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Posted on 10/29/2011 7:55:12 PM PDT by Former Proud Canadian
"We are all Greeks" - so begins one of the best reports on the unsustainability of the status quo, and on what "the new world order" will look like, created by SocGen's Veronique Riches-Flores. Her overarching observation: "No one can claim immunity from a Greek-style spiral" because "Our economies are mature, with weak potential GDP, especially post the financial crisis" and due to that old standby which everyone chooses so conveniently to forget, yet which is the biggest threat to the world's "welfare-state" stability, in existence since 1860 and which has been responsible for not only the longest period of peace in world history, but for the longest stealth plundering of middle-class wealth (there is indeed no such thing as a free lunch): "We are aging - we have no chance to see our future income improving substantially in the long run ; our savings capacities are shrinking and our health and pensions spending is increasing." That, in a nutshell, is it, no matter how many protracted essays one reads predicting the future (or war in Europe): the truth is there is increasingly less cash flow, coupled with increasingly more demands for cash.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
But probably the most damning piece of evidence for the upheaval that is coming is not some recent revelation, but the conclusion from an S&P report published 5 years ago, that is before the GFC had even come to its predictable end. It represents the long-term forecast of sovereign debt ratings by Standard and Poors by decade, beginning in 2020 and going all the way through 2040. All we can say is: Canada better prepare to receive lots and lots of immigrants (and Europe, whose entire future is now reliant on the credit rating of the world's most complex structured credit instrument ever conceived, which in turn depends on the AAA-rating of constituent countries, is done).
bump.
ping
Well said.
However, such discussions are but two-dimensional snapshots of a dynamic, multidimensional organism.
Thanks, but I didn’t write that.
I didn’t think you did.
Probably just a coincidence.
There is only one way out: $10/barrel oil or energy equivalent.
Any ideas?
Drill in the US. Get rid of the EPA. Reduce cap gains tax to < %5. Reduce income taxes.
That's a start.
/johnny
Boy, the Turks will be thrilled.
Cold Fusion.
1 MW E-Cat Cold Fusion Device Test Successful
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2799528/posts
Rossi’s E-Cat uses nickel. The best source of nickel is asteroids and the moon.
I can’t think of a better way to kick-start the world’s economy than to start the Third Industrial Revolution - mining and manufacturing in space.
We have the technological know how and lots of rich people who can live in only so many mansions - why not spend their money on an expansion into space?
They should be. If they’re Greek, they get the Cyprus Islands back.
Surely, you jest.
Five hundred years ago, the most powerful entities in the world were the Ming Empire in China and the Ottoman Empire in modern day Turkey. If anyone had said that the most powerful mercantile, agricultural and creative industrial powers in the future, ones creating untold wealth for millions of people, would originate in what was then a rustic Europe and a wilderness in North America, they would have been deemed insane.
I will repeat for you: we have the technology to mine near Earth asteroids and the Moon. We have the time to go about it slowly and carefully, step by step, establishing manufacture in space exploiting the zero gravity vacuum of space capable of creating unique metals due to its lack of gravity.
This opens up the possibility of innovative and new products resulting from materials that cannot be created on Earth.
We have rail guns mounted on navy ships that launch large projectiles; there is no reason such devices cannot be used in space, utilizing solar energy, to launch space vehicles.
We are only limited by our lack of imagination and fear of risk. It took courage to settle the North American wilderness, and there were mercantile companies that financed many such endeavors.
If the United States doesn't take the next step, some other nation will do so, and it will be to our disadvantage.
Re space mining:
You’re serious!
OK, I’ll answer it straight up. I don’t believe that the technology is there for asteroid mining. Do you have any idea how much effort, energy, and money it takes to bring a payload to an asteroid and back? According to Wiki Answers it costs $4729 to put one pound into orbit. It’s going to cost a lot more than that to go to an asteroid, mine it, and bring it back! You used the example of nickel, which currently costs $13.50 per pound, under the assumption that it could be mined to fuel Rossi’s e-cat, and therefore generated essentially unlimited energy. The numbers do not work, as far as I can see.
We can’t do what you suggest at present.
One average sized near Earth asteroid, rich in platinum-group metals, is equal in value to the entire annual gross global product. That is one helluva lot of wealth.
Do you understand how using gravity wells to provide return momentum to payloads would work? Do you understand how powerful solar power is on the Moon, and how it would be effective at providing endless electrical energy to the mag-levs that would power a rail-gun type launcher?
If you reread what I wrote, I said “We have the time to go about it slowly and carefully, step by step,..” Taking on a long-term developemnt project which has periodic financial returns allows for the emergence and implementaion of innovative new processes not originally anticipated, and provides time to make adjustments to the original plan.
You see, after gobbling up all the near Earth asteroids, the ones that are a hazard and can cause an end to life on this planet, we can move out to Mars and then to harvesting the asteroid belt. This could take a couple centuries but it provides a frontier for exploration and expansion, something no long available on Earth.
Still think I’m crazy?
How about, just a visionary ahead of your time?
Ok. That I can accept.
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