Troll Economics
Jan 17th, 2013 by Donagh
Someone on politics.ie has referred to me as a brain damaged lunatic. Should I sue? The comment was referring to Michael Taft’s article on Ireland’s bank debt which they thought was “bonkers”:
“first of all I couldn’t find any of them explicitly mentioned in the Eurostats report. And by the way we know that 41bn Euro isn’t anywhere near the total cost to the Irish tax payer. 40 bn Euro total cost to the German taxpayer laughable. And France made 3bn Euro?
The Irish left review never was and never will be a reliable source for anyone. It’s run by brain damaged lunatics.”
I accept responsibility for ‘running’ the site as no one else is mad enough to do it, so the comment obviously refers to me. They seem unaware that Michael has his own blog where it was originally posted. However, to the substantive point. Expecting to see what Michael showed explicitly stated as he put it in a data set is odd to say the least. Have they never heard of a pivot table, or “slicing and dicing” data?
Looking at the Eurostat figures for Germany what I see corresponds to point made by Michael. In the sheet for Germany there’s a table that relates to activities undertaken to support financial institutions which shows there are 42,845 million in liabilities outstanding. I would need to look at this more closely, but based on Eurostats data what exactly is so funny about Michael’s analysis?
However, they didn’t even need to go to the data sheet to convince themselves that what Michael is saying is correct. All they had to do is go to page 12 of this background note to see a handy graph:
After all this time, and with an IMF report saying that Ireland has had the “costliest banking crisis in an advanced economy since at least the Great Depression in the 1930s”, the level of denial is unbelievable.
I guess they’d believe it if Constantin Gurdgiev or NAMA Wine Lake said it. Or maybe they’re waiting for the press release from Declan Ganley (given that many of the most vicious commentators on politics.ie are Libertas loyalists).
I guess Ireland is funny in a sick sort of way.
Its a sort of great big shadow banking joke.
We once thought we were inside the circle but are clearly not……the sad thing about it is we (our leaders) want back in at the first opportunity.
But they fail to see how the game has changed.
Its about real resources now
Its not about manufacturing claims on “assets” (houses & cars mainly) where the fiat / fossil fuel is farmed via the credit bank system.
That very same credit hyperinflation has made the fossil fuel too valuable for those games now.
Indeed Ireland has been in this game for so long that it is unable to conceptualize a national economy or even the semi national / integrated economy of the Sterling years.
A world where real internal energy inputs and outputs actually matter.
Where capital rundown to express false profits for the banking system is no longer viable.
The pro euro left fail to see how in the context of real resources within a European framework we are worth more dead then alive.
There was a very large oil field found and exploited in Ireland post 2007.
Its anti production is approaching 70 ,000 BPD , much bigger then even the inflated claims of oil prospects on the southern coast.
The French see our consumption as a waste - they can use that stuff for rebuilding tramways in their Provincial cities or maintaining their colonies in North Africa.
The Germans want to build more cars.
The Brits want to continue the Scottish estate life.
Look to car regs they tell you all that needs to be known as it is the most resource intensive of all industries both during production and especially across its life cycle.
Iceland had the largest % increase in new cars for 2012 at 56%
Greece had the biggest decline at -40 %
Why is this ?
Iceland is not bailing out the underwater global energy / slave arbitrage banks as it has capital like controls (its savings remain internal more or less)
I.e. its a real separate (for the moment) economic hinterland which can trade with other jurisdictions.
Greeces job like Ireland is to focus resources to the cold dead heart of colonial Europe.
That is our only role if Asia states it no longer sees itself as a colony.
The only guys remaining to be poached is the European periphery.
We (or our leaders) have willingly decided to put us on a chopping bloc to preserve their private claims on the rump economy.
PS
It always comes down to real resources - the banking debate is a distraction from the real issues.
The Irish communist party of the 70s wanted Nuclear for very specific and logical reasons now borne out by events on the ground.
If Algeria falls both Spain & Italy will fall also.
According to Reuters Italy gets 35 % of its gas from Algeria !
Until 2011 Spain was the most LNG (expensive gas shipped mainly from Qatar) dependent country in Europe.
A larger pipeline reduced it LNG imports
http://www.medgaz.com/medgaz/pages/datos_significativos-eng.htm
But Japan (nuclear shutdown) is now eating most of the LNG pies……..western LNG is no longer available in quantity if the worst happens.
Both Italy and Spain decided to stop building Nuclear post EMU and EEC entry.
Chernobyl was merely the excuse for the shadow bank system to finally free itself from capital intensive nation state like investments.
Here you can see the dramatic spike of Nat gas consumption in Spain post 1992 -this was the Barcelona games credit rapture which was much like our 1995 Riverdance thingy
http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/ESELEC.pdf
Europe is on the edge.
But why has it come to this ?
Well Nat gas (even LNG) build is less capital intensive then Nuclear or even coal.
This meant the banking sector could create more useless assets (houses) to capture the fleeting cash surplus from this false economy.
Without the so called “Dash for Gas” 20 + years ago the final stage of the neo-liberal nightmare could not have happened.
This is why you get neo -liberals such as Richard Toll pushing for LNG at all costs ………….its low initial capital cost relative to even a couple of Moneypoints will free up a surplus that the free banks can burn on more grot but at a huge long term cost - a greater loss of redundancy.
Of course Ireland is a far more extreme dash for gas adventure but that is no longer a funny story.
This looks like a emergency shipment of LNG to Spain
http://www.lngworldnews.com/belgium-zeebrugge-re-exports-lng-cargo-5/
Where is the peripheral money going ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUnZFrcFkPM
This is a 1.6 Km tunnel for a tram system much lighter then the LUAS system………
Pure decadence.
In an article in January 2011, the weekly Politis highlights the lobbying undertaken by Lohr Industrie , and the relations with the president by some politicians…..
According to the financing agreement approved by the Board of Directors of STIF 13 December 2006 , the total cost of the infrastructure is 391,830,000 euros 32 and is funded by:
Region Ile-de-France (156.73 M €);
State (61.63 M €);
the General Council of Hauts-de-Seine (78.37 M €);
the General Council of Yvelines (54.02 M €);
the RATP (41.08 M €).
The cost of rolling stock, estimated at € 140 million, is funded by the RATP
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_6_du_tramway_d’Île-de-France
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2013/01/italy-economy-rotting-as-focus-all-on-elections.html
“Unappreciated by many is the fact that the Italian economy has seen the largest contraction (7%) since the crisis began within the euro zone after Greece. (Ireland ?) Per capita income is back, according to former ECB’s Bini Smaghi, to where it was in the mid-1990s (talk about a lost decade).”……Dork - lost 2 decades
Italy consumes (or consumed) a higher ratio of nat gas for energy then any other large European country.
http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/ITELEC.pdf
http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/ITTPES.pdf
Again the change in energy profile can be seen in the early 90s (extreme neo liberal period)
There can be no + change of domestic demand denominated in Euros in Italy as the euro system will always look for machines to replace labour (the problem is the cost of machine inputs keeps rising)
As a Dork I was talking about Italy all of the time during 2012.
These countries are about to (and indeed are) falling off a cliff as they are all capital extracted out.
The Italian fiscal austerity post mid 1990s was a mere capital extraction excercise……….
It did not achieve anything but a transfer of energy credits to a smaller and smaller group of people.
The remaining energy was farmed via banking creation of “assets” which tap into the declining energy base.
Neo - liberalism a entropy loop
Both of the Marios rule of Italy can be characterized as a transfer of real resources to the core and to the eurozone plantations in the east of Europe and indeed China.
Europe is a jurisdiction run in the interests of private banking corporations……….it was always the way but never in such a extreme fashion as in post 1980.
The complete & willful ignorance of the French Physiocrat school in economics is astounding.
They believed agriculture was the root of all wealth.
And at that time it indeed was - agricultural goods were in the main the only energy system back then.
It was the tap root.
We can see what happened to Italy the moment Mario entered and did his extraction job.
Energy is defined as the ability to do work
Of all the fuels Diesel is most closely associated with work especially in the areas of fixed capital formation , transport of goods to market etc . (also diesel cars are not really popular in Italy)
So it can be seen as the primary root.
http://omrpublic.iea.org/demand/it_dl_ov.pdf
You can see above this looks like a terminal dive - there is no recovery on the horizon.
They have cut off Italys wings post 1986 - it cannot even glide now.
Whatever it is called in Europe - be it a fiscal crisis (Italy ?) or a banking crisis (Ireland)
It does not matter a damn.
This is a physical world / banking malinvestment crisis made much worse by a euro monetary breakdown.
France gets some of the Mario surplus - but for how long ?
http://omrpublic.iea.org/demand/fr_dl_ov.pdf
Its just gliding.
Whats truly dastardly about the euro is that after it extracts energy units out for machines in more efficient geographical areas it still remains a hard currency…..
Destroying even more capital.
This means for example that high energy input but static wages corporate supermarket operations will wipe out less energy intensive small business operations despite the lack of energy units available within the system mainly because of a lack of tokens (money supply) in the system. (but also with the use of government law & policy
This is in fact a all out war against people by the machines or to be more precise the people who control them.
Blackpool Cork - a old working class area completely destroyed by the car centric supermarket system must now lose the last bits of its business focus thanks to Government policy.
The local Barber , backer , fish merchant , Butcher , cafe etc will all be wiped out.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/text/ireland/cwkfsnsnmhcw/
The Euro is the perfect expression of evil.