Good article on bezzle that is running wild in the global economies and how it artificially inflates GDP. Makes it seem that GDP is de carbonizing which isn’t true. Just a phony economy.
Residential real estate in the US has a value of about $57 trillion. To afford the average home you need an income of about $116,000. Unfortunately the average income in the US is $67,000.
Which makes housing at nosebleed unaffordable records.
Right now nobody can afford to sell and trade their 3% mortgage for a new 7% mortgage. Not at the current average home price of $420,000 So many are stuck where they currently are.
I think we already know net energy has peaked. Even though the concept is hard to measure. But when the actual physical supply of oil starts it’s inevitable average yearly decline. Debts are going to be defaulted on everywhere you look and prices are going to fall.
This is roughly what it looks like:
Rate Range % of Outstanding Mortgages Estimated Outstanding Debt (USD)
Below 3% 22.2% ~$2.80 trillion
3% to 4% 35.9% ~$4.53 trillion
4% to 5% 18.9% ~$2.38 trillion
5% to 6% 9.7% ~$1.22 trillion
6% > 13.2% ~$1.67 trillion
Total 100% ~$12.61 trillion
A lot of older people that own their homes outright in the $57 trillion figure. At some point these people will liquidate their assets to the next generation.
All the assets will eventually be sold to the next generation. Which means a lot more new loans will need to be created. And a lot of the homes that older people own outright were built in the 60’s and 70’s and need constant maintenance.
I think the boomers will have a hard time extracting the wealth out of their assets to pay for retirement. High interest rates and costly repairs are just part of the problem.
As oil production shrinks. The ability to pay for these high price assets by the gen xer’s and millennials will be strained to put it mildly.
Banks will have to be willing to finance all this in order for the wealth to be extracted.
There is paper wealth. Where on paper this is what assets are worth. Most paper wealth will never be realized. Not when the energy supply used to repay debt isn’t growing or is shrinking.
We aren’t as wealthy as our asset values say we are.
As the ability to repay debt gets gutted. Wealth and value will simply disappear.
As the Baby Boomers unwind their investments for retirement who’s buying? The younger generation can’t afford to buy houses or equities. They certainly can’t maintain their own homes or higher others to. (25% of GenZ can’t replace a light bulb good job educational system) Wall Street has stepped in and mopped up a lot of inventory keeping prices high in housing and corporate buy backs are doing the same in stocks. In housing the carrying costs for insurance and taxes as well as maintenance is crushing that market. Real Estate prices are declining nationally so at some point he who panics first panics best. Just like 2008 but much worse.
Everything works great when there is an ever increasing amount of energy, people and money.
The BlackRocks of the world own a lot of rental properties. They didn’t use cash money to buy these homes. They borrowed billions to buy these properties. Just like all real estate investors do. They use borrowed money because you can control a lot more properties with borrowed money than using cash money.
And they have over paid for those properties without even knowing because future energy availability was never considered at the time of purchase. As long as rental income can cover the mortgage and maintenance and all other costs. They are ok. That can change. And it will change as the available energy to the economy shrinks.
Rent is at ridiculous levels compared 10-15years ago. Even 5 years ago.
While incomes have gone up they haven’t gone up enough to keep up.
The idea that oil prices can go to $150 or whatever price is needed and stay there so we can continue producing oil is misplaced.
Oil prices really boils down to those that are purchasing the end products made from oil and what they can afford to pay.
Your average Joe and Jane will become poorer as each and every year passes. When oil production starts declining 2% every year.
And some years that decline might be 5% or 8%. Oil revenues for oil producers are going to shrink. Which will equal less investment.
So less ability to pay for the consumer and less ability to produce for producers.
The Saudi’s canceling projects is a good example of this already happening.
Contraction is absolutely going to be painful. In so many ways.
This administrations effort to role back globalization may have both good and bad effects. Lets admit if instituted to a significant degree that it will be an accelerant of the coming contraction phase.
If so, the social contract of Medicare and SS will be shredded before too long. I think that is an unspoken part of the plan.
On the path to getting lean and mean. Very mean, and smaller.
A lot of the value of residential real estate is the value of the land it sits on. The bizarre laws of American cities strictly limit the number of residences per acre of land. Fixing that would go a long way towards fixing the problem.
Oil has nothing to do with the problem at all. It’s a cultural problem, an outdated idea kept in place by the Nash Equilibrium. A Nash Equilibrium is a suboptimal situation for everyone where no individual can improve his personal situation by changing strategy. In this case, owners of single family homes in cities resist densification because they fear declining real estate values. So everybody loses.
Because Republicans are unpopular in cities, they claim that zoning reform is a left wing idea. The current mess keeps American cities small. Suburban Americans like to pretend they are rural (e.g. by driving their kids to soccer practice in a pickup truck before heading to the mall) and buy into the anti-urban ideology. In fact they are urbanites forced to make long commutes by wrong-headed urban planning. Pretending to be rural working class is just a coping mechanism.
However, zoning reform isn’t really left wing. The biggest sinner is probably California, hell on Earth according to Fox News. California has arguably the worst land use policies in the country and is losing population because housing is so expensive.
As I’m sure you know Calif State law now gives ability to place 3 residential units on all previously zoned single residential properties, overriding all local ordinances….one primary, one attached ADU and one separate ADU.
Yeah true Hickory. But I’m sure cities will find ways to dodge the law. Also IMHO what California needs more is to replace single story retail with mixed use neighborhoods.
One of the ironies of the oh-so-smart tech bros is that they lavish perks on their employees to keep them in the office, but none of them has come up with the idea of providing the company “campus” with dormitories, which would save them two hours of commute a day. That’s thinking a little too far outside the box.
“My claim about California is based on this video”
Alimbiquated, Ray Delahanty the CityNerd is an idiot. My commute for the last 20 years of my career was from the bedroom to my office down the hall. I have 4 supermarkets, the Pacific ocean, 50 restaurants, Target and Home Depot within a mile walking distance. Professional major league teams sporting events, Disneyland and Theaters withing 15 miles or 30 minutes. And just for you, I have a bus stop linked to Orange county’s cental hub 200 feet out side my front door, our sewer water is reclaimed, bike lanes and air quality gets better every year.
Ray lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico city density of 3,000 per square mile and average home value of $370K. Surrounded by desert in every direction for 200 miles. The idiot seems to love his space and/or can’t afford to live in Alimbiquated’s mismanaged state of California. The most populated and economically suggestful state in the union. For Alimbiquate, it’s either mismanagement of water, roads, land or vehicles. It’s getting old.
“The median sale price for homes in Huntington Beach, CA is around $1.3 million, with a median listing price of $1.5 million. The median price per square foot is around $790-$825. These figures are based on recent data from sources like Realtor.com, Redfin, and Zillow. Huntington Beach has a population density of approximately 7,361.33 people per square mile. The city’s population was 198,735 in 2020”.
We don’t need to stack humans in bedrooms 4 or 5 high. We need to cut the baby making. Low income welcomes trailer trash. It’s not about home values, it’s about standard of living.
I agree with the idea of greater density, but here’s a couple of quibbles:
cities will find ways to dodge the law.
A good friend in LA has just added two ADUs to her residence. Seemed to work ok.
Also IMHO what California needs more is to replace single story retail with mixed use neighborhoods.
The traditional combination with residential is 1st floor storefronts. But there’s no demand for additional storefronts for the foreseeable future.
Huntington Beach Ray Delahanty the CityNerd is an idiot.
.. blah blah anecdotes about you
Well he may be an idiot but he does use data.
Nick G But there’s no demand for additional storefronts for the foreseeable future.
I agree. I just think that America needs to get rid of “commercial” zones where human habitation is forbidden. It seems like a better bet than fighting against home owner associations. Trying to “fix” the vast tracts of single family units is probably a lost cause.
“.. blah blah” Who in their right mind would want to live above a retail establishment ? Not myself for sure. At least if you live in a rest stop along the highway out of your car. You don’t have to carry your grocerys up stairs and trash down stairs. Where do the kids play ? In the hair salon or Liquor store. And then there is the noise. So this is your view of the American dream?
I wouldn’t even own a two story residents. Everything becomes more difficult to maintain like painting, roofing, plumbing and cleaning. I ask a friend last night why he wants to move out of his third story condo. He gave me a look like what the hell is a matter with me and said “The stairs”. Then added, the association fees are over $700 which is more than his mortgage. Then said, last year the neighbors sewage backed up into his bathroom sink and the association couldn’t get the plumbers out to fix it until they could get access to all four units at the same time. Think about that SHIT for a minute.
Nick, I wouldn’t live in LA and you can add SF to that also. Pretty much everything build before the war in the LA basin is a transportation nightmare today. A lot of the major streets are single lane and busy all the time. If the person in front of you is making a left hand turn your screwed. On top of that, there is little parking. More units per lot, just means less available parking and more traffic. More Uber just means more traffic. Plus, why do I want to sit in some loosers Corolla back sit. You may as well live in an El Salvador prison. It’s a lot cheaper. Just writting this kinda makes me yearn for the days of Covid traffic. Peak oil is looking better everyday.
“Who in their right mind would want to live above a retail establishment ?”
Well, there are 2,000,000 Parisians living within the périphérique, where the main level is commercial space with residential above it, but granted, the majority might be dans leur cerveaux gauche. Seems like a very sensible way to build a city.
Paris has a population density of ~21,000 people per Km2, so at that density, the entire global population could reside within a geographical area the size of California. Climate aside, I’d much rather live in Paris than L.A..
When I visit southern California my experience is that it would be a fantastic place to live if you got rid of the cars, as it is, not so much. I haven’t visited Europe since 2008, but I’d love to spend some extended time in Paris and see what it is like now that they are well on their way to doing just that.
Huntington Beach
I don’t care if you want to live above retail. Nobody is asking you to anyway. That is why I said it makes more sense to ignore sprawl. It’s full of busybodies like you.
It’s bizarre that you want to prevent others from living above retail. Maybe you should mind your own business instead of trying to force your lifestyle on others. So much for the land of the free.
I used to live in this building and found it very convenient to live upstairs from a bakery and a supermarket.
>> When John Mills wrote more than 150 years ago that “panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works,” he was effectively writing about the creation and subsequent elimination of the bezzle within a credit cycle.
<<>> Why the Bezzle Matters to Economics:
Minsky argued that one of the reasons mainstream economics seemed to do such a poor job of explaining modern economies was a tendency among economists to ignore money, banks, and balance sheet effects. But these elements should correctly be placed at the heart of economic analysis, he argued, and this meant, among other things, understanding how balance sheets created and destroyed value and how they lined up systemic procyclical and countercyclical tendencies across an economy.
<<
To keep it easy to understand economic stability only can occur during economic growth. Economic growth can only occur during energy growth. Everything we’re seeing happening globally can be explained in those facts. To speculate on how degrowth progresses is foolish because civilization has never been this complex before. One thing we know for sure is affordability is built on critical mass and it’s falling fast. With out enough consumption things fall apart in a hurry.
It’s sad to see such misguided thinking. For all Trump is or isn’t he’s a romantic and truly believes he can bring back the 50s and 60s when energy was growing at 8-9% annually. He represents a huge portion of Baby Boomers who dream of the good old days. Unfortunately that ship sailed and can’t be repeated. You can vilify the old man for his displaced dreams, but you really should just feel sorry for him and for everyone else who doesn’t understand the situation. Let go of emotion and embrace pragmatism. It is irrelevant who’s at the helm of a sinking ship could be a deck hand but if the captain remains it’s to his credit.
It is irrelevant who’s at the helm of a sinking ship could be a deck hand but if the captain remains it’s to his credit.
No, Trump wrecked the economy Obama built in his first term, and is wrecking the economy Biden built now.
There is a difference between competence and incompetence.
Sorry but romantics do not display the personal behavior of revengeful narcissists. Trump is no romantic and he isn’t imagining a return to the 50s and 60s. That was an era when, because of unions, the New Deal and the sacrifices of millions of Americans , working people held the greatest portion ever of any nation’s wealth. He hates all of that.
He has very specifically said his ideal is the end of the 19th century. You know; sweat shops, tenement slums and gilded mansions.
Trump would sink the entire ship of state and everyone on it if he could make a nickel on the outcome.
Economic growth can only occur during energy growth.
The average American spends $2000 to $2500 a year on fuel just to commute to work. That’s about the same amount as the per capita GDP of Bangladesh. Presumably Bangladeshis spend money on some other things, not just fuel.
Trump claims Bangladesh is “stealing jobs” from his subjects and slapped a 52% tariff on imports from the country. But another explanation could be that economic growth is shifting away from energy wasting countries to more frugal ones.
So yeah, the rapid Bangladeshi economic growth of recent years brought more energy consumption to Bangladesh, but it cut growth in America, where the economy and energy consumption are both relatively flat.
MELTING GLACIERS WILL HARM US ALL. YET STILL WE WATCH, UNMOVED — ROBIN MCKIE
“An avalanche of disruption and desecration has began to sweep the world’s upper latitudes. These should act as stark warnings about the risks that face the rest of our planet. Sadly, such alerts seem to be having little impact on humanity, which still shows few signs it is going to stop burning fossil fuels or curtail greenhouse gas emissions, the prime causes of global heating. The blight that now affects the Arctic seems destined set to spread to other lands and continents in the near future.”
Not sure how many times Wile E Coyote has been invoked to illustrate overshoot; energetic, economic and environmental— but at this time it feels concretely like we’re suspended pending the realization by the entire world that the American electorate, as evidenced by trump’s reelection, is untrustworthy. Not only untrustworthy but actually malevolent.
Just as the LTO is rolling over we have the Drill Baby who will kill any effort at transition.
Atwood and Orwell seem like optimists.
FIRMS CANCEL $8 BILLION IN RENEWABLES INVESTMENT ON TRUMP POLICIES
• U.S. clean energy firms scrapped or downsized $7.9 billion worth of projects in Q1 2025.
• Over $6 billion in canceled projects and 10,000 lost jobs have occurred in GOP-held districts as a result.
• Despite some ongoing projects, new investment pledges have slowed dramatically.
Rising market and policy uncertainties forced companies to cancel $8 billion in investments in U.S. clean energy projects in the first quarter of the year. In a dramatic surge in cancellations of projects amid the chilling effects of the Trump Administration’s trade policy and attempts to repeal part of the green energy incentives, companies have withdrawn $7.9 billion in investments since January, clean energy business group E2 said in a monthly update this week. The value of the canceled investments in the first quarter alone was more than three times the total investments canceled over the previous 30 months, E2’s project tracker showed.
“Not only untrustworthy but actually malevolent.”
Indeed. Deep seated human character traits.
Particularly bad in mob form.
Hatred and falsehood on social media is a massive tsunami, and people actually earn money for juicing it.
I’m expecting US corporates to resume massive stock buybacks. Which will flip the market and draw the CTA’s back in on the long side.
When this happens Japanese carry traders will also be chasing the market higher. None of which will happen because fundamentals changed back to risk on so buy everything because everything has been fixed.
We all know nothing has been fixed. But it doesn’t matter. Stocks are about momentum changing and chasing.
I’m thinking we will likely see new all time stock prices before our energy reality really starts to set in and is clear to everyone.
It’s just going to be hard for this market to continue going down when the largest two buyers of stocks. Which are the corporates and the retirement funds aren’t participating in the sell off.
The two largest buyers of stocks actually have a lot of ground to make up because they have lost value and will be looking to make up lost ground.
I read about plans to establish a Texas Stock Exchange in Dallas. Is this a sign of the times, a harbinger of a split in the Union, say into a group of progressive and a group of conservative states?
The US as an entity is rapidly losing credibility on the international stage. In the areas of diplomacy and relations with allies, human rights, science, national debt, separation of powers, freedom of speech, … in short, everything that made America great.
If I ‘follow the money’, this feels like some are anticipating a major event.
It would be a very hard split to achieve in Texas, and in most states.
For example in Texas if you take the top 5 counties of GDP, 4 of the 5 voted for Harris rather than Trump.
And those 4 counties comprise roughly 38% of the state population and over 50% of the state GDP.
There is a very difficult patchwork in the US…difficult to split up cleanly or I suspect it would have already happened years ago.
Maybe you are correct and the US will find a way to split up… in a very difficult way.
I agree with your observations about credibility, and worthiness. The culture is in tatters.
UPDATE 3-RTX cautions $850 million hit from Trump’s tariffs over 2025, shares fall
10:54:29 AM ET, 04/22/2025 – Reuters
(Recasts headline, first paragraph with shares)
By Utkarsh Shetti and Mike Stone
April 22 (Reuters) – RTX on Tuesday cautioned that U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs could chip away $850 million from its 2025 profits, sending its shares down 8.5%, even as it beat expectations for quarterly results and reaffirmed its full-year forecasts.
It arrived at the figure on assumptions that customers do not change buying habits, Canada, Mexico, steel and aluminum tariffs remain at 25%, China tariffs remain at 145% and global reciprocal tariffs remain at 10%.
The aerospace and defense major has benefited from steady demand for parts and maintenance as airlines fly aging fleets amid jet production delays, even as broader market uncertainty grows due to Trump’s trade war and ongoing supply chain challenges.
SOARING INSURANCE COSTS TOP CONCERN FOR FLORIDIANS
“More than two-thirds of Floridians are moderately or extremely concerned about hurricanes increasing in strength and frequency, according to a new Florida Atlantic University survey. The Invading Sea’s Florida Climate Survey also found that most Floridians—54%—are worried about being able to afford and maintain homeowners insurance due to climate change. According to a 2023 report by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the average premiums for Florida homeowners rose nearly 60% between 2015 and 2023, the largest increase in any state.”
“Utility-scale solar power capacity in China reached more than 880 gigawatts (GW) in 2024, according to China’s National Energy Administration. China has more utility-scale solar than any other country. The 277 GW of utility-scale solar capacity installed in China in 2024 alone…”
Just to be clear these numbers are electrical generation Capacity…to get annual output you multiple by the capacity factor (CF), which for utility scale solar is reliably 20-25% if you deploy it in a sunny area.
Lets say 20% CF to be unenthusiastic about it-
so last year 2024 China installed 277 GW x 0.2 = 55 GW
which gives annual electricity output equivalent to 61 Nuclear Power Plants of the 1000MW size running without glitch (meaning a 90% CF).
btw- China commissioned zero nuclear plants in 2024.
For context-
“The Three Gorges Dam has a total installed capacity of 22.5 GW, making it the world’s largest hydroelectric power station.”
So the additional PV installed in China in 2024 produces more than twice the electricity of the Three Gorges Dam on an annual basis. The dam took 17 years to build and locations with this potential are rare to find.
The Grand Coulee Dam is rated at 6.8 GW.
The Trump administration response is to escalate sanctions on Chinese PV, in order for this country to achieve fossil fuel depletion at a more accelerated pace than is otherwise possible, and feasible.
Every time they build a new windmill, chances are a bitcoin miner takes the power to solve puzzles for nothing. How many windmills do you guys think are spinning hashes for nothing?
Check out this article from reddit.com/r/cryptoreality
The Real Worth of Bitcoin is Around Negative $1,776
Bitcoin has long been hailed as digital gold, a revolutionary store of value beyond the control of governments or central banks. But beyond the hype, when you strip Bitcoin down to its economic fundamentals, a stark reality emerges: Bitcoin doesn’t store value, it destroys it. That’s because Bitcoin cannot produce output in the form of future economic benefits, yet it requires inputs. Based on its history of energy consumption and total supply, the actual worth of a single Bitcoin is approximately negative $1,776.
This figure comes from a straightforward analysis. Bitcoin mining has consumed around 700 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity from its inception through April 2025. Using a conservative global average electricity price of $0.05 per kilowatt-hour, that equates to roughly $35 billion in cumulative energy costs. With around 19.7 million Bitcoins mined to date, the average cost of electricity per Bitcoin comes to about $1,776. And this is just the energy cost. It excludes inputs like hardware, infrastructure, labor, and cooling. That means Bitcoin does not just have no intrinsic value, it has a negative intrinsic value.
Assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, or fiat currencies also require inputs, but they can produce future economic benefits. Stocks yield dividends or liquidation value, while bonds yield principal and interest. Metals produce physical utility, oil produces energy. Software or machinery can be used as productive tools. Dollars, because they are issued as debt owed to the U.S. banking system, settle liabilities to that system, and thus can produce future economic benefits for debtors. Bitcoin does none of this. It is simply an object with embedded resource costs and no output.
Some argue that if governments declared Bitcoin legal tender, it would gain legitimacy and value. But this misunderstands what legal tender status actually does. Legal tender means a government agrees to accept something in payment of taxes, but it does not transform the underlying economic nature of that thing. The government could declare cows, shells, or marbles legal tender, but if those objects do not produce future economic benefit, their underlying value remains unchanged. Legal tender status is not alchemy. It cannot turn an object with no economic output into an asset. It merely forces a temporary transactional role onto something structurally unfit for it.
In this light, Bitcoin is not just a speculative object, but also a value-destructive one. It burns real resources to create something that offers no offsetting utility, profit, or system function. It does not store value, it stores loss. And when the speculative momentum fades, holders will be left not with digital gold, but with digital ash, objects that cost thousands to create and are economically worth less than nothing. It is economic lunacy to pay $80,000 for something that is worth less than negative $1,776.
Absolutely
Welcome to extend pretend and deceive. Fake it till you make it. Bitcoin as it reaches its preprogrammed limit either goes to infinity or zero. Which are the same. But it been a great way to increase CO2 with no benefit.
What is Trump’s end game with these investigations?
Thanks DC, back at you
The rise of end times fascism
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
Inspired by a warped reading of the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies.
One might assume that it is contradictory for Trump, elected on a flag-waving “America first” platform, to lend credence to this vision of sovereign territories ruled over by billionaire god-kings. And much has been made of the colorful flame wars between the Maga mouth-piece Steve Bannon, a proud nationalist and populist, and the Trump-allied billionaires he has attacked as “technofeudalists” who “don’t give a flying fuck about the human being” – let alone the nation state. And conflicts inside Trump’s awkward, jerry-rigged coalition certainly exist, most recently reaching a boiling point over tariffs. Still, the underlying visions might not be as incompatible as they first appear.
The startup country contingent is clearly foreseeing a future marked by shocks, scarcity and collapse. Their high-tech private domains are essentially fortressed escape pods, designed for the select few to take advantage of every possible luxury and opportunity for human optimization, giving them and their children an edge in an increasingly barbarous future. To put it bluntly, the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.
“In many places, endangered sea turtles are bouncing back. A survey of turtle researchers in 50 countries found that on average, numbers of nesting females have increased since 2011, and threats such as hunting, pollution and habitat loss are declining in more than half of the regions analysed. Still, things are getting worse in some locations, with the biggest problem being entanglement in fishing nets. “Overall, the sea turtle story is one of the real conservation success stories,” says ecologist Stuart Pimm.”
Trump getting ready to capitulate to Russia on Ukraine and China on tariff/trade.
He makes for a lame bully. Watch out…he’ll try to take out his international failures on home citizens,
as a spiteful delinquent punk..
10 years ago many environmentalists were saying that solar and wind power were getting so cheap that coal mines and power stations in India and China would become stranded assets.
Some people will never understand the value of a power source that can be stored for years and burnt at 4pm or 2am to produce exactly the power needed. They equally refuse to understand the cost of battery backup or the cost of producing hydrogen to store for use mainly in winter.
China and India burn 5.8 billion tonnes in a year. As much as Great Britain in 1,200 years. No amount of tree planting can undo this damage.
And the truth is found in between…with the current global electrical grid being a mixed source system in most countries, and it will be indefinitely.
1997: Coal accounted for 53% of US electricity generation.
2023: Coal accounted for 16% of US electricity generation.
I agree, nothing undoes the damage of the last 10,000 years and now 8.2 billion people.
UK is 1/40th size of India and China, and is no longer much of an industrial engine as are China and India. That comparison is not too relevant.
Many environmentalists said that wind and solar are getting so cheap that coal mines and power stations in CHINA AND INDIA would become stranded assets.
What an ignorant comment about Great Britain. You obviously have no idea what is manufactured in the U.K.
If China burnt the same amount of coal as The U.K. as a proportion of the population then it would be burning 2.4 billion tonnes less coal. If India burnt as much coal as a proportion of GDP then it would be burning 50 million tonnes of coal and not 1,000 million tonnes.
When I was born in the middle of WW2, the UK was the fourth manufacturing power of the world, ranking after the USA, USSR, and Germany. After the war, the UK remained fourth, then fifth with Japan’s rise in the rankings. But then came Margaret Thatcher; now the UK is twelfth.
Thatcher hated working class people, probably because she was one.
She hated any idea of a social society, selling council houses, millions ended up owned by professional property managers. Charging high rents often paid by tax payers, before low paid workers did not need working tax credits etc because their housing costs were low.
She hated nationalised industries and thought privatisation would make everything wonderful. We know how great the privatised water companies are. Raw sewage pouring into our rivers and lakes while bonuses of £2.4 billion have been handed out to these crooks.
Walmart is currently cutting prices on thousands of items in the face of tariffs. Walmart is telling us that they can’t pass on higher prices to the consumer.
Cutting prices sounds deflationary. Because it is.
But hey, as long as stocks turn around and go higher all is well right?
Years ago I read an essay on the UK manufacturing being a loss leader entity. Meaning that the industrial manufacturing of things whether textile or heavy industry was never the center of wealth creation or even profit for that matter. The manufacturing sector only facilitated the banking and market making sectors. Basically the industrial manufacturing operated as a subsistence level business.
If you think about things from that lens then the rust belt fly over states make sense. They were never the driver of wealth only the facilitators.
My point is China is about to learn that lesson as possibly Germany is learning now. It’s not what you make that matters it’s who controls the markets that matters.
With that in mind now ask yourself how important is the Eurodollar?
That is a frightening idea. I suppose as long as the share holders could move the manufacturing somewhere cheaper than where things were manufactured did not matter. Now companies are starting to move out of China to India, Vietnam etc.
When I was born in the middle of WW2, the UK was the fourth manufacturing power of the world, ranking after the USA, USSR, and Germany. After the war, the UK remained fourth, then fifth with Japan’s rise in the rankings. But then came Margaret Thatcher; now the UK is twelfth.
The first industrial economy to develop was the UK built on mountains of coal and iron ore. Not political will or technical savy. As these resources declined in affordability so went the economic base that revolved around them. The US has experienced the same outcome. Once the greatest country on earth for abundant easily accessible resources it built an economy that was the envy of the world. Those days are gone and can’t return it’s just physics. Politicians who tell you otherwise are just lying.
Money isn’t true wealth. Prosperous civilizations are built on the personal productivity of its individual citizens. When abundant resources are available at low cost personal productivity grows and the social contract is preserved. When resources stop being affordable and start declining so does personal productivity and the social contract breaks down. Think about the riots in the US in the 70s or the years of Troubles in the UK. Now it’s going global.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14622137/Trump-golden-dome-missile-plan-revealed.html
Trump to build Golden Dome missile shield with Elon Musks SpaceX..
Isn’t this similar to the Star Wars program from Reagan.
This seems like a conflict of interest.
Reposting from last thread.
Golden Dome was probably Trump’s second choice for a name after the Trump Dome
His Dome will be bigger than Israel’s Dome. Just like his missile is bigger than Kim Jong Un’s missile.
Marco Rubio read 1984 and thought “Hold my banana daiquiri”?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14628017/how-trump-win-bougainville-america-deal.html
Trump wants to seize tropical island full of GOLD!
Mr. Trump is on FIRE!!!!!!
This is BIGLY!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBtki9-U0Y8
12 minutes
“The Boondoggle of all Boondoggles”
Musk will own the system, as a subscription service, and can use it on anyone he wants!!!!!!!!
Good article on bezzle that is running wild in the global economies and how it artificially inflates GDP. Makes it seem that GDP is de carbonizing which isn’t true. Just a phony economy.
https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets/2021/08/why-the-bezzle-matters-to-the-economy?lang=en
Residential real estate in the US has a value of about $57 trillion. To afford the average home you need an income of about $116,000. Unfortunately the average income in the US is $67,000.
Which makes housing at nosebleed unaffordable records.
Right now nobody can afford to sell and trade their 3% mortgage for a new 7% mortgage. Not at the current average home price of $420,000 So many are stuck where they currently are.
I think we already know net energy has peaked. Even though the concept is hard to measure. But when the actual physical supply of oil starts it’s inevitable average yearly decline. Debts are going to be defaulted on everywhere you look and prices are going to fall.
This is roughly what it looks like:
Rate Range % of Outstanding Mortgages Estimated Outstanding Debt (USD)
Below 3% 22.2% ~$2.80 trillion
3% to 4% 35.9% ~$4.53 trillion
4% to 5% 18.9% ~$2.38 trillion
5% to 6% 9.7% ~$1.22 trillion
6% > 13.2% ~$1.67 trillion
Total 100% ~$12.61 trillion
Formatting is difficult….
A lot of older people that own their homes outright in the $57 trillion figure. At some point these people will liquidate their assets to the next generation.
All the assets will eventually be sold to the next generation. Which means a lot more new loans will need to be created. And a lot of the homes that older people own outright were built in the 60’s and 70’s and need constant maintenance.
I think the boomers will have a hard time extracting the wealth out of their assets to pay for retirement. High interest rates and costly repairs are just part of the problem.
As oil production shrinks. The ability to pay for these high price assets by the gen xer’s and millennials will be strained to put it mildly.
Banks will have to be willing to finance all this in order for the wealth to be extracted.
There is paper wealth. Where on paper this is what assets are worth. Most paper wealth will never be realized. Not when the energy supply used to repay debt isn’t growing or is shrinking.
We aren’t as wealthy as our asset values say we are.
As the ability to repay debt gets gutted. Wealth and value will simply disappear.
As the Baby Boomers unwind their investments for retirement who’s buying? The younger generation can’t afford to buy houses or equities. They certainly can’t maintain their own homes or higher others to. (25% of GenZ can’t replace a light bulb good job educational system) Wall Street has stepped in and mopped up a lot of inventory keeping prices high in housing and corporate buy backs are doing the same in stocks. In housing the carrying costs for insurance and taxes as well as maintenance is crushing that market. Real Estate prices are declining nationally so at some point he who panics first panics best. Just like 2008 but much worse.
HHH
Bricks and mortar and land are good investments in a world with an increasing population.
Many rich people, the top 5% have billions to invest and they buy properties to let.
There are 20 million rental properties in the U.S.
Loadsofoil,
Everything works great when there is an ever increasing amount of energy, people and money.
The BlackRocks of the world own a lot of rental properties. They didn’t use cash money to buy these homes. They borrowed billions to buy these properties. Just like all real estate investors do. They use borrowed money because you can control a lot more properties with borrowed money than using cash money.
And they have over paid for those properties without even knowing because future energy availability was never considered at the time of purchase. As long as rental income can cover the mortgage and maintenance and all other costs. They are ok. That can change. And it will change as the available energy to the economy shrinks.
Rent is at ridiculous levels compared 10-15years ago. Even 5 years ago.
While incomes have gone up they haven’t gone up enough to keep up.
The idea that oil prices can go to $150 or whatever price is needed and stay there so we can continue producing oil is misplaced.
Oil prices really boils down to those that are purchasing the end products made from oil and what they can afford to pay.
Your average Joe and Jane will become poorer as each and every year passes. When oil production starts declining 2% every year.
And some years that decline might be 5% or 8%. Oil revenues for oil producers are going to shrink. Which will equal less investment.
So less ability to pay for the consumer and less ability to produce for producers.
The Saudi’s canceling projects is a good example of this already happening.
Contraction is absolutely going to be painful. In so many ways.
This administrations effort to role back globalization may have both good and bad effects. Lets admit if instituted to a significant degree that it will be an accelerant of the coming contraction phase.
If so, the social contract of Medicare and SS will be shredded before too long. I think that is an unspoken part of the plan.
On the path to getting lean and mean. Very mean, and smaller.
A lot of the value of residential real estate is the value of the land it sits on. The bizarre laws of American cities strictly limit the number of residences per acre of land. Fixing that would go a long way towards fixing the problem.
Oil has nothing to do with the problem at all. It’s a cultural problem, an outdated idea kept in place by the Nash Equilibrium. A Nash Equilibrium is a suboptimal situation for everyone where no individual can improve his personal situation by changing strategy. In this case, owners of single family homes in cities resist densification because they fear declining real estate values. So everybody loses.
Because Republicans are unpopular in cities, they claim that zoning reform is a left wing idea. The current mess keeps American cities small. Suburban Americans like to pretend they are rural (e.g. by driving their kids to soccer practice in a pickup truck before heading to the mall) and buy into the anti-urban ideology. In fact they are urbanites forced to make long commutes by wrong-headed urban planning. Pretending to be rural working class is just a coping mechanism.
However, zoning reform isn’t really left wing. The biggest sinner is probably California, hell on Earth according to Fox News. California has arguably the worst land use policies in the country and is losing population because housing is so expensive.
As I’m sure you know Calif State law now gives ability to place 3 residential units on all previously zoned single residential properties, overriding all local ordinances….one primary, one attached ADU and one separate ADU.
Yeah true Hickory. But I’m sure cities will find ways to dodge the law. Also IMHO what California needs more is to replace single story retail with mixed use neighborhoods.
One of the ironies of the oh-so-smart tech bros is that they lavish perks on their employees to keep them in the office, but none of them has come up with the idea of providing the company “campus” with dormitories, which would save them two hours of commute a day. That’s thinking a little too far outside the box.
My claim about California is based on this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ4T_BHFgt0
“My claim about California is based on this video”
Alimbiquated, Ray Delahanty the CityNerd is an idiot. My commute for the last 20 years of my career was from the bedroom to my office down the hall. I have 4 supermarkets, the Pacific ocean, 50 restaurants, Target and Home Depot within a mile walking distance. Professional major league teams sporting events, Disneyland and Theaters withing 15 miles or 30 minutes. And just for you, I have a bus stop linked to Orange county’s cental hub 200 feet out side my front door, our sewer water is reclaimed, bike lanes and air quality gets better every year.
Ray lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico city density of 3,000 per square mile and average home value of $370K. Surrounded by desert in every direction for 200 miles. The idiot seems to love his space and/or can’t afford to live in Alimbiquated’s mismanaged state of California. The most populated and economically suggestful state in the union. For Alimbiquate, it’s either mismanagement of water, roads, land or vehicles. It’s getting old.
“The median sale price for homes in Huntington Beach, CA is around $1.3 million, with a median listing price of $1.5 million. The median price per square foot is around $790-$825. These figures are based on recent data from sources like Realtor.com, Redfin, and Zillow. Huntington Beach has a population density of approximately 7,361.33 people per square mile. The city’s population was 198,735 in 2020”.
We don’t need to stack humans in bedrooms 4 or 5 high. We need to cut the baby making. Low income welcomes trailer trash. It’s not about home values, it’s about standard of living.
I agree with the idea of greater density, but here’s a couple of quibbles:
cities will find ways to dodge the law.
A good friend in LA has just added two ADUs to her residence. Seemed to work ok.
Also IMHO what California needs more is to replace single story retail with mixed use neighborhoods.
The traditional combination with residential is 1st floor storefronts. But there’s no demand for additional storefronts for the foreseeable future.
Huntington Beach
Ray Delahanty the CityNerd is an idiot.
.. blah blah anecdotes about you
Well he may be an idiot but he does use data.
Nick G
But there’s no demand for additional storefronts for the foreseeable future.
I agree. I just think that America needs to get rid of “commercial” zones where human habitation is forbidden. It seems like a better bet than fighting against home owner associations. Trying to “fix” the vast tracts of single family units is probably a lost cause.
“.. blah blah” Who in their right mind would want to live above a retail establishment ? Not myself for sure. At least if you live in a rest stop along the highway out of your car. You don’t have to carry your grocerys up stairs and trash down stairs. Where do the kids play ? In the hair salon or Liquor store. And then there is the noise. So this is your view of the American dream?
I wouldn’t even own a two story residents. Everything becomes more difficult to maintain like painting, roofing, plumbing and cleaning. I ask a friend last night why he wants to move out of his third story condo. He gave me a look like what the hell is a matter with me and said “The stairs”. Then added, the association fees are over $700 which is more than his mortgage. Then said, last year the neighbors sewage backed up into his bathroom sink and the association couldn’t get the plumbers out to fix it until they could get access to all four units at the same time. Think about that SHIT for a minute.
Nick, I wouldn’t live in LA and you can add SF to that also. Pretty much everything build before the war in the LA basin is a transportation nightmare today. A lot of the major streets are single lane and busy all the time. If the person in front of you is making a left hand turn your screwed. On top of that, there is little parking. More units per lot, just means less available parking and more traffic. More Uber just means more traffic. Plus, why do I want to sit in some loosers Corolla back sit. You may as well live in an El Salvador prison. It’s a lot cheaper. Just writting this kinda makes me yearn for the days of Covid traffic. Peak oil is looking better everyday.
“Who in their right mind would want to live above a retail establishment ?”
Well, there are 2,000,000 Parisians living within the périphérique, where the main level is commercial space with residential above it, but granted, the majority might be dans leur cerveaux gauche. Seems like a very sensible way to build a city.
Paris has a population density of ~21,000 people per Km2, so at that density, the entire global population could reside within a geographical area the size of California. Climate aside, I’d much rather live in Paris than L.A..
When I visit southern California my experience is that it would be a fantastic place to live if you got rid of the cars, as it is, not so much. I haven’t visited Europe since 2008, but I’d love to spend some extended time in Paris and see what it is like now that they are well on their way to doing just that.
Huntington Beach
I don’t care if you want to live above retail. Nobody is asking you to anyway. That is why I said it makes more sense to ignore sprawl. It’s full of busybodies like you.
It’s bizarre that you want to prevent others from living above retail. Maybe you should mind your own business instead of trying to force your lifestyle on others. So much for the land of the free.
I used to live in this building and found it very convenient to live upstairs from a bakery and a supermarket.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fVmgre5ffmDzqXTo8
It’s not about you.
I learnt a new word today: bezzle.
https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets/2021/08/why-the-bezzle-matters-to-the-economy?lang=en
>> When John Mills wrote more than 150 years ago that “panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works,” he was effectively writing about the creation and subsequent elimination of the bezzle within a credit cycle.
<<>> Why the Bezzle Matters to Economics:
Minsky argued that one of the reasons mainstream economics seemed to do such a poor job of explaining modern economies was a tendency among economists to ignore money, banks, and balance sheet effects. But these elements should correctly be placed at the heart of economic analysis, he argued, and this meant, among other things, understanding how balance sheets created and destroyed value and how they lined up systemic procyclical and countercyclical tendencies across an economy.
<<
To keep it easy to understand economic stability only can occur during economic growth. Economic growth can only occur during energy growth. Everything we’re seeing happening globally can be explained in those facts. To speculate on how degrowth progresses is foolish because civilization has never been this complex before. One thing we know for sure is affordability is built on critical mass and it’s falling fast. With out enough consumption things fall apart in a hurry.
“A power-drunk and demented president gone rogue defies the rule of law”
“economic stability”?
It’s sad to see such misguided thinking. For all Trump is or isn’t he’s a romantic and truly believes he can bring back the 50s and 60s when energy was growing at 8-9% annually. He represents a huge portion of Baby Boomers who dream of the good old days. Unfortunately that ship sailed and can’t be repeated. You can vilify the old man for his displaced dreams, but you really should just feel sorry for him and for everyone else who doesn’t understand the situation. Let go of emotion and embrace pragmatism. It is irrelevant who’s at the helm of a sinking ship could be a deck hand but if the captain remains it’s to his credit.
It is irrelevant who’s at the helm of a sinking ship could be a deck hand but if the captain remains it’s to his credit.
No, Trump wrecked the economy Obama built in his first term, and is wrecking the economy Biden built now.
There is a difference between competence and incompetence.
Sorry but romantics do not display the personal behavior of revengeful narcissists. Trump is no romantic and he isn’t imagining a return to the 50s and 60s. That was an era when, because of unions, the New Deal and the sacrifices of millions of Americans , working people held the greatest portion ever of any nation’s wealth. He hates all of that.
He has very specifically said his ideal is the end of the 19th century. You know; sweat shops, tenement slums and gilded mansions.
Trump would sink the entire ship of state and everyone on it if he could make a nickel on the outcome.
Economic growth can only occur during energy growth.
The average American spends $2000 to $2500 a year on fuel just to commute to work. That’s about the same amount as the per capita GDP of Bangladesh. Presumably Bangladeshis spend money on some other things, not just fuel.
Trump claims Bangladesh is “stealing jobs” from his subjects and slapped a 52% tariff on imports from the country. But another explanation could be that economic growth is shifting away from energy wasting countries to more frugal ones.
So yeah, the rapid Bangladeshi economic growth of recent years brought more energy consumption to Bangladesh, but it cut growth in America, where the economy and energy consumption are both relatively flat.
MELTING GLACIERS WILL HARM US ALL. YET STILL WE WATCH, UNMOVED — ROBIN MCKIE
“An avalanche of disruption and desecration has began to sweep the world’s upper latitudes. These should act as stark warnings about the risks that face the rest of our planet. Sadly, such alerts seem to be having little impact on humanity, which still shows few signs it is going to stop burning fossil fuels or curtail greenhouse gas emissions, the prime causes of global heating. The blight that now affects the Arctic seems destined set to spread to other lands and continents in the near future.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/20/melting-glaciers-will-harm-us-all-yet-still-we-watch-unmoved
Not sure how many times Wile E Coyote has been invoked to illustrate overshoot; energetic, economic and environmental— but at this time it feels concretely like we’re suspended pending the realization by the entire world that the American electorate, as evidenced by trump’s reelection, is untrustworthy. Not only untrustworthy but actually malevolent.
Just as the LTO is rolling over we have the Drill Baby who will kill any effort at transition.
Atwood and Orwell seem like optimists.
POPS — Yeah, odd way to get off fossil fuels!
FIRMS CANCEL $8 BILLION IN RENEWABLES INVESTMENT ON TRUMP POLICIES
• U.S. clean energy firms scrapped or downsized $7.9 billion worth of projects in Q1 2025.
• Over $6 billion in canceled projects and 10,000 lost jobs have occurred in GOP-held districts as a result.
• Despite some ongoing projects, new investment pledges have slowed dramatically.
Rising market and policy uncertainties forced companies to cancel $8 billion in investments in U.S. clean energy projects in the first quarter of the year. In a dramatic surge in cancellations of projects amid the chilling effects of the Trump Administration’s trade policy and attempts to repeal part of the green energy incentives, companies have withdrawn $7.9 billion in investments since January, clean energy business group E2 said in a monthly update this week. The value of the canceled investments in the first quarter alone was more than three times the total investments canceled over the previous 30 months, E2’s project tracker showed.
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Firms-Cancel-8-Billion-in-Renewables-Investment-on-Trump-Policies.html
“Not only untrustworthy but actually malevolent.”
Indeed. Deep seated human character traits.
Particularly bad in mob form.
Hatred and falsehood on social media is a massive tsunami, and people actually earn money for juicing it.
I’m expecting US corporates to resume massive stock buybacks. Which will flip the market and draw the CTA’s back in on the long side.
When this happens Japanese carry traders will also be chasing the market higher. None of which will happen because fundamentals changed back to risk on so buy everything because everything has been fixed.
We all know nothing has been fixed. But it doesn’t matter. Stocks are about momentum changing and chasing.
I’m thinking we will likely see new all time stock prices before our energy reality really starts to set in and is clear to everyone.
It’s just going to be hard for this market to continue going down when the largest two buyers of stocks. Which are the corporates and the retirement funds aren’t participating in the sell off.
The two largest buyers of stocks actually have a lot of ground to make up because they have lost value and will be looking to make up lost ground.
I read about plans to establish a Texas Stock Exchange in Dallas. Is this a sign of the times, a harbinger of a split in the Union, say into a group of progressive and a group of conservative states?
The US as an entity is rapidly losing credibility on the international stage. In the areas of diplomacy and relations with allies, human rights, science, national debt, separation of powers, freedom of speech, … in short, everything that made America great.
If I ‘follow the money’, this feels like some are anticipating a major event.
It would be a very hard split to achieve in Texas, and in most states.
For example in Texas if you take the top 5 counties of GDP, 4 of the 5 voted for Harris rather than Trump.
And those 4 counties comprise roughly 38% of the state population and over 50% of the state GDP.
There is a very difficult patchwork in the US…difficult to split up cleanly or I suspect it would have already happened years ago.
Maybe you are correct and the US will find a way to split up… in a very difficult way.
I agree with your observations about credibility, and worthiness. The culture is in tatters.
UPDATE 3-RTX cautions $850 million hit from Trump’s tariffs over 2025, shares fall
10:54:29 AM ET, 04/22/2025 – Reuters
(Recasts headline, first paragraph with shares)
By Utkarsh Shetti and Mike Stone
April 22 (Reuters) – RTX on Tuesday cautioned that U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs could chip away $850 million from its 2025 profits, sending its shares down 8.5%, even as it beat expectations for quarterly results and reaffirmed its full-year forecasts.
It arrived at the figure on assumptions that customers do not change buying habits, Canada, Mexico, steel and aluminum tariffs remain at 25%, China tariffs remain at 145% and global reciprocal tariffs remain at 10%.
The aerospace and defense major has benefited from steady demand for parts and maintenance as airlines fly aging fleets amid jet production delays, even as broader market uncertainty grows due to Trump’s trade war and ongoing supply chain challenges.
SOARING INSURANCE COSTS TOP CONCERN FOR FLORIDIANS
“More than two-thirds of Floridians are moderately or extremely concerned about hurricanes increasing in strength and frequency, according to a new Florida Atlantic University survey. The Invading Sea’s Florida Climate Survey also found that most Floridians—54%—are worried about being able to afford and maintain homeowners insurance due to climate change. According to a 2023 report by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the average premiums for Florida homeowners rose nearly 60% between 2015 and 2023, the largest increase in any state.”
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-soaring-floridians-survey.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J6pgrVd8-8
5 minutes
Trump, real estate genius, has royally f****d up real estate with his tariffs and deportation
“Utility-scale solar power capacity in China reached more than 880 gigawatts (GW) in 2024, according to China’s National Energy Administration. China has more utility-scale solar than any other country. The 277 GW of utility-scale solar capacity installed in China in 2024 alone…”
Just to be clear these numbers are electrical generation Capacity…to get annual output you multiple by the capacity factor (CF), which for utility scale solar is reliably 20-25% if you deploy it in a sunny area.
Lets say 20% CF to be unenthusiastic about it-
so last year 2024 China installed 277 GW x 0.2 = 55 GW
which gives annual electricity output equivalent to 61 Nuclear Power Plants of the 1000MW size running without glitch (meaning a 90% CF).
btw- China commissioned zero nuclear plants in 2024.
For context-
“The Three Gorges Dam has a total installed capacity of 22.5 GW, making it the world’s largest hydroelectric power station.”
So the additional PV installed in China in 2024 produces more than twice the electricity of the Three Gorges Dam on an annual basis. The dam took 17 years to build and locations with this potential are rare to find.
The Grand Coulee Dam is rated at 6.8 GW.
The Trump administration response is to escalate sanctions on Chinese PV, in order for this country to achieve fossil fuel depletion at a more accelerated pace than is otherwise possible, and feasible.
Every time they build a new windmill, chances are a bitcoin miner takes the power to solve puzzles for nothing. How many windmills do you guys think are spinning hashes for nothing?
Check out this article from reddit.com/r/cryptoreality
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoReality/comments/1k45tet/the_real_worth_of_bitcoin_is_around_negative_1776/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The Real Worth of Bitcoin is Around Negative $1,776
Bitcoin has long been hailed as digital gold, a revolutionary store of value beyond the control of governments or central banks. But beyond the hype, when you strip Bitcoin down to its economic fundamentals, a stark reality emerges: Bitcoin doesn’t store value, it destroys it. That’s because Bitcoin cannot produce output in the form of future economic benefits, yet it requires inputs. Based on its history of energy consumption and total supply, the actual worth of a single Bitcoin is approximately negative $1,776.
This figure comes from a straightforward analysis. Bitcoin mining has consumed around 700 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity from its inception through April 2025. Using a conservative global average electricity price of $0.05 per kilowatt-hour, that equates to roughly $35 billion in cumulative energy costs. With around 19.7 million Bitcoins mined to date, the average cost of electricity per Bitcoin comes to about $1,776. And this is just the energy cost. It excludes inputs like hardware, infrastructure, labor, and cooling. That means Bitcoin does not just have no intrinsic value, it has a negative intrinsic value.
Assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, or fiat currencies also require inputs, but they can produce future economic benefits. Stocks yield dividends or liquidation value, while bonds yield principal and interest. Metals produce physical utility, oil produces energy. Software or machinery can be used as productive tools. Dollars, because they are issued as debt owed to the U.S. banking system, settle liabilities to that system, and thus can produce future economic benefits for debtors. Bitcoin does none of this. It is simply an object with embedded resource costs and no output.
Some argue that if governments declared Bitcoin legal tender, it would gain legitimacy and value. But this misunderstands what legal tender status actually does. Legal tender means a government agrees to accept something in payment of taxes, but it does not transform the underlying economic nature of that thing. The government could declare cows, shells, or marbles legal tender, but if those objects do not produce future economic benefit, their underlying value remains unchanged. Legal tender status is not alchemy. It cannot turn an object with no economic output into an asset. It merely forces a temporary transactional role onto something structurally unfit for it.
In this light, Bitcoin is not just a speculative object, but also a value-destructive one. It burns real resources to create something that offers no offsetting utility, profit, or system function. It does not store value, it stores loss. And when the speculative momentum fades, holders will be left not with digital gold, but with digital ash, objects that cost thousands to create and are economically worth less than nothing. It is economic lunacy to pay $80,000 for something that is worth less than negative $1,776.
Absolutely
Welcome to extend pretend and deceive. Fake it till you make it. Bitcoin as it reaches its preprogrammed limit either goes to infinity or zero. Which are the same. But it been a great way to increase CO2 with no benefit.
Ah, but what about the value to kidnappers and computer ransomware artists, who can hide their ill-gotten gains?
Surely we can romanticize them as gangstas and pirates…
Bitcoin, the tulip of the Trump tribe.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2025/04/10/miles-taylor-chris-krebs-trump-order-investigation/83025618007/
What is Trump’s end game with these investigations?
Thanks DC, back at you
The rise of end times fascism
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
Inspired by a warped reading of the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies.
One might assume that it is contradictory for Trump, elected on a flag-waving “America first” platform, to lend credence to this vision of sovereign territories ruled over by billionaire god-kings. And much has been made of the colorful flame wars between the Maga mouth-piece Steve Bannon, a proud nationalist and populist, and the Trump-allied billionaires he has attacked as “technofeudalists” who “don’t give a flying fuck about the human being” – let alone the nation state. And conflicts inside Trump’s awkward, jerry-rigged coalition certainly exist, most recently reaching a boiling point over tariffs. Still, the underlying visions might not be as incompatible as they first appear.
The startup country contingent is clearly foreseeing a future marked by shocks, scarcity and collapse. Their high-tech private domains are essentially fortressed escape pods, designed for the select few to take advantage of every possible luxury and opportunity for human optimization, giving them and their children an edge in an increasingly barbarous future. To put it bluntly, the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
Trump’s End-Times Fascism | Naomi Klein | TMR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw7nMKN7Bfc&t=11s
@hadara69
4 days ago
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
~Blaise Pascal
A rare bit of good news!
TURTLES ARE CRAWLING BACK FROM THE BRINK
“In many places, endangered sea turtles are bouncing back. A survey of turtle researchers in 50 countries found that on average, numbers of nesting females have increased since 2011, and threats such as hunting, pollution and habitat loss are declining in more than half of the regions analysed. Still, things are getting worse in some locations, with the biggest problem being entanglement in fishing nets. “Overall, the sea turtle story is one of the real conservation success stories,” says ecologist Stuart Pimm.”
https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/AAFH8jNeudMQaAksXwAbWMXKE2c
Trump getting ready to capitulate to Russia on Ukraine and China on tariff/trade.
He makes for a lame bully. Watch out…he’ll try to take out his international failures on home citizens,
as a spiteful delinquent punk..
10 years ago many environmentalists were saying that solar and wind power were getting so cheap that coal mines and power stations in India and China would become stranded assets.
https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2118788
Some people will never understand the value of a power source that can be stored for years and burnt at 4pm or 2am to produce exactly the power needed. They equally refuse to understand the cost of battery backup or the cost of producing hydrogen to store for use mainly in winter.
China and India burn 5.8 billion tonnes in a year. As much as Great Britain in 1,200 years. No amount of tree planting can undo this damage.
And the truth is found in between…with the current global electrical grid being a mixed source system in most countries, and it will be indefinitely.
1997: Coal accounted for 53% of US electricity generation.
2023: Coal accounted for 16% of US electricity generation.
I agree, nothing undoes the damage of the last 10,000 years and now 8.2 billion people.
UK is 1/40th size of India and China, and is no longer much of an industrial engine as are China and India. That comparison is not too relevant.
Hickory
Can you understand what you read?
Many environmentalists said that wind and solar are getting so cheap that coal mines and power stations in CHINA AND INDIA would become stranded assets.
What an ignorant comment about Great Britain. You obviously have no idea what is manufactured in the U.K.
https://www.themanufacturer.com/uk-manufacturing-statistics/
If China burnt the same amount of coal as The U.K. as a proportion of the population then it would be burning 2.4 billion tonnes less coal. If India burnt as much coal as a proportion of GDP then it would be burning 50 million tonnes of coal and not 1,000 million tonnes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
They are both burning these vast quantities because they know the rich who are in power will have enough food and water.
When I was born in the middle of WW2, the UK was the fourth manufacturing power of the world, ranking after the USA, USSR, and Germany. After the war, the UK remained fourth, then fifth with Japan’s rise in the rankings. But then came Margaret Thatcher; now the UK is twelfth.
Thatcher hated working class people, probably because she was one.
She hated any idea of a social society, selling council houses, millions ended up owned by professional property managers. Charging high rents often paid by tax payers, before low paid workers did not need working tax credits etc because their housing costs were low.
She hated nationalised industries and thought privatisation would make everything wonderful. We know how great the privatised water companies are. Raw sewage pouring into our rivers and lakes while bonuses of £2.4 billion have been handed out to these crooks.
Other people will never understand that the ecosystem is more important than the economy.
This is a good comparison of China vs US in the framework of tariffs / trade,
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/04/beyond-tariffs-what-the-us-can-learn-from-chinas-industrial.html
rgds
WP
Walmart is currently cutting prices on thousands of items in the face of tariffs. Walmart is telling us that they can’t pass on higher prices to the consumer.
Cutting prices sounds deflationary. Because it is.
But hey, as long as stocks turn around and go higher all is well right?
Years ago I read an essay on the UK manufacturing being a loss leader entity. Meaning that the industrial manufacturing of things whether textile or heavy industry was never the center of wealth creation or even profit for that matter. The manufacturing sector only facilitated the banking and market making sectors. Basically the industrial manufacturing operated as a subsistence level business.
If you think about things from that lens then the rust belt fly over states make sense. They were never the driver of wealth only the facilitators.
My point is China is about to learn that lesson as possibly Germany is learning now. It’s not what you make that matters it’s who controls the markets that matters.
With that in mind now ask yourself how important is the Eurodollar?
JT
That is a frightening idea. I suppose as long as the share holders could move the manufacturing somewhere cheaper than where things were manufactured did not matter. Now companies are starting to move out of China to India, Vietnam etc.
https://stratnewsglobal.com/business/fortune-magazine-indian-subcontinent-favoured-by-39-of-firms-moving-out-of-china/
I think China is past it’s peak of manufacturing and lots of people there will lose their jobs
Ultimately manufacturing needs to happen in every country in order to have balance of trade and well paid employment for people to buy what is made.
When I was born in the middle of WW2, the UK was the fourth manufacturing power of the world, ranking after the USA, USSR, and Germany. After the war, the UK remained fourth, then fifth with Japan’s rise in the rankings. But then came Margaret Thatcher; now the UK is twelfth.
The first industrial economy to develop was the UK built on mountains of coal and iron ore. Not political will or technical savy. As these resources declined in affordability so went the economic base that revolved around them. The US has experienced the same outcome. Once the greatest country on earth for abundant easily accessible resources it built an economy that was the envy of the world. Those days are gone and can’t return it’s just physics. Politicians who tell you otherwise are just lying.
Money isn’t true wealth. Prosperous civilizations are built on the personal productivity of its individual citizens. When abundant resources are available at low cost personal productivity grows and the social contract is preserved. When resources stop being affordable and start declining so does personal productivity and the social contract breaks down. Think about the riots in the US in the 70s or the years of Troubles in the UK. Now it’s going global.
New posts are up
https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-april-2025/
and
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-25-2025/