Thursday, December 9, 2021

"Life, eh?"

"We said together, wistfully, 'Life, eh?' It says everything without having to say anything: that we all experience moments of joyful or painful reflection, sometimes alone, sometimes sharing laughs and tears with others; that we all know and appreciate that however wonderful and precious life is, it can equally be a terribly confusing and mysterious beast. 'Life, eh?'"
- Miranda Hart

The Poet: Langston Hughes, "Dreams"

"Dreams"

"Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow."

- Langston Hughes

"How It Really Is"

 

"Hint of Truth"

"Hint of Truth"
by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "In the news yesterday came a report from FantasyLand that a nonexistent social media company had chosen a non-tech, non-media executive to head up its nonexistent operations. CNET reports: "GOP Rep. Devin Nunes to leave Congress to run Trump's media company. The California Republican has been one of the former president's most ardent supporters."

Our premise here at the Diary is that it is real money that keeps our shoulders to the wheel and our feet on the ground. We want it. And we get it by providing goods and services to others. That is why a “capitalist” economy is so much more productive, prosperous, and polite than a “socialist” economy. The “hidden hand,” as 18th-century economist Adam Smith called it, guides people to increase the wealth of others as well as themselves. But substitute fake money for real money… and even a capitalist system soon goes giddy with corruption, malinvestment, and waste. And substitute an “ardent supporter” for a real entrepreneur or businessman… and… well… investors are probably better off keeping their money in their pockets.

Midas Touch: Axiomatic in a fake-money economy is that real capital is squandered on projects that never produce a profit (an increase to the world’s wealth). This is the story of one of them. Behind it is a remarkable story of a remarkable man with a remarkable career… and a remarkable new plan for separating investors from their money. Yes, we speak of Donald J. Trump, impresario, former president, entertainer, developer… and who knows what else.

Mr. Trump (and a few Wall Street whizzes in cahoots with him) set up a SPAC (special-purpose acquisition company), Digital World Acquisition Company (DWAC). The sole aim of this company was to purchase a media company, Trump Media and Technology Group, that they also set up.

There is nothing particularly notable about a SPAC. People with name recognition set them up. Other people invest in them. Then, the SPAC is supposed to go out into the real world and buy a real company… thus putting the acquired company on the public stock market – without all the usual IPO rigamarole – and making SPAC investors a lot of money. At least, that’s how investors think it works.

In this case, the DWAC stock soared when the deal to purchase Trump Media and Technology Group was announced – leading to a nearly 850% gain for investors in a couple of days. And this is not the first time money has been made and lost by attaching the Trump name to a long-shot deal. Set up by Trump himself, there was Trump Shuttle… and Trump University. And now, others have gotten in on the act, with a Trump crypto… and a Baby Trump crypto… and another token with the same initials as Trump’s new “media and technology” company, TMTG (interestingly named The Midas Touch Gold).

Clear and Present Danger: Your editor admits to some first-hand knowledge of the SPAC world. One of the companies with which he is associated recently completed a SPAC deal. In our experience… and by our cynical reckoning of the way the world works… it is unlikely that most SPAC deals will lead to any real-world business success. Businesses are complex. SPAC promoters generally lack the experience or the determination to fully grasp them. What SPAC organizers have is a pot of money from investors… and a keen motivation to spend it.

If they buy nothing, they have to return the money. But if they buy something, they get a part of the deal and come out ahead – whether it works for investors, or not. From the investors’ standpoint, this is not a good setup; it is a FantasyLand innovation, encouraging the SPAC organizers to pay too much for businesses they don’t really understand. And in the case of DWAC, there was nothing they could understand. The business didn’t exist.

Yes, Dear Reader, the odds that the Trump SPAC would lead to a successful business fell dramatically when the SPAC targeted Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), another Trump company that is more wishful thinking than reality.

It’s hard enough to find a good business at a good price, especially with so many SPACs looking for them. A nonexistent business (one that has no sales, no managers, no patents, no offices, no profits, no coffee machine, no market niche, no brand, etc.) may be easy to propose… but it is much less likely to ever be profitable.

Buying a nonexistent business founded by the same people who started up the SPAC in the first place is also a clear and present danger. Typically, at least the seller knows his business. In this case, neither buyer nor seller has any idea how to build a successful social media company. And then, yesterday’s announcement – turning to a political hack with no experience either in technology or media, nor anything other than dairy farming (perhaps) and political chicanery (surely) – dooms the project altogether.

Fast Money: We might add, too, that “Truth Social,” Trump’s proposed social media platform, invites ridicule as well as losses. We humans only get a faint whiff of truth, rarely, when the wind is blowing in the right direction, and we have just suffered some crushing and humiliating loss. Truth 24/7 is much more than we can handle. And now… adding to the odds against investors… the pros are circling like vultures, ready to pick the carcass clean.

Over the weekend, the new Trump group announced that it had struck a deal to raise $1 billion from hedge funds and other large players. The deal gives these insiders the right to buy shares for 40% below the retail price. These are not patient, long-term investors, with faith in the new business or its new CEO. These are the fast-money mavens of FantasyLand, preying on ideologically driven, naive “investors,” who think they can make the world a better place… and make money, too. Apparently, the insiders think the stock is way overpriced. Apparently, too, they expect to make money in the old-fashioned way… buying at wholesale… and selling to the rubes at retail.

This is okay with us. It’s fun to watch. And however it goes, we’ll claim it proves our Diary maxim – that “investors don’t get what they want or what they expect; they get what they deserve.” And in this case, as the new project inevitably heads to the finance morgue, they are likely to get a hint of Truth as a bonus."

"Rising Prices And More Empty Shelves At Kroger!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 12/9/21:
"Rising Prices And More Empty Shelves At Kroger!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger with a lot of empty shelves. We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and to get a few items of course they don't have. It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products! Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you in the next video!"

Gregory Mannarino, "Is A Stock Market Drop Imminent? This Is What You Need To Know Now"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/9/21:
"Is A Stock Market Drop Imminent? 
This Is What You Need To Know Now"

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Musical Interlude: 2002, "River Of Stars"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "River Of Stars"

"Your Money Is Not Safe On A Computer Screen; Don't Buy A New Car; Everyone Is Quitting Their Jobs"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 12/8/21:
"Your Money Is Not Safe On A Computer Screen; Don't Buy A New Car;
Everyone Is Quitting Their Jobs"

Gerald Celente & The Judge: "We've Lost Our Freedom; New Omicron Mandates"

Gerald Celente & The Judge:
 "We've Lost Our Freedom; New Omicron Mandates"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

"The Biggest Fall in 60 Years"

"The Biggest Fall in 60 Years"
by Brian Maher

"The Daily Reckoning, June 27, 2019: “Given the finite ability to service debt outstanding… future economic growth, if we are to have it, will need to be based largely on gains in productivity.”

CNBC, Dec. 7, 2021: “Labor productivity fell at the fastest rate in more than 60 years in the third quarter, according to a Labor Department report Tuesday.”

It is true, supply chain disorders have played the devil with economic functioning. Equally true, the virus has been working its mischief. Yet economists had promised us galloping 2021 economic growth after 2020’s tumults. The tumults continue nonetheless. When will they clear on through? We have yet to encounter a plausible answer.

Trillions More Debt: Meantime, debt levels have streaked to impossible heights since June 27, 2019. The virus and the ensuing monetary and fiscal deliriums were still one year distant. The United States government has heaped on an additional $6 trillion of debt in the intervening space. Today’s national debt exceeds $29 trillion.

In 2019’s fourth quarter, the United States debt-to-GDP ratio went at 106% — itself plenty handsome. In 2021’s current quarter the same ratio runs to 125%. Private debt represented 218% of GDP in 2019. In 2020 private debt represented 235% of GDP.

We lack data for 2021, yet hazard no meaningful reducing. And now we learn productivity is plunging at the dizziest rate in over 60 years.

Productivity = Growth: Productivity growth transformed these United States from a stump-toothed backwater into a global behemoth, an economic Colossus bestride the world. Michael Lebowitz of Real Investment Advice: “Productivity growth over the last 350-plus years is what allowed America to grow from a colonial outpost into the world’s largest and most prosperous economic power.”

Productivity growth averaged 4–6% for the 30 years post-WWII. But average productivity has languished between 0–2% since 1980. Meantime, labor productivity averaged 3.2% annual growth from World War II to the end of the 20th century. And since 2011? A mere 0.7%.

Even the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco stares the problem square in the eyes: "Estimates suggest the new normal pace for U.S. GDP growth remains 1.5–1.75%, noticeably slower than the typical pace since World War II…A larger challenge is productivity. Achieving GDP growth consistently above 1.75% will require much faster productivity growth than the United States has typically experienced since the 1970s."

Gold and Productivity: What might account for America’s declining productivity growth? We have previously raised a possibility: Look to Nixon’s 1971 slamming of the gold window. The gold standard, though a sad caricature of a gold standard in its dying days, nonetheless enforced an honesty. A wastrel nation that consumed more than it produced would eventually run through its gold stocks.

The fiat dollar, the unbacked dollar, lifted the penalty. It could take things in without sending gold out. A liberated Federal Reserve finally struck its golden shackles… spread its nets… and ensnared the nation in debt. In 1970 — the year before Nixon cut the dollar’s final tether to gold — public debt totaled $371 billion. Or in today’s dollars, some $2.6 trillion.

U.S. public debt today exceeds $29 trillion… and fast approaching $30 trillion. Lebowitz: "The stagnation of productivity growth started in the early 1970s. To be precise it was the result, in part, of the removal of the gold standard and the resulting freedom the Fed was granted to foster more debt… over the last 30 years the economy has relied more upon debt growth and less on productivity to generate economic activity. “Unfortunately, productivity requires work, time and sacrifice,” he adds."

The Financialization of America: Yet the emerging American economy abandoned the grimy toil of the factory floor and the workbench…. and struck out for Wall Street. It went chasing after the fast buck — the easy buck. The financialization of the American economy was underway. Ten percent of GDP in 1970, the finance industry grew to 20% of GDP by 2010… like weeds mushrooming through an abandoned factory.

And as weeds choke a flowering garden, finance choked the flowering of labor…The bottom 90% of American earners advanced steadily from the early 1940s through the early 1970s. But they’ve been sliding back ever since — or held even at best. In contrast we find the top 1% of earners…From 1920 to the early 1970s they lost ground to the bottom 90%. But beginning around 1980 they went leaping ahead… and began showing society their dust.

Good or Bad? But perhaps we can declare the race a draw. Labor’s loss is simply capital’s gain. The economy as a whole comes out even. Money has merely shifted pockets. Perhaps the transaction even benefits the economy. Capital could wring more productive use out of it than labor. But has the United States economy benefited from financialization?

A financialized economy demands perpetually expanding credit — debt — to keep the show going. Servicing that debt absorbs increasing amounts of society’s income. That, in turn, leaves less to save… and to invest in productive assets. Speculation goes amok. Economists Gerald Epstein and Juan Antonio Montecino have plowed through the numbers. These numbers reveal that financialization is — in fact — economically destructive.

A $22.7 Trillion Drain: Since 1990… these gentlemen conclude the financial sector has drained trillions and trillions from the United States economy: "What has this flawed financial system cost the U.S. economy?… We estimate these costs by analyzing three components: (1) rents, or excess profits; (2) misallocation costs, or the price of diverting resources away from non-financial activities; and (3) crisis costs, meaning the cost of the 2008 financial crisis. Adding these together, we estimate that the financial system will impose an excess cost of as much as $22.7 trillion between 1990 and 2023, making finance in its current form a net drag on the American economy.

$22.7 trillion exceeds 2020 GDP by nearly $2 trillion. 2020 was a locust year, yet the central thesis stands: Financialization represents a vast economic wastage.
 Yet these gentlemen settled upon their $22.7 trillion figure prior to the pandemic. We have seen no update. But we hazard it would be an even greater enormity. But the Federal Reserve must keep the show running with greater debt yet — else the curtain falls, and the lights go dark. It is a dreadful cycle. Eventually it leaves the cupboards bare. It leaves the future empty.

Compounding Negative Returns: Average real annual economic growth since 2009 runs to some 2.2%. Compare the past decade’s 2.2% with the larger 3.22% trend since 1980. One percentage point may seem a trifle. And one year to the next it is a trifle. Yet year upon year upon year it is not. Jim Rickards calculates the United States would be $4 trillion richer — had the 3.22% trend held this past decade. Run it 30, 50, 60 years… Jim concludes the nation would be twice as rich over a lifetime. Productivity is likely the lone way up. And productivity has just plunged at its greatest rate in 60 years…"

Gregory Mannarino, "A Scary 'Economic Disaster' Warning, And Is War Coming?"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/8/21:
"A Scary 'Economic Disaster' Warning, And Is War Coming?"

"Economists are Struggling to Hide the Economic Collapse"

Dan, iAllegedly, 12/8/21:
"Economists are Struggling to Hide the Economic Collapse"
"The opinions may vary, but the economists are having a difficult time hiding the impending economic collapse. Credit is maxed out and savings accounts are at an all time low. Main street is suffering while Wall Street thrives."

"A Look to the Heavens"

"These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries, embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust. 
Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years."

"What If..."

"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"
~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought..

"And When It Happens..."

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
- Louise Erdrich

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "The Far Field"

"The Far Field"

I
"I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.

II
At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery,-
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found it lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.
I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:

How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes,-
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean,-
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.

- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.
I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.

III
The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent
And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland,-
At first a swift rippling between rocks,
Then a long running over flat stones
Before descending to the alluvial plane,
To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.
The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers,-
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

IV
The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around,-
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree:
The pure serene of memory in one man,-
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world."

- Theodore Roethke

"The Art And Science..."

 

"We All Live in a Metaversian Cosmos"

"We All Live in a Metaversian Cosmos"
by Bill Bonner

"We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine..."
– “Yellow Submarine” by The Beatles

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "A storm passed over Ireland yesterday. The power went off. Trees blew down. The roof of an old shed flew off. Oh… if we could only live in the Metaverse… where the only things that happen are things we want to happen. If only we knew where to find it!

Here on Planet Earth, life goes on. And with so many hours… so many resources… so much brain power and capital applied to the fantasy world, it is not surprising that the real world feels a little neglected. Here’s the latest news from Breitbart: "Productivity Crashes More Than Expected." "The productivity of U.S. workers in the third quarter of 2021 dropped at a rate of 5.2 percent, the Department of Labor said Tuesday. Economists had forecast productivity would decline by 4.9 percent. Unit labor costs soared at an annual rate of 9.6 percent in the third quarter of 2021, reflecting a 3.9 percent increase in hourly compensation and the decline in productivity."

That was more than expected. Analysts polled by Econoday had forecast unit labor costs to rise 8.3 percent… Let’s see… higher labor costs… less labor output. Is that a formula for success, or what?

Fantasy World: But in the fantasy world, assets get more and more valuable… even though they don’t produce any more wealth…houses go up so much that you can “take out” some of the value, without giving up floorspace…“crypto” currencies… meme stocks… NFTs… and money-losing companies can make you rich – even without sales, profits, goods or services, employees, skills, or tax bills. What in the real world can compete with that?

Yes, we all live in a yellow submarine now… in the deep calm of the metaversian cosmos. But where did it come from?

The Real Cost of Cheap Credit: An educated guess: from a flood of liquidity from the Federal Reserve, that buoyed up everything not firmly attached to the real world. For the last 10 years, scarcely anyone’s toes have been able to touch the bottom.

Even before the Wall Street bailout of 2008-2009, interest rates had been falsified by the Fed for many years. Cheap credit caused a bubble in the housing market that eventually cost up to 10 million American homeowners their homes. Wall Street lenders, however, got off scot-free. They should have taken their losses (they lent far too much money with far too little collateral). And the stock market should have gained a solid footing, but at a much lower level. Instead, the Fed lowered lending rates even further… and the water got deeper.

Today, the federal funds rate is all of 0.08% (essentially zero)… and inflation is running at 6.2%. In other words, the Fed is lending to member banks at a MINUS 6% rate. And by our calculations last month, in order to get ahead of inflation – as Paul Volcker did in 1980 – the Fed would have to put its funds rate up to almost 10%. Not going to happen.

Fleeting Fantasy: Meanwhile, the most important credit in the world, the U.S. 10-year bond, is trading at a nominal yield of 1.4%. But subtract the going inflation rate – 6.2% – and you see that the real yield is MINUS 4.8%. And now, after lending money for years at yields below inflation, is it any wonder that people retreat to fantasyland… a submarine quietly navigating beneath the tempestuous waves?

It is a place where time has stopped… and the future holds no risk. You will not age. No storms will blow up. No one will be shot or die of the omicron variant. Yes, it is a fantasy world. A make-believe world. A world that exists… but only as a fleeting aberration.

Is the Bubble Deflating? And what’s this? SoftBank, the Japanese company that has funded many fantasy start-ups, lost nearly 16% last week. Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest, that invested so much money in them, lost about the same. And bitcoin… the coin of the new fantasy realm… lost a quarter of its peak value in the last month. How long before the fantasists need to come up for air?"

The Daily "Near You?"

Napier, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. Thanks for stopping by!

"Can Any Nation-State Survive the Era of Inequality and Scarcity?"

"Can Any Nation-State Survive
 the Era of Inequality and Scarcity?"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"The possibility that the United States could fragment is no longer a marginalized topic. Maps displaying various post-U.S. regional configurations accompany essays exploring how and why a break-up of the U.S. would be a solution to regional and ideological polarization, for example, Max Borders' recent article, "Dear America: It's Time to Break Up."

But two forces larger than political polarization may fragment nation-states across the globe, including the U.S.: inequality and scarcity. Inequality and corruption go hand in hand, of course, as the wealthiest few influence the state to protect their monopolies and backstop their speculative gains.

Inequality also goes hand in hand with the collapse of nation-states, as this seminal paper explains: "Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies." The parasitic elite can accumulate the majority of income, wealth, political power and resources in eras of expanding abundance, as what's left is enough to support an expanding populace that consumes more per capita every year, i.e. broad-based prosperity.

But once abundance transitions to scarcity, the economy and society can no longer sustain the dead weight of its outsized parasitic elite. The parasitic elite believes its bloated share of resources, wealth and power is not only sustainable but can be expanded without consequence, and so it deploys all its formidable power to keep the status quo unchanged even as scarcity lowers the living standards of the bottom 90% and hollows out the economy.

In effect, the modern central state, regardless of ideological label, optimizes inequality and growth. Once growth falters while inequality continues increasing, the only possible outcome is fragmentation and/or collapse. Put another way: the status quo is no longer the solution to inequality and scarcity, it is the problem. Private-sector and political elites are incapable of recognizing they are now the problem, and so the rapid unraveling of the status quo will come as a great shock to their magical-thinking confidence in their power.

The elite's delusional "solution" is a seamless, painless transition to a new era of abundance via "green energy." Unfortunately, this vision is 100% magical thinking, as all these projections ignore the physical realities of building out a global energy system that generates energy on the same scale as existing hydrocarbon energy sources. Read these three reports for reality-based assessments:

• "The New Energy Economy": An Exercise in Magical Thinking (manhattan-institute.org)
• "The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth": Even "sustainable" technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines face unbreachable physical limits and exact grave environmental costs. (scientificamerican.com)
• "Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels" (PDF, Simon P. Michaux, Geological Survey of Finland) Read the 3-page abstract.

As explained in the first paper, inequality generates collapse and so does a decline in resources, i.e. scarcity. Put the two together and the only possible outcome is collapse of all centralized nation-states that optimize inequality and endless expansion of consumption. The issue isn't ideological labels or principles, it's whether the state solves problems or covers them up with fake fixes that accelerate collapse.

Nations which want to not just survive but emerge stronger have one path: a revolutionary transformation from "waste is growth" to degrowth, from an economy and state dominated by a parasitic elite to a strictly limited parasitic elite and from abject dependence on fragile supply chains originating in other nations to decentralized, localized independence for essentials.

I've written a book that is a template for this transformation. This book is the culmination of a lifetime of study, observation, experience and analysis: "Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States." Though I devote some analysis specifically to the U.S., the book is a template for any nation to not just survive scarcity but emerge stronger by evolving a degrowth economy and a decentralized political order. We have an extraordinary opportunity to transform our unsustainable "waste is growth" economy and toxic inequality to sustainable systems that optimize well-being rather than collapse. I'm offering the print edition at a 20% discount this month: print $20, Kindle ebook $8.95. You can read the Introduction and Chapter One for free (PDF).

This is me when I started thinking about these topics in 1972. Don't laugh too hard, you might hurt yourself..."