“The Financial Jigsaw” has been serialised here and is replaced by this weekly “Letter from Great Britain.” NOTE – If anyone would like an electronic copy of the complete book, I should be pleased to email a free PDF on request to: peter@underco.co.uk.
Gail Tverberg has a very well explained essay on how and why the global economy is facing unprecedented headwinds. History tells us that when oil prices spike, recessions follow as witnessed in the 1970s and 2008. This time will be no different – here are Gail’s conclusions if you do not wish to read the complete work:
“At this point, it seems as if complexity has gone too far. The pandemic moved the world economy in the direction of contraction but prices of fossil fuels tend to spike as the economy opens up.
The recent spikes in prices are highly unlikely to produce the natural gas, coal and oil that is required. They are more likely to cause recession. Fossil fuel suppliers need high prices guaranteed for the long term. Even if such guarantees could be provided, it would still take several years to ramp up production to the level needed.
The general trend of the economy is likely to be in the direction of the Seneca Cliff (Figure 1). Everything won’t collapse all at once, but big “chunks” may start breaking away.
The debt system is a very vulnerable part. Debt is, in effect, a promise of goods or services made with energy in the future. If the energy isn’t there, the promised goods and services won’t be available. Governments may try to hide this problem with new debt, but governments can’t solve the underlying problem of missing goods and services.
Pension systems of all kinds are also vulnerable. If fewer goods and services are being made in total, they will need to be divided up differently. Pensioners are likely to get a reduced share, or nothing at all.
Importers of fossil fuels seem likely to be especially affected by price spikes because exporters have the ability to cut back in the quantity available for export, if total supply is inadequate. Europe is one part of the world that is especially dependent on oil, natural gas and coal imports.
The combined production of hydroelectric, wind and solar and biofuels (in Figure 9) amounts to only 19% of Europe’s total energy consumption (shown in Figure 8). There is no possible way that Europe can get along only with renewable energy, at any foreseeable time in the future.
European economists should have told European citizens, “There is no way you can get along using renewables alone for many, many years. Treat the countries that are exporting fossil fuels to you very well. Sign long term contracts with them. If they want to use a new pipeline, raise no objection. Your bargaining power is very low.” Instead, European economists talked about saving the planet from carbon dioxide. It is an interesting idea, but the sad truth is that if Europe takes itself out of the contest for energy imports, it mostly leaves more fossil fuels for exporters to sell to others.
China stands out as well, as the world’s largest consumer of energy, and as the world’s largest importer of oil, coal and natural gas. It is already encountering electricity shortages that are leading to rolling blackouts. In fact, rolling blackouts in China started almost a year ago in late 2020. China is, of course, a major exporter of goods to the rest of the world. If China has major energy problems, the rest of the world will no longer be able to count on China’s exports. Lack of China’s exports, by itself, could be a huge problem for the rest of the world.
I could continue speculating on the changes ahead. The basic problem, as I see it, is that we have reached limits on oil, coal and natural gas extraction, pretty much simultaneously. The limits are really complexity limits. The renewables that we have today aren’t able to save us, regardless of what the models of Mark Jacobson and others might say.
In the next few years, I am afraid that we will find out how collapse actually proceeds in a very interconnected world economy.” https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/10/18/spike-in-energy-prices-suggests-that-sharp-changes-are-ahead/
BUT – we all know who is behind this contrived crisis except that the great majority have no wish to acknowledge what is going on now. It will be too late when they wake up and we will all be exposed to extreme global totalitarianism. Iain Davis has written many articles explaining how the global elite are planning our future. This one is well worth reading as it explains much about our present dilemma. Here is the start of his explanations.
“The Global Public-Private Partnership (GPPP) is a world-wide network of stakeholder capitalists and their partners.
This collective of stakeholders (the capitalists and their partners) comprises global corporations (including central banks), philanthropic foundations (multi-billionaire philanthropists), policy think-tanks, governments (and their agencies), non-governmental organisations, selected academic & scientific institutions, global charities, the labour unions and other chosen “thought leaders.”
The GPPP controls global finance and the world’s economy. It sets world, national and local policy (via global governance) and then promotes those policies using the mainstream media (MSM) corporations who are also “partners” within the GPPP.
Often those policies are devised by the think-tanks before being adopted by governments, who are also GPPP partners. Government is the process of transforming GPPP global governance into hard policy, legislation and law.
Under our current model of Westphalian national sovereignty, the government of one nation cannot make legislation or law in another. However, through global governance, the GPPP create policy initiatives at the global level which then cascade down to people in every nation. This typically occurs via an intermediary policy distributor, such as the IMF or IPCC, and national government then enact the recommended policies.
The policy trajectory is set internationally by the authorised definition of problems and their prescribed solutions. Once the GPPP enforce the consensus internationally, the policy framework is set. The GPPP stakeholder partners then collaborate to ensure the desired policies are developed, implemented and enforced. This is the oft quoted “international rules based system.”
In this way the GPPP control many nations at once without having to resort to legislation. This has the added advantage of making any legal challenge to the decisions made by the most senior partners in the GPPP (it is an authoritarian hierarchy) extremely difficult.”
He ends his excellent article with the following observations: “While, in theory, governments do not have to implement GPPP policy, the reality is that they do. Global policies have been an increasing facet of our lives in the post WW2 era. The mechanism of translating GPPP policy initiatives, first into national and then regional and eventually local policy, can be clearly identified by looking at sustainable development.
In 1972 the privately funded, independent policy think-tank the Club of Rome (CoR) published the Limits of Growth. As we saw with the roll-out out of the pseudopandemic, the CoR used computer models to predict what they decreed were the complex problems faced by the entire planet: the “world problematique.”
Their offered opinions derived from the commissioned work of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) system dynamic “World3 model.” This assumed global population would deplete natural resources and pollute the environment to the point where “overshoot and collapse” would inevitably occur.
This is not a scientific “fact” but rather a suggested scenario. So far, none of the predictions made have come to pass.
The scientific and statistical to-and-fro on the claims made in the Limits to Growth has been prolific. However, ignoring all doubts, the World3 model was firmly planted at the centre of the sustainable development policy environment.
In 1983 the Brundtland Commission was convened by former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harland Brundlandt and then Secretary General of the UN Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. Both were Club of Rome members. Based upon the highly questionable assumptions in the World3 model, they set about uniting governments from around the world to pursue sustainable development policies.
In 1987 the Commission published the Brundtland Report, also known as Our Common Future. Central to the idea of sustainable development, outlined in the report, was population control (reduction.) This policy decision, to get rid of people, won international acclaim and awards for the authors.
The underlying assumptions for these policy proposals weren’t publicly challenged at all. The academic and scientific debate raged but remained almost completely unreported. As far as the public knew, scientific assumption and speculation was a proven fact. It is now impossible to question these unproven assumptions and obviously inaccurate models without being accused of “climate denial.”
This resulted in the Millenium Development Goals and eventually, in 2015, they gave way to the United Nation’s full adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), In turn, these have been translated into government policy. For example, the UK government proudly announced their Net Zero policy commitment to sustainable development goals in 2019.
SDGs were already making an impact at the regional and local level in counties, cities, towns and boroughs across the UK. Nearly every council across the country has a “sustainable development plan.”
Regardless of what you think about the global threats we may or may not face, the origin and the distribution pathway of the resultant policy is clear. A privately funded, globalist think-tank was the driver of a policy agenda which led to the creation of a global policy framework, adopted by governments the world over, which has impacted communities in nearly every corner of the Earth.
SDGs are just one among numerous examples of GPPP global governance in action. The elected politician’s role in this process is negligible. They merely serve to implement and sell the policy to the public.
It doesn’t matter who you elect, the policy trajectory is set at the global governance level. This is the dictatorial nature of the GPPP and nothing could be less democratic.”
https://off-guardian.org/2021/10/20/what-is-the-global-public-private-partnership/
BUT in Britain this week we have the Budget and the government’s optimism appears to be misplaced. Rishi Sunak will use his budget this week to insist the UK is entering an economic “age of optimism” and herald a “new economy post-Covid”. Sunak is expected to unveil a flagship measure to help families hit by the £1,000 cut to universal credit, having already made £30bn of spending announcements, or re-announcements, across the health service, housebuilding, crime-fighting, transport and skills.
But with the threat of rising inflation and holes in the public finances, Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, warned the country was facing an “age of uncertainty … The place we are at is coming out of a recession but going into a cost of living crunch. The country is looking for a resolution of the uncertainty of the pandemic but the budget is not going to be able to provide that.” Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, questioned the chancellor’s emphasis on optimism at a time when many people are struggling. The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said a Labour government would cut VAT on domestic energy bills for six months.
VACCINE REACTIONS: “An investigation of official ONS data has revealed that since the Covid-19 vaccine was offered and administered to kids in England and Wales there has been a 89% rise in deaths among male children against the five-year-average, with the most recent week seeing an increase as high as 200%.” https://theexpose.uk/2021/10/27/deaths-among-male-children-increased-by-89-percent-since-given-covid-19-vaccine/
To be continued next week.