Oil at the Crossroads: Belief or Reality?

Guest Post by Chris MacIntosh

Oil at the Crossroads

What do you do when you see the proverbial storm on the horizon? You stock up on whatever you think you’ll need which you may not be able to secure when the storm hits.

Why stock & flow matters?

In inflationary periods people stock up because they fear the loss of purchasing power. The problem with this is that at some point you run out of your supplies and you need to replenish them. How do you fix that? Well you need “flow.”

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The Final Act

Authored by Dmitry Orlov via ClubOrlov.com,

In processing the flow of information about the goings on in the US, it is impossible to get rid of a most unsettling sense of unreality – of a population trapped in a dark cave filled with little glowing screens, all displaying different images yet all broadcasting essentially the same message. That message is that everything is fine, same as ever, and can go on and on. But whatever it is that’s going on can’t go on forever, and therefore it won’t. More specifically, a certain coal mine canary has recently died, and I want to tell you about it.

It’s easy to see why that particular message is stuck on replay even as the situation changes irrevocably. As of 2019, 90% of the media in the United States is controlled by four media conglomerates: Comcast (via NBCUniversal), Disney, ViacomCBS (controlled by National Amusements), and AT&T (via WarnerMedia). Together they have formed a corporate media monoculture designed to most effectively maximize shareholder value.

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The Break Up

Guest Post by The Zman

Not so long ago, societal collapse was a big topic of conversation among critics of the current world order. Usually it was centered on economics, as the financial system has become so complex that no one can explain it. The run-up to the mortgage crisis had lots of people promoting economic collapse theories. A decade earlier, the Y2K panic ushered in theories of technological collapse. Of course, the zombie apocalypse movies and TV shows are a regular part of the pop media rotation.

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Are Ivy League Schools immune from 4th turnings?

I had an interesting conversation the other day. Are Ivy League Schools immune from 4th Turnings?

It seems that our “educational” systems in this country carry on regardless of what happens in the world.

Look at most Ivy League schools (like Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, etc.), they’ve been around for centuries!

Including many previous “4th Turnings.”

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The Growing Economic Sandpile

Guest Post by John Mauldin

“How did you go bankrupt?” 
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

As you may have noticed, I’ve been in a pensive mood lately. I’m re-thinking a lot of things as I process economic developments, personal issues, and the clock ticking as I reach birthday number 69 in a few weeks. Many good things are happening but with them comes change.

Change will be today’s topic. Below I’m reproducing part of a letter I originally wrote in December 2007 and have referred to several times. It is the single most-read letter I have written and the most commented-on, too. I consider it, in some ways, my most important letter. If you’ve read it before, you should read it again. I have updated it a little bit, but the principles are just as timeless as ever. And for the time conscious, we have shortened it a bit and at the end, I try to apply those principles to present economic times.

Change happens quickly and often, unpredictably. And as we will see, the unpredictable part is actually a mathematical principle. As in the Hemingway quote above, not just bankruptcy but change also happens slowly and then seemingly all at once. It’s time passing without change that causes the worst problems, including some historic economic catastrophes. It turns out we shouldn’t just accept change; we actually require it.

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Three critical lessons from Europe’s recent mini-meltdown

Guest Post by Simon Black

Trying to trace the origins of the latest political crisis in Italy is like… well… trying to trace the origins of the decline of the Roman Empire.

There simply is no good starting point.

You can’t talk about the decline of Rome without a lengthy discussion of how destructive Diocletian’s Edict on Wages and Prices was in the early 4th century.

But you’d have to go further back than that and discuss all the lunatic emperors preceding him, all the way back to Caligula.

But you can’t talk about Caligula without bringing up the effects of the civil war between Octavian and Marc Antony… which was a direct result of the previous civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus.

Before long you’ve gone back in time more than 500 years trying to figure out why the Roman Empire collapsed.

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Ron Paul Warns America’s “On The Verge Of Something Like 1989’s Soviet System Collapse”

Authored by Damir Mujezinovic via Inquisitr.com,

Ron Paul does not believe the U.S. will break into separate countries, like the Soviet Union did, but expects changes in the U.S. monetary policy, as well as the crumbling of the country’s “overseas empire.”

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The godfather of the Tea Party movement and perhaps the most prominent right-leaning libertarian in America, Ron Paul, believes the economic boom the United States experienced under President Trump could be a “bit of an illusion.”

Mr. Paul sees inequality, inflation, and debt as real threats that could potentially cause a turmoil.

“the country’s feeling a lot better, but it’s all on borrowed money” and that “the whole system’s an illusion” built on corporate, personal, and governmental debt.

“It’s a bubble economy in many many different ways and it’s going to come unglued,”

In a recent interview with the Washington Examiner, Paul said,

“We’re on the verge of something like what happened in ’89 when the Soviet system just collapsed. I’m just hoping our system comes apart as gracefully as the Soviet system.

 

We have ownership of these countries, but it’s not quite like the Soviets did. I think our stature in the world and our empire will end, and that’s when, hopefully, the doors will be open.”

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The Norks

Guest Post by The Zman

Is North Korea about to collapse?

That’s the question Don Surber asks in this post last week. He is looking at the recent defections of soldiers and civilians. We have at least one soldier, an elite soldier no less, who simply walked across the border unmolested. Maybe this happens from time to time, but the impression from news reports is that the Norks guard that border ferociously. The Norks have special units that do nothing but roam the border looking for anyone trying to flee. Here’s a recent video of them shooting a guy trying to escape.

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Pumping up a Leaking Tire

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Every kid knows what happens when you try pumping up a leaking tire. As soon as you stop pumping air into it, the tire begins to go flat.

New car sales have been working that way for the past couple of years – with effectively free (zero or little to no interest) loans extended over the horizon – and leases counted as sales – serving as the “air” in the tire.

We’ve been told that business is great.

In fact, it’s as rickety as a Jenga tower.

What’s happening in the used car market is a portent. Prices are collapsing – chiefly because of historically unprecedented depreciation. During the past twelve months, the average used car lost 17 percent of its value. This is almost twice the annual average depreciation rate just three years ago. It smacks of the post-2005 collapse of housing prices.

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EVERYTHING CAN COLLAPSE REALLY FAST

Guest Post by Ol’ Remus

art-remus-ident-04.jpg Food. Finding good water isn’t a problem in the hills of Appalachia. Survivalists who fixate on water probably have other regions in mind, the arid southwest or the western high plains. If I lived, say, on the lee side of the Rockies I’d worry more about water than I do. Which is not much.

Here there are springs and weeps everywhere, creeks big and small, lakes, ponds, rivers and reservoirs, even the occasional swamp. If this isn’t enough to keep you hydrated, it rains regularly and generously in summer, and snows in the winter. Water would often be an obstacle to the travelin’ man keepin’ low and movin’ fast in interesting times.

Where survival doesn’t turn on a scarcity of water and adequate shelter has been managed, food quickly reveals itself for the priority it is. This is not as obvious as you’d imagine. You’d have to get up early and work hard to avoid food in America. In the last hundred years, only in the “dust bowl” times of the ‘thirties did America see anything like a food shortage. Notice there was always bread for the bread lines in the Depression. The lines were from lack of means, not lack of product.

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Beware the Dogs of War: Is the American Empire on the Verge of Collapse?

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” — James Madison

Waging endless wars abroad (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Syria) isn’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, it’s certainly not making America great again, and it’s undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

In fact, it’s a wonder the economy hasn’t collapsed yet.

Indeed, even if we were to put an end to all of the government’s military meddling and bring all of the troops home today, it would take decades to pay down the price of these wars and get the government’s creditors off our backs. Even then, government spending would have to be slashed dramatically and taxes raised.

You do the math.

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What Is America Going To Look Like When Stock, Housing, And Even Used Car Prices All Crash?

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Have you ever thought about what comes after the bubble?  In 2008 we got a short preview of what life will be like, but most Americans seem to have come to the conclusion that the last financial crisis was just a minor bump in the road toward endless economic prosperity.  But of course the truth is that the ridiculously high debt-fueled standard of living that we are enjoying now is not sustainable, and after this bubble bursts it will be an extremely painful adjustment for our society.

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The Ship is Sinking

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

Sinking Ship boatDo not put equities in the same boat with bonds. The ship is sinking, but that is concerned with debt – not equity. Keep in mind that the collapse of a financial system has historically unfolded to different degrees. If we are talking about a Dark Age, then you are into the Mad Max situation. Then the only thing that has value is food – not even gold.

That was the fall of Rome. People effectively sold themselves as serfs to work the land, retain 20% of the crop in return for protection behind the castle walls. Medieval coinage really appears only in silver and are rarely found more than 20 to 30 miles from where the coins were struck. This illustrated the isolation  of city states. Money was not really necessary for there was really no major trade interacting within Europe – hence the Dark Age.

Malls Owners Rush For The Exits As Mall-Backed CMBS Defaults Soar

Tyler Durden's picture

Last week we wrote about the epic collapse of the Galleria Mall at Pittsburgh Mills which sold for $100 after once being appraised for $190 million shortly after being opened in 2005 (see “Pittsburgh Mall Once Worth $190 Million Sells For $100“).  Unfortunately for mall owners, while the Pittsburgh Mills Galleria is an extreme example, crashing mall valuations are hardly an anomaly these days.  In fact, just a few weeks ago Commercial Real Estate Direct wrote about the Foothills Mall in Tuscon, Arizona which was valued at $115mm in 2006 and backs a $75mm CMBS loan but recently appraised for just $18mm…or just a slight 75% loss for lenders.

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