We all remember the child's game that we used to play, making one person count while the others tried to hide. Typically, we made one person close their eyes and count to one hundred, then the others would scatter, looking for places to hide. We would go to empty closets, under beds or behind curtains if we were playing indoors, or under leaf piles, behind or up trees, behind a stump or wood pile if we were playing outside. Well the game is still going on, but it is with ideas and the stakes of the game are our collective souls.
The way I see it, there are those who are all-in on a losing hand, but they control the words we use to discuss politics, religion, and even such discreet emotions as love or fidelity. The people who set up the deck are now way over extended and there are not that many cards left to play. A friend, who follows the oil and gas industry like a hawk has informed me for many moons that the extended debt burden being carried by the folks who have given us the frack boom, is far more than what led to the housing crash. Monies invested in the drill baby drill economy have soared, just like when the housing market was on the double digit increase. The trouble is, the largest producing "boom" towns that have sprung up, replete with their crime rates, bars, brothels, and drug use.
Aside: Ironically, it is often the super religious politically right advocates that think these economies represent "opportunity", because they have put their money into a bet on that future success, that everyone else seems to have had. That is how bull markets get their name, they feed on themselves like chickens in too small a pen. When the tipping point is reached, either folks have overextended and need their money back or the realization is made that everyone was delusional, and the scales tip, yielding no leverage, or value in purchasing, for anyone in the process.
There are areas experiencing busts already and the whole region will be non-producing in less time than most mortgages, certainly the one established to fund the offensive pipeline. Finally, there are people standing, to say "NO!" to big oil. Not until the pipeline company with the worst safety record of any pipeline company, got to the point of attempting to crossing a river that provides eighty million downstream residents with drinking water, did concerned citizens say, "Enough is enough!"
Now, is not the time to fold and let the oligarchs take even more money, it is far past time to step in a new direction. Fossil fuel from the frack fields takes about three BTUs of energy at the well head, to liberate five BTUs of energy. Offsite you have sand mining, washing and drying which requires more energy to be expended, then you also have any other adjuncts, chemicals, plasticizers, polymers, etc. that are created far from the frack site that must be hauled in, burning even more of the diesel fuel that is not yet out of the ground.
In essence, we are spending the lion's share of the money, "investing" in future energy by burning all (perhaps more than all) the energy we can, to get that future energy. Pissing up a rope would make as much sense. The moment the "market" understands this, investors will flee faster than they did from the housing market, but the big energy companies will be judged "too big to fail" and you know what happens next. Our tax dollars will flow to them in even larger amounts than they currently do with the corporate welfare they get, it does not matter how many lawyers and lobbyists they have to pay, they make it up on the back end anyway.
Check out where "wealth" hides, where it ebbs and flows, who cleans up on both sides of every transaction. You may not like what you see when you find it, but you will never see the terrain the same way again. When the enlightenment hits, you will want to spend as few dollars as possible anywhere, but most especially with the multi-national corporate welfare recipients whose "stars" (logos) are on the new Corporate States of America flag, just to break the stranglehold the oligarchs have on us.
The way I see it, there are those who are all-in on a losing hand, but they control the words we use to discuss politics, religion, and even such discreet emotions as love or fidelity. The people who set up the deck are now way over extended and there are not that many cards left to play. A friend, who follows the oil and gas industry like a hawk has informed me for many moons that the extended debt burden being carried by the folks who have given us the frack boom, is far more than what led to the housing crash. Monies invested in the drill baby drill economy have soared, just like when the housing market was on the double digit increase. The trouble is, the largest producing "boom" towns that have sprung up, replete with their crime rates, bars, brothels, and drug use.
Aside: Ironically, it is often the super religious politically right advocates that think these economies represent "opportunity", because they have put their money into a bet on that future success, that everyone else seems to have had. That is how bull markets get their name, they feed on themselves like chickens in too small a pen. When the tipping point is reached, either folks have overextended and need their money back or the realization is made that everyone was delusional, and the scales tip, yielding no leverage, or value in purchasing, for anyone in the process.
There are areas experiencing busts already and the whole region will be non-producing in less time than most mortgages, certainly the one established to fund the offensive pipeline. Finally, there are people standing, to say "NO!" to big oil. Not until the pipeline company with the worst safety record of any pipeline company, got to the point of attempting to crossing a river that provides eighty million downstream residents with drinking water, did concerned citizens say, "Enough is enough!"
Now, is not the time to fold and let the oligarchs take even more money, it is far past time to step in a new direction. Fossil fuel from the frack fields takes about three BTUs of energy at the well head, to liberate five BTUs of energy. Offsite you have sand mining, washing and drying which requires more energy to be expended, then you also have any other adjuncts, chemicals, plasticizers, polymers, etc. that are created far from the frack site that must be hauled in, burning even more of the diesel fuel that is not yet out of the ground.
In essence, we are spending the lion's share of the money, "investing" in future energy by burning all (perhaps more than all) the energy we can, to get that future energy. Pissing up a rope would make as much sense. The moment the "market" understands this, investors will flee faster than they did from the housing market, but the big energy companies will be judged "too big to fail" and you know what happens next. Our tax dollars will flow to them in even larger amounts than they currently do with the corporate welfare they get, it does not matter how many lawyers and lobbyists they have to pay, they make it up on the back end anyway.
Check out where "wealth" hides, where it ebbs and flows, who cleans up on both sides of every transaction. You may not like what you see when you find it, but you will never see the terrain the same way again. When the enlightenment hits, you will want to spend as few dollars as possible anywhere, but most especially with the multi-national corporate welfare recipients whose "stars" (logos) are on the new Corporate States of America flag, just to break the stranglehold the oligarchs have on us.
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