Stories in topic "Economics/Finance"
Finite Resources: One Possible Explanation for the Energy Crisis
Posted by Rembrandt on November 7, 2009 - 10:15am
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: bubble, credit crunch, deflation, economy, energy, financial crisis, housing bubble, limits to growth, resources [list all tags]
Finite Resources: One Possible Explanation for the Financial Crisis from Rembrandt Koppelaar on Vimeo.
More natural gas controversy
Posted by Gail the Actuary on November 4, 2009 - 10:14am
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: arthur berman, natural gas, oil [list all tags]
Monday, November 2, Arthur Berman wrote in his blog:
Pressure from Petrohawk helps cancel World Oil column
In an act of extraordinary courage, a top Petrohawk executive threatened to cancel his free subscription to World Oil if the magazine continued to publish my column. Today, John Royall, President and CEO for Gulf Publishing, cancelled my November column.
I have accordingly resigned as contributing editor.
Heading Out (Dave Summers) and I have been talking about the issues Arthur Berman raises for quite a while now. Most recently, Dave wrote a post called Shale Gas Estimates Perhaps Optimistic - An Interesting and Worrying Talk at ASPO.
So what are the issues involved?
An interview with Stoneleigh - the case for deflation
Posted by Euan Mearns on October 31, 2009 - 10:57am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: crash, deflation, depression, economics, stock market, stoneleigh [list all tags]
At the ASPO conference in Denver, October 2009, I had the good fortune to meet Stoneleigh, former editor of The Oil Drum Canada, who left the The Oil Drum crew with colleague Ilargi to set up The Automatic Earth where they publish stories, news and analysis of the unfolding financial crisis. I spent a couple of days chatting with Stoneleigh where she recounted her rather gloomy prospects for the immediate future of the global economy. The following interview is a summary of her analysis of the unfolding situation. Note that in a departure from convention, my questions are set in "blockquotes" to distinguish these from Stoneleigh's responses.
Stoneleigh, the world economy seems to be suffering from two great structural woes at present, namely stubbornly high energy prices that are linked to demand that is persistently ahead of the supply curve, and a level of debt that has destabilized the global finance and banking systems. Can you explain for us the scale and structure of this debt and to what extent write-downs and quantitative easing (QE) have solved this problem?
NY Times Reports on Biophysical Economics Conference in Syracuse
Posted by Gail the Actuary on October 24, 2009 - 10:55am
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: biophysical economics, eroi [list all tags]
The New York Times published an article yesterday about a conference that we advertised on The Oil Drum, and several staff attended, called the 2nd Annual Biophysical Economics Conference.
New School of Thought Brings Energy to 'the Dismal Science'
The financial crisis and subsequent global recession have led to much soul-searching among economists, the vast majority of whom never saw it coming. But were their assumptions and models wrong only because of minor errors or because today's dominant economic thinking violates the laws of physics?
A small but growing group of academics believe the latter is true, and they are out to prove it. These thinkers say that the neoclassical mantra of constant economic growth is ignoring the world's diminishing supply of energy at humanity's peril, failing to take account of the principle of net energy return on investment. They hope that a set of theories they call "biophysical economics" will improve upon neoclassical theory, or even replace it altogether.
Dr. Chu, Dr. Aleklett, and the Price of Oil
Posted by Heading Out on October 22, 2009 - 10:05am
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: kjell aleklett, oil prices, stephen chu [list all tags]
There are a number of us who write about the situation in regard to the world supply of liquid fuels, and the future availability of those supplies. In general we began by gleaning our information from the internet, or each other, and from those relatively amateurish beginnings a community has developed to study the condition of “Peak Oil.” That community was immeasurably helped coalesce and grow by the conferences that began under the ASPO banner, with ASPO standing for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. Kjell Aleklett began these conferences on the study of peak oil some years ago, and has watched the growth of the community (shepherding, as International President, where necessary) since then.
He has recently reviewed the papers given at the ASPO – USA conference in Denver, providing the type of coverage I would have liked to provide had circumstances been different.
Kjell is located outside Stockholm, in a University that I almost made it to earlier this year and has shown, through his graduate students' dissertations, that it is possible to acquire and publish a wealth of information about the condition of the various aspects of future energy supply that cast a relatively realistic view of what we might expect in the future. (And if I don’t always agree about some of the conclusions – that is, after all, the underlying basis of scientific discussion.)
I look at what he has been able to accomplish, and then I contrast this with the current U. S. Secretary of Energy, an individual who has the vast resources of one of the larger Departments in the United States Administration at his disposal.
One (or two) years on - they have learned nothing
Posted by Jerome a Paris on October 12, 2009 - 10:25am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: regulation [list all tags]
Just over one year after it became impossible to deny that the financial crisis that had started in 2006/2007 was a major, systemic event, it is rather depressing to see that nothing has really changed and, to the contrary, if anything has, it is for the worse.
The most striking item, of course, is the continued dominance of politicians by bankers. Banks are universally seen - including by bankers - as being at the heart of the problem, and having created the crisis through reckless behavior and worse. And yet, after having being bailed out at a staggering cost, in a highly asymmetrical way (the losses were socialised, but not the banks), not only have they managed to eliminate the likelihood of any meaningful regulatory change, but more importantly they have managed to maintain the fiction that finance was the reason for earlier prosperity and should thus be protected as a source of future prosperity. The crash has not made anyone question the quality (or reality) of the previous boom, but rather made them wistful for these times. Thus, the dominance of the finance sector on the economy and the airwaves has not changed one bit: we still worry about the stock market, it's still financial analysts and economists that drive the public debate, we're still talking about "reforms" of entitlements or the labor market as if these were the main problem today, and public policy largely avoids the big looming issues of resource depletion and climate change.
What Peaked at the Same Time as Oil Prices? Lots of things.
Posted by Gail the Actuary on October 9, 2009 - 10:40am
Topic: Economics/Finance
We know oil prices peaked in the third quarter of 2008--in fact in July 2008. But what else peaked about the same time? It turns out when you look at the data, lots of things:

It seems to me that the current crisis is credit driven, which is why it is so widespread. I had expected a credit crisis to result from the rising price of oil, because the rising price of price would choke back growth, and this would likely lead to debt defaults. But as I look at the data, I discover other relationships I didn't really expect.
A Change Coming to the World Monetary System?
Posted by Luis de Sousa on October 7, 2009 - 10:03am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: dollar, euro, g20, gold, imf, khaleeji, original, reserve currency, special drawing rights, yuan [list all tags]
Thoughts related to the world monetary system, and where it may be headed, below the fold.
Oil Prices and the €uro
Posted by Luis de Sousa on September 16, 2009 - 10:14am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: brent, crude prices, dollar, euro, euro currency, jean laherrère [list all tags]
Michael C. Lynch and the 'False Threat of Disappearing Oil'
Posted by Nate Hagens on August 27, 2009 - 10:02am
Topic: Economics/Finance
This is a guest post by Kevin Rietmann, aka The Dude, on The Oil Drum. The post is a response to Tuesdays NYTimes Op-ed by energy analyst Michael Lynch, showing some historical track records between some 'peak oilers', Mr. Lynch and others.



k Nation (Jim Kunstler)






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