Note: I was on Coffee and a Mike yesterday. The Rumble version is here. There was no Sunday show this week. Taking a break for the holidays, but behind the green door I have a post about a cheap fitness watch I bought as part of my latest health kick, a post about milling about. Subscribe here or here.
For most of human history the store of value, what we call money, was shiny rocks melted into more useful disks. Occasionally money was colorful bits of paper that represented the shiny rocks or the raw power of the issuer. If someone wanted the produce of your labor, they needed shiny rocks. Then in the 20th century this began to change, and the shiny rocks gave way to drab looking bits of green paper that represented something new, the energy unit.
In the future, historians will put this great shift in how the world does business up there with the semiconductor, the printing press, and the steam engine. The petrodollar that was formalized fifty years ago was the result of a long realization that what every nation needed was access to energy. It was not just to fuel engines, heat homes and light the streets, but to grow the food and make stuff. Oil, coal and natural gas were the most important things in the world, so they became our money.
The importance of energy is obvious. If the price of gold goes up, barely anyone notices, but if the price of oil goes up, everyone notices. Much of Joe Biden’s scheme to run for reelection was based on keeping gas prices low. He drained the strategic petroleum reserve to keep crude prices from rising. His people worked tirelessly to keep a lid on the Middle East because a regional war would send crude price through the roof, which would mean rising gas prices.
There is another piece to it. The deal with the Saudis to price energy in dollars and reinvest oil profits in U.S. Treasuries made the United State the global bank and the global mint. On the one hand, the American banking system could produce as many dollars as it likes, because the demand for energy never slackens. This let the American government run massive deficits. It also provided a form of seigniorage, which profited the American economy.
It is this piece that lies at the heart of global trouble. For example, energy is one reason why Syria collapsed. The United States took control of the Syrian oil fields and starved the Assad government of those revenues. American involvement in Syria was not just about those oil fields, but also about making sure there was never going to be gas lines running from the Persian Gulf to through Syria if Syria was not within the American sphere of influence.
The rebels were not done looting official buildings when there was talk about reviving the Qatar – Turkey gas pipeline. Europe needs natural gas, and the choices now are Russia and much more expensive American LNG, so a new source would be welcome in Europe and be a boon to Qatar and Turkey. The odds of the United States going along with this are low, unless they can control this new pipeline, either directly or through proxies loyal to the dollar.
Of course, the war with Russia is as much about energy as it is about the neocon obsession with Russia. The Ukraine war was an excuse to cut off Russia from the global oil trade and a reason to cut Europe off from Russian gas. This has largely failed, but the United States is now selling Europe more LNG than ever, thus making them more dependent on the dollar. There was also the dream of gaining access to Ukrainian coal and gas reserves after the war.
The Ukraine war offers another example of the centrality of energy. Ukraine makes money transporting Russian gas to Hungary and Slovakia. Zelensky wants to end the deal unless these two countries support NATO membership for Ukraine. These two countries sell electricity to Ukraine, especially when the Russians turn off the Ukraine power plants. The Russians have hinted that they will destroy the Ukraine natural gas system if Zelensky does not continue the gas deal.
If not for those gas lines running through Ukraine, no one would care much about this corrupt backwater on the edge of Europe. The homicidal maniacs we call neocons would still care, but the rest of the world would not care, but since Ukraine is at the heart of the Eurasian energy system, everyone cares about Ukraine. The corrupt midget in the green jumpsuit gets to make demands of the world, because the world’s bank relies on controlling global energy.
America’s greatest ally understands the importance of energy to America, which is why they are talking about war with Turkey. They will claim the Turks are the new Iraq and demand America let them raid their Akkuyu nuclear plant, which is scheduled to begin operation in 2025. The Israelis are worried that the Turks could gain control of Syrian oil fields and make a deal with the Gulf states on pipelines. Soon, we will hear Lindsay Graham talking bad about Erdogan.
Obviously, energy is a major factor in China relations. The Chinese buy a lot of energy, mostly from Russia. The unwillingness of the Chinese to join the war on Russia is due, in part, to dependence on Russian oil and gas. The Chinese also have zero trust in Washington but take away the energy issue and China is behaving different than what we have seen over the course of the Ukraine war. For the Chinese, energy is money and money always talks.
The global energy war that has broken out over the last decade is due to a fundamental reality of the American financial system. The thing that backs the dollar in energy and the control of the energy markets. Just as bits of colorful paper used to be backed by shiny rocks, the American dollar is backed by the BTU. If the United States loses control of that asset, the dollar becomes just another representation of that asset and Washington ceases to be the global bank.
That is the process we see unfolding in these regional crises. It is about control of global energy markets, as much as the ideological fever dreams from certain subcultures in Washington. In fact, the neocon crusade on Russia has harmed the economic interest of America. By shaking the trust in the system, the rest of the world is now looking for a way around the dollar denominated markets. The global bank forgot why it existed and now we have multiple crises.
Most likely, this will shape foreign policy under Trump. Re-normalizing relations with Russia to get them back onto the global banking system will be a priority, even if it is never mentioned. Settling the Syria mess in such a way that the United States, through regional proxies, continues to control the flow of energy will be the focus of Trump policy. Note that everyone has stopped talking about Iran. The project there and everywhere is not war, but the business of America, energy.
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Excellent post, Zman. It gave me a better understanding of the nexus of global energy supplies/pipelines and the dollar, beyond my ’70s understanding of the origins of the petrodollar. I am no fan of Erdogan, but Israel talking about attacking Turkey is insanity. But then, the whole world is insane, with paeans about Carter filling the web. I’ve had enough of this today – I’m going grocery shopping, putting out more corn for the deer, and reading a crappy escapist book. I’ll check back in later to learn more from the many wise commenters here.
Yes, agreed. I never quite thought of the situation in those terms.
Heretofore, my difficulty was in describing the war against Russia as mindless hate left over from the Cold War. Energy control throws a whole new light on the issue. That I can understand.
Yes, as Jannie (and others, I’m sure) had said, it’s the Great Game redux. I once saw the blurb for a book named “Oil Spies”, about the fascinating and secretive world of the international Gilded Age agents during the world’s conversion from coal steam to oil boilers. I’ll be darned if I can find that book on search again, to my great regret. Theirs were the sorts of exploits mixing James Bond with the Wild West and Indiana Jones. Very steampunk. High intrigue and low chicanery. Such a genre would rival cinematic Westerns, WWII, or Lawrence of Arabia in its… Read more »
Add in that we got the Jewish technocrats that ruined the USSR in the 1980’s. Their children are now in positions of power and influence. Thus the government is far more focused on revenge on Russia than it does anything to do with governance of America.
Those deer should be feeding you instead of you feeding them… try a nice grilled venison souvlaki on a pita with tzatziki, olives and feta sometime…
Make sure it’s not GMO corn because you might have to eat them someday soon…😉
We’re caught in a vicious bind. On the one hand, we’re prevented from exploiting our own energy resources to the fullest by an assortment of political and social forces whose motivations are somewhat suspect. On the other hand, our foreign policy is being dictated by Christians dazzled by Old Testament gobbeltygook and Jewish lobbying. There seems to be no way out of this by rational means.
If only we had more H1Bs from India, they would use their superior intellect and work habits to help us.
If you spend a lot of time around the US military, you’ll notice a significant shortage of soldiers, sailors, and airmen of Indian descent.
You can hear it in Ramaswamy’s ignorant Tweets last week that math nerds and spelling bee champs >> jocks and prom kings.
I would wager there’s a significant shortage of those with Jewish descent too.
What Jews do serve tend find their way into the officer ranks, unsurprisingly.
Like Vindman, the Ukrainian Jew who got Trump impeached for trying to investigate the bribes given by Burisma to Hunter Biden?
I’m almost certain there are quite a few within the command ranks, Jim…
I remember an article in Proceedings (mid/late 80’s), a magazine published by the US Naval Institute, by a Jewish naval officer lamenting the lack of representation of Jews in service. Kudos to the writer for noticing and writing about the lack of tangible patriotism (within the context of the civic nationalism we all believed back then), but his choice of publication was suboptimal. Jews one might want to reach with that message weren’t reading Proceedings in the first place. He would have been better off in Tablet, or whatever hardcopy equivalent they had back then. Regardless, his message would have… Read more »
We need them to be competitive with china!
Just look at how many third worlders they imported to bolster their economy… Oh wait.
We export most of the oil we produce. We don’t have refineries capable of refining the oil we produce. You cannot just put any oil in any old refinery. But we are still a huge net importer.
The people exporting our natural gas should be arrested and tried for treason.
The reason we don’t have more refineries is referred to in the second line of my comment.
It’s not worth building new refineries for this tight oil we are producing. You build a refinery for 30-50 years of supply.
AFAIK, the average tight oil well peaks in like 12-18 months and falls off a cliff which we hope will produce a small amount of oil for decades.
This is why I always laugh at people who think America’s light, sweet crude will bring us energy independence, some now even claiming they want energy dominance. Try producing diesel or jet fuel from what we have. Oh you can’t? That means the US Military still has to rely on foreign energy sources to function. Not a good position to be in when it is that very military that is relied upon to uphold the global energy system. Seems like a pretty major vulnerability in terms of national security.
It’s amazing to me how many people I run into who think we are already a net exporter of oil and some kind of energy superpower. Even people here believe we are a net oil exporter. While it varies slightly from quarter to quarter, we import like 1/2 of our oil and that includes the net from the light sweet crude we cannot refine and ship elsewhere.
Good essay. No wonder safe nuclear energy is smothered in the crib, there is no easy way to make widespread cheap nuclear power into a weapon and a way to finance debt and empires.
well yes, that is what ubiquitous nuke power would do. if ford and gm get all the electricity they need for free, does that affect their competitiveness? free electricity from nukes would also destroy every petrodollar based society (i.e. the arabs).
Electricity will never be free, even if we could generate it for free, which we cannot. The grid is a very expensive and complex machine which needs constant expensive maintenance and repair. Big companies like GM and Ford and Alcoa et al get much cheaper rates than we do. It’s unlikely they could make it themselves any cheaper. I heard a lot of companies are now buying batteries to run their factories (operating as a very large UPS, with the battery sitting between the grid and factory). This guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrWBLtna_yw says he is making good money doing this due to… Read more »
He’s not and they are making us more vulnerable each year that passes, by increasing demand and getting rid of the stable supply…
The long-term national interest requires a robust nuclear sector to balance fossil fuels, as well as an extensive retrofitting of the existing energy grid.
Both of which would take decades, create hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs, reduce both the cost of energy and the amount used, and move us towards autkarkic prosperity and an improvement of the general welfare.
Which is why it will never happen without a few industry, lobbyist and congressional heads being separated from their shoulders.
Concur…
When petroleum gets scarce, nuclear power will bail out mankind. Wind and Solar are just fetishes.
On a side note, how crazy are the Germans to shut down all their nuke plants, while neighboring countries continue to open new nuclear power plants?
Almost nobody burns petroleum to make electricity. I think there are a few countries that do, but it’s a literal hand full like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Even in Venezuela, it’s only like 11%. But we do burn a lot of natural gas for electric generation, which is why the people exporting it should be locked up and charged as traitors. I seriously doubt nuclear is a panacea, at least with current nuclear technology as deployed. They use uranium which is fairly limited, especially considering most of the uranium is not fissionable. Unless a miracle happens and we are… Read more »
In the meantime though the US sits on a lot of uranium reserves. Also the strategic global helium supply. We will never want for party balloons.
If the leaders of this now dumpster fire of a country, over the decades had just conducted policy for the actual benefit of the country and its people, instead of meddling and supposedly making the world safe for democracy, we probably wouldn’t be at this pass, but here we are. Obviously, events can change or shape those dynamics, and men, being men, often can’t resist certain opportunities, but we’ve now so s*** our bed and the world’s, it’s probably going to take a lot of bad things happening to get back on some reasonable track to normalcy. Happy new year!
Here’s a big part of the problem…
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/george-marshall-opposed-the-creation-of-israel-but-truman-caved-in-to-zionist/
Why haven’t we built refineries capable of handling lighter, sweeter American oil than heavy South American and Canadian tar sands crude? One suspects the candy of processing American oil is one of the many strings by which we tie down our European vassals.
My understanding is we haven’t built new refineries in forever. Not sure why, probably a combo of cost, perhaps excess capacity (or wanting to keep a lid on the supply) and environmental/bureaucratic red tape.
That is another “choke point” to control the world. Crude is great, but it does not become useful until refined. The smart money wouldn’t bomb foreign oil fields – you bomb foreign refineries and embargo replacement parts.
It has become for practical purposes impossible, in AINO, to build either a new refinery or a new pipeline, due to litigation and lawfare from “environmentalists.” Who funds them and why is another question, but they never lack funding. And their resistance is absolute and uncompromising. For instance, Massachusetts prefers importing Russian gas to allowing a gas pipeline to be built from Pennsylvania.
The environmental review process to build a new refinery is ruinously expensive and takes forever. Also, you’ll likely face litigation from the enviro-nuts and NIMBYs that’ll take years to resolve. That’s not a bug, but a feature since half of our political class wants to condemn us to the buggy-whip era by ending our “dependence” on oil and replace it with wind and solar, which are expensive, useless pipe dreams. Also, you can’t make plastics and many other products out of sometimes-on electricity generated by wind and solar. The existing refineries are under assault by state and federal regulators for… Read more »
My husband spent one summer working at a refinery and all your excellent points echo his rants about how it is impossible to build a new one in AINO.
Because fractional distillation only gives you the fraction of each component that already exists. Gasoline is roughly 5-12 carbon chains, diesel is roughly 10-20 carbon chains, so there is a little overlap that can be directed to either stream, depending on what the rest of the feedstock is. The lighter the feedstock, the more the gasoline fraction. Because so much of our usage is diesel, heating oil, jet fuel and higher carbon strings, light isn’t a very good feedstock. It’s much easier to take a 21-carbon heavier feedstock and “crack” it into 3 seven carbon chains than the other way… Read more »
The Ukraine War also showed the resilience of the Russian economy. “The ruble is rubble,” Biden shouted at the beginning, supposedly due to his sanctions. That didn’t happen. And the higher energy prices in the war’s first year helped pay for the war, and such innovations as the Oreshnik missile.
The US has been able to tap into the reality that energy is a male not a female topic. Women don’t care that Europe has been cut off from cheap Russian energy. Posturing as boss girls who stand up to the patriarchal father figure know as Putin is far more satisfying. Some of these boss girls are even trying to deindustrialize their countries to help Mother Gaia defeat the Sun God. Eventually women will care when they can no longer afford to jet off for vacation or even charge their phones. Is life even worth living for them if they… Read more »
This is a great post. Energy is the meta-political pole that drives reality. The drawing antipode is ethnicity, as we have seen in this week’s twitter war.
Blood and Fire.
I suspect domestic production will explode again, and this will paper over the inflation bound to occur with the economic proposals of Trump (some of which are good for our people). Controlling who gets oil and how they get it is about keeping Europe’s learned helplessness along with foreign demands for dollars intact, right?
I doubt it. Regime uncertainty will make investments in developing new oil plays too risky. Developing a new play would likely cost many, many billions of Dollars and take many years. All of that money could be lost if the next administration is as anti-oil as the Biden administration.
I think several things will fade away, among them the AGW religion. I’m confident enough to invest a bit in energy.
Global warming is just a means to an end. They have hated oil a long time, long before oil was tied to AGW. The real goal is 15 minute cities and the end of personal automobile ownership. But oil production is safe. Even if they manage to totally do away with personal automobiles, we still need diesel, bunker fuel, aviation fuel, lubricating oil etc. No end to the need for oil. The funny thing is we will have to sell the gasoline. You cannot just not make gasoline when you need diesel etc. Some fraction of oil is natural gasoline… Read more »
A couple of recent studies should have ended the climate change hoax once and for all, but as of right now everybody is just kind of pretending not to have noticed
New Study Reveals Oceans Absorb More CO2 Than Previously Thought
Plant CO2 Uptake Rises by Nearly One Third in New Global Estimates
This means ALL of the prior models were not just wrong but way, way wrong
Of course the oceans “absorb” more CO2, they eat it.
We get most of our oxygen from surface plankton, not the trees and land flora.
What were we breathing before land life developed? What the endless beds of algae were producing for half a billion years.
I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t breathing anything before land life developed.
I expect a lot of dead europeans this winter, due to energy costs being unaffordable while the ruling aholes fly their private jets to global warming conferences
So now Trump is saying getting out of Ukraine isn’t so assured & a war with Iran can happen, quite the about face from what he’s been saying for the last year. Naturally he also agrees with elon in wanting to drown America with street shitters, something he said should be outlawed all the way back in 2016. There’s what Trump personally wants to do then there’s his incessant approval seeking of those around him having a very strong influence on his policies. That’s at least part of the reason why his last term was so chaotic, everyone around him… Read more »
“Like always I just hope for a freeze on most of the damage, hoping for the best & expecting the worst. I do hope that the reaction to H1B visas is a sign that people won’t be so sycophantic towards Trump’s inevitable campaign promise backstabs.” I went to a couple of the 2015 Trump rallies. The average attendee will have a hard time remembering anything but they are in the presence of Donald Trump unfortunately. However, Trump’s want to have those rallies be popular means that he can’t bring it up. Therefore, I doubt increases will become a priority. I… Read more »
He’s like dr jekyll & mr hide when hes talking at rallies versus when he’s at events like the RNC, respectively. You’re right about him wanting to keep the rallies content though, he’s no doubt going to do some good things that he can brag about. I have to admit he does seem to make exuberant claims to not only his base but his donors as well. The thing that worries me is he really doesn’t have to answer for anything now that its his last term. At this point after biden I’m content with the status quo, that last… Read more »
I wouldn’t get too riled yet. Say what ya want – Trump is a money grubber just like the rest… but unlike them, he knows how to deal. War is great for the profiteers but a misery to everyone else and very bad for business for everyone. monetarily the smart play is to remove Zelenskyy and the jewry that brought this about which will kneecap the profiteers… and set the ‘Kraine up as a neutral state. Properly negotiated by an adult, a win for everyone IS theoretically possible – provided the right players buy off the right people. That is… Read more »
I can’t deny he was far better on foreign policy than he was domestically particularly his last year in office & he basically blueballed israel last go round. I really do hope he does that again. He has proven himself to be a bit of a wild card so who knows, as always I hope he proves me to be an irrational cynic. I’d love nothing more than to be wrong about my negative predictions.
Yes. Even the upstart competitor to the Dollar – the Cryptocurrency – is based on energy. Electricity > solves equations with computing power > creates Cryptocurrency. There’s no escaping it, as energy is life.
It’s actually worse than it appears. Blockchain/crypto authenticates trustworthy actors as those who can afford to burn huge amounts of energy on meaningless algebra problems. The idea is that an army of bots trying to falsify the blockchain could not afford the energy to perpetrate the fraud. The authentication model is literally the ability to burn lots of energy.
It’s easy to get hysterical about the amount of energy consumed by blockchains, but this website says that “a single crypto transaction consum[es] more energy than that required to power 6 houses for a day in the U.S.” https://www.energystar.gov/products/data_center_equipment/cryptocurrency
According to Google it’s 708kwh per Bitcoin transaction. That is insane. Visa can do 100k transactions for 148kwh.
Crypto is nothing but scams. It’s gone on longer than I imagined, but it will end in tears at some point. It’s not just that crypto is a scam, it’s that everything around it is a scam. It cannot deliver on any of its initial promises. It was supposed to be an anonymizing currency, but it is neither anonymizing or a currency. This has not deterred any of the Crypto fanatics (who all hold it).
As far as the blockchain ledger is concerned, your anonymity is about as close to perfect as we can hope. However, your wallet on the blockchain has an address and that will become known (ask Anglin and Spencer). People will be able to track your wallet activity.
The big exposure is connecting to the network of the blockchain. Internet service providers will have all of that logged. You can use some sort of anonymous internet service, but then the vulnerability is just pushed back to that service.
As I understand it, crypto will serve two purposes:
The first is as a fake ‘currency’ to absorb and then default on the odious national debt;
The second as a domestic currency to control the populace.
Third would be as a cover for military-grade AI development, such as the bipedal Terminator combat robots China just rolled out.
“As far as the blockchain ledger is concerned, your anonymity is about as close to perfect as we can hope.” While true in a 1-off, it’s not with repeat transactions. You engaged in some transaction to both acquire and spend that bitcoin. Some will be easy — if your landlord accepts bitcoin, there will be several easily predictable monthly transactions that will make it easy to track. You cannot maintain anonymity if you spend it, unless you know for a fact that the feds cannot put the thumbscrews to whomever you did business with. Buy and hold? Maybe, depending on… Read more »
The allure of crypto currency, in my very limited understanding, is its alleged accountability through block chain technology. It is all too fuzzy for my limited brain power, but you appear correct that no energy = no cryptocurrency.
At least the shiny rocks can be carried, physically exchanged and physically defended.
“At least the shiny rocks can be carried, physically exchanged and physically defended.” This seems the essence of the situation, which is why I can’t see crypto as replacing the dollar. Until an entity like a country takes responsibility for its value, it seems to me to be based on the “greater fool” concept. Who cares if a crypto unit takes a billion dollars in energy to create? Would our currency be worth more if the paper dollars cost a million dollars to print instead of seven cents? Once created the dollar is intrinsically a piece of worthless paper, albeit… Read more »
Heck, you can even use those shiny rocks (or a bag of coins!) to brain the guy trying to grab them.
An attack on Turkey by Israel would destroy NATO. It would expose Article 5 as the BS it is. Besides, I don’t think Israel is capable of defeating Turkey anyway. Unlike their Arab neighbors, Turkey is capable of fighting back.
Would it really? Even now, against all observable reality, NATO is still able to masquerade as a defensive alliance. If Turkey was attacked, the msm would just put out another NPC update. Are you suggesting that the Europeans will rebel against their American masters? I’ll believe that when I see it.
Iran, aka Persia, is capable of fighting back too.
For someone taking “2 weeks off for the holidays”, you sure post a great deal.
(thank you)
More on point: If Trump doesn’t aggressively fire/jail anyone under his executive authority who tries to throw a monkey wrench in US energy policy for future electoral gains, he’s cooked.
I’ve been thinking about how the modern robber barons tried to invoke patriotism as a justification for bringing foreign scab labor into the country to displace, impoverish and immiserate the native white middle class population. The concept of robber barons of course brought up the natural reaction of unionization. Young white people especially should think about how the history of unionizing could provide inspiration for collective action towards economic and even physical self defense in a nakedly hostile and exploitive environment. There is no ‘America’ anymore that has any moral claim to your allegiance, only an increasingly authoritarian and rapacious… Read more »
The petrodollar has required US military supremacy and the credible threat of military coercion against recalcitrant petrostates. US military power and the dollar have been two cards propping each other up in the rickety house of cards that is the US empire. The problem has been faltering military might. In the memorable words of GWB, this sucker’s going down.
Even while GAE military power wanes, there’s still a very strong TINA aspect to the dollar regime. As soon as there is an alternative, there will be a stampede, but one has not appeared. And it’s possible that the GAE’s perceived ability to dictate world events, with or without direct military involvement, just got a nice shot in the arm in Syria.
TINA?
There Is No Alternative
The military is really struggling now. Between the DEI rot and the constant waste, fraud and abuse present in the Pentagon and its acquisition programs, we’d be lucky to fight Canada and win. But that’s most Western militaries. The Brits are shrinking their military for the umpteenth time after the Cold War. The Germans just commissioned destroyer-sized frigates with NO LONG RANGE SURFACE TO AIR MISSILES that are basically Coast Guard cutters on steroids. The French military is also shrinking. The PRC now has the world’s largest navy and likely has the world’s largest air force and army as well.… Read more »
The oil & gas production industry has been boom and bust since its inception, and as a result, the majors formed a covert cartel in the 70s to minimize these fluctuations and create predictable revenue streams. As part of a master plan, transportation arteries are being created worldwide in order to manage this resource globally. In a perfect world, this implementation would be based solely on economic efficiency criteria, but NOOOO! Profligate governments have run up huge sovereign debts and are now relying on the rape of this revenue stream to keep the plates spinning a little longer. Thus far,… Read more »
Meanwhile, our female-controlled left wing states are signing legislation to rape the oil and gas industries:
Hochul signs NY law that charges $75B to oil, gas and coal companies for climate change
I hope Trump gives this bitch the pimp hand…
I’ll be surprised if they ever manage to do anything major with that. The legislation is short on specifics, more of a statement of intent, “we’re making a plan to make a plan,” something to wave around at election time (TV announcer voice) “She fought the big oil climate polluting companies.”
Well, the temporary benefit of selling Europe LNG at 4-5 times the price of Russian gas has the negative effect of bankrupting European business, which will ultimately kill off demand, and drive Europeans back into the arms of Russia….not really a good idea…I recall Kissinger saying something about the lethality of being an American “friend”…Similarly, the US is slowly driving Japan and S. Korea into the arms of China, mainly with its toxic cultural pressures for immigration and low birth rates…. As far as energy production goes, America doesn’t have that bright a future, with almost every large resource being… Read more »
‘By shaking the trust in the system, the rest of the world is now looking for a way around the dollar denominated markets.’ Yes they are. A matter of faith, really. The nations think the U.S. has gone loco but hey whatever sure gringo, we’ll devalue your currency if you insist. New Amerika announced her intentions to the world of national suicide on basis of racism, sexism, and basically a desire to rebel against God and unite, hello Babylon Dos. We’re back on the Plains of Shinar! This time with better tech. I can only explain the self-destructive economic policy… Read more »
Your visits with Mike are always nice. Did we get any memes showing Elon plowing through a white Christmas market in one of his gay trucks (with diarrhea pouring from the exhaust)? Haven’t seen any, sadly. Anglin™ was on vacation. Internet guys think the “real story” of Elon’s holiday was his reckless samefagging as Adrian Dittmann, the alternate identity he uses when he’s up all night on meth (or something like it). It’s not solely his alt account, so he can deny it, but he doesn’t really, because he thinks it’s a genius op and wants credit for it, and… Read more »
For a guy with the leadership responsibilities he supposedly has, not to mention 12 kids, he spends an incredible amount of time shitposting. I’d think that in his position I’d have better things to do.
If it’s any comfort, his recent spat of shitposting was incredibly efficient. I went from entirely neutral on the Telsa brand to wanting his stupid chargers and cars gone in just one day. I now eagerly await the ultimate self destruction of the whole Telsa concept. It takes Americans entirely too long to inspire that sort of sea change in opinion. Immigrants and H1-B visas for the win!
I would really like to double-check Elon’s claim he is the number one Diablo player in the world.
I mean, there are teenage gremlins that will sit in their basement and grind for days on end. How can a 50-something man with Elon’s responsibilities compete with that?
In his position, I’d have competent people handling those things.
It might be nice if energy was backing the dollar, but that hasn’t been true for a long time, if it ever really was. Nothing stronger (or weaker) than pure faith and belief backs it. The petrodollar is not an end in itself, but a means to one, that being requiring people to hold dollars and trade in dollars. If they can’t make them do so for energy, they’ll try to make them do so for some other reason(s). They just had a go at creating a pharmadollar, trying to force everyone to buy American and British “vaccines” in perpetuity,… Read more »
“Settling the Syria mess in such a way that the United States, through regional proxies, continues to control the flow of energy…”
A sidebar to this is the dismantling of Syria, specifically, Syrian air defenses. That dense cluster of air defence has been removed, clearing a corridor for Israeli jets to attack Iran(…and Turkey, I just realized).
Without in-air fueling, Israeli jets don’t have the reach to strike Iran and return; now they do, as their aerial tankers are no longer so vulnerable.
Isreali control of the energy region is a much bigger immediate incentive than some proposed Belt-Road positioning.
Update: Ukraine and Syria (HTS) are holding talks; Zelenkyy’s Ukrainian diplomats arrived today, after the gift of 500 tons of Ukrainian grain.
Instead of Hitler taking over the world, Israel wants to take over its oil/gas.
America? We just voted for focusing on the nation – the people. We just voted to begin restoring us as the reason for being. The big savior faction just unmasked itself as wanting to replace us from above and the regime has: DBI head; AI head; Civil Rights head; desecration of Our God by claiming Guru Devaswamydong as the one true God. This is a farce. It is all for energy? We must import India and China to defeat India and China. Thus said the greatest genius of our time. They snarl and hate the people. Don’t you understand that… Read more »
biden’s team might have treated domestic energy production better, if prices mattered to them.
Draining the SPR was a way to suppress fuel prices while undermining the oil and gas industry, especially the well-paid, tough, and highly independent white guys in the field.
This is just another example how much Biden and the ideological team around him hate red areas, the American heartland, and masculinity.
First day in office the usurper canceled the Keystone project: 12,000 good (white guy) jobs.
Yeah the SPR exhaustion is a win all around for the Hive that runs the ‘Biden Team’.
When the Feminine rules a nation, following its period of Righteous Rebellion it soon turns to self-destruction. The urge to obliterate oneself as a polity arises because both the created and natural order have been inverted.
Sowing chaos so that none may unite against their lewd advances…and I ain’t talking about the girls.
Jesus, that’s some beautiful phrasing, Ray, it’s goshdang poetry.
i forget that the Scolding Class, the original feminists, really got rolling with the Social Gospel.
Martin Luther King didn’t base his campaign on Ghandi, like he said; I think he actually based it on Susan B. Anthony.
That’s “God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue purdier than a twenty dollar whore.”
Could this be why Trump started talking about buying Greenland: “US Geological Survey (USGS) estimates around 17.5 billion undiscovered barrels of oil and 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is contained in Greenland’s offshore area. In their 2007 report, North Danmarkshavn Salt Basin and the South Danmarkshavn Basin have been estimated to contain most of the undiscovered petroleum resources. But due to its remote location and often harsh climatic conditions, makes it difficult to navigate and explore. “
Z, how does this all tie in with the fact that Saudi Arabia did not renew the petrodollar arrangement that expired early this year or last year?
one thing about bitcoin (in my understanding) is that it is predicated on no one ‘agent’ providing more than 50% of total mining activity. but then there is this:
China still controls 55% of Bitcoin hashrate despite crypto ban.
oops
I don’t know that there’s anything magical about 50%, but the greater number of transactions you do the processing on, the better the picture you have of global money flows. If you owned (or infiltrated or threatened or hacked) enough larger processors, you have a very good picture of what’s going on.
I get a headache with this because there are wheels within wheels and tangled gear trains everywhere within it… but I think you’re largely correct, Z. My question is Iran. Israel is alienating the hell out of everyone; and there are serious signs that the Arab world could unite against them. I strongly suspect that if Iran is attacked the Russians and the Turks may intervene. Equally troubling is the new arms showing up in the theatre… remember that not too long ago, some obscure rag heads calling themselves “Hooties” – put the run on the US Navy in the… Read more »
Maybe less important than energy but I thought the corrupt backwater was also important agriculturally, at least for Western Europe. Presumably, the agricultural output of Ukraine has been damaged by the war.
Coffee and a Mike un watchable, too many grifting commercials , maybe you can post it behind the green wall.
Update: Zelenskyy’s diplomats arrived today to meet with Jolani’s HTS provisional government in Syria, after forwarding a gift of 500 tons of grain.
No question then, this is about the control of vital energy routes and regions.
Remember, Libya got an oil bank one week after Gaddafi’s fall, even though they didn’t have a government. Neocons are applying pressure as a negotiating tactic.
I predict that Israel will propose itself as a superior guarantor of peace in the region than Iran; I can see a deal with Turkey and Russia, and the fall of Iran’s Shia Crescent proxies.
I’m withholding judgment until Trump actually gets inaugurated and takes the reins. It seems the asswipes are plotting multiple ways to try and F up his administration (& even his inauguration) from the word go. I’m cautiously optimistic, hoping for the best but expecting not so much of the best…
Great post. a really clear and concise explanation of what the petrodollar represents.
I also read doomberg & ourfiniteworld.com for commentary on energy.
All the best for 2025 to Zman and readership.