In The Long Emergency (2005, Atlantic Monthly Press), I said that we ought to expect the federal government to become increasingly impotent and ineffectual - that this would be a hallmark of the times.  In fact, I said that any enterprise organized at the colossal scale would function poorly in ...read more

It's not only the energy markets that threaten the 'low inflation' data now encouraging bondholders to keep buying... The published inflation data are surprisingly unsophisticated in so far as they compare current prices with a snapshot a year earlier. Just over a year ago, oil was every hedge fund manager's favorite speculation. ...read more

Let's take a quick look at what's happening in Brazil, over and above the 2016 Olympics being awarded to Rio de Janeiro. "I don't know if I will live to see it," said Brazil's president Luiz (Lula) da Silva a couple weeks ago. "But Brazil has to transform itself into a ...read more

When Alan Greenspan predicted three percent economic growth showing up in the reported figures for the third quarter of 2009, did he mean executive compensation packages? Maybe the lesson here is: don't ask a crackhead to predict the future supply of crack. Greenspan's greatest success may be to drive economics ...read more

Each year, generally in May, the Energy Information Administration publishes a less-than-eagerly-anticipated tome called the International Energy Outlook, 250+ pages of mind-numbing text, charts, graphs, and tables. No one reads it. The mainstream media ignore it. It’s the product of the best prognosticators in the Department of Energy. Okay, that may be ...read more

Hey here's a question to start your Wednesday off with. If Bernie Madoff gets 150 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme, what do you think the people who designed Social Security and the Superannuation scheme ought to get? And speaking of colossally stupid government programs, you may have seen ...read more

Texas U. S. Representative John Carter has galloped in to rescue us from the Cap & Tax bill, HR 2454, by proposing limitations on price increases that would repeal the bill automatically if the program raised diesel or gas prices by more than ten cents a gallon or our home ...read more

James Howard Kunstler has eloquently argued in The Long Emergency that cheap oil makes globalism possible.  Transporting goods across the globe costs energy, and, when energy costs enough, local production becomes more economical than global. For now and the near future, however, it still costs not only less money, but ...read more

It's not technically a new decade yet. But if the trade of the last decade was to sell stocks and buy gold, then maybe the best trade for the next ten years is to sell bonds and buy energy. Gas, coal, oil, conventional, unconventional, renewable, alternative. You have a whole ...read more

Through the tangle of green shoots and sprouting mustard seeds, a certain nervous view persists that the arc of events is taking us to places unimaginable.  The collapse of General Motors and Chrysler signifies more than the collapse of US car manufacturing.  It spells the end of the motoring era ...read more