“Nelsone:
So we have Nate on one side saying that PO is causal (or at least one cause) of the financial collapse, Ilargi on the other extreme saying there is no evidence that PO is related at all to the current crisis, and WT thinking trigger.
Clearly, the financial system of one year ago was a house of cards, but “Shock Doctrine” notwithstanding, I don’t think anybody wanted this collapse to occur. But it spun out of control anyway – Does there have to be one overarching reason, or can there be elements of all three interpretations operating in the many affected national capitals and capital flows?
Nate Hagens:
there IS one overarching reason. It is the CAUSES of that reason that are probably multiple. The reason is the dramatic decoupling (via credit) of abstract marker assets from real capital. Productive ‘work’ occurs when energy is combined with materials, labor and some technology. A higher and higher % of SP500 ‘profits’ were from financial companies that produced nothing – eventually the music stopped and there were too few chairs. I think Ilargi meant that high prices resulting from Peak Oil were not directly the cause as the credit expansion and subsequent collapse were baked in the cake well before the oil price spike. What is little talked about (and can’t be proven because we don’t have the data), is the likelihood that net energy/materials per capita peaked in 1998-2002 timeframe. Our data not only just shows gross not net, but also just shows the energy, and not the non-market limiters – water, soil, land, etc. Resource constraints cause social/political responses – ‘printing’ of more money (via credit relaxation) was a natural perceived low cost strategy using the rules of the old system that backfired. The next responses are going to be considerably more nasty unless we reduce consumption dramatically and link currencies to natural capital.”
Agora sim, nova economia…
