Economic Errata

[RE]

If you follow the econ doom newa, you know that US Goobermint borrowing has gone Hockey stick, with something like $10T added in the last year essentially doubling the total debt.  This has resulted in the big banks which serve as dealers having to buy the debt themselves when they can't sell it to some other sucker.  This in turn has caused the UST yields to rise, now past 5%.  If it costs Da Goobermint 5% to borrow money, how much does it cost J6P to borrow money for his car?  A lot more, of course.  Banks make their money on the spread between those borrowing costs.

Interest rates for used cars are 13.5% on average for those with fair credit but can rocket up to around 21% for those with the worst credit, according to Bankrate.

15-20% is what you get with unsecured loans like Credit Cards. A car loan or home mortgage is securitized so should come cheaper since the bank can repo the car or foreclose on the mortgage if you miss a payment.

Not surprisingly, as the rates go up, more people go delinquent on the loan because they are usually adjustable rate and your payment, once $200/mo goes to $250 or $300.  Does this stop dumbass J6P from buying carz?  No, they keep buying at higher rates, leading to more delinquencies.  Eventually your subprime loans pop and it's time to bailout the banks.  Where does that money come from?  MOAR Goobermint borrowing.  So now, at long last Fitch, Moodies et al no longer give USTs AAA rating, its downgraded to AAA-.  It should be rated as Junk Bonds, except Da Fed can keep printing as long as they keep printing more USTs also and shoveling wheelbarrows of them at the Dealers to sell.  Round and round she goes, where she stops NOBODY seems to know.  Should have stopped in 2008 of course, but the Smartest Guys in the Room pulled a rabbit out of their Jockstraps and 15 years later it's still going round.  Can the Magicians of Money keep it going again this time?  We'll know soon methinks.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/10/21/americans-are-overdue-with-their-car-payments-at-highest-rate-in-nearly-30-years/?sh=38b68e9133d0

Americans Are Overdue With Their Car Payments At Highest Rate In Nearly 30 Years

RE

[K-Dog]

Rising car prices have in part been caused by a pandemic-induced computer chip shortage, and some chip shortages could continue into 2024

So what are the other parts of the rise?

Proletarian undercover work as revealed that the average person only earns about $25 an hour.  The average price for a new car is over $47,000.

I'm not going to bother with saying how things were in the past or pull out the flat income graph shown against rising productivity that spans decades of recent American history.

Suffice it to say reality is catching up with math.

Here there and everywhere.

[RE]

Looks like the Chinese learned the lesson of how to turn small countries in its sphere of influence into perpetual debt slaves just like the IMF has done for the last century in South America, Africa and the Middle East. Somewhere along the way here the CCP changed from Chinese Communist Party" to Chinese Capitalist Party" 

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/09/laos-is-spiraling-toward-a-debt-crisis-as-china-looms-large.html

Laos is spiraling toward a debt crisis as China looms large

RE

[RE]

This article is just chock full of unfathomable economics.

First off, I can't figure out how they can get ANYBODY to start as an EMT in NYC driving in from NJ at $40K/yr.  That's $20/hr.  Even before a $15 Congestion Fee, how do they afford to drive into Manhattan from NJ?  Minimum round trip mileage is about 50/day, maybe you could squeak by on $5 gas.  However, the article talks about some of the union members living 100 miles away!  That's 200 miles R/T commute! The Toll on the tunnel is $12-15 going in, nothing leaving.  There is no free parking in midtown or on Wall Street.  In the prime neighborhoods, the average fee for daily parking in a garage is $50.  You're talking 3-4 hours of working just to pay for this, and you haven't even factored in the cost of the car, insurance or routine maintenance.

Obviously also, you can't live in Manhattan and work at this salary level.  Average rent is $3600 for a 1 bedroom.  Even out in Brooklyn and Queens it would be hard to find an apt below $2000/mo. Subway fare is $3 each way.  So WTF do any of these workers live without more than half of their already low wages going to housing and commutation?

According to Google, you need an income of $75-100K to live in NY.  Even that I think would be hard to pull off, once you figure in taxes, utilities, communications, insurance etc.

Now on the other end, the $15 Congestion Fee is supposed to raise $1B out of about $15B to finance MTA projects.  This is a drop in that bucket.  The money could easily be raised with a tiny tax on Wall Street banks that have their offices in these neighborhoods.  The real reason isn't to raise money, it's to further discourage driving into the city.  Not a  bad goal, but making it still more unaffordable without another way to get the workers to the jobs just means people will quit.  You'll do better taking a job at min wage near where you live.

Obviously, these workers should be paid more, but for some reason EMTs have never been considered worth as much as Garbagemen, who get paid on a par with Cops and Firemen in NYC.

I can't figure out how NYC keeps running at all.  The economics there are insane.

https://nypost.com/2023/12/24/metro/nyc-ambulance-workers-in-panic-attack-over-15-congestion-toll/

NYC ambulance workers sound sirens over $15 congestion toll: 'It's a slap in the face'

RE

[RE]

The movers & shakers from Davos have seen the light.

Conversation over canapes at the after session cocktail parties will be comparing bunker amenities and self defense weapons.  Freeze dried Truffles available in the food vendor booths.



https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/10/business/wef-global-risks-report/index.html

The people paid to spot risks see high chance of 'global catastrophe' within 10 years

RE

[K-Dog]

The movers & shakers from Davos have seen the light.

Conversation over canapes at the after session cocktail parties will be comparing bunker amenities and self defense weapons.  Freeze dried Truffles available in the food vendor booths.



https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/10/business/wef-global-risks-report/index.html

The people paid to spot risks see high chance of 'global catastrophe' within 10 years

RE

Full doomer, but from their own point of view.  In reality the folks at Davos are not even close to being 'doomer'.  As a Marxist I have to give this report a thumbs down.  The author, Hanna Ziady writes from an capitalist point of view and generates her own MIS-INFORMATION.

Doom is coming, but genuine bad information, like a green new deal.  Not faux mis-information will be the cause of doom.  Mis-information can only start a fire.  By itself it can't do much.  AI mis-information may be tinder for a fire, but to burn a fire needs fuel.  The existence of Davos itself provides sufficient fuel.

People at Davos need continual economic growth so their money piles get higher at twice the rate of actual growth.  So Davos as usual, with crocodile tears will define doom in terms of their portfolio bottom line.  Doom for Davos will not be 5.6 million Americans starving to death in 2053.  Doom for Davos will mean difficulty finding energy supplies to fuel their rape of the planet and maintain their useless eater status.  This is the writing on the wall Davos sees.

The problem with Hanna is she imagines the information we already have is true and correct.  Fear of 'dis-information' is a natural result of a threat to her frozen in stone 'truth'.  A Marxist point of view considers the world to be in flux, constant motion, everything changing and the economic system we have must reflect current conditions. Reactionaries * to the contrary, imagine the system we have is the best possible.  It is, only outright slavery is more exploitive.  Oligarchies rule by bank account.  The money trick puts a layer of abstraction on slavery and gives it more power.

Years ago, (actually most of my life) I decided to imagine a times that all the 21st century ideas modernity is so proud of, actually were as ignorant of reality as we know an average European peasant from the 1500s was.  I did this from a personal point of view, to test the validity of my own DOGma.  I am only now sour enough to apply the comparison to everyone else.  I am aware this little trick of mine, through the years has made my DOGma far superior to the average.  This gives me the confidence and self-esteem to put the filter on other people.

Let's be real.  Hanna Ziady posits that disinformation will become a threat.  All people who want censorship agree with her.  Mis-information must be fought, and all wanna-be censors are standing in line ready to do it.  Then any information that threatens the supremacy and cultural hegemony of the Davos status-quo will be quashed.  Davos will paint shit white.

My 15th century trick turned me into a Marxist, and I did not even know what one really was at the time.  Likely the gentile reader does not know what one really is.  It is not your fault.  You live in America.

* reactionaries fight system change.  They react against it.

[RE]

Of course, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, Doom is different for the rich, because they have more money.    But  even though it's different, they still see Global Catastrophe in the next 10 years.  That's a Full Doomer type prediction.

RE

[RE]

Consistent with the ongoing crash in the Commercial Real Estate market, the truth about the over valuation in the stock market is also getting talked about in the MSM, as opposed to the bullshit that has been promulgated that the FSoA economy is healthy and we would avoid a recession due to the higher interest rates needed to stem inflation.   Pretty much every warning light for a crash is flashing RED, from the yield curve inversion in bonds to the PMI, skyrocketing debt on the Federal level and consumer credit card debt now topping $1T and of course the unaffordable housing situation all just SCREAMS crash ahead!

Also pretty silly IMHO is the notion that a recession will be short lived, and we will hop back to growth in a year or even less.  The debt problem is systemic and very deep, and there is nothing you can point to that might provide an engine for growth.

Internationally, the Chinese economy is in a deep hole with their own RE disaster unfolding and youth unemployment above 20%.  Shipping and trade continues to be threatened by the war in the Middle East and the Indian rice export ban is going to wreak havoc with food prices in many countries where it's a main staple.  This means increasing political instability throughout Asia.

So overall we are likely to see a major economic slowdown which will reduce demand for oil, and unless the wars escalate further to increase military demand for oil, consumer prices for fuell here in the FSoA probably won't change too much, at least to begin with.  However, if demand drops enough and they are forced to drop oil prices, that will mean the more expensive oil plays will be shut in.

It looks like the next couple of years will be a critical turning point in the whole energy-economy ball game.  Get ready for a real roller coaster ride, cuz it appears that TSHTF day is approaching.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-outlook-economy-recession-bear-market-earnings-tech-bubble-2024-1

Stocks look 'highly vulnerable' and the economy is likely to enter a yearlong recession, a 30-year market veteran says

RE

[RE]

40% decline is optimistic.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4671474-is-it-1929-deja-vu-all-over-again

Is It 1929 Deja Vu All Over Again?

RE

[RE]

Next to margin calls, short sellers and bank runs, nothing warms the cockles of my heart more than corporate bankruptcy filings.     What are cockles anyhow?   The pressure is building for a market crash on Black Tuesday, which coincidentally falls on October 29^th this year, just as it did in 1929.  It would be the perfect set up for the POTUS election on the following Tuesday, November 5th.  I can't think of a more perfect scenario for the arrival of SHTF Day, a day of infamy awaited by all Dedicated Doomsted Diners since we began the original Diner in February of 2012.  It's been a long wait, and perhaps we will at last be rewarded for our patience, my soul free to exit my current meat package and cash in my ticket to the Great Beyond, still with plenty of juicy fat marbled meat on the bones to earn a Prime Long Pig USDA designation from the Cannibals at the FSoA Dept of Agriculture.

Of course, actually calling this historic moment is a crapshoot, and we'll have to continue to wait a while longer, which is OK too.  I'm still enjoying following the daily progress of collapse, which is really a process and not something you can really pin to a single day, or even year, although sometimes with enough historical perspective later it can be narrowed down a bit.  Still, after more than 1500 years, pinning the Collapse of the Roman Empire to 476 AD with the fall of Rome in the Western half of the Empire doesn't really identify when the collapse began, or when it ended.  In some ways it's still with us in the deepest records of property ownership held in bank vaults in Switzerland and the catacombs of the Vatican by the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

For Industrial Civilization, collapse has been underway for a long time and in the FSoA you could point to a few moments as significant mileposts, the financial crisis of 2007-8, the collapse of the WTC on 911, the victory of consumerism and greed over the rebellion against capitalism and the back to the land movement of the hippies, best signified by the end of the 60s at Woodstock in the summer of '69, to name a few significant and symbolic events.  So even if Black Tuesday is a major milestone this year, it's unlikely all the lights will go dark the next day or the dollar's exchange value will fall to zero either.  Whatever happens, the trajectory is clear andthe pace of collapse is accelerating.  The end of the age of oil is on the horizon, and the sun is setting on capitalism, globalism and the control of the many by a tiny fraction of greedy billionaires pulling the strings of politicians and legislators and judges they own is coming to an end.  What follows will not be pretty, as nation states dissolve into anarchy, food becomes scarce and the vast majority of the current population die of starvation.

However, in the immortal words of Uncle Joe Stalin, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. 



https://www.marketwatch.com/story/corporate-defaults-are-happening-at-fastest-pace-since-financial-crisis-according-to-s-p-a2a096a6

Corporate defaults are happening at fastest pace since financial crisis, according to S&P

[TDoS]

The scenario of the End Times has been around longer than the internet has been around to propagate it. Which isn't even close to how long Apocalypticism has been around. Bumped into it on reddit, and the definition is really good, within the context of how consuming the topic is. And how it has survived so long.

Apocalypticism is the religious belief that the end of the world is imminent, even within one's own lifetime.

"Religious belief" being the hiccup of course, with this definition from unless we accept the standard Merriam Webster Online definition of religion:

a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

and presto...we have all arrived where others have since Jesus was around.

Us old farts here have the experience to have seen this all play out across our lifetimes. RE's list, of the faith and ardor that before leaving this mortal coil, FINALLY the results will be revealed to all the non-believers.

But for those of us with age and experience, and paying attention to the history we've lived through, we can't ignore how often these results have been announced, seemed to be occurring, discussed at length.
 
The old Diner, peakoil.com, ROE, dieoff.org and oilcrisis.net going back into the last century. And those are ALL after the stagflation of the late 70's, the Cold War, the Great Dieoff, the world running out of oil proclaimed by Jimmy Carter no less...before the end of the 1980's.

We've been here before. We've been here multiple times, those of us who protested the destruction of the natural world when the Trans-Alaskan pipeline was built, or the development of Prudhoe Bay. We're cheered on Jimmy when he announced the world was running out of oil by the end of the 1980's, believed in Ehrlich when he spoke of the pollution and dying via starvation of large swaths of the world population in 1970.

And all we got were the go-go 80's and a lingering after taste...soon satiated when Colin Campbell himself kicked off a catastrophe of a global peak oil. In 1990. And then within a few short years, internet, the scientific community and their opinion on the topic ran smack into modern disinformation and dissemination of ideas and the merry round picked up some speed once again.

34 years since Colin restarted a kernel of an older idea, and the internet took it, and others, and that first decade of the 21st century sure looked like the time had come. Again.

Everyone here is old now. I asked before, does anyone have kids? Kids might at least mitigate the natural tendency to buy into every world ending event that looks like it is approaching, lending a little optimism to our ideas if only for their sakes...the  apocalypse always just over the horizon...always just off in the future as we continue to wait....just wanting a glimpse so all the fascination won't have been for naught.

Rather than being happy to finally see it, and having failed in attempting to change the world back in the mid-70's and through stagflation, I found it better to just live life. It worked out pretty well. I'll continue doing it until my personal doom arrives, and it won't much matter as to why and how. But it will have been a good ride regardless.

[K-Dog]

Religious apocalypticism is something reserved for lower life forms.  I am of a scientific bent, and the math says we are going down.  Belief has nothing to do with it.  Facts have everything to do with it.

All we got were the go-go 80's and a lingering after taste...

I found it better to just live life too.  Nothing is changed by the efforts of one.  But, if Julian Assange is flown in, I stand fully ready to support spray can art.  Among other things.  I wanted more than high fructose corn syrup.  I want more than idiots deciding what is good for me.

[RE]

But for those of us with age and experience, and paying attention to the history we've lived through, we can't ignore how often these results have been announced, seemed to be occurring, discussed at length.

Ah!  I knew that one would pull you out from lurkerville!   Baiting you is so EZ!  Along with the corporate defaults, another thing I can count on as I observe collapse moving along its inexorable path, is that you will be sure to drop in and refresh us with your firm belief that since the defining SHTF Day moment has perpetually failed to arrive for all recorded history, since no collapse was really the Apocalypse because, hey, we're all still here, right?  LOL.  Every Kollapsnik who ever predicted collapse since Homo Sap first became self aware has been wrong, so it's a fair bet I'll be long dead before it comes to pass, as it of course must, because the Sun will run out of hydrogen eventually of course.

Now perhaps I am not as old or have as much experience as you, but then again I'm less likely to be suffering from the early symptoms of Alzheimer's either.  If you bothered to read the post for comprehension rather than the slick little misdirection of prior moments in the downward slide that just mark waypoints, you would grasp that what I am saying is that you can't really ever pin a collapse to a single event, day or even year.  A couple of fun ones I didn't mention were Dec 31, 1999 & 12/21/2012, my favorite Mayan prediction because Roland "Master of Disaster" Emmerich made one of his specialty City Destroying Cataclysm CGI spectacles for that one.  Collapse is a process, not a day or an event, and generally takes a few generations to play out.  Then in retrospect (if there are any historians around and any records survived) you may be able to point to events that were significant in the downfall, like the sacking of Rome by barbarians.

For me, it really is irrelevant when I buy my ticket to the great beyond, because I've already seen enough to know where it's going.  I don't need to see 4B people die in a year, because I know that in the absence of FFs the earth won't feed 8B meat packages.  the Die Off is as inevitable as the Sun running ut of hydrogen to fuse.

I shall count on your return many more times to remind everyone that predictions of the apocalypse never come true.  It's a feature of Alzheimers, to become fixated on something like that, even when it's not actually being predicted.  You might want to check on that.  I think there are some meds now that will slow the progress.

RE

[K-Dog]

you will be sure to drop in and refresh us with your firm belief that since the defining SHTF Day moment has perpetually failed to arrive for all recorded history, since no collapse was really the Apocalypse because, hey, we're all still here, right?  LOL.  Every Kollapsnik who ever predicted collapse since Homo Sap first became self aware has been wrong, so it's a fair bet I'll be long dead before it comes to pass, as it of course must, because the Sun will run out of hydrogen eventually of course.

Always a perpetual argument about what human nature is.  One thing for sure.  Humans can't appreciate a collapse timeline.  Check the news about the Iceland volcano activity every day, and after about three weeks of doing that you are going to believe it is not going to erupt.  But it will.

Iceland volcanoes erupted three times last year, and there is seismic activity to show eruptions will happen again.  Your 'human nature would need calibration.

Personally I miss the herds of buffalo  I will never see.


Collapse has been happening for a long time.

I will never dine on Passenger Pigeon in my private Pullman rail car rattling the rails to Chicago from New York.

I have an ancestor who had his own Pullman.  The private jet of its day in the 1880's.  At the time he was worth a few million.  He did it by owning lots of chicken farms.  Consumption of Passenger Pigeon is a reasonable assumption.

He put my grandmother through an Ivy League college.  She was his granddaughter.  At the time he was 107 years old.

So fuck Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  It should be my turn.

Collapse has been happening for a very long time.

[TDoS]

If you bothered to read the post for comprehension rather than the slick little misdirection of prior moments in the downward slide that just mark waypoints, you would grasp that what I am saying is that you can't really ever pin a collapse to a single event, day or even year.

Yeah, and you must have missed me detailing or referencing not only the claims going back to Jesus but those spanning the last half a century and piling up of multiple consequences to get to the expected outcome. 20 years ago. An explicit acknowledgement for those reading that even after many of them have been piled on top of each other, we still don't get the result some seem to look forward to. 

I'm happy that personal doom for any of us, same as regular folk, is far more likely than anything happening that results in a resounding "We told you so!" from those who have been watching events unfold since Jesus was born. 

And peak oil was all about a given point in time, a single event, day and year, and folks went for that hook, line and sinker. Thanksgiving Day, 2005. You can talk to me about dementia because it runs in the family, what's your excuse missing one this obvious? Selective memory? Indigestion? Irritated because the next day the blessed consequences hadn't appeared yet?