I think the chance of a financial crisis this year is higher than 30% and you are correct in identifying private debt as the real problem rather than government debt. Steve Keen was one of the few economists to correctly predict the 2008 crisis and that was on the basis of a massive expansion of private debt, with the same pattern being seen now. Add to this China's restriction of silver exports on the 1st of January, with silver being a vital component for both AI and the "green transition", and things look rather ominous.
Dr Tim Morgan has identified the rising Energy Cost of Energy (ECoE), also referred to by others as Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI), as the main factor driving the slowing of the global economy. He thinks that we may have already passed peak global economic activity:
Some of the financial podcasts I view regularly posit a recession in private debt already. I see Trump's actions in Venezuela and his threatening of Greenland as "playing the narrative." Fiat currencies and the whole fiat system require public faith in the currency and the government that backs it. Trump is trying to keep the narrative afloat. To my mind, this is a fail but it will take time to play out.
Fiat currencies draw their value from taxation because they are the only thing a government will accept in payment; this is underlined by the government's monopoly on violence.
Not entirely. The Fed and Banks can create more fiat$ AND western markets appear to be using futures to manipulate gold and silver prices. Central Banks (e.g. Japan) can manipulate interest rate differentials to drive currencies in their favor.
We could also decrease SS deficits by eliminating early (pre-age 70) retirements and perhaps not letting the top 5% use SS for luxuries, while the bottom 90% can't afford housing.
So it's not as simple as tax. Unfortunately the top 1% (oligarchs) controlling gvt policies won't start doing anything to cut their power and privilege any time soon.
I think maybe it's not really taxes that support value, but the underlying assets owned by the citizens. As more and more of the oligarchs and mega-corporations become global, they can take many their assets out of any country that tries to control their voracious greed. The Wendigo psychosis is global.
Instead of using this small window of overabundance to make preparations for the long decline to come (making cooperative arrangements, reinstating arms control, reducing geopolitical tensions etc.) they use this time to gain economic, political, and—if they deem necessary—military leverage over oil producing regions of the world.
The Men Who Run the World are not stupid. They are doing exactly what needs to be done to keep the train on the tracks for as long as possible. There no alternative to what they are doing.
Please analyze the impact of America blocking Chinese companies from capitalizing the Amazon. The tipping point for the rainforest is 22%. Today we are at 20%. China, in this case, or any capitalist nation, needs emerging markets. China must feed 1.4 billion people. Destroying Amazon forests for lumber and then turning the land into cattle pastures is a global disaster. The core problem is not Human CO2 overload because of oil addiction, but 8 billion humans, 30 billion farm animals, and 1 billion pets devouring 1.7 Earth's resources per year. The carrying capacity of Earth is 2 billion, so 75% of humanity will be reduced using the laws of natural selection.
B says, "This general indifference—or outright nihilism—is what gives a special context to the recent abduction of Venezuela’s Maduro . . . . " Once again, B is spot on.
One of the things I have gotten onto lately is from a leading French intellectual and sociologist, Emmanuel Todd. He describes the main crisis of the US as American Nihilism. His latest book, La Défaite de l'Occident (2024) would be translated into English as The Defeat of the West. It is not in English yet but Jeff Rich describes his translation in detail on one of his episodes of The Burning Archive, to which I am indebted. Here is a quote from Jeff's site:
"In today's America, I observe in terms of thought and ideas a dangerous state of emptiness with residual obsessions with money and power. These cannot be goals in themselves or values. This void induces a propensity for self-destruction, militarism, endemic negativity, in short nihilism."
-- Emmanuel Todd, The Defeat of the West (2024)
Many years ago, Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter (1963) described the three pillars of American society as business, Christianity, and anti-intellectualism. I have accepted this formulation as a truism for over fifty years, especially as I experienced quite a bit of anti-intellectualism in my own life, which was corroborated by my own observations of other people who were "too damn smart for their own good." Now, being intelligent is not intellectualism. Hofstadter's definition is that intellectualism is the intellect looking at itself. In modern anthropology, this is called reflexivity. So anti-intellectualism in American life would include a strong reaction AGAINST examining what is wrong in American society. "Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV . . . " to quote John Lennon's famous song, Working Class Hero (1970).
Now I see Todd's American Nihilism as a signal shift in American life. The old paradigm of Hofstadter has been superseded by Todd's new paradigm. Trump is just the latest iteration of this. When did this transition begin? I don't know. But I see it in action.
Spot on. As an Australian, I would add sport to the list of what keeps the population doped up and ignorant. We are the epitome of a nation addicted to sports, consumerism and anti-intellectualism.
Whenever a pundit reaches for the n-word - nihilism - look out for very superficial, hot-takey nothing-burgers.
Killing and destruction and outright self-serving idiotic plunder are not "nihilism" - they are active forms of murder that humans have always specialized in, requiring great physical and material effort. Nihilism is a philosophy based on evidence,
I am no armchair philosopher. The extended and tortured abstractions of epistemology hold no attraction for me. Clearly, Donald Trump and his Cabinet have lost their way and their sense of moral values. But how was the ground prepared for them? My working model is to blame Obama and the Tea Party's ability to finesse the Dems and take over the GOP. But that may be simplistic too. I will do more investigation. Todd's formulation contra Hofstadter's paradigm gives me something to work with. I will do a close reading of Euthyphro. ("Pay attention. These are life and death issues.")
Here's a question for everyone. Are Trump's mental and moral midgets worse than Kennedy's "best and brightest?" Or are they just tawdry, cheap suit versions? In fact, was Hofstadter's paradigm outdated by the time it hit the bookshelf?
Of course this quick-take, big white space corporate forum of Substack is a terrible Petri dish for developing ideas through back-and-forth. Nihilism has always been the go-to epithet of choice for every pundit, big-thinker, and craven yapper from every side, and it’s useless.
Nazis suffered no “lack of meaning,” and for today’s versions of Nazis, in the country that birthed Nazism, that goes double.
Well, can I pick one out of the three? Since Trump and his Cabinet have no morality, are they therefore nihilists? I think so. You obviously don't. Not a problem. As I said, I am looking at Todd's American Nihilism as a working model. I will do some testing.
Or perhaps, as Musa al-Gharbi proposes, Symbolic Capitalism, being driven by post-modern intellectuals has moved academia so far from reality that an anti-intellectual backlash by main street people who actually do things in the real, physical world is needed.
BTW - add toxic junk food to the Keep you doped list. It is probably more toxic than fentanyl in terms of the number of people impacted.
The latest on junk food addiction is that it's probably transmitted via RNA in sperm that epigenetically alter the development of the fetus. Toxic lipids circulating end up pushing toxic RNA into the sperm which then produces the same in the child before any exposure to lifestyle toxins. So not only do our current toxic diets injure our kids, parent's toxic diets may predispose their children to junk food addictions.
Not only are you what you eat, your kids may be epigenetically influenced by what dad eats. [As well as what mom eats-they still need to test the RNA mechanism in eggs.]
Note, good physical conditioning appears to also be transmissible to children.
There's been the thought that obesity, which runs in families and friend circles' is socially transmitted thru sharing bad food habits. Now it appears that consequences of bad lifestyle choices are epigenetically transmitted to our children.
I know quite a few people who eat mostly whole foods and no sweeteners.
AND it's really hard. You often have to grow and preserve your own food and even if I get it from a local organic farmer or a CSA, I still spend hours preparing and preserving stuff from scratch.
I find it quite easy ... I eat only organic food ... but very simple meals... mostly salads with organic olive oil + vinegar... with some wild caught prawns or fish or organic chicken...
People, of course, have a tendency to repeat what they are told. They had been told that Trump is the President of the United States, and that is what they repeat endlessly, whereas to many, many people he looks as though he's merely the bus driver.
The route that he is taking the country on was planned many, many decades ago, and very few people seemed to have worked out the true destination.
I would encourage anybody do not repeat what they are told but too embrace, what things look like, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel.
The war between USA and Iran is an orchestrated theatre of various layers.
1. Deflecting the Epstein files.
2. USA using Venezuela oil to leverage against China's decree to stop or slow down silver and rare earth mineral exports . Trump plays chess. China plays Goh. And we play Fish.
3. To ensure Israel gets to keep their nuclear bomb by decapitating Iran's defense.
4. The fight for control within USA, between Defense, Finance and Tech.
"No energy, no work, no raw materials, no food, no products, no services — no GDP."
Not exactly, GDP is a metric describing financial transactions. So long as .gov moves money back and forth without actually making anything in the physical it will still register as GDP. GDP is as fake as the fiat it follows.
As Rystad and the majors assembled by the White House have revealed, the reserve number for Venezuela is purely fictional, made up by Hugo Chavez and never audited...Likely reserves are less than 1/3 of that number, and some of the reserves, for example in the Orinoco region, are basically undrillable or worthless because of their composition....Nor will majors like Exxon, currently owed more than 10 billion dollars by Venezuela, likely return after very bad experiences with the Venezuelan government and the current instability.....
But Trump may have stopped the vote routed fraud thru Venezuela, for what that's worth...
Great article—your diagnosis of a 'Wile E. Coyote' economy running on empty is compelling. I agree the physical foundations are crumbling. But I'd add one key twist: in today's world, the coyote doesn't just run off the cliff; he's immediately hooked up to a monetary IV drip.
What I mean is: governments and central banks, especially in the U.S., will do everything they can to prevent a deflationary collapse. They'll print money, run deficits, and bail out key sectors. So a 1930s-style crash and falling prices are less likely.
Instead, we'll probably face prolonged 'stagflation'—stagnant growth with persistent hidden inflation (Rick Rule famously calls the CPI the "CP Lie"). Money will buy less of the essential things tied to real resources (energy, food, critical minerals), even if the U.S. dollar remains relatively strong compared to other major currencies (Euro, GBP, JPY, etc.), which are in much worse shape.
The crisis, then, may not look like a market crash. It will look like a slow but steady loss of living standards, masked by a financial system with rising asset prices that keeps the coyote suspended in mid-air while the real ground beneath him—affordable energy, material abundance—quietly moves further and further away. This could continue until the crushing debt-to-GDP load (now ~120%) is brought down to something sustainable—historically, that's been closer to 40–60%. I could be wrong, of course. Just my 2¢.
I wonder that you/Rystad see peak oil in 2030, or even 2035. While I guess this would be technically possible - the oil prices are way too little to make this possible - while higher oil prices aren't affordable. I guess we will have peak oil in 2027 or latest 2028. As soon as we will have lost 10% from peak (I guess between 2030 and 2035) I predict a wider reaching realization of the future will set in and this wil lead to chaos, financial breakdown and a couple years later in breakdown of global trade. Actually having a financial meltdown earlier than peak oil - or before oil supply breakdown - would give us more years of modernity. If it's the collapse in oil supply causing it - I fear it will lead to much bigger ripple and more instant collapse, with large parts of the world turning to unregulated anarchism or at best similar life quality as right now in central Africa.
Let's see. I rather expect new Zealand to start collapsing by 2028 and UK and EU by 2030. There is an surprisingly big time frame during which just consumption will decrease and exports die down. The resilience is big and the myth that we have democracy will stop the revolutions that bring down the system to only afterwards discover they cannot do much better... See how Iran is still holding up. The population is still not able to just all go out and take the regime down even though they heavily outnumber it and people have been getting poorer and poorer.
If investments stop there will be much more energy to just keep things running till they break
But yeah I see my future in emigrating to Taiwan and thereby becoming a Chinese citizen,... Asian societies with their collaborative behaviour will in my eyes succumb to anarchy way later and don't have the swamp that was created in Europe and USA (by all political parties, just they always only see the swamp of the opposition). China and USA will survive the longest except if there is nuclear war... Once modernity crumbles there as well I will not fight but end my life. Actually I already decided to kinda just party on until out of funds.. no reason to invest into anything when the future is bleak. Just having a good life till then... Of course the more people think like that the faster the decline... My only investment is keeping on improving my Chinese language skills from c1 to c2 levels...
If USA is Coyote and China is the Praire wolf going off the cliff - I'm the lemming. However, this lemming is focusing on my networks and community groups . Can't change what's on the global stage, but your knowledge helps me prepare my little bubble.
Thank you for sharing. Thanks to Trump - we're all bombed back to the Stone Age.
I've encountered claims that, thanks to AI, we'll soon master nuclear fusion, which will provide us with unlimited energy. The tritium needed for this will be mined on the Moon, just like many of the key raw materials for our civilization, whose Earthly resources are largely depleted. My intuition tells me that this is highly unlikely, but I have no strong argument to refute such declarations.
It's weird reading strategy commentary that assumes nuclear weapons simply don't exist, on the assumption that nobody will ever use the first one, thereby allowing those with the most conventional weapons to take over anything they want.
"The Europeans have outsourced their security to the U.S. and now, as a result, have no means defending themselves against it. "
Ummm..except they have enough nuclear weapons to fry every Russian base.
It's even weirder to me that the Miller guy was still talking about the old world that Oppenheimer "blew up" as they said at the end of the movie. Miller is wrong, because everybody has that awesome power to destroy the whole world now...if they want it. Nuclear weapons are CHEAP CHEAP. Check our the $6M Agni-V delivery system, India has 178 of them, each of which can be equipped with up to 12 warheads, which only cost $1M-$2M each, once you set up a production line.
Canada could buy one F-35 ... or enough Agni-V and warheads to wipe out Moscow and Miami in the same hour. (Assumes launch from Churchill River in our far north, deep in the forests...Agni-V has a 7000km range.)
That is why the UN exists ... to give everybody enough of a sense that the above is "Unthinkable" that we don't all just build cheap nukes and turn ourselves into little Napoleons. Because we know how WW1 started and the littlest things can, ahem, blow up.
The rest of the world needs to just shut down Trump and Putin by not being shy of threatening nuclear war. The species would survive. Perhaps better than we'll survive the eventual climate breakdown if there's no nuclear war.
I do love that the current generation has been so inculcated with nukes being "unthinkable" that they can literally write that Europe has no defenses. But we have to talk about it again to shut Trump up.
A great overview, thank you for sharing. The idea of Denmark being forced to sell Greenland and the EU not being able to defend the sale because of dependencies on the US is very worrying. Of course, they are supposed to be 'allies', and the idea of relying on your allies (ideally a co-dependency) means this should not be a concern in the first place...
I think it's less about resources and more about strategic control - if Denmark won't deploy a proper line of defense against Russia there, then America will take it and do it. That, or it's all part of Trump's delusion because of the Mercator projection so trying to make sense of it is moot.
Is Russia taking Greenland and Denmark is not defending it? So why does America need to take it?
Try using logic before you post.
FYI:
“The barrier isn’t just bureaucratic; it is thermodynamic. Greenland spans 2.17 million square kilometers, 80% of which is covered by ice. The “unit economics” of mining here are atrocious compared to competitors in Australia or Brazil.
The Infrastructure Gap: There are no roads connecting Greenland’s towns. Every piece of heavy machinery must be shipped in by sea or flown in by helicopter. Industry analysis suggests that developing a mine in the Arctic incurs capital costs (CapEx) 150% to 300% higher than in temperate regions.
The Power Problem: There is no grid to plug into. A mine requires a dedicated power plant, likely importing diesel in a zone where fuel freezes, or building renewables in a place with three months of darkness.
Ian Lange, an economist at the Colorado School of Mines, put it bluntly: “Everybody’s just been running to get to this endpoint [of production]. And if you go to Greenland, it’s like you’re going back to the beginning.”
If the EU plans to double its investment in these projects to satisfy U.S. demands, it represents a massive subsidy. It is a transfer of public funds to make a project commercially viable, not because the market demands it, but because the politics require it. We are essentially watching Europe offer to build a money-losing mine to buy geopolitical stability.
Agreed. In addition, the vast majority of citizens believe in peak oil but are convinced that some technological breakthrough in energy production will save us. 😵💫
"the vast majority of citizens believe in peak oil". Really?
My personal experience is that the vast majority have absolutely zero idea that "energy *is* the economy". To most people oil is something that goes in the gas tank. That's it.
I think the chance of a financial crisis this year is higher than 30% and you are correct in identifying private debt as the real problem rather than government debt. Steve Keen was one of the few economists to correctly predict the 2008 crisis and that was on the basis of a massive expansion of private debt, with the same pattern being seen now. Add to this China's restriction of silver exports on the 1st of January, with silver being a vital component for both AI and the "green transition", and things look rather ominous.
Dr Tim Morgan has identified the rising Energy Cost of Energy (ECoE), also referred to by others as Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI), as the main factor driving the slowing of the global economy. He thinks that we may have already passed peak global economic activity:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/05/29/304-has-growth-ended/
Some of the financial podcasts I view regularly posit a recession in private debt already. I see Trump's actions in Venezuela and his threatening of Greenland as "playing the narrative." Fiat currencies and the whole fiat system require public faith in the currency and the government that backs it. Trump is trying to keep the narrative afloat. To my mind, this is a fail but it will take time to play out.
Fiat currencies draw their value from taxation because they are the only thing a government will accept in payment; this is underlined by the government's monopoly on violence.
Not entirely. The Fed and Banks can create more fiat$ AND western markets appear to be using futures to manipulate gold and silver prices. Central Banks (e.g. Japan) can manipulate interest rate differentials to drive currencies in their favor.
We could also decrease SS deficits by eliminating early (pre-age 70) retirements and perhaps not letting the top 5% use SS for luxuries, while the bottom 90% can't afford housing.
So it's not as simple as tax. Unfortunately the top 1% (oligarchs) controlling gvt policies won't start doing anything to cut their power and privilege any time soon.
Yes, sorry, I wasn't saying that taxes fund spending, I meant "value" in the sense of legitimacy. Thanks for the clarification.
I think maybe it's not really taxes that support value, but the underlying assets owned by the citizens. As more and more of the oligarchs and mega-corporations become global, they can take many their assets out of any country that tries to control their voracious greed. The Wendigo psychosis is global.
Instead of using this small window of overabundance to make preparations for the long decline to come (making cooperative arrangements, reinstating arms control, reducing geopolitical tensions etc.) they use this time to gain economic, political, and—if they deem necessary—military leverage over oil producing regions of the world.
We have 8B+ humans who are alive because of oil. When growth stops THIS happens https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/collapse-and-cannibalism
There will be no long decline. At some point something breaks https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/financial-system-supply-chain-cross and the cannibalism will begin.
The Men Who Run the World are not stupid. They are doing exactly what needs to be done to keep the train on the tracks for as long as possible. There no alternative to what they are doing.
Please analyze the impact of America blocking Chinese companies from capitalizing the Amazon. The tipping point for the rainforest is 22%. Today we are at 20%. China, in this case, or any capitalist nation, needs emerging markets. China must feed 1.4 billion people. Destroying Amazon forests for lumber and then turning the land into cattle pastures is a global disaster. The core problem is not Human CO2 overload because of oil addiction, but 8 billion humans, 30 billion farm animals, and 1 billion pets devouring 1.7 Earth's resources per year. The carrying capacity of Earth is 2 billion, so 75% of humanity will be reduced using the laws of natural selection.
B says, "This general indifference—or outright nihilism—is what gives a special context to the recent abduction of Venezuela’s Maduro . . . . " Once again, B is spot on.
One of the things I have gotten onto lately is from a leading French intellectual and sociologist, Emmanuel Todd. He describes the main crisis of the US as American Nihilism. His latest book, La Défaite de l'Occident (2024) would be translated into English as The Defeat of the West. It is not in English yet but Jeff Rich describes his translation in detail on one of his episodes of The Burning Archive, to which I am indebted. Here is a quote from Jeff's site:
"In today's America, I observe in terms of thought and ideas a dangerous state of emptiness with residual obsessions with money and power. These cannot be goals in themselves or values. This void induces a propensity for self-destruction, militarism, endemic negativity, in short nihilism."
-- Emmanuel Todd, The Defeat of the West (2024)
Many years ago, Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter (1963) described the three pillars of American society as business, Christianity, and anti-intellectualism. I have accepted this formulation as a truism for over fifty years, especially as I experienced quite a bit of anti-intellectualism in my own life, which was corroborated by my own observations of other people who were "too damn smart for their own good." Now, being intelligent is not intellectualism. Hofstadter's definition is that intellectualism is the intellect looking at itself. In modern anthropology, this is called reflexivity. So anti-intellectualism in American life would include a strong reaction AGAINST examining what is wrong in American society. "Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV . . . " to quote John Lennon's famous song, Working Class Hero (1970).
Now I see Todd's American Nihilism as a signal shift in American life. The old paradigm of Hofstadter has been superseded by Todd's new paradigm. Trump is just the latest iteration of this. When did this transition begin? I don't know. But I see it in action.
Spot on. As an Australian, I would add sport to the list of what keeps the population doped up and ignorant. We are the epitome of a nation addicted to sports, consumerism and anti-intellectualism.
I've lived in Australia for 2 years now... and agree.
Whenever a pundit reaches for the n-word - nihilism - look out for very superficial, hot-takey nothing-burgers.
Killing and destruction and outright self-serving idiotic plunder are not "nihilism" - they are active forms of murder that humans have always specialized in, requiring great physical and material effort. Nihilism is a philosophy based on evidence,
Well, let's see.
Lack of meaning? Check
Lack of morality? Check
Lack of knowledge? Check
I am no armchair philosopher. The extended and tortured abstractions of epistemology hold no attraction for me. Clearly, Donald Trump and his Cabinet have lost their way and their sense of moral values. But how was the ground prepared for them? My working model is to blame Obama and the Tea Party's ability to finesse the Dems and take over the GOP. But that may be simplistic too. I will do more investigation. Todd's formulation contra Hofstadter's paradigm gives me something to work with. I will do a close reading of Euthyphro. ("Pay attention. These are life and death issues.")
Here's a question for everyone. Are Trump's mental and moral midgets worse than Kennedy's "best and brightest?" Or are they just tawdry, cheap suit versions? In fact, was Hofstadter's paradigm outdated by the time it hit the bookshelf?
Of course this quick-take, big white space corporate forum of Substack is a terrible Petri dish for developing ideas through back-and-forth. Nihilism has always been the go-to epithet of choice for every pundit, big-thinker, and craven yapper from every side, and it’s useless.
Nazis suffered no “lack of meaning,” and for today’s versions of Nazis, in the country that birthed Nazism, that goes double.
Well, can I pick one out of the three? Since Trump and his Cabinet have no morality, are they therefore nihilists? I think so. You obviously don't. Not a problem. As I said, I am looking at Todd's American Nihilism as a working model. I will do some testing.
Or perhaps, as Musa al-Gharbi proposes, Symbolic Capitalism, being driven by post-modern intellectuals has moved academia so far from reality that an anti-intellectual backlash by main street people who actually do things in the real, physical world is needed.
BTW - add toxic junk food to the Keep you doped list. It is probably more toxic than fentanyl in terms of the number of people impacted.
The latest on junk food addiction is that it's probably transmitted via RNA in sperm that epigenetically alter the development of the fetus. Toxic lipids circulating end up pushing toxic RNA into the sperm which then produces the same in the child before any exposure to lifestyle toxins. So not only do our current toxic diets injure our kids, parent's toxic diets may predispose their children to junk food addictions.
Not only are you what you eat, your kids may be epigenetically influenced by what dad eats. [As well as what mom eats-they still need to test the RNA mechanism in eggs.]
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-dads-fitness-may-be-packaged-and-passed-down-in-sperm-rna-20251222/?ref=thefuturist
Note, good physical conditioning appears to also be transmissible to children.
There's been the thought that obesity, which runs in families and friend circles' is socially transmitted thru sharing bad food habits. Now it appears that consequences of bad lifestyle choices are epigenetically transmitted to our children.
It's just as addictive that's for sure. I know of not a single person who has dumped process garbage for whole foods... sugar is highly addictive
I know quite a few people who eat mostly whole foods and no sweeteners.
AND it's really hard. You often have to grow and preserve your own food and even if I get it from a local organic farmer or a CSA, I still spend hours preparing and preserving stuff from scratch.
I find it quite easy ... I eat only organic food ... but very simple meals... mostly salads with organic olive oil + vinegar... with some wild caught prawns or fish or organic chicken...
Nietzsche reaching from the grave.
The age of Nihilism and the Last Man.
People, of course, have a tendency to repeat what they are told. They had been told that Trump is the President of the United States, and that is what they repeat endlessly, whereas to many, many people he looks as though he's merely the bus driver.
The route that he is taking the country on was planned many, many decades ago, and very few people seemed to have worked out the true destination.
I would encourage anybody do not repeat what they are told but too embrace, what things look like, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel.
yes https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/what-if-488
The war between USA and Iran is an orchestrated theatre of various layers.
1. Deflecting the Epstein files.
2. USA using Venezuela oil to leverage against China's decree to stop or slow down silver and rare earth mineral exports . Trump plays chess. China plays Goh. And we play Fish.
3. To ensure Israel gets to keep their nuclear bomb by decapitating Iran's defense.
4. The fight for control within USA, between Defense, Finance and Tech.
"No energy, no work, no raw materials, no food, no products, no services — no GDP."
Not exactly, GDP is a metric describing financial transactions. So long as .gov moves money back and forth without actually making anything in the physical it will still register as GDP. GDP is as fake as the fiat it follows.
As Rystad and the majors assembled by the White House have revealed, the reserve number for Venezuela is purely fictional, made up by Hugo Chavez and never audited...Likely reserves are less than 1/3 of that number, and some of the reserves, for example in the Orinoco region, are basically undrillable or worthless because of their composition....Nor will majors like Exxon, currently owed more than 10 billion dollars by Venezuela, likely return after very bad experiences with the Venezuelan government and the current instability.....
But Trump may have stopped the vote routed fraud thru Venezuela, for what that's worth...
This https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trump-may-freeze-exxon-out-venezuela-after-ceo-darren-woods-called-it-uninvestable
And this https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-venezuela-story-does-not-stack
Great article—your diagnosis of a 'Wile E. Coyote' economy running on empty is compelling. I agree the physical foundations are crumbling. But I'd add one key twist: in today's world, the coyote doesn't just run off the cliff; he's immediately hooked up to a monetary IV drip.
What I mean is: governments and central banks, especially in the U.S., will do everything they can to prevent a deflationary collapse. They'll print money, run deficits, and bail out key sectors. So a 1930s-style crash and falling prices are less likely.
Instead, we'll probably face prolonged 'stagflation'—stagnant growth with persistent hidden inflation (Rick Rule famously calls the CPI the "CP Lie"). Money will buy less of the essential things tied to real resources (energy, food, critical minerals), even if the U.S. dollar remains relatively strong compared to other major currencies (Euro, GBP, JPY, etc.), which are in much worse shape.
The crisis, then, may not look like a market crash. It will look like a slow but steady loss of living standards, masked by a financial system with rising asset prices that keeps the coyote suspended in mid-air while the real ground beneath him—affordable energy, material abundance—quietly moves further and further away. This could continue until the crushing debt-to-GDP load (now ~120%) is brought down to something sustainable—historically, that's been closer to 40–60%. I could be wrong, of course. Just my 2¢.
I wonder that you/Rystad see peak oil in 2030, or even 2035. While I guess this would be technically possible - the oil prices are way too little to make this possible - while higher oil prices aren't affordable. I guess we will have peak oil in 2027 or latest 2028. As soon as we will have lost 10% from peak (I guess between 2030 and 2035) I predict a wider reaching realization of the future will set in and this wil lead to chaos, financial breakdown and a couple years later in breakdown of global trade. Actually having a financial meltdown earlier than peak oil - or before oil supply breakdown - would give us more years of modernity. If it's the collapse in oil supply causing it - I fear it will lead to much bigger ripple and more instant collapse, with large parts of the world turning to unregulated anarchism or at best similar life quality as right now in central Africa.
New Zealand’s gas buffer has vanished as output nearly halved from 415 million m³/month in 2017 to 215 million m³/month in 2025.
By 2027 there supply will deficits will be extreme....
LNG is not feasible as there is no infrastructure + the distances and small market would make costs too high...
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/New-Zealand-Faces-Growing-Gas-Supply-Risk.html
So NZ is likely to collapse within 2 years.
How far behind is the UK (or ahead?) https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/oh-my-fucking-god/
What about Europe?
I am left thinking ... we have 2 maybe 3 years before https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/collapse-and-cannibalism
Let's see. I rather expect new Zealand to start collapsing by 2028 and UK and EU by 2030. There is an surprisingly big time frame during which just consumption will decrease and exports die down. The resilience is big and the myth that we have democracy will stop the revolutions that bring down the system to only afterwards discover they cannot do much better... See how Iran is still holding up. The population is still not able to just all go out and take the regime down even though they heavily outnumber it and people have been getting poorer and poorer.
If investments stop there will be much more energy to just keep things running till they break
But yeah I see my future in emigrating to Taiwan and thereby becoming a Chinese citizen,... Asian societies with their collaborative behaviour will in my eyes succumb to anarchy way later and don't have the swamp that was created in Europe and USA (by all political parties, just they always only see the swamp of the opposition). China and USA will survive the longest except if there is nuclear war... Once modernity crumbles there as well I will not fight but end my life. Actually I already decided to kinda just party on until out of funds.. no reason to invest into anything when the future is bleak. Just having a good life till then... Of course the more people think like that the faster the decline... My only investment is keeping on improving my Chinese language skills from c1 to c2 levels...
Comprehensive, mindnumbing and clarity.
If USA is Coyote and China is the Praire wolf going off the cliff - I'm the lemming. However, this lemming is focusing on my networks and community groups . Can't change what's on the global stage, but your knowledge helps me prepare my little bubble.
Thank you for sharing. Thanks to Trump - we're all bombed back to the Stone Age.
I've encountered claims that, thanks to AI, we'll soon master nuclear fusion, which will provide us with unlimited energy. The tritium needed for this will be mined on the Moon, just like many of the key raw materials for our civilization, whose Earthly resources are largely depleted. My intuition tells me that this is highly unlikely, but I have no strong argument to refute such declarations.
It's weird reading strategy commentary that assumes nuclear weapons simply don't exist, on the assumption that nobody will ever use the first one, thereby allowing those with the most conventional weapons to take over anything they want.
"The Europeans have outsourced their security to the U.S. and now, as a result, have no means defending themselves against it. "
Ummm..except they have enough nuclear weapons to fry every Russian base.
It's even weirder to me that the Miller guy was still talking about the old world that Oppenheimer "blew up" as they said at the end of the movie. Miller is wrong, because everybody has that awesome power to destroy the whole world now...if they want it. Nuclear weapons are CHEAP CHEAP. Check our the $6M Agni-V delivery system, India has 178 of them, each of which can be equipped with up to 12 warheads, which only cost $1M-$2M each, once you set up a production line.
Canada could buy one F-35 ... or enough Agni-V and warheads to wipe out Moscow and Miami in the same hour. (Assumes launch from Churchill River in our far north, deep in the forests...Agni-V has a 7000km range.)
That is why the UN exists ... to give everybody enough of a sense that the above is "Unthinkable" that we don't all just build cheap nukes and turn ourselves into little Napoleons. Because we know how WW1 started and the littlest things can, ahem, blow up.
The rest of the world needs to just shut down Trump and Putin by not being shy of threatening nuclear war. The species would survive. Perhaps better than we'll survive the eventual climate breakdown if there's no nuclear war.
I do love that the current generation has been so inculcated with nukes being "unthinkable" that they can literally write that Europe has no defenses. But we have to talk about it again to shut Trump up.
A great overview, thank you for sharing. The idea of Denmark being forced to sell Greenland and the EU not being able to defend the sale because of dependencies on the US is very worrying. Of course, they are supposed to be 'allies', and the idea of relying on your allies (ideally a co-dependency) means this should not be a concern in the first place...
Why would they need to sell it? Why would they need to invade and take it?
Does the US or any other country need to invade Norway to get North Sea oil and gas?
Does anyone need to invade Alberta to get the tar sand oil?
The polite word is asset stripping. The real word is theft.
I think it's less about resources and more about strategic control - if Denmark won't deploy a proper line of defense against Russia there, then America will take it and do it. That, or it's all part of Trump's delusion because of the Mercator projection so trying to make sense of it is moot.
Huh? This makes no sense.
Is Russia taking Greenland and Denmark is not defending it? So why does America need to take it?
Try using logic before you post.
FYI:
“The barrier isn’t just bureaucratic; it is thermodynamic. Greenland spans 2.17 million square kilometers, 80% of which is covered by ice. The “unit economics” of mining here are atrocious compared to competitors in Australia or Brazil.
The Infrastructure Gap: There are no roads connecting Greenland’s towns. Every piece of heavy machinery must be shipped in by sea or flown in by helicopter. Industry analysis suggests that developing a mine in the Arctic incurs capital costs (CapEx) 150% to 300% higher than in temperate regions.
The Power Problem: There is no grid to plug into. A mine requires a dedicated power plant, likely importing diesel in a zone where fuel freezes, or building renewables in a place with three months of darkness.
Ian Lange, an economist at the Colorado School of Mines, put it bluntly: “Everybody’s just been running to get to this endpoint [of production]. And if you go to Greenland, it’s like you’re going back to the beginning.”
If the EU plans to double its investment in these projects to satisfy U.S. demands, it represents a massive subsidy. It is a transfer of public funds to make a project commercially viable, not because the market demands it, but because the politics require it. We are essentially watching Europe offer to build a money-losing mine to buy geopolitical stability.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-Greenland-Became-the-Most-Dangerous-Real-Estate-on-Earth.html
Now feel free to get angry - that's what most people do when they are proved wrong
Excellent analysis, B.
Great article, thank you!
Agreed. In addition, the vast majority of citizens believe in peak oil but are convinced that some technological breakthrough in energy production will save us. 😵💫
"the vast majority of citizens believe in peak oil". Really?
My personal experience is that the vast majority have absolutely zero idea that "energy *is* the economy". To most people oil is something that goes in the gas tank. That's it.
Most of them believe in the Three Pillars of Bullshit https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-three-pillars-of-bullshit