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150 comments on Economic Impact of Peak Oil Part 2: Our Current Situation

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Swede on September 24, 2007 - 10:53am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Pay off your debts, make practical preparations. Thereafter if you have any surplus savings left exchange them to the only real money: GOLD.

The fiat money systems are likely doomed at least to further depreciation year after year ahead.

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ET on September 24, 2007 - 12:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

RE the gold standard: IMO the US dollar's link to gold had long become a fiction by the time France 'called the bluff' and actually began demanding payment in gold. The pros and cons of a gold standard have been debated extensively on this list and elsewhere. I don't see a way that a gold standard can realistically work. But then, I don't see a way that the worlds current economic situation can work regardless of the commonly accepted monetary standard. We are in a bad fix.

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step back on September 24, 2007 - 3:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

We are in a bad fix.

OIL AND MONEY
Hello TODders,

For those of you who understand "oil" but don't get "finance" stuff, this is a "golden" opportunity (pun intended)to sense what a Peak Oil neophyte feels when tackling the issues of PO for the first time.

As an economics neophyte you might ask:
1. What is "money"?
2. Where does it come from (how is it "created")?
3. Why does our culture need ever-growing supplies of money (and the goods/bads, services/disservices to back up that money)?

Similarly, a PO neophyte might ask:

1. What is "oil"?
2. Where does it come from (how is it "produced")?
3. Why does our culture need ever-growing supplies of of flowing oil (and the goods/bads, services/disservices dependent on that growing flow of oil )?

OIL and MONEY: How did we get on this accelerating treadmill and where is the button for stopping and getting off?

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Rajiv on September 24, 2007 - 5:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

A good video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&hl=en-CA

Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it ... all is being created. It is an entertaining way to get the message out. The Cowichan Citizens Coalition and its "Duncan Initiative" received high praise from those who previewed it. I recommend it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary system in Canada and the United States.

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Mike Hearn on September 24, 2007 - 6:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It's a great video but the arguments at the end about why the system is unsustainable aren't correct. Look below for the reasoning as to why.

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step back on September 25, 2007 - 5:46am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Rajiv,

Thank you for the link to the video.

The punch line near the end is that hardly anyone gives a second thought as to what money is or how it is created.

I think if we took a survey, as some of us do, of how many people ever give a second thought to what oil is, how it is created (formed and extracted) and why it might be an essential element of our very existence, the results would be very similar.

The "rational" human mind doesn't give it a second thought. Second thoughts hurt. Best to leave such painful thinking to the invisible smart people who are taking care of things --the care takers and crude givers. :-)

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