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Five (Dangerously Misguided) Financial Fairy Tales   (April 19, 2006)


The "Standard Model" of economists, pundits and analysts is: everything is coming up roses for the global economy. If you believe the heavyweights, the future's so bright, we all need shades:

  • The rest of the world is now growing solidly, so the global economy is no longer dependent on the intrepid (and massively indebted) American consumer; as a corollary, China is an emerging world power whose continuing white-hot prosperity will lead world growth.
  • Commodities of every type are in a decades-long bull market as China and India build out their infrastructures.
  • Oil is also in a long-term bull market, but the world has absorbed higher prices without disruption, as higher demand spurs higher production and alternative fuels.
  • Interest rates are at historically low levels, and will stay that way for the foreseeable future, as there is a global savings glut.
  • The global economy is stable, robust and awash in money (liquidity); the risks of a financial meltdown are vanishingly low.

    This glowingly positive model somehow fails to mention these more-than-minor risks:

  • the global housing bubble
  • the diminishing supply of sweet light crude oil
  • the massive overhang of risky derivatives
  • U.S. dependence on foreign capital to finance its deficits
  • the unprecedented U.S. current account deficit (trade deficit)
  • the demographic timebomb ticking away at the very heart of global prosperity
  • the enormous risk of an environmental, social or financial crisis in China.
  • The rising risks of a global environmental catastrophe such as the melting of the Antarctic ice shelves

    It's one thing to analyze these risks and and then conclude they're harmless, but to dismiss them without analysis seems more than a little shortsighted. The grave importance of these issues sparks me to cover them one at a time over the next week or so.

    First up: oil. The whole model of unending growth for decades to come depends on one little thing: cheap, plentiful oil. Yet experts tell us that all the super-large oil fields in existence have already been found, and that the discovery of new oil reserves has been in decline since the 60s.

    One of the few clearsighted pundits on this topic is Robert Kiyosaki, who penned a piece titled The Coming Oil CRisis.

    For a more in-depth view, read this excerpt from the Roscoe Bartlett Energy Conference and then wonder if the permanent 'global growth" bulls are on the same planet as the rest of us. (The conference is broken into three parts on the website; read all three for an excellent briefing on oil and alternative sources of energy.) This excerpt is long but well worth the investment of time, for it details the same "gap" that Kiyosaki foresees between the realization that there isn't enough oil and the construction of an alternative infrastructure:
    Now this is an extraordinarily important report that, even though I didn't help author this report, I want to hammer on it for a few minutes because I think it's something that everyone should be talking about and virtually no one is. It was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, paid for by the U.S. Department of Energy. Science Applications International Corporation compiled the report. Robert L. Hirsch was the project leader, and the title of it is "Peaking of World Oil Production Impacts Mitigation and Risk Management."

    Now U.S. DOE asked ASIC basically two questions: is global peak oil a real problem, and, if so, what should we do about it? Now this is the executive summary that they came up with, and I'll read it to you. "The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached , liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and without timely mitigation the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking."


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    Now this report is extraordinary because, well among other reasons, economists have been telling us for some time that peaking of world oil production, even if we need to be thinking about it at all, is really a very small issue because as prices increase, they'll stimulate more exploration. They'll stimulate the production of alternative fuels, and they'll stimulate conservation. And with the combination of all three of those factors, we should make a very smooth and easy transition so that 25 or 50 years from now, we'll all be driving hydrogen cars down the street. No one will know that anything even happened. There won't even have been a bump on the road. We'll look back, and we'll say, what was that all about?

    Well, the Hirsch report says that, in fact, those price signals will come at least 10 years too late and maybe 20 years too late to make a real difference. In other words, yes, we can make a transition, but it takes time to prepare that transition before the price signal arrives. For example, we all know we could be driving more fuel efficient cars right now as was mentioned. There are European cars that are already getting 100 miles to the gallon and more. Problem is it takes time to change over the U.S. car fleet.

    First of all, U.S. manufacturers have to retool and start making those much more highly efficient cars in large quantities. That will take probably four or five years. Then, not everyone buys a new car every year. I happen to drive a 25-year-old Mercedes diesel that I run on biodiesel, but that's not too uncommon. A lot of us drive cars that are 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 15-years-old. So that's going to take 15 to 20 years to change out the entire U.S. car and truck fleet. So we're looking at a process of transition there that will likely take 20 to 25 years.
    If this doesn't give you pause, exactly what will?


    For more on this subject and a wide array of other topics, please visit my weblog.

                                                               


    copyright © 2006 Charles Hugh Smith. All rights reserved in all media.

    I would be honored if you linked this wEssay to your site, or printed a copy for your own use.


                                                               


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