The U.S. economy IS in decline and any "rebounds" are nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Much more on this to come.
The U.S. lifestyle and "standard of living" we take for granted are also in decline -- there are "doomers" and "doomer damners", but whether the ride down is slow or swift, it IS coming -- hopefully NOT in sheer freefall.
BUT, before I dive deeply and drill down on what "peak oil" protends (with both some pro- and many con sites -- that would be "con" of maintaining the status quo), here's a wee bit of humor for your weekend reading (both my readers~!). (the laffs only come at the end when you THINK about this):
Wal-Mart vs. the (elected) Morons, i.e. our "leaders'
The heirs to Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart. Each of the five heirs was worth at least $15 BILLION in 2008. Probably more than $20 BILLION by now.
1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.
2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!
3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.
4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears+ Costco + K-Mart combined.
5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English.
6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.
7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.
8. During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.
9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.
10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.
11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)
12. 90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart (I'm an exception in SOOooo many ways -- for starters, 60% of the people my age don't know how to use a computer or "google" anything -- and I live a good 40 miles, one way, to the nearest wally world and I LIKE it that way)
Lest you may think that the writer of these stats is complaining, but s/he was really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.
This should be read and understood by all Americans Democrats, Republicans, EVERYONE!!
MEMO: To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature:
It is now official you are ALL corrupt morons:
a. The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.
b. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
c.. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.
d.. War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.
e.. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.
f.. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.
g.. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.
(here's the laughter part, or at least a cynical smirk): MAYBE WE OUGHT TO KICK YOUR EGG-HEAD BUDDY BUMS OUT OF OFFICE AND HIRE WAL MART TO RUN THE GOVERNMENT ??? WAL MART SEEMS TO KNOW HOW TO RUN A BUSINESS.......WHY DON'T YOU GUYS JUST ADMIT IT'S WAY BEYOND YOUR PAY GRADE, AND QUIT?
Folks, keep this circulating. It is very well stated. Maybe it will end up in the e-mails of some of our "duly elected' (they never read anything) and but MAYBE their staff will clue them in on how Americans feel.
Showing posts with label U.S. economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. economy. Show all posts
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
PEAK OIL - another disaster in the making
A bit of a personal post now. I grew up in the "oil patch" -- my dad worked in the petroleum industry, his last gig being a pipe-straightening business, in conjunction with running a small motel in West Texas. We lived through "boom or bust" periods -- chicken or feathers economy. In good times, the "bunk house" might have three men alternating with one bed, and a total of maybe twelve men in the sleeping quarters, as their 8-hour shifts rotated them in and out of town. When the "morning tower" crew came in, they'd roust out the "evening tower" guys and fall into an already warm bed to grab a few winks.
When I was still on the bottle, my dad would take me with him, out "to the field" to guage tanks. He'd have been called a "pumper" in today's lingo. I still remember my first memory of oil and rigs -- stinky, grimmy, scarey to be up on the floor of a working drilling rig. I loathed the STINCH of worker's oil soaked work boots and pants -- but was told "that's the smell of money". Black gold. Crude cash.
Later, as an adult, I was Chief Technical Writer for the BJ-Hughes Training Center in Midland, TX -- crafting training manuals so a man with a 5th grade reading comprehension level could study up well (formation) fracturing procedures and not go out and blow himself or a half-million dollar frac truck to kingdom come (i.e. don't flow into closed manifolds on the frac lines).
The science of geology was much more fascinating to me than the oil patch per se, and I should have become a geologist but back in the late 1960's, mid 1970's when I was getting my "learnin'" it was not fashionable to women to go into such fields. But even then, I had a suspicion -- an inkling of an idea that the good times might not roll on forever, and since ALL the oil in the ground was created during two unusual geologic / climatological events millions of years ago... and we aren't crushing and cooking any more dinosaurs, we MIGHT run out of this FINITE resource.
Now, the handwriting is on the wall -- we ARE going to "peak" in re: oil production -- and the ride down off Hubbart's peak will be a slippery slope for sure. Probably the most important url on the net is NOT for this blog, but at http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ -- I urge ALL my readers (both of them) to study this site in depth.
When I tenatively converted to Judaism some years back, I came across the story of a kid who asked his Rabbi, "Where IS God?". The teacher replied, "Where is God NOT at?". There is really NO place where we can't see evidence of a Divine Intelligence if you know what you are looking at -- even a chair reflects the Grand Design that did up the brains of the person who created the chair and materials in his or her mind before it took shape.
More recently, that same sense of omnipresence smacked me in the face with regard to oil -- there is NOTHING in our "modern" lives, other than the air we breathe, that doesn't have a petrochemical price tag attached to it. All the food we eat required oil for fertilizer, diesel to harvest and transport it, for the plastic bags we put it in, for the microchips in the cash registers -- etc. You get the picture.
The basis -- the very underpinning of our "civilization" is OIL -- and while we won't "run out" next week, this resource IS rapidly diminishing and as it becomes more scarce... and more expensive -- it WILL impact all that we take for granted. Not 1 out of 100 people have a ghost of an idea just how precarious our situation is -- being totally dependent on petroleum, and the potential consequences of NOT having a reliable source and supply of it. Not 1 person in 1,000 could tell you what the daily consumption of oil is in this country -- here's some hints -- we are walking, two-legged SUV's -- our lifestyle takes, on average, FOUR gallons of gasoline/oil per day to sustain us. And there are 300 million (give or take) of us in this country, legally or illegally.
In the coming days, this blog will focus more and more on "Peak Oil" and what it means. Be well, get prepared and stay safe.
When I was still on the bottle, my dad would take me with him, out "to the field" to guage tanks. He'd have been called a "pumper" in today's lingo. I still remember my first memory of oil and rigs -- stinky, grimmy, scarey to be up on the floor of a working drilling rig. I loathed the STINCH of worker's oil soaked work boots and pants -- but was told "that's the smell of money". Black gold. Crude cash.
Later, as an adult, I was Chief Technical Writer for the BJ-Hughes Training Center in Midland, TX -- crafting training manuals so a man with a 5th grade reading comprehension level could study up well (formation) fracturing procedures and not go out and blow himself or a half-million dollar frac truck to kingdom come (i.e. don't flow into closed manifolds on the frac lines).
The science of geology was much more fascinating to me than the oil patch per se, and I should have become a geologist but back in the late 1960's, mid 1970's when I was getting my "learnin'" it was not fashionable to women to go into such fields. But even then, I had a suspicion -- an inkling of an idea that the good times might not roll on forever, and since ALL the oil in the ground was created during two unusual geologic / climatological events millions of years ago... and we aren't crushing and cooking any more dinosaurs, we MIGHT run out of this FINITE resource.
Now, the handwriting is on the wall -- we ARE going to "peak" in re: oil production -- and the ride down off Hubbart's peak will be a slippery slope for sure. Probably the most important url on the net is NOT for this blog, but at http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ -- I urge ALL my readers (both of them) to study this site in depth.
When I tenatively converted to Judaism some years back, I came across the story of a kid who asked his Rabbi, "Where IS God?". The teacher replied, "Where is God NOT at?". There is really NO place where we can't see evidence of a Divine Intelligence if you know what you are looking at -- even a chair reflects the Grand Design that did up the brains of the person who created the chair and materials in his or her mind before it took shape.
More recently, that same sense of omnipresence smacked me in the face with regard to oil -- there is NOTHING in our "modern" lives, other than the air we breathe, that doesn't have a petrochemical price tag attached to it. All the food we eat required oil for fertilizer, diesel to harvest and transport it, for the plastic bags we put it in, for the microchips in the cash registers -- etc. You get the picture.
The basis -- the very underpinning of our "civilization" is OIL -- and while we won't "run out" next week, this resource IS rapidly diminishing and as it becomes more scarce... and more expensive -- it WILL impact all that we take for granted. Not 1 out of 100 people have a ghost of an idea just how precarious our situation is -- being totally dependent on petroleum, and the potential consequences of NOT having a reliable source and supply of it. Not 1 person in 1,000 could tell you what the daily consumption of oil is in this country -- here's some hints -- we are walking, two-legged SUV's -- our lifestyle takes, on average, FOUR gallons of gasoline/oil per day to sustain us. And there are 300 million (give or take) of us in this country, legally or illegally.
In the coming days, this blog will focus more and more on "Peak Oil" and what it means. Be well, get prepared and stay safe.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Howdy ~!
Well, since it was a recent review of economics (YUCH ~!) that inspired this fledgling blog, let us begin with some Economic 101...
from: www.gizadeathstar.com
Expert in alternative science and history, Joseph P. Farrell presented his premise that ancient and modern international bankers have practiced a kind of racketeering (hence his nickname for them 'Banksters') that relates to concepts in physics. Both physics and finance can be thought of in two different ways. One is a closed system, based on scarce resources, energy or money. The other is an open system, in which energy is in abundant supply, "and where money in turn reflects this by being a creation of the state, and therefore a debt-free instrument of exchange," he detailed.
The former is the system we've been living under, "where you have a private banking monopoly issuing monetized debt...the money always carries an interest bearing load on it, so there's always going to be money that's in short supply of the demands of the economic system that it's in," he said. Any bank including the Federal Reserve can never issue interest, they can only lend money into circulation, so that there's never enough money to pay the interest on the principle, he continued. A state, however, can issue debt-free money yet past US Presidents such as Lincoln, Garfield, and Kennedy all ended up assassinated after they tried to change the banking system, Farrell pointed out.
The Federal Reserve is not a government enterprise-- it's a privately held joint-stock company that's "no more federal than Federal Express," Farrell quipped. However, now, the corporate elite bankers are on the defensive-- "they've made too many enemies around the world," with countries like Russia and China, he noted. Politicians such as Ron Paul are on the right track, calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve, he commented. New energy technologies like zero point are being suppressed by both governments and the corporate elite, as "they are wanting to monopolize this technology for themselves," as well as keep it out of the hands of terrorists who might hold the world hostage, he added.
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2010/05/23
from: www.gizadeathstar.com
Expert in alternative science and history, Joseph P. Farrell presented his premise that ancient and modern international bankers have practiced a kind of racketeering (hence his nickname for them 'Banksters') that relates to concepts in physics. Both physics and finance can be thought of in two different ways. One is a closed system, based on scarce resources, energy or money. The other is an open system, in which energy is in abundant supply, "and where money in turn reflects this by being a creation of the state, and therefore a debt-free instrument of exchange," he detailed.
The former is the system we've been living under, "where you have a private banking monopoly issuing monetized debt...the money always carries an interest bearing load on it, so there's always going to be money that's in short supply of the demands of the economic system that it's in," he said. Any bank including the Federal Reserve can never issue interest, they can only lend money into circulation, so that there's never enough money to pay the interest on the principle, he continued. A state, however, can issue debt-free money yet past US Presidents such as Lincoln, Garfield, and Kennedy all ended up assassinated after they tried to change the banking system, Farrell pointed out.
The Federal Reserve is not a government enterprise-- it's a privately held joint-stock company that's "no more federal than Federal Express," Farrell quipped. However, now, the corporate elite bankers are on the defensive-- "they've made too many enemies around the world," with countries like Russia and China, he noted. Politicians such as Ron Paul are on the right track, calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve, he commented. New energy technologies like zero point are being suppressed by both governments and the corporate elite, as "they are wanting to monopolize this technology for themselves," as well as keep it out of the hands of terrorists who might hold the world hostage, he added.
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2010/05/23
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