syria. The
world has pretty much lined up against President Obama’s proposal to
issue a cruise missile spanking to Syria for supposedly gassing its own
citizens. Nobody thinks this is a good idea, some for reasons of
tactical advantage and some on the idea’s basic merit, or lack of. Mr.
Obama pulled his punch over a week ago by standing down and taking the
issue to congress for approval. I’m convinced he did that because he
would have been impeached for launching an overt act of war — despite
similar actions by his recent predecessors. The proposed spanking was a
bad idea from the start. There was no visible threat to the national
interest from Syria’s bad behavior within its own borders. The gas
attack was a terrible act of depravity, but firing missiles into Syria
wasn’t going to bring back the dead. It was only going to cause more
death. There’s no advantage to the US for supporting either side in the
Syrian civil war. The spread or deepening of any kind of disorder in
that region will threaten a critical portion of America’s oil imports.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> In the background of this,
things are becoming unstuck in the seriously ill and constipated realm
of international banking. The aforementioned deformities caused by
central bank interventions, market manipulations, Too Big To Fail
carry-trade rackets, and misreporting of financial data have begun to
shred currencies in nations at the margin (India, Brazil, Indonesia) and
that illness may prove contagious. The global economy depends on some
basic faith that major financial institutions are sound, and that they
trade in sound instruments that represent real wealth. That is all being
called into question now, and how long will it be before a general
paralysis freezes the entire letters-of-credit system that underlies
global commerce?</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The Syria soap opera has
also managed to upstage the imminent mud-wrestling match between
congress and the executive branch over the national debt limit and
related matters of government spending. These problems appear for now to
be completely intractable. If the government overcomes the latest
version of this recurring dilemma, it will only be due to generating
even more layers of accounting fraud to an already well-papered piñata
that is just waiting to be smashed. While this goes on, the American
public gets pushed deeper and deeper into a financial abyss, haunted by
re-po men, lying bank officers, verminous lawyers, and chiseling
hospital administrators.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> All this is a recipe for a
political explosion. What happens if the US Government starts gassing
its own citizens? It happened in 1967. That one only made people cry.
Maybe next time, they’ll use a different kind of gas.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/gassy-politics/">http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/gassy-politics/</a> </span></span>Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-21655591506701958872013-09-10T00:14:00.002-07:002013-09-10T00:14:20.915-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1HC1kiPhEbu-4cJueyhwcZ-pcFOneVfLS7Ttqidv-GtRVn8_F0YK8u7HB24n1ZmqvKT8eu9ejPV3r0o9QttXTLyV8xbNGs0OilBBRzDqjJs5CdEbegy4jGdYE_BTlAEnfKNj6rg/s1600/IMG_6353w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1HC1kiPhEbu-4cJueyhwcZ-pcFOneVfLS7Ttqidv-GtRVn8_F0YK8u7HB24n1ZmqvKT8eu9ejPV3r0o9QttXTLyV8xbNGs0OilBBRzDqjJs5CdEbegy4jGdYE_BTlAEnfKNj6rg/s320/IMG_6353w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Along the roadside on way to Torrey, Utah...</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6DOdvVncVsAGJhkyltasuKvY1r5fV7OqgAEHhIQkHchIC8Z0IbySA3RNddiBT-ispZtVgBd-3d0OejcgpDCSDgWJyr3C-cAz70-MpUBOWmexGvbqws-GX3sLvFqH9OuLGVnrbFQ/s1600/IMG_8082w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6DOdvVncVsAGJhkyltasuKvY1r5fV7OqgAEHhIQkHchIC8Z0IbySA3RNddiBT-ispZtVgBd-3d0OejcgpDCSDgWJyr3C-cAz70-MpUBOWmexGvbqws-GX3sLvFqH9OuLGVnrbFQ/s320/IMG_8082w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-8315198208339991832013-09-09T09:17:00.004-07:002013-09-09T09:17:28.944-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidzC5exc-fy5XgmmCW1JKq3Kgl57DEpfxKFPJLVbZJUdUrlg3f7tVXmx0OIDbfPzJ8YfQQzfjFa2gqdd3eMqYQU2G_n3byE447SgQCwyRWYgOdC8T-GeMz5Z4drxIW12l6nSbdSg/s1600/IMG_8018w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidzC5exc-fy5XgmmCW1JKq3Kgl57DEpfxKFPJLVbZJUdUrlg3f7tVXmx0OIDbfPzJ8YfQQzfjFa2gqdd3eMqYQU2G_n3byE447SgQCwyRWYgOdC8T-GeMz5Z4drxIW12l6nSbdSg/s320/IMG_8018w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Up in Zion National Park...</span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-8244943179444164422013-09-09T09:16:00.000-07:002013-09-09T09:16:00.828-07:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #181818;"></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: 'OFL Sorts Mill Goudy TT', Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">Between a Rock and a Laugh Track</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">After the British parliament put the kibosh on following the American punishment brigade to Syria, and then NATO, and the UN wrinkled their noses at the project, well, that pretty much left President Obama to twist slowly, slowly in the wind — washed, rinsed, and hung out to dry. It looks like a watershed moment in the USA’s increasingly klutzy career as the world’s hall monitor. International power relations are suddenly in flux. A phase change has occurred causing all that was solid a few days ago to melt into liquid.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> The Iranians are having a good laugh, for now. Mr. Assad of Syria responded with a beaming smirk. However, any sentient observer can see this region of the world for what it is, a political demolition derby which, left to its own blundering devices, would blow up the whole arena when the last player sputters to a standstill.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> First of all, it seems to me that extremists in the Republican-dominated US House of Representatives have been quietly searching for a pretext to impeach President Obama. Committing an overt act of war without congressional approval would have been a good case, legally, despite the fact that executive branch war-making has been absolutely the rule for decades in Washington. The British parliamentary move against the avid David Cameron pretty much begged the question for American legislators. The foggy part is whether they would actually come back to Washington from the fried dough alleys of their state fairs and mount a “debate” about whether it would be a good or bad thing to whack Syria for gassing more than a thousand of its own citizens.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> Lately when America mounts a high moral horse about how other nations behave, we have gone into these places and smashed things up, bringing much more death and destruction than we anticipated. The hope is always that some surgical military operation can correct a political illness, but a cruise missile is not exactly a scalpel and once the patient is blown to pieces it is rather hard to patch up the body politic again. You’re just left, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a lot of bloody fragments fought over by political rats and cockroaches.</span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> Syria is a real crossroads both for America’s policy in the region and for its position on the world stage. The region is in a state of destructive turmoil that is likely to lead to the further fall of regimes and the breakup of states. Many of these states are figment nations anyway, with boundaries drawn in the 20</span><sup style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">th</sup><span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> century by the winners of the two world wars. The discovery of oil from North Africa to Iran and beyond has been catastrophic for everybody in the world, but most vividly for the exploding populations of these mostly desert states, which could not have supported so many people without the artificial support of petro-money. Now, faced with the specter of peak oil production, the whole region is flying apart from the stress of population overshoot, including countries like Syria which never produced much oil itself.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> But the drama over the trade in the oil remaining only becomes more intense. For instance, the position of Saudi Arabia, pretending to sit quietly on the sidelines through all this, is curious. There are rumors, unverified, that the gas incident in Syria happened because Saudi Arabia sent canisters of Sarin to the Syrian rebels, who then mishandled them and gassed their own neighborhood. The world’s recent experience with so-called “intel reports” about weapons has made everybody skeptical of claims made by politicians that a particular country poses a danger to others.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> Otherwise, there is a whole other strategic realm of concerns around the petro trade and its financing that is totally off the radar screen of the mainstream media. For instance, the sometimes erratic but brilliant blogger </span><a href="http://www.silverdoctors.com/jim-willie-syria-pipeline-politics-opec-the-usdollar/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #3a6735; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top;" target="_blank" title="JIM WILLIE: SYRIA, PIPELINE POLITICS, OPEC & THE USDOLLAR"><span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">Jim Willie describes the larger struggle</span></a><span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> of Russia, Iran, China, and other interested parties to displace the US dollar dominance in oil trade — in particular a dollar based on increasingly sketchy US Treasury bonds, which has deformed global banking, roiled currencies, and made the settling of international accounts problematical for everybody else in the world. The opposition to the US, and its client / partner Saudi Arabia, the story goes, would replace the dollar with gold-backed oil trade and a logistical work-around based on a growing pipeline system from Iran and beyond, in Asia, to desperate customers in Europe. The implications are a collapse of the dollar (and the US bond market), a wedge between European and American interests, and a dominant partnership of oil-and-gas rich Russia with China — that is, a major power shift from west-to-east.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">
<span my="my" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"> Who knows how much of this has informed President Obama’s decision process. The stall in the American whack-attack against Syria may itself be a symptom of the swirling new conditions in world finance and power relations. In any case, a great empire — which we have been — can’t afford to make idle threats. The outcome of the Syria melodrama may be that the US has been knocked down a big step in its ability to project power without terrible consequences to itself.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/between-a-rock-and-a-laugh-track/">http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/between-a-rock-and-a-laugh-track/</a></span></div>
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Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-87714973821374002792013-08-28T14:37:00.002-07:002013-08-28T14:37:23.673-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIEfsc2RMTSq5GjXLbpti0NeH0dRg55vLwKgOLGPdaOIJ75pUq9VRMpLPqjZLctWZwSBv7ZW6zCysNeeKQU0753jZ71xW7jxfjjukcfHGR1U5XW3bAKcSjtXuTiqF1C0soFo-G_A/s1600/photo9wbw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIEfsc2RMTSq5GjXLbpti0NeH0dRg55vLwKgOLGPdaOIJ75pUq9VRMpLPqjZLctWZwSBv7ZW6zCysNeeKQU0753jZ71xW7jxfjjukcfHGR1U5XW3bAKcSjtXuTiqF1C0soFo-G_A/s320/photo9wbw.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">iPhone 4 shot somewhere deep in Bisti Wilderness area...</span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-7071270710372092882013-08-24T19:50:00.004-07:002013-08-24T19:50:45.229-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdh72Un8MYLC2diVct_ZyMBu4tZ94QC-qmpukTbaiBK15MfIdXCnwqmClG067zIAXrRe5G5JaVFGV-GpM20VXv_2JWOQPA1Q0JNsdFUEClyU92a2c_b_fxgC1R1U9mEamt9NNt-w/s1600/IMG_8404w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdh72Un8MYLC2diVct_ZyMBu4tZ94QC-qmpukTbaiBK15MfIdXCnwqmClG067zIAXrRe5G5JaVFGV-GpM20VXv_2JWOQPA1Q0JNsdFUEClyU92a2c_b_fxgC1R1U9mEamt9NNt-w/s320/IMG_8404w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Conserve water now before we have none to conserve!</span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18478001.post-66153978415689601972013-08-21T11:48:00.001-07:002013-08-21T11:49:44.433-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgexrOFRr7LqRSjXGxL0xnkPz0_SInVqbQ8xfavpuPRTeh4DwUeJGkKOuLyqszml5eDbkj7x7ZTaJhvURmVApcvnNgeZqXUP9PxHrUtndy1zMLLGYELImTQxi-x-H4_q4byXVCOdg/s1600/IMG_6375.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgexrOFRr7LqRSjXGxL0xnkPz0_SInVqbQ8xfavpuPRTeh4DwUeJGkKOuLyqszml5eDbkj7x7ZTaJhvURmVApcvnNgeZqXUP9PxHrUtndy1zMLLGYELImTQxi-x-H4_q4byXVCOdg/s320/IMG_6375.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sunset on the way to Torrey, Utah</span></div>
Don Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07100925801710921593noreply@blogger.com