Quote from: TDoS on Mar 16, 2024, 01:00 PMBut when your application of that level of understanding allows you to conclude that Toyota would be bankrupted during the 2008-2009 recession at peakoil.com, and the same of Tesla years ago on reddit

I never concluded Toyota would go bankrupt during the 2008-9 financial crisis, and I've never put a timeline on Tesla's inevitable bankruptcy.  Like GM, Chrysler, AMC, Nash, Hudson, PanAm, TWA and the Railroads, bankruptcy of any of these finance dependent corporations comes to them all eventually, often multiple times.

Since you claim you don't cite any research, your hobbyist POV is no more valid than my hobbyist POV, it's just more narrowly focused on Peak Oil than my more whollistic POV.  The rigor which I consider satisfactory is what I consider enough to convince myself, and any of my readers who are not ideologically driven to argue against it and fixated enough to keep banging away over and over, and over and over the same tired arguments that nobody else here buys but yourself.  I may be preaching to the choir, but you are just preaching to yourself here, for what reason other than to convince yourself I can't fathom, since you're not convincing anyone else, and our readership circulation is so tiny it wouldn't make a difference if you did.    You waste your time, my time and everyone else's time regurgitating your POV.  I have plenty of time to waste given I have little else to do, I guess you also have nothing better to do with your time.  So round and round we go, ad infinitum.  So it goes.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Mar 16, 2024, 02:07 PM

QuoteAny suggestions on equipment or things to watch out for, other than don't drive an unreliable car like whatever K-Dog was using that needed towed home?

I still have the car and it is actually reliable.  Cruising around Washington State in it is fine.  There are thousands of Mercedes here.  Montana is a different story.  If something goes wrong with it in the middle of nowhere you are screwed.

That problem I am familiar with. In earlier day for roaming North America (literally, Key West to Prudhoe Bay if the urge strikes) I've relied on toyota pickups and ford pickups. In later roamings I shifted to toyota and ford sedans, if only for the fuel savings. Both brands have decent parts and dealership avaailability, at least near populated areas. Montana is I-95 between NYC and DC compared to heading to Goose Bay, or Prudhoe Bay, some would say US 50 through Nevada might qualify. It doesn't, after you've done the other two. Oh, carry 2 spares and extra parts and whatnot for the easy to fix stuff. After that it is a Premium AAA plan for the 200 mile tow once a year.

Quote from: K-Dog

This one is a 2008 mine is a 2007.  Mrs. Dog has a 2008.  They are both black.

We arrive at a place together driving separately.  People think we actually get along.  The truth is we have been trying to get rid of each other for more than forty years.  Neither one of us can do anything right.

There was an issue with the transmission.  It has been fine since.

One of my toyota pickups, what should have been an indestructible manual transmission started popping out of 1st gear in Ohio. By the time I got it to Louisiana it was popping out of 5th. But it got me that 1000 miles while towing a trailer with motorcycles on it. Can't really complain, it got the job done regardless.

Quote from: RE on Mar 16, 2024, 02:33 PMI never concluded Toyota would go bankrupt during the 2008-9 financial crisis, and I've never put a timeline on Tesla's inevitable bankruptcy.

What's it worth to you for me NOT to prove what I said? Tell you what, check out your reddit posting history back 6 or 7 years ago, before you started catching flack and getting some posts scrubbed and forming globalcollapse. And feel free to revise your prior statement and I won't yuck it up over what you've forgotten. We are all older, we forget. Even more interesting, search about then for your claim of Tesla not being able to quintiple their sales. That search word on titles can't kick back that many results. Just don't compare those annual sales you denigrated to current ones.

As far as Toyota, I'll make you the same deal. Just go search in peakoil.com on Wednesday, Dec 10, 2008 for your posts. 7:46:47 was the time. Not Rogue Economist. Reverse Engineer.

How about we just continue conversing nicely and I skip another demonstration on the value of research?

Quote from: RESince you claim you don't cite any research....

You missed the part where I didn't provide footnotes, ergo, of course I didn't provide research. I provided a timeline. A story. Some history. Not all of it was published research..some was presented at conferences, AAPG, SPE, the big EIA ones in Washington when they were still doing them. 

Quote from: RE....your hobbyist POV is no more valid than my hobbyist POV, it's just more narrowly focused on Peak Oil than my more whollistic POV. 

At what point when you were passing around published works you claimed were mine, did you get the impression I was a hobbyist?

So am I an expert on some related narrow professional topic you told the mods back then, or not?

Quote from: REYou waste your time, my time and everyone else's time regurgitating your POV.  I have plenty of time to waste given I have little else to do, I guess you also have nothing better to do with your time.  So round and round we go, ad infinitum.  So it goes.
RE

How about we change the dynamic then? First, we establish that mentioning a problem solved that wasn't known by anyone on this website and to most of the peak oil world at large isn't a POV. It was just a fact not commonly known.

And I might have mentioned this in other websites along the way, but not made it clear at any of yours as to the WHY I tend to have hung around this topic for so long. Specifically, why I went longer than the first six months after Thanksgiving Day, 2005. The amount of time it took to understand the core of the problem, certainly had no idea where to start, and began...you know...researching the topic.

I'm not going to bother with researching my old posting, I'm suitably honored though that you have made it your hobby in your declining years to make such a comprehensive study of my writing that you can dredge up posting I made all the way back to peakoil.com.    I have my own historian!  lol.  Clearly, you have a more comprehensive knowledge of what I wrote than I do.  I've written so many posts and blogs over the past 16 years anything is possible in there, just about everything I write is done in a single draft and after I post it, unless a debate ensues where I have to double check what I wrote, I never read it again after I hit the send button.  Do you have this stuff catalogued?

Now, although I have suspected for some time that you were my most ardent and loyal reader and troll MKing,  it was only after this most recent exchange where you mentioned Prudhoe bay, my history with Reddit and Peak Oil mods that I felt certain of it enough to mention it to K-Dog to decide what if anything we should do about it.  Taking the screen ID of Tdos, who was a blogger and Doomsteader I interviewed a few times on the Diner initially made me think it was him writing here now, after having an Ashvin Pandurangi like Religious Revelation and becoming a Born-Again Denier.  I'm glad to see that is not the case, and you were just hiding behind another new screen ID to get back to your old job of disrupting the forum by filling the pages with an endless stream of contrarian posting using the same old theme and arguments as always.

Now that you have decided to come out of the closet, the dynamic has most certainly changed.  I'll return to the same policies I had the last time I got tired of responding to your never ending stream of repetitive arguments, which is for the moment if you don't clog up the pages with too many daily posts on your own agenda I'll just ignore them or delete them if I find them too insulting or annoying, and I'll give you progressively longer suspensions of your posting privileges if you violate the rules, like your Appeal to Authority claims of your geochemistry papers and status as a big shot in the oil industry.  You are already alluding to that, so I think I'll start by giving you a 1 week suspension.  Also, when you come back, any complaining about censorship is also a violation of the rules, and commenting only on peak oil and energy topics that fit your agenda is also a violation.  This isn't a Peak Oil board, we discuss a wide variety of collapse related topics.  You need to contribute to more than just your narrowly focused agenda, and you need to come up with something novel, which I have yet to read.

When you do return, you should also change your ID back to MKing, using Tdos' name as a cover for your identity is an insult to his memory.

RE

Breaks my heart. 

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1243982287/fbi-agents-housing-costs

Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

RE

Reminds me of the 1970s, when NYC was supposedly on the edge of bankruptcy for about the whole decade.  Then during the 2008 Financial Crisis it was Harrisburg and a few other cities supposedly going to default on their bonds.  Yet somehow, the TBTF banks and Da Goobermint always manage to restructure the debt in some way so BAU goes on and you don't hear about it again for another decade or two.  Same shit happens with Sovereign debt and the IMF.  Remember Greece and Argentina?  Everybody's in a big tizzy, the world's on fire, the sky will fall but then magically after months of secret negotiations in Basel, Switzerland or on Jekyll Island or on Jamie Dimon's yacht in International Waters the Smartest Guys in the Room get it all worked out.  $100B in debt seems to just disappear.  Some shit gets privatized, public employees take a salary cut, some pensions disappear, loans are rolled over for a longer term, lawyers and accountants are paid a shit load of money, a few dozen high priced hookers get a windfall and the Muni or 3rd World debtor country is once again given the green light to issue new 30 year bonds underwritten by Goldman or JP Morgan Chase and the problem disappears for another generation or so.  The problems always seem to arise when there is some kind of deeper problem with the financial system happening, and these debtors are the Canary in the Coal Mine.  What's the deeper problem this time?

It's the persistently high inflation Da Fed has not been able to tame with higher interest rates, and despite promises of rate cuts, mortgages are back over 7% and USTs selling at over 5%.  Banksters are starved of the Free Money they love to gamble with and the stock prices for companies with absurd P/E ratios start to look increasingly suspicious and ugly.  This is a strong leading indicator that we are on the verge of another melt down, which last year I said looked likely for the 2nd or 3rd quarter of this year.  We're in the beginning of quarter 2 now, so we'll get to see if I called it right this time or I get a low grade in my ECONostradamus 101 class this semester. 3rd quarter ends Oct 1st, so it's crunch time now.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/25/many-large-us-cities-are-in-deep-financial-trouble-heres-why.html

Many large U.S. cities are in deep financial trouble. Here's why

RE

Well, if I turn out to be wrong, at least I won't be alone.  However, if that's the case, I will have been wrong FIRST!  lol.

You know what they say about the market...it can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.  It's always fun though trying to predict market crashes as a hobby.  However, don't risk any real money on it, timelines get changed for all sorts of reasons.  Eventually reality always wins, but sometimes the wait for reality to arrive takes longer than expected.

https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-market-outlook-dietrich-bubble-crash-recession-dot-com-housing-2024-4

S&P 500 is at risk of crashing 44% — and selling early could pay off, says elite forecaster

RE

Suggesting Da Fed be Abolished is the kind of thing that gets Presidents assassinated.  At least it would if it had a snowball's chance in hell of being passed by CONgress and signed into law by the POTUS.  The control of the FSoA money supply is the means by which the Elite Oligarchy controls the Goobermint, along with the bribes paid by the lobbyists on K Street.



The Federal Reserve Bank is owned not by the people, it's owned by the TBTF Banks.  The Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913 in after being drawn up by wealthy Oligarchs meeting in secret of Jekyll Island and voted on just before the Christmas break.

Just before Thanksgiving in 1910, U.S. senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island invited six members of America's banking elite to a covert retreat on Jekyll Island.

The Jekyll Island Club was a private club on Jekyll Island, on Georgia's Atlantic coast. It was founded in 1886 when members of an incorporated hunting and recreational club purchased the island for $125,000 (about $3.1 million in 2017) from John Eugene du Bignon. The original design of the Jekyll Island Clubhouse, with its signature turret, was completed in January 1888. The club thrived through the early 20th century; its members came from many of the world's wealthiest families, most notably the Morgans, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts. The club closed at the end of the 1942 season due to complications from World War II.

Role in the history of the Federal Reserve

Jekyll Island was the location of a meeting in November 1910 in which draft legislation was written to create a central banking system for the United States. Following the Panic of 1907, banking reform became a major issue in the United States. Senator Nelson Aldrich (R-RI), chairman of the National Monetary Commission, went to Europe for almost two years to study that continent's banking systems. Upon his return, he brought together many of the country's leading financiers to Jekyll Island to discuss monetary policy and the banking system, drafting legislation which was introduced in Congress as the "Aldrich Plan". Some ideas from the Aldrich Plan were later incorporated into the Federal Reserve Act.

On the evening of November 22, 1910, Sen. Aldrich and A.P. Andrews (Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury Department), Paul Warburg (a naturalized German representing Kuhn, Loeb & Co.), Frank A. Vanderlip (president of the National City Bank of New York), Henry P. Davison (senior partner of J. P. Morgan Company), Charles D. Norton (president of the Morgan-dominated First National Bank of New York), and Benjamin Strong (representing J. P. Morgan), together representing about one quarter of the world's wealth at the time, left Hoboken, New Jersey on a train in complete secrecy, dropping their last names in favor of first names, or code names, so no one would discover who they all were. The excuse for such powerful representatives and wealth was to go on a duck hunting trip on Jekyll Island.

Forbes magazine founder Bertie Charles Forbes wrote several years later:

    Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily riding hundreds of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking onto an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned, lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance. I am not romancing; I am giving to the world, for the first time, the real story of how the famous Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new currency system, was written ... The utmost secrecy was enjoined upon all. The public must not glean a hint of what was to be done. Senator Aldrich notified each one to go quietly into a private car of which the railroad had received orders to draw up on an unfrequented platform. Off the party set. New York's ubiquitous reporters had been foiled ... Nelson (Aldrich) had confided to Henry, Frank, Paul and Piatt that he was to keep them locked up at Jekyll Island, out of the rest of the world, until they had evolved and compiled a scientific currency system for the United States, the real birth of the present Federal Reserve System, the plan done on Jekyll Island in the conference with Paul, Frank and Henry ... Warburg is the link that binds the Aldrich system and the present system together. He more than any one man has made the system possible as a working reality.[7]


If you want to put a date to the beginning of FSoA Fascism, it's December 23, 1913, the date Woodrow Wilson signed into Law the Federal Reserve Act.  Wilson would later express his regret.



https://watcher.guru/news/us-congressman-introduces-bill-to-abolish-the-federal-reserve

US Congressman Introduces Bill To Abolish The Federal Reserve

RE

Fundamentally, money and the banking system is based on TRUST.  Whether it's paper bills or coins, it just represents numbers on a balance sheet and is used to measure the relative value in trade of disparate items, from physical goods to labor to ideas and entertainment.  Once trust is lost in its value holding reasonably steady from one day to the next, the system fails.  What is happening now is El Trumpo is destroying all trust in the system by wildly changing the rules on a daily basis.

I have talked about this many times, but now coming out of the mouth of a Billionaire hedge fund  guru like Ray Dalio, people may pay attention. 

A recession is two negative quarters of GDP and whether it goes slightly there. We always have those things. We have something that's much more profound. We have a breaking down of the monetary order.

Recessions are bad, monetary system collapse is another can of beans entirely.  If something isn't done to stop Trump, he's gonna get it.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/13/ray-dalio-trump-tariffs-recession

Hedge fund billionaire says US may face 'worse than a recession' from Trump tariffs

RE

Comprehensive analysis of the various knock on effects of the Trumpenators witless attempt to "fix" persistent trade deficits through the unilateral application of tariffs.  It's a very one dimensional strategy which doesn't take into account the effects on the Bond Market or FOREX trading, or the potential for lockup in liquidity due to the outsize value of the basis trade.

Although the recent reversal of the tariff policy by His Trumpness have calmed the stock market, the damage done to the value of USTs as a "safe asset" haven in times of economic instability isn't fixed so easily.  The countries and institutions holding large amounts of USTs will continue to dump them quietly while they diversify out and find a new way to balance their risk.  This will prove to be problematic for the FSoA when it needs to finance the next budget.

For now we sit in a lull, a calm between storms waiting for the next shock to the system.  Coming soon to a theater near you.

Trump Has Exposed the Fragility of the Global Dollar System

https://jacobin.com/2025/04/trump-global-dollar-system-tariffs

RE

QuoteTrump Has Exposed the Fragility of the Global Dollar System

Now it begins: 'corporate' mandated 20 hours a week for associates about a year ago.  Now beginning after the 12th of next month which ends a pay period, my hours are cut.  I will be scheduled for 12 hours a week after that.

Elon wants to take away my Social Security and Trump just docked me $200 a week.  These lame-assed motherfuckers fuck people they never met.

As I was pricing last week.  I could see what we had stocked in the Moreno Valley warehouse by item price jumps.  Things in good supply are not going up in price yet.  Everything else fresh off the boat goes up.

QuoteWe hope you don't look for a new job.  We really like you here, and we hope you stay.

Of course, what is happening to me is across the board so where would I go?  The stock market will do fine for a while.  Unemployment makes it healthy,  until the unemployed can't buy any shit.  That comes next.  In the meantime my work wages are cut in half and my zeros are going to stop growing.  Trump the thief becomes a real billionaire instead of the pretend one he has been.

One of my CNAs makes Xtra money on days off shopping 4 Instacart.  Maybe you could do that to add some hours.

RE

Quote from: RE on Apr 26, 2025, 07:47 AMOne of my CNAs makes Xtra money on days off shopping 4 Instacart.  Maybe you could do that to add some hours.

RE

I am going to spend a month on the reduced hours at least.  We are going into good weather, and I need to tend to the yard and house.  If I decide I need more hours, I will move.

I'm not complaining about the extra bandwidth.  For now.

I probably will be complaining later as I doubt they will do the decent thing and cut a day a week.  They will expect the same team commitment coverage-wise.  More for less when viewed from a correct perspective.

I'm Ok, Other people are going to be singing a much sadder song.

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 26, 2025, 06:53 AM

QuoteTrump Has Exposed the Fragility of the Global Dollar System

Now it begins: 'corporate' mandated 20 hours a week for associates about a year ago.  Now beginning after the 12th of next month which ends a pay period, my hours are cut.  I will be scheduled for 12 hours a week after that.

Well,  gut punch to be sure. But in a world of McJobs, can't you go find one to make up for 2 missing 4 hour shifts?

Quote from: K-DogElon wants to take away my Social Security and Trump just docked me $200 a week.  These lame-assed motherfuckers fuck people they never met.

Well, good thing you've got those low yield investments churning away at...something less than the high yield investments then. I'm sure they didn't have you in mind when beginning to blast away chunks of the federal budget that get in the way of them handing out tax cuts to friends.

Quote from: K-Dog

QuoteWe hope you don't look for a new job.  We really like you here, and we hope you stay.

Sounds like a clue to bail. You live in a non-depressed part of the country, opportunities might be plentiful. And closer to home so you don't need to fuel up with danish and coffee on the way to work, saying some significant fraction of your pay, as you last detailed.

Quote from: K-DogOf course, what is happening to me is across the board so where would I go?  The stock market will do fine for a while.  Unemployment makes it healthy,  until the unemployed can't buy any shit.  That comes next.  In the meantime my work wages are cut in half and my zeros are going to stop growing.  Trump the thief becomes a real billionaire instead of the pretend one he has been.

Reverse mortgage on the house and LIVE IT UP! Round the world cruises and shit like that, no point in leaving it to any never-do-well relatives. Tom Selleck is still hawking those products for high net worth but low cash flow folks isn't it? Dunno...sounds like a potential opportunity to screw over those waiting around for you to keel over AND have a good time before it actually does happen.

This sounds like a lot, right?  In terms of being realistic, it's also pretty out of the question except for grads of Ivy League or other elite universities in a few fields, mainly finance.  We're not talking an advanced degree, just a Bachelor's.

But even with that, compare it to what you started at in 1978 with BA in investment banking at the top banks.  Typical starting salary was $50K, plus bonus and commissions in some positions.

Adjusted for inflation, $50,000 in 1978 is equal to $254,110 in 2025.

Dollar Times

This is why the Middle Class is a vanishing species.  Starting salaries at even the highest levels haven't even come close to keeping up with inflation.  To Boomers though, $100K sounds like a lot of money, particularly for a recent college grad.  A reasonably successful Boomer like Kdog didn't crack 6 digits even at the end of his career in IT with a Master's.

Besides Banking and an elite degree, about the only field I think you could hope to make 6 figures starting out now would be Nursing, and only with Overtime or maybe as a traveling nurse.  Playing pro football doesn't count.

Far as the list in the article goes, who would hire a "Consultant" right out of college?  You need experience and a track record in any field to be a consultant.  Similar with "Supply Chain Manager".  You would need a few years in logistics somewhere before you got a managerial position.  The low end of those job opening examples is a little more realistic.

https://www.msn.com/en-my/money/careersandeducation/new-grads-expect-to-earn-over-100k-right-after-college-on-average-these-are-the-top-fields-to-achieve-that/ar-AA1DttzA

New grads expect to earn over $100K right after college, on average—these are the top fields to achieve that

RE