Ultimately REAL PHYSICAL #Economic #Growth Stops, And Then...

"What economists around the world get wrong about the future."

THE FALLACY OF ENDLESS ECONOMIC GROWTH

By CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM

The idea that economic growth can continue forever on a finite planet is the unifying faith of industrial civilization. That it is nonsensical in the extreme, a deluded fantasy, doesn't appear to bother us. We hear the holy truth in the decrees of elected officials, in the laments of economists about flagging GDP, in the authoritative pages of opinion, in the whirligig of advertising, at the World Bank and on Wall Street, in the prospectuses of globe-spanning corporations and in the halls of the smallest small-town chambers of commerce. Growth is sacrosanct. Growth will bring jobs and income, which allow us entry into the state of grace known as affluence, which permits us to consume more, providing more jobs for more people producing more goods and services so that the all-mighty economy can continue to grow. "Growth is our idol, our golden calf," Herman Daly, an economist known for his anti-growth heresies, told me recently.

INVISIBLE GENOCIDE: FALLACY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH 

In the United States, the religion is expressed most avidly in the cult of the American Dream. The gatekeepers of the faith happen to not only be American: The Dream is now, and has long been, a pandemic disorder. Growth is a moral imperative in the developing world, we are told, because it will free the global poor from deprivation and disease. It will enrich and educate the women of the world, reducing birth rates. It will provide us the means to pay for environmental remediation—to clean up what so-called economic progress has despoiled. It will lift all boats, making us all rich, healthy, happy. East and West, Asia and Europe, communist and capitalist, big business and big labor, Nazi and neoliberal, the governments of just about every modern nation on Earth: All have espoused the mad growthist creed.

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WHY DON'T WE APPLY EXPONENTIALS TO OUR EXISTENTIAL LIMITS?

Middle East Tensions Add #Risks To #Oil Shipping

"if security in the Gulf region deteriorated, then insurers may be left with no choice but to increase marine insurance premiums."

Global Oil Shipping Concerns Rise Over Middle East Tensions

By Tim Daiss

While global oil markets are accustomed to factoring geopolitical uncertainty into oil prices, this kind of geopolitical fallout hasn’t been seen for a number of years. The world’s largest oil exporter, that still along with its OPEC+ partners, plays the role of global oil markets swing producer, is seeing an escalation of attacks on its oil export infrastructure and shipping.

Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday that armed drones had attacked two of its oil pumping stations. This came just two days after the sabotage of two oil tankers carrying Saudi oil near the UAE. Meanwhile, the U.S. military, amid an increasingly tense tit for tat exchange of words between Washington and Tehran, said it was braced for “possibly imminent threats to U.S. forces in Iraq” from Iran-backed forces.

Tuesday’s attacks on the pumping stations more than 200 miles west of Riyadh and Sunday’s attack on four tankers off the UAE have raised concerns that the U.S. and Iran might be inching toward military conflict. However, on Thursday Trump told media that he did not want a war with Iran.

Also on Thursday, a Saudi-led coalition carried out airstrikes on Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. The deadly airstrikes, that reportedly left six dead, came after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who control the capital, claimed responsibility for the Tuesday drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s critical oil pipeline. All of this, of course, isn’t being lost on global oil markets which ticked up on Thursday by more than 1 percent. Global oil benchmark Brent crude futures ended the day’s session at $72.62/barrel, up 1.18 percent, while U.S. oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up 1.37 percent, at $62.87/barrel, near its highest level in two weeks.

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US WARSHIPS HEAD TOWARDS MIDDLE EAST

#OPEC Production Continues Slide - Can USA Stave Off Global Peak #Oil?

"Saudi Arabia dropped another 45,000 barrels per day in April"

OPEC April Production Data

by RON PATTERSON

The data below was taken from the OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report. All data is through April 2019 and is in thousand barrels per day. The data is crude only, that is it does not include condensate.

Total OPEC production hardly moved in April, down a mere 3,000 barrels per day.

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THE FUTURE OF OIL

#Shale Oil Peak Signals Serious #Economic Decline

"It will severely impact the world economy because with U.S. shale oil accounting for 66% of the rise in global oil production over the past decade, it was the leading driver for economic growth"

Global Economic Growth In Serious Trouble When U.S. Shale Oil Peaks & Declines

The global economy would be in serious trouble if it weren’t for the rapid growth of U.S. shale oil production.  Since the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. shale oil production has increased by more than 6 million barrels per day.  Without these additional barrels of oil, the massive money printing and asset purchases by the central banks would not have been as successful in propping up the economy and markets.

We must remember this simple fact; energy drives the markets, not finance. Finance steers the market.  So, for the economy to expand, there must be oil production growth.  However, it would be unwise for the market-economy to rely upon the U.S. shale industry as the leading driver of global oil production growth for the foreseeable future.

Why?  Well, there are several reasons, but let’s first look at how much the increase in U.S. shale oil production has accounted for the rise in global oil supply since 2008. Of the 9.6 million barrels per day (mbd) of global oil production growth 2008-2017, the United States supplied two-thirds or 6.3 mbd of the total:

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THE FALSE PROMISE OF SHALE OIL

#MarketWatch: Massive Corporate #Bond Losses Expected With #Recession

“Corporate debt isn’t going to cause the next recession, but it’s where the pain will be in the next recession.”

 By Peter Vercoe, 

Yvonne Man, and 

Rishaad Salamat

U.S. Recession Would Spur ‘Massive’ Corporate Bond Losses, Eisman Says

The U.S. corporate debt market will suffer “massive losses” if the world’s biggest economy falls into recession, said Steve Eisman, the Neuberger Berman Group money manager who famously predicted the collapse of subprime mortgages before the 2008 financial crisis.

While the U.S. financial system is strong, “that doesn’t mean we won’t have a recession,” Eisman said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Hong Kong on Thursday. “And in a recession I think there will be massive losses in the bond markets because there’s a lack of liquidity.”

“You will see big losses in things like triple-B corporate debt, high-yield etcetera, but you need a recession first,” he said. “Corporate debt isn’t going to cause the next recession, but it’s where the pain will be in the next recession.”

Eisman’s early bets against the housing market before the 2008 crisis were chronicled in Michael Lewis’s 2010 book “The Big Short,” which highlighted money managers who profited from the market turmoil. A character based on him was played by Steve Carell in the movie adaptation of the book.

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CENTRAL BANKS ARE ALSO CONCERNED

#Economic Collapse Looms - Just Do The #Math

"The main lesson for me is that growth is not a “good quantum number,” as physicists will say: it’s not an invariant of our world. Cling to it at your own peril" 

By Tom Murphy

 

Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist

Some while back, I found myself sitting next to an accomplished economics professor at a dinner event. Shortly after pleasantries, I said to him, “economic growth cannot continue indefinitely,” just to see where things would go. It was a lively and informative conversation. I was somewhat alarmed by the disconnect between economic theory and physical constraints—not for the first time, but here it was up-close and personal. Though my memory is not keen enough to recount our conversation verbatim, I thought I would at least try to capture the key points and convey the essence of the tennis match—with some entertainment value thrown in.

Cast of characters: Physicist, played by me; Economist, played by an established economics professor from a prestigious institution. Scene: banquet dinner, played in four acts (courses).

Note: because I have a better retention of my own thoughts than those of my conversational companion, this recreation is lopsided to represent my own points/words. So while it may look like a physicist-dominated conversation, this is more an artifact of my own recall capabilities. I also should say that the other people at our table were not paying attention to our conversation, so I don’t know what makes me think this will be interesting to readers if it wasn’t even interesting enough to others at the table! But here goes…

Act One: Bread and Butter

Physicist: Hi, I’m Tom. I’m a physicist.

Economist: Hi Tom, I’m [ahem..cough]. I’m an economist.

Physicist: Hey, that’s great. I’ve been thinking a bit about growth and want to run an idea by you. I claim that economic growth cannot continue indefinitely.

Economist: [chokes on bread crumb] Did I hear you right? Did you say that growth can not continue forever?

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MIT LIMITS TO GROWTH

#IMF: Soaring #VENEZUELA, 40% + Unemployment Rate, Fuels Crisis

"Many businesses and shops remain closed in what once were the busiest commercial districts of the capital, Caracas." 

Venezuela Unemployment Nears That of War-Ruined Bosnia, IMF Says

By 

David Biller

 and 

Patricia Laya

Venezuela’s unemployment rate is soaring to levels unseen in the world since the Bosnian war came to an end more than two decades ago, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Joblessness will reach 44.3 percent in 2019 and will slam nearly half of Venezuela’s labor force in 2020, the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook published on Tuesday. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s joblessness was 50 percent in 1996, immediately after its 3 1/2-year domestic war, according to the multilateral’s database.

The Venezuelan depression is among the deepest economic catastrophes ever suffered by a nation outside of wartime. This year alone, the Andean nation’s output will shrink by a quarter -- the most worldwide since the 2014 start of the Libyan civil war, according to the IMF. The contraction has become so large that it’s generating “sizable drag” on growth not just in Latin America, but also in emerging markets as a whole.

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HYPERINFLATION - HOW IT WORKS