H.C. Westermann ‘Popeye and Pinocchio’
This is the time of year when everybody is making a Christmas list, if not for merriment purposes but for to avoid the Christmas Curse: the Demon Claus lurking in closets across the country ready to creep out in the darkness and remove naughty childrens’ still-beating hearts with a Swiss Army knife.
The incredible Economic Undertow headquarters does not have a chimney: this oversight on the part of the builder is fortunate as it is certain the shape-shifting Santa would slither hence so as to murder me in my sleep. Without the direct route, Claus would need to use the front door and the elevator, to be ‘announced’ at the desk. He would be mobbed by the greedy children, this would allow time to race down the fire stair and off into the acres of free parking.
I can hide out from the vengeful, blood-soaked Claus underneath an SUV. Thanks Santa, for giving somebody ground clearance and a set of all-terrain tires.
Besides a roach-free kitchen and a non-leaking roof, here are some additional Christmas ‘stocking stuffers’. Feel free to add more of your own:
Dear Santa, please give America some politicians with a clue.
‘Ron Paul Peak Oil’: on Google chums up about seven-hundred thousand hits compared to ‘Kim Kardashian Divorce’ which comes up large w/ ninety million, all this in 0.22 seconds!
BTW Santa, please make Kardashian, Martha Stewart, ‘J-lo’, Jon ‘Diamond Jim’ Corzine, Ben Bernanke, Albert Haynesworth, Tim Tebow, etc. go away. You don’t have to kill them all, just make them … fade … into a well-deserved obscurity. Thank you.
Ron Paul: “And then there is all the talk about “peak oil.” I don’t worry about peak oil as much as I do about geopolitics and inflation. If we had sound money, and if we were not provoking wars and oil supplies, and if peak oil all of a sudden not only arrived but the supply was decreasing much faster than we ever dreamed of, I wouldn’t even worry about it, because I have such confidence that the price mechanism in the free market helps us decide what to do. If we had a truly free market and gasoline prices go to $5 per gallon, all of a sudden ethanol may be the answer. The last thing we want is the government to be doing this. If we let the markets handle this , we should never worry. We don’t need to worry so much about a limited supply as much as how we mess things up after that with inflation and regulation and radical environmentalism and geopolitical intervention. That is where the real problems are.”
How do you define ‘wrong’? Paul goes on and on about phantom inflation when the country and much of the rest of the world’s economies are unraveling due to deflation. The exception is the BRICs along with the oil producers, who are the destination of ‘mobile’ capital and who have good reasons to print.
Of all the major candidates, Paul is the most clueless. He really has no idea how a 21st century economy (mal)functions, he also has no idea how government works even as he is well-positioned … within the government! Extreme cluelessness explains Paul’s fanatic support! This is particularly strong among gold-bugs who fantasize about becoming wealthy should a Paul government switch to a gold monetary standard (takes an action that benefits a tiny elite).
The gold hoarders put themselves into a box, they don’t understand that gold’s worth can be captured only by getting rid of the gold. Precious metals are just as much a part of industrial ‘money’ as are unsecured loans. Modern economies destroy value. This is the intention, by doing so the system puts in place its own ‘substitute values’ for the ‘old’ which are characterized as ‘obsolete’.
The value destruction regime is an ‘innovation’. Dear Santa, please bring me some new buzzwords for Christmas …
Gold-hoarding is absolute, to paraphrase Hayek, it is the ‘Road to Miser-y’. A true gold standard is gold as beyond money into something else entirely: toward Transubstantiation/body and blood of Christ. Within the ‘New Golden Mean’, Paul would become a discredited Robespierre: tried and convicted of apostasy faster than it takes to type the word. How so? Because gold-hoarders ‘wealth’ exists on paper like all the other forms of industrial wealth. Like everything else within the reach of industrialization gold’s worth is relative to all the other forms. As pure as Paul would be, he would never be pure enough. Trading away gold diminishes (annihilate) its worth and the hoarders’ fantasies are crushed. This would have to be somebody’s fault, certainly not Santa’s.
You cannot have a gold cake and eat it at the same time.
Rep. Paul’s Victorian money morality might gain some traction as the centralized industrial state unravels and loses relevance. The ‘new’ US economy might take an extended vacation in the 19th century or it might pass through rapidly on its way to the 9th century. If the latter, gold would be as irrelevant to must folks as a credit card.
Everything depends on the public sentiment and the context: the public — not governments — creates money by consensus. If the public accepts a certain form of money it matters not what governments do. The most important characteristic of any successful money is convenience.
Note to Santa, please give governments more convenience …
Here’s Newt Gingrich on peak oil in his own words:
October 9, 2009Peak Oil: A Theory Running Out Of Gas
Newt Gingrich and Steve Everley
Peak oil was a theory developed decades ago that suggests we will soon reach a point of maximum oil production, after which oil will only become harder and harder to find, leading to an enormous energy crisis.
In fact, many still believe this theory today, including Al Gore, who told CNN that “we are almost certainly at or near what they call peak oil.” The Sierra Club’s executive director, Carl Pope, once warned that peak oil could come in 2010 and that “we’re better off without cheap gas.”
Since anti-energy elites ignore the massive amounts of oil that we do have but are banned from extracting, they propose new energy taxes to supposedly save us from future energy crises by punishing the use of oil. After all, if oil is the problem, then coercing America away from oil usage would be the answer.
The problem is that peak oil is fundamentally wrong.
GINGRICH: Well, I say you — the question you just asked is perfect, because the fact is we ought to have a massive all-sources energy program in the United States designed to, once again, create a surplus of energy here, so we could say to the Europeans pretty cheerfully, that all the various sources of oil we have in the United States, we could literally replace the Iranian oil.Now that’s how we won World War II.
[…]
GINGRICH: But let me make a deeper point. There’s a core thing that’s wrong with this whole city. You said earlier that it would take too long to open up American oil. We defeated Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in three years and eight months because we thought we were serious.
If we were serious, we would open up enough oil fields in the next year that the price of oil worldwide would collapse. Now, that’s what we would do if we were a serious country. If we were serious…
The United States won World War Two by replacing Iranian oil. That’s interesting, also is the realization that new oil supplies can be willed into existence by serious people. How about clowns?
Here’s Mitt Romney from Romney’s own campaign web site:
“The United States must become energy independent. This does not mean no longer importing or using oil. It means making sure that our nation’s future will always be in our hands. Our decisions and destiny cannot be bound to the whims of oil-producing states…“Energy independence will require technology that allows us to use energy more efficiently in our cars, homes, and businesses. It will also mean increasing our domestic energy production with more drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, more nuclear power, more renewable energy sources, more ethanol, more biodiesel, more solar and wind power, and a fuller exploitation of coal. Shared investments or incentives may be required to develop additional and alternative sources of energy.”
Romney is the likely GOP candidate for president running against Barack Obama and a defenseless wildlife refuge. Wildlife has no value, only SUVs with ground clearance and knobby tires.
Empty words with no policy follow-up. He may as well have not said anything.
Dear Santa, how about giving us some European politicians with a clue:
German Government Rejects Report ‘Peak Oil’ Occurred in 2010
Rainer Buergin (Bloomberg)
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government rejected a report by Germany’s armed forces that global crude-oil production reached its maximum last year, parliament’s HIB newsletter said.
Crude output “can be increased through 2035 under today’s conditions, assuming an optimal development and exploitation of reserves,” HIB said today, citing the government’s response to a query by the opposition Green party. The government’s outlook is based on International Energy Agency estimates, it said.
The German armed forces said in a report that maximum global crude output, so-called peak oil, occurred in 2010 “with a certain likelihood,” according to HIB. The study is yet to be completed, HIB cited the government as saying.
Dear Santa, can you find it in your heart to bring the Eurozone about twenty trillion euros? Cash, of course, small, used bill, no consecutive serial numbers: it won’t cost anyone anything except paper and ink. Not to worry about ‘lasting effects’: the cash would all be squandered on booze and hookers dollied up as Nazis cracking bull whips across the butt-cheeks of Eurocrats! To be able to watch Frau Merkel flog the European ‘Ministerium’ to within inches of their lives would be worth the money …
Dear Santa, please give Japan a cold shutdown at Fukushima Daiichi rather than the fake version Japanese government is serving to itself?
The nuclear crisis at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is over:
Japan gov’t declares ‘cold shutdown’ of crippled Fukushima plant
The Japanese government declared Friday that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been brought to a stable state of cold shutdown, in a sign the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl has been brought under control nine months after its outbreak.
The achievement is expected to lead the government to consider scaling back evacuation zones around the plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co., but the huge amount of radioactive substances already released into the environment and the melted nuclear fuel left inside the crumbling reactor buildings remain major concerns.
“We have decided that a stable condition has been achieved and that the accident at the plant itself has been settled,” Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told Cabinet colleagues, while ordering them to move ahead with the work of scrapping the stricken nuclear reactors.
Dear Santa, please give me a new lead suit.
Dear Santa, please don’t let the reactors blow up, collapse, catch on fire or leak radiation into the Pacific Ocean. Please let the Japanese government officials and Tepco managers spend weeks inside the damaged reactor buildings so as to enjoy the coldness of the shutdown.
Dear Santa, please give Occupy Wall Street some more permits to set up Hoovervilles in city parks across America. At the same time, please give the goon squads some more cans of orange spray paint. I need the entertainment.
Dear Santa, please give America’s banking and business executives the bonuses they richly deserve. Keep in mind that almost none of these executives are prepared for peak oil, far more valuable and scarce dollars. or customers without credit or scarce money to spend.
Dear Santa, please give the executives the impulse to squander their bonuses on booze, dope and hookers dressed up as Nazis. Becoming broke by their own impulses serves these folks well.
Dear Santa, please come down the chimney at take away America’s television sets. There is nothing on …
Dear Santa, thanks for taking away the impulse of Americans to always rush out and buy new cars. People are starting to question the auto hegemony, which is hopeful.
Feel free to post your unalterable Christmas demands here. Santa is smart, he reads this site first, even before Max Keiser and Zero Hedge … and after ENE News.