Fuel Prices….

[jac]

Good news guys !!!! HSBC bank has just announced that the next 40 years are to be “boom” times and that they have only just begun:D… they cant predict past 2050 tho…
John

[Marshall]

John, thanks for that good news. I sure feel better now. It is nice to hear from someone with something positive once in awhile.

[near horse]

It will be a sad day when one can’t afford the fuel necessary for self-emolation!

[jac]

OldKat can you set us straight on the stories in the papers that are to be believed… so far we have had the oil is running out, then it isnt, then a well was filling up again, then the water powered cars, then the hydrogen power, then the oil was a polutant on water, then it isnt and the sea cleans its self, now we have some kind of multiplyning thing on the oceon because of the stuff they sprayed on to clear up the BP cockup… whats next… petrolium products dont cause cancer, now that would be cool :cool:!!!!!!!…. As someone on the inside it would be great to have your opinion on the hype we get told… best regards..
John

[bivol]

@Rod 23305 wrote:

Hi Bivol

Great perspectives from someone who has been their. Thanks for your input into this dialogue which has many of us overly concerned.
I grew up very poor (in money) in an era when the great depression was still a recent memory. We had no car, no vacations, no new clothes, no TVs, made our toast on the kitchen stove top, made our own soap, patched our clothes, did our on shoe repair, lived out of our gardens, had an ice box, heated with coal, and used hand me down bicycles for transportation. It works, we had a good life and came through it whole.
I think it could be like that again and we will find ways to survive.

Glad to!

Rod, we had basically a copy-paste situation here when i grew up, some two decades ago. and it HAD GOOD SIDES!

for ex., there was virtually no teasing or degrading if you didn’t have something – noone had anything extra! back then i think someone pushing it on basis of someone else being poor would have trouble in the toilet later! not so today…

but that isn’t the point, the point is:

1). people can GET BY with less than they think it’s possible. but IT IS possible!

2). people have, i guess, has lost the faith in their own brawn (and brain, too, it seems!) if you say to some averige citizen (job, family, car, house) he and his falmily had to till their garden to eat and drive around on bikes, i think he’d be spoo-oked!
but why not? perfectly normal, and heating on wood is the most wonderful form of heating there is! 18 years of it and i warmly 😀 reccomend it!

i’m a little late, it seems, but this topic has really become big and interesting, with lots of good ideas!

jac, it is true what you said. luckily, i think no big scale reversion to horses is likely to take place, because horses are not numerous enough, and take a long time to grow in numbers. and because there will be anough fuel for strategic needs (food and army) from other sources, like coal, peat, etc.

in a serious shortage of fuel i think it’ll be like this:
1. cars are used very little
2. gasifers are used on what trucks and tractors there are
3. liquid fuel is being made from coal, wood, by fischer-tropsch process

large fields are tiled by tractors, and the is enough fuel. manure is gathered from people. i see no other way.

the main problem with people today is that they just don’t think they can do without loads of stuff…

[bivol]

@OldKat 23381 wrote:

A few other thougts from my vantage point. Something that gets glossed over in most discussion is that the weak dollar is a product of our own governments reckless spending. As we print money, like Charmin prints toilet paper, to “monetize” the debt each new batch makes the sum total in circulation worth incrementally less. Simple economic fact. Our government is destroying our way of life with debt. I also heard recently that Russia and China are doing everything within their power to cause our dollar to not be used as the benchmark in trading, as you mentioned above. Yet there are people that insist that China is our friend. They are NOT our friend and we are crazy to think they are.

OldKat, i wholeheartedly agree on what you said!
i’m sure we both ment nothing personal against citizens of china, but if ANY country is sucking you dry on ANY means, trade or whatever, that county is not your friend. period!
because it IS crazy that everything is produced somewhere else and that all our money goes somewhere else, instead staying within borders! and i see NOTHING good in factories closing by the dozen because it is cheaper to produce everything in china! it is a normal human impulse to rebel against something like that and guard our production, no matter that the political (and big business) dogma is at the moment! big bussiness multi-nationals will always be well off, and i don’t think they care for stuff like patriotism or well being of their countries!

and speaking of borders, the whole “global-market” idea came from big business in US and europe, but is costing the national economies more and more. so, maybe it would be the time to go back to “regional markets”, or, in plain text, to reintroduce customs.

now, market theories are:

1.national market – very little trade outside

2. regional market – parts of the world who make up separate economic entities, like soviet countries being economically largely cut of capitalistic ones , or nazi-controled economic system in europe in ww2.

3. global market – current. unfortunatelly.

question: US has a strong economy, but also has a growing trade debt to china. so, wouldn’t depreciation of dollar also be a means to make that debt smaller, domestic export easier, and lessen the price of work in US?

because at the moment, if china would re-draw all the credit money from US financial sector, US financial system would almost collapse! or, it would SURELY colapse, only i know that the dollar will then be “re-set”, that is, re-made, and tied to the gold standard again, to ensure its stability.
ofcourse, china’s demand like that would bring tense relations, and that would effectively mean that china would have all its foreign reserve value wiped out in a moment, which would mean war.

[dominiquer60]

Bivol,
Perhaps you are right about this. “luckily, i think no big scale reversion to horses is likely to take place, because horses are not numerous enough, and take a long time to grow in numbers.” But just remember the success that Cuba has had with oxen. Castro ordered that bull calves were to be spared and trained to work. The poor Cubans were deprived further with a limited supply of beef, but in the end they have a huge work force of animal power, and grow many crops without petroleum. Horses don’t have to save the world, but along with cattle, and a good mule or two, together they can save the sanity of a few on the small scale, of this I am certain:)

Erika

[goodcompanion]

@bivol 23447 wrote:

question: US has a strong economy, but also has a growing trade debt to china. so, wouldn’t depreciation of dollar also be a means to make that debt smaller, domestic export easier, and lessen the price of work in US?

because at the moment, if china would re-draw all the credit money from US financial sector, US financial system would almost collapse! or, it would SURELY colapse, only i know that the dollar will then be “re-set”, that is, re-made, and tied to the gold standard again, to ensure its stability.
ofcourse, china’s demand like that would bring tense relations, and that would effectively mean that china would have all its foreign reserve value wiped out in a moment, which would mean war.

There is no way China can recall American debt, as you say.

A weakening dollar does make American exports more affordable overseas and Chinese imports less affordable here. American debt held by China would be in the form of U.S. treasury bonds and yes those would be worth less, compared to other currencies. But since any theoretical repayment of American debt held by China would be also in dollars the decline in value is neither here nor there. The Treasury can repay by printing more money and issuing more bonds, but to overdo this invites further decline of the dollar. The best way to shore up value of the dollar is to demonstrate that the U.S. economy is growing at least as fast as the debt, in real terms. Now it seems unlikely that the U.S. will see a return to such rates of economic growth, yet the payments the treasury must make just to service the interest on our debt are constantly rising. The only way to win when you’re deeply in debt is to grow faster than the next country in the game, and the U.S. is stuck and likely to remain so. This is a time-bomb situation, particularly when you factor in the potential effects of rising energy prices.

In general as I understand it a weakening dollar is a symptom of declining worldwide confidence in the future stability of the dollar and the ability of the U.S. treasury to eventually make good on its obligations. But a collapsing dollar would signal a total loss of faith in the ability of the U.S. Treasury to repay debt in dollars or any other kind of currency, much as the Roman Empire became unable to procure sufficient silver to mint enough coin to pay its army (the coins became smaller, made out of ever-more-inferior metals, and finally became worthless) This would entail the collapse in value of all American obligations, and since these obligations stabilize the entire worldwide financial system and the foreign reserves of most countries, this would basically be the end of the global economy as we know it, which would be no fun for us and no fun for China either.

Probably some kind of war would follow but how any country would be in any shape to finance it is hard to imagine. Nobody wants a collapse in the dollar to happen. China and the U.S. are locked into a kind of lover’s death embrace (or something), and are both committed to keep the game going as long as possible with hopes that rapid growth will save the day for the U.S. sooner or later. Wall Street seems pretty peppy about this prospect. How about you?

[jac]

Way I see it is that this “modern” banking system just doesnt work. 2 world wars have kept it going but now its failed…. 3 times on a large scale. When are the idiots that run the show going to get it thru their thick skulls that we need to change the system !? I am curious as to why China cant call in a debt ? We were in debt to the US for WW2 untill very recently so why is the US debt to China any different ? If you owe money you owe money… simple.. or least it is to me:D…
John

[goodcompanion]

@jac 23462 wrote:

Way I see it is that this “modern” banking system just doesnt work. 2 world wars have kept it going but now its failed…. 3 times on a large scale. When are the idiots that run the show going to get it thru their thick skulls that we need to change the system !? I am curious as to why China cant call in a debt ? We were in debt to the US for WW2 untill very recently so why is the US debt to China any different ? If you owe money you owe money… simple.. or least it is to me:D…
John

The main way the US debt is different is that it’s ongoing and growing, not a one-time static debt like Britain’s war debt. A debt like Britain’s a country can come to grips with eventually. Instead the US debt is the general cost of the american government and lifestyle over a decades, for which we have borrowed and must continue to borrow money from the chinese and others. Even if we were to stop borrowing the cost of interest on the existing debt would still be a huge burden that we could only rid ourselves of by having our economy grow faster than the interest.

The big fear on the part of the lenders is that the borrowing is consistently growing faster than growth in GDP–this suggests that the U.S. may never grow fast enough to be able to get control of it. Yet they are stuck, stuck financing our wars and medicare, and they have to keep lending money and we have to keep taking it or the game is over and everyone loses. Right now we are all still locked into this on the mutual lie that this can go on forever, because no-one can imagine how to get out of the present situation.

[jac]

Quite scarey when its laid out isnt it ? ..Britain is in as big a pickle… relatively speaking. Both the US and Britain seriously need to re industrialise.. we dont make tractors any more for cryin out loud… sure CNH have an assembly plant at Basildon but not a single tractor is truly made in the UK anymore.. our last match manufacturer closed down recently so we dont even make matches :o… computers and software is the byword and “service nation”:mad:..We in the western developed nations seem to move round the world seeking out cheap/child labour to make our images of percieved wealth… even Harley Davidson have opened a plant in India now !!! do they not want Americans to build the bike ??? Im all for free trade but you can only buy for so long… if you dont sell anything you cant make the money to buy… unless we follow Adolf’s idea and keep printing notes…
John

[Rod]

@jac 23466 wrote:

Im all for free trade but you can only buy for so long… if you dont sell anything you cant make the money to buy… unless we follow Adolf’s idea and keep printing notes…
John

I completely agree and think we should have policy’s that resemble barter, in other words we can trade but only up to parity with any particular country. That is, a balance trade amount and after that we apply tariffs. I know the major producing countries benefiting from cheap labor and lax safety and environmental controls would scream but I say so what. They need our markets and will have to play fair if they want access to them.
The mechanics of how to do this I will leave to more creative minds.

[near horse]

John,

One reason China can’t (I’ll say won’t) call in the US debt is we are the cash cow of their current economic growth. As long as they keep loaning us money, we continue to carry on as usual and buy Chinese goods (I use the term loosely) – like a good parasite, you never kill your host.

[jac]

What also angers me Geoff is the manner of how these cheap goods are made.. never mind the child labour{i dont mean never mind but more..as well as} but the fact that whole factories are set up to make stuff they know full well wont work.. and our import lot allow this to happen… a good friend of mine bought a “Husky” saw… it was orange with husky bar…that was as far as it went.. the effing thing could not be started and the on/off switch was off a toy.. the plastic was of sweet box quality..she got fleeced, my point is that here is a country churning out crap and shipping it to God knows where.
Rod I like your idea.. a lot !! theres way to much of the “dont say that, you dont want to upset them” crap !!
John

[Rod]

One thing I believe in which could be a big help is the buy local movement and this can be understood as buy American as well. When I can I try to do that. Our community recently lost our downtown anchor store after many years of being a great source of outdoor clothing and sporting goods. I can’t help but think that the big box stores in Keen which is a 45 minuet drive away had an effect. When you factor in the gas and time to drive 1.5 hours to save a little money and the fact that now we are without the resource of the local store it can be self defeating. If we wait for the stargazers in Washington to craft policies that will solve this crises it will be to late but this is something we all can do without the government spending billions on the problem and something that can encourage local and USA made products and services. Just say NO to foreign goods unless you can’t get it from our own country.

[Author]

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