HUGE PUTS BEING PLACED ON CITIGROUP

Thank goodness y'all have read Rubicon. I don't need to 'splain nuthin.

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB122670685798329753.html?mod=9_0002_b_online_exclusives_weekend


UNDERSTANDING COLLAPSE

Consider the following two quotes from the attached story:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/14/autos/auto_failure_ripple_effect/index.htm?postversion=2008111412

"So far this year, 23 major auto-related companies, most of them parts suppliers, have filed for bankruptcy, according to consulting firm Grant Thornton. They are struggling since car makers have cut back as sales have slowed and raw-material prices have risen."

and,

"As supplier companies fail, that [a GM bankruptcy] would have a direct impact on Ford and Chrysler, since the three domestic automanufacturers share about 70% of their suppliers, Rodriguez estimated."

Now just think about those statements for a while. Let them rattle around. This is what happens when complex civilizations fail. I forget when I wrote it... Some of you wonderful, dedicated, FTW archivists will probably remember. But it's like walking into a room and turning on the light switch. Not only does the bulb burn out; but a leg falls off the coffee table and the cat dies -- all at the same time. The U.S. government should do NOTHING to help the Big Three. Let them go extinct. They ARE extinct. Dead men walking. But please do it quickly. Show mercy by at least making it decisive and quick. And it looks like that decision has been made and (yes, I'm actually writing this) it was the right one. No matter how steep the price, or how much pain is involved; GM, Ford and Chrysler can only become parasites that will soon outweigh the host and drag us all down deeper; before mankind is finally set free to swim for the surface and rebuild. None of the Big Three will ever see the new paradigm because they, like Robert Hirsch, are incapable of seeing it. To truly see it is to have some real hope for mankind and the evolution of our collective soul. (I love the band too.)

There is only one thing that is too big to fail. That is the United States of America. And it's time some real Americans grabbed a saddle and mounted up, not to fight for but just to express it.

I have not said much lately because there wasn't much to say. From what I see now, those who read this blog are some very sharp cookies. You make me feel so much less alone than I used to. Thank you.

Another thing I will comment on is Robert Hirsch's plea that Peak Oilists shut the fuck up because we might actually scare somebody. WTF???? We've been scared for years, haven't we? I met Hirsch in Sacramento at ASPO-USA. We talked. He ferdamnsure knew who I was and he asked twice for me to send him a draft of my book so that he could "look" at it. (Only about five people are going to see it outside of the publishing process. He's not going to be one of them. We're in some very "spicy" talks with several publishers. That's all I will say until there's something else to say.)

Robert Hirsch is a scientist, an engineer, and as rooted in his thinking as John McCain; no ability to see the inevitable -- to embrace it as we must. He must be near a breakdown and, frankly, I feel for him. I watched my father; a decorated Air Force aviator and former aerospace exec who dealt with USAF and CIA, come to understand that the CIA actually dealt and smuggled a lot of drugs -- and nearly killed his son. It only took him twenty-five years to "get" it. But what Robert Hirsch asked of us was absolute bullshit and we all know it. Pathos ad infinitum. It was as lame as the plea he made in Sacramento at the end of his speech that sounded like something out of a Ronald Reagan, WW II, rah-rah movie. It landed with a thud in the audience that might have registered on seismic scales and -- to be honest -- I felt for Hirsch then too. He knew that he was in a different movie from everyone else. He had seen... but he has not"seen".

Dontcha love the Saudis bragging about the IEA report somehow proving they aren't in decline? Sweet, Jesus, Mary and Joseph! We are so far through the looking glass that Alice just took a vicodin and a Valium, and the Mad Hatter leased a cardboard box on skid row.

BTW -- Don't get too sensitive about my comments about Christians (which I always categorize as Fundamentalist Right-Wing Christians). Those who know me well, know the extent of my spiritual studies. It is so amazing that real Christians have become so defensive; so demonstrative of the battered-wife syndrome. (I did a freelance piece for the L.A. Times on that in '85.) Jesus Christ was a prophet and a real-life demonstration of what can be unleashed of the God which lives in all men, women and children -- in everything. That is what Jesus taught. He taught how to find and release a kingdom that was within, all of us, in the here and now. That is also what Buddha taught. It is what the Tao teaches. It is what Mohammed taught and it can be found in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. It is also richly in the books of Isaiah, Psalms and John. The evil that Fundamentalist Right Wing Christians represent is that they (in an unbroken continuum) have taken the truth and the teachings of some really cool souls and used it for political purposes; for selfish ends. I can trace the pattern back to the Council of Nicea in about 315 AD. (I may be off on the year). "Virtue, the minute it recognizes itself as a virtue, becomes a vice." (Thank you Chuck C.) What that is, is the biggest part of man's soul that needs to be shed for evolution to occur. Whether we want to or not, we -- as a species --must surrender to something bigger than ourselves. Whether one calls it God or Peak Oil is utterly irrelevant.

I have prayed in churches, synagogues, mosques, ashrams, temples and also while going to the bathroom and making love. -- And do you know what? I found the same God, equally, in all places.

I need to ask the "loyalists" for an opinion. Lately, I have found myself writing as a means of dealing with all this crap. It's a departure from the two-million or so words I have written trying to be so factual and clear. It's helping me, but what I would like to know is, is it helping you too?

Why do I feel like an involuntary character in "Atlas Shrugged"?

MCR
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The Robert Hirsch comment to which Mike is referring is here:
http://www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/1323

I suggest that the peak oil community minimize its efforts to awaken the world to the near-term dangers of world oil supply. The motivation is simple: By minimizing our efforts in the near term, we may not add fuel to the economic fires that are already burning so fiercely...

Businesses and the markets are in what might be called a free fall. If the realization of peak oil along with its disastrous financial implications was added to the existing mix of troubles, the added trauma could be unthinkable.

He's right. It is unthinkable. We should know. We've been thinking it for the last several years.

Hirsch is a really nice guy. We've had occasional e-contact (as well as meeting in Sacramento) since he answered a few questions after his first report in '05. Such was the suppression of peak oil back then that the article based on that e-interview used to show up in third place when you googled "Robert Hirsch" and "peak oil."

But the suggestion that we should tiptoe around the subject for fear of frightening the horses smacks of the same patronizing attitude we saw after 9/11 when TPTB lied about the record-breaking levels of toxics and carcinogens downtown for fear of creating panic. As a result, untold thousands are sick and some are dying, all unnecessarily.

Thus History is also repeating itself with respect to the sacrifice of human lives on the altar of the economy.

What is this panic that everyone so afraid of?

Fear is the underrated emotion, the nerd of human behavior that has its day of vindication in the end.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself," ring out the statesmen as they lead us (deftly, without going themselves,) into war. Perhaps it is they who are afraid of our fear. Perhaps that is why they are depriving us of it, at all costs.

If there's a fire, shall we keep mum for fear of creating panic? Or shall we point out the exits?

Ah, there's the rub. In the case of peak oil, no one knows where the exits are. Also, there aren't enough; they're far away and too small for everyone.

Still, who are we to decide that The Public is not mature enough to handle the reality that we realized years ago?

Particularly if the bad news comes coupled with some solutions, however meager - the way a doctor would present a grim diagnosis - it will be more palatable.

And there is something bracing and reassuring about knowing the truth, even when it's dire. You have the sense of ground beneath you, as opposed to tremulous uncertainty which is what the gyrating markets are reflecting now.

Corroborating Mike's first point, about letting the auto companies die, The Daily Reckoning presents cogent arguments for letting the chips fall etc; for acting as though we really had a free market system. What we have now is a perverse, heads-I-win-tails-you-lose socialism in which the market is free as long as Wall Street profits; interventionist when it doesn't, and only on its behalf.

But oi, the symbolism of letting GM fail. As GM goes, so goes etc.....

JO