Why Europe Lays Supine

Abstract: The crisis in Europe is now worse than in the 1930s, in major countries such as Britain, or Spain. So how come, differently from the 1930s, revolutions are not wrecking the streets? The aging of the population does not explain all the torpor. Nor does the fact that Europe suffers from globalization, also known as ‘free trade’, and plutocrats make sure that the Plebs is not aware of what ails them, or even, that they suffer at all: the wealthiest profit from the unfolding catastrophe.

A  most subtle psychological mechanism is at work: Europe already tried something very bold, very virtuous, axed on the sustainable and, not only did it backfire, but it proved… completely unsustainable. A disabling injury joined by an insult to reason itself: no wonder Europeans feel too depressed to do anything about anything anymore.

Why No Panic Yet?

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EUROPEAN PLUTOCRACY: SUBJACENT TO MUCH.

I was reading newly published  conversations of Hitler with his generals. Marshall Edwin Rommel and Hitler, in May 1943, discussed the dislike that “plutocrats” (yes, “plutocrats”, that’s the word they used) had for any social tendencies found in Nazism. In particular Hitler expressed the revulsion he felt in Rome, in 1938, for Italian plutocrats, and the triple game they played, through their control of the military, and double faced diplomacy with Britain, playing everybody against everybody.

Italian plutocracy did not come out whole from WWII. A republic was installed, with a slightly modified version of the French revolutionary flag. The daughter of the king, the one that Hitler gave his arm to, in 1938, died in an extermination camp, victim of an allied bombing…

Fast forward to May 2013, 70 years later. The Dutch are hysterical with joy: they just nominated a new plutocrat to head the Netherlands, William-Alexander, worth at least 300 million dollars. His wife is particularly popular. She is doubly plutocratic; barely twenty year old, before even having an economy degree, she was an investment banker in Argentina and New York (the biggest banks made like bandits from Argentinean default); she is the daughter of another plutocrat, a minister of the dictator Videla (famous for having tortured, before assassinating them, more than 30,000 people).

The hysterical Dutch wear orange. My Mom asked me why. I did not know, but I was correctly suspicious. It turns out that William-Alexander’s family used to rule, more than six centuries ago, the city of Orange… In Provence, France. Unfortunately, for the plutocrats, France is now a republic, sort of, so the followers of William-Alexander are reduced to waving orange flags, instead of waging terror in Orange, as they used to. Of course, Orange was built as one the free cities of the Roman republic, and only later was stolen by the ancestors of William-Alexander.

Kleptocracy or plutocracy? The latter is more general than the former.

I visited a 17 centuries old cathedral, the Saint Sauveur cathedral in Aix en Provence, four centuries older than Islam. Part of the cathedral was built even before Constantine became emperor. Then Constantine, a major plutocrat, if there ever was one, greatly thanks to fiscal measures, imposed Catholicism… The breathing of millennia endows our minds beyond this Earth.

Christianity, like Islam, was instrumentalized. The Saud family is trying to pose as the guardian of pure and hard Islam, but it violates the very foundation of Islam according to Muhammad, zakat (basically an anonymous voluntary tax the pious rich are supposed to impose on themselves, a command of the Qur’an). The Saudis know that they thrive, as long as people think in a way that revere them on top.

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WHO COMMANDS MAKE CIVILIZATIONS MORE OR LESS POTENT & CREATIVE:

That the free are more motivated was already pointed out by Herodotus (see the last essay). What makes the minds of civilizations? Sometimes the oligarchy fabricates thoroughly the minds of the Plebs. Such robots show little mental creativity, even when they are requested to have some.

Indeed, even where they are allowed to be mentally creative, they will tend to be afraid of crossing scarlet walls across the mental landscape. This explains why the Roman empire lost much of its mental creativity, once it became a dictatorship. Even in the arts of war: the adoption of new weaponry in the first seven centuries of the Roman military dictatorship was roughly zero, in sharp contrast with the Roman Republic’s constant introduction of new weapons (although Constantinople introduced a crucial new weapon, Grecian Fire, the Seventh Century equivalent of the nuclear bomb).

Sometimes the oligarchy is ejected by a new, larger oligarchy, or several variants, in quick succession: this happened in England in the 17C.  Sometimes the revolt is even larger, encompassing much of the middle class: that’s what happened in France in 1789. The American Revolution was still something else, as it was more of a civil war.

Who leads is who gives the minds to the commons. If only a few lead, little mind is to be had. The wider the leadership, the more mind for the commons. This explains why the French republic of 1792 was able to defeat the coalition of all European plutocracies that tried to crush her, including Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia. French research in new high explosives and superior artillery was crucial in defeating the invading Prussian army at Valmy in September 1792 (same story as Captain napoleon’s artillery defeated the British at Toulon, a few weeks later).

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WHY EUROPE TOLERATES AUSTERITY:

The lack of vision in Europe is, colossal. And not just from the leaders, but also from the Plebs. But how come is austerity still proceeding apace? Why, as jobs are dying, not enough people are screaming for work? Is it just because the more people are out of work, the more stabilizers of the welfare state are at work?

The control of the EU by right wingers is still a fact, except, in appearance, for the French Socialists (but most elected socialists are right wingers in disguise). Many European leaders are tied to Wall Street.

This explains why Mario Draghi, ex-partner at Goldman Sachs, is still practicing the strong Euro policy (that takes away millions of European jobs; the Euro ought to be half the value it’s at, right now). That favors his masters on the other side of the ocean.

All these facts are known, but why no truly massive demonstrations? In May 1968, just because the state was too authoritarian, all of France went on strike, for a month (something similar happened in Czechoslovakia, and, in the USA, and LBJ declined to be candidate to the presidency again).

OK, people are older now, their anger hormones less in control.

Yet another fact is at work.  Europe made a giant effort, 25 years ago. Europe had two visions: the free market, “libre concurrence”, and ecology. Both visions have failed. The free market, it turns out mostly meant that banks were free to exploit the consumers and the states, and that plutocrats could live, tax-free, more powerful every year.

Many of those on the deep left said:”we told you so!” But even them have run out of critical steam. Indeed, they wanted to help the Third World, desperately. Now the Third World is helping itself with second, third, and actually, all servings. So what are European progressives going to say? Take jobs away from the Vietnamese, give them back to the French, who are paid twenty times more? Do they want to exploit the Third World, like the colonialists they used to criticize?

Sustainable energy is an even more painful subject, a wreck of European hopes and struggles. Ecological virtue has made European disadvantage even worse. Huge investments and efforts were engaged, great hopes raised, to curb the rise of the CO2. The rest of the world, led by the USA, refused to collaborate.
Thus, that vision has been a disaster. First, industrial production was delocalized in places that did not mind using the cheapest energy. Hence the global CO2 production was in no way impacted.

Secondly, European sanctions against energy production hobbled European industrial production and enabled those others, led by the USA, to get immense economic advantages, while the seas and temperatures rose, and Europe economic advantage sank.

British electricity prices have tripled in less than ten years. Even Germany, right now, having decided to get out of old fashion nuclear energy is finding the going tough, increasingly intolerably expensive. The French have wrecked their car industry by imposing tough CO2 standards.

Overall, because of Euro (and pound!) over-evaluation, the European economy has become uncompetitive (in spite of the German ‘success’, which is more appearance than reality).

Result? Now the Europeans are scared of any new vision, embarking in the many new ventures that really getting out of austerity would entail, lest something even worse comes about. They  suffer from a subconscious feeling that they did something uncomprehendingly, immensely bad, by showing too much initiative. Hence a dreadful determination to not go grandiose again. And thus the willing, collective wearing of the hair shirts.

This is why there is no explosion yet. And why the bought off right-wingers, the Barrosos, Rehn, Junkers,  German central bank head, and other austerians, keep on talking loud and strong. All the more as they have to disguise how wrong they were. And what better disguise for error than to keep on insisting that they were right?

And what of the USA? The sequester may bring a disaster: it’s pretty similar to what happened in Europe in the last few years.

When Roosevelt became president, he advocated to have no fear. Indeed one can hardly expand an economy when everybody is hiding below a rock.

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Patrice Ayme

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Patrice Ayme

Fragile Earth Syndrome

Abstract: The Earth is already all too close from being getting all too hot, from its astronomical position at the interior edge of the Sun’s Habitable Zone.

The Greeks viewed Gaia, the Earth, as the Mother Goddess from whom all other gods sprang. Yet, discoveries they made later showed that this metaphysics was misleading. In truth, habitable planets, far from being all powerful, are confined to narrow zones around their stars (and these zones move, and are under continual threat, as I describe below):

Sun Like Stars Are Most Hospitable.

Vertically the masses, going up, the unit being the mass of the sun; as stars gets bigger, they get hotter, thus they change color, covering the entire black-body spectrum, from brown dwarves to blinding ultra violet hot “Blue Stragglers”.

Horizontally, the distance from the star; the graph gives only a rough idea of the notion of Habitable Zone; in truth the whole point of this essay is that Earth is at the edge of Sol’s Habitable Zone, within 1% of boiling; Habitable Zones narrow as the stars get smaller, and get much larger, far out, around bigger stars.

The life of Earth on the edge has got more dicey in the last 400 million years. Thus the risk of hyper warming is greater than in the Carboniferous Era. By pumping into the atmosphere the equivalent of 100 million tons of CO2, every single day, we are, literally, playing with fire. (A first counter-measure would be to outlaw, through regulations, those gases that warm up the air a lot, and are not indispensable; for example leaks in the pipelines of the USA allow 4% of the CH4 to escape!)
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The two close calls by large space rocks were a reminder that this is a serious, not particularly friendly universe. Something to meditate carefully.

Those who play apprentice sorcerers with the climate and planetary ecology should pay attention.

For reasons having to do with the periodic table, the frequency of elements and the chemical characteristics of carbon, namely its ability to form many liaisons, it seems likely that life in the universe will have to resemble life on Earth. That is being water, carbon and oxygen based. (Believing that life does not have to be carbon-centric may sound cute, but it’s unreal.)

Thus the habitable zone is the zone around a star where it is neither to hot, nor too cold, and a planet can support water.

Not all stars can have an habitable zone: the greater the mass of a star, the more fiercely it burns. A star with five times the mass of the sun will typically have 625 times the luminosity of the sun.

Why? In small stars, the part of the core hot and dense enough to sustain thermonuclear fusion is relatively small. In large stars, it becomes enormous, and embraces much more of the thermonuclear fuel tank.

For Stars, Mass Is Everything.

Thus, the larger the mass, the shorter the lifespan of the entire system orbiting the star. A star with 60 solar masses will shine only 3 million years before running out of hydrogen. At that point it will run hotter and hotter as it burns heavier elements until it explodes as a super nova. A star of five solar masses will live longer, but still only 100 million years or so. Long enough to make it a tourist destination, not long enough to evolve life (all the more as the habitable zone will migrate out fast, as the stellar furnace gets hotter, fast).

Even a star with only 50% larger mass than the Sun will live only three billion years. On Earth, after that duration, the first oxygen making organisms were appearing, and the atmosphere was going to change completely, from reducing to oxidizing. That would bring the “Snowball Earth” episodes, 600 million years ago, or so, when most of the planet froze, before enough CO2 could be generated to reach the appropriate greenhouse effect.

Clearly, for evolving advanced life, more than a billion years is needed. Thus planets with indigenous life will be restricted to red and yellow dwarves (the sun is one of the latter, with an estimated lifespan of ten billion years before turning ephemerally into a red giant).

The 2012 sci-fi (silly) movie “Battleship” has it right on that point: most of the habitability is found cuddling next to red dwarf stars, so that aliens would be blinded by our sunlight is likely. This also means that life out there has a good probability to have evolved in what, for us, would be rather dim circumstances. Indeed most stars are red dwarves and those are the longest living stars, easily going on for 15 billion years (they use their thermonuclear fuel conservatively).

Some red dwarves could have evolved life, in our Milky Way galaxy, when our sun, a mighty yellow dwarf, did not exist yet. Such stars, with their habitable planets, could still be around.

Being in the habitable zone is necessary for life, but it’s not sufficient.

For example, any planet orbiting too close to its star will lock its orbital rotation and its diurnal rotation (as the Moon has with the Earth). Thus the planet will have one side too hot for life, and the other too cold.

That means that when red dwarves become too small, their habitable zones, get too close, and would-be habitable planet lock down. (Venus, although 100 million kilometers from the Sun is nearly locked: it rotate on itself slower than it does around the Sun.)

The Earth is totally exceptional. She is endowed with a huge satellite that stabilizes her inclination on the orbital plane (Mars’ inclination on the elliptic varies wildly, causing wildly fluctuating super-seasons). This resulting, constant and mild inclination allows the poles to not get too cold, and the tropics, not too warm: it spreads the goodness of sunlight around.

Earth is also a mighty nuclear reactor, providing with the shield of a powerful magnetosphere (Venus does not have any, so its upper atmosphere is scorched by the solar wind), and plate tectonic (allowing for a complex recycling mechanism involving CO2 and long term climate stability).

The present, sort of official, habitability zone theory is 20 years old. It showed that Earth was within 5% of receiving too much warmth from her star. What has been found by the latest study is even more disturbing: Earth is within 1%, 1.5 million kilometers of inhabitability (5 times the Earth-Moon distance).

Earth is, astronomically, at risk of getting too hot, and of suffering a run-away greenhouse, as Venus did.

Long ago, Venus may have been in the habitable zone. However, general main sequence star theory, and observation, show that the Sun has warmed up. Its power output has increased by at least 25% since it got started. So the habitable zone in the Solar System has been slowly moving outward.

Why did the Earth cool over the last 100 million years, if the sun is slowly warming up? It probably has to do with non linear effects related to the geometry of the continents: the continents migrated north, and shallow tropical seas disappeared. The migration of land towards the north augmented the albedo of the Earth (as land stays frozen in summer more easily than sea, ice and snow keep reflecting more sunlight back to space, even then; that’s the core of the two centuries old glaciation theory).

So, as Earth should have warmed up, by a miracle, a sun shade, the glaciated North, was put in place, just in time!

Not all the coolness is due to ice and snow. Earth, before very recent human interference, had long been endowed with a cool climate. It seems that clouds make the difference (the effects clouds bring are too complex to be taken into account in computer programs of habitability at this point).
It’s a double edged sword. Water vapor may bring more clouds, but it is also a mighty greenhouse gas.

Still the point remains that all the objective data show that, our planet is not far, astronomically speaking, from a runaway greenhouse. By keeping on pumping a witches’ brew of greenhouse warming gases in the atmosphere, we are, literally playing with fire. Every day we add nearly 100 million tons, in CO2 alone, in our apparent urge to mimic Venus.

Pumping 450 million years of carbon into the air all of a sudden is not smart: Earth has had plate tectonics from the start, so much of this carbon was sequestered. Now we are freeing huge quantities of it… and in a geological, and biological, snap.

All other things being equal, the Earth is closer to inhabitability through warming than it was 400 million years ago (when the CO2 was very high). Having the same CO2 in the air as in the Carboniferous Era would result in a warmer planet.
To make things worse, there are no plausible technological fixes to too much CO2 in the atmosphere (with existing science and technology; and contrarily to disinformation from the fossil carbon burning fanatics).

In between the high- and low-mass stars lie stars similar to our own Sun. They make up about 15% percent of the stars in the galaxy. Such stars have reasonably-broad Habitable Zones, do not suffer from hard UV irradiation, have lifetimes of the order of 10 billion years. They are the best candidates for harboring planets with indigenous life.

Intriguingly, the three stars of the Alpha Centauri system may harbor life. The system is made of two main yellow dwarves, one slightly bigger, one slightly smaller than the sun. They come as close to each other as Saturn is from the Sun (not close enough to affect each other Habitable Zones directly).

A planet was just detected, grazing the .9 solar mass Alpha Centauri B. (We have the means to find out if the system supports life, but NASA and the Congress of the USA, shut down the projects, in an apparent fit of obscurantist anti-science rage; one of them called the Terrestrial Planet Finder; Alpha Centauri would be reachable with nuclear propulsion.)

The stability of orbits (hence of the Habitable Zones) in the Alpha Centauri system has been debated. Many a stellar system has been found where giant planets have progressively swept the entire system. And we are always one giant comet away from extinction. That could happen in 6 months. And we don’t know, because we are apparently not interested to find out. (Although the mightiest nuke could solve that problem, that would require some preparations.)

Life exists in the cosmos, everywhere, but it’s fragile. Everywhere. Including on so far invincible fortress Earth. Invincible, but still so fragile.

3,000 years after the Greeks elaborated their mythology, we find out that, contrarily to what they guessed, Earth is far from the mother of all what is divine. There are greater powers out there… The worst of them being, potentially, ourselves.

As a star goes up the main sequence, its Habitability Zone moves out. So we should be careful to think we can reconstitute the conditions of the Carboniferous Era, by pumping as much CO2 in the air as there was then, and prosper.

Everything indicates that we will punch straight trough.
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Patrice Ayme

RADICAL BANKING FIX

BANKS ARE PUBLIC, MAKE THEM TRANSPARENT!

Why Are Banks Dealt With As If They Were Private? When They Are Not?

An Obvious Corruption Of The Constitution?

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Abstract: I track the genesis of Fractional Reserve Banking, all the way down to imperial Rome (a full 14 centuries before Wikipedia has it, nota bene). Rome developed a serious money problem, a Fractional Reserve System, properly done, would have solved it. Instead Rome invented other useful institutions: central planing, feudalism, and a notional currency (a few centuries later the Song dynasty used another notional currency, paper money; Rome could afford the luxury of diluting more precious metals in copper coins).

A slight problem that our contemporary plutocrats have succeeded to hide, is that the power and advantage of Fractional Reserve Banking lays in the fact that it is state controlled. The state can change the money supply, as needed. Up or down. What the Roman Principate could not do. Rome had run out of money, unlike the Fed, or now, the ECB.

In this enormous power, notional currency, that is, fractional reserve, great opportunity, but also the risk of enormous corruption. China, which did not have enough silver and gold, used copper and paper currency. That led, after centuries, to a terrible inflation that destroyed the value of money (contributing to the fall of the Yuan dynasty). China soon became dependent upon Spanish provided South American silver.  

Thus it is no wonder that Big Banking has turned into organized crime, thanks to Fractional Reserve banking. Corrupting the state through money fabrication gifted to friends, is a not a new crime, as cybercrime is. But its extent is new (by the way, early American presidents feared this, and took strong measures against it; president Jackson, not a shrinking violet, called it its “proudest achievement“, on his deathbed).

Nor is that crime unlawful as two of my smart interlocutors have pointed out. When a plutocratically minded Principate rises, it is careful to change the laws to suit its evil ends. A principate we have. Each time American media celebrates the “first lady” and “first family”, they celebrate the first man in Rome, the Princeps (as one says in Latin). Then Obama sends the first daughter to Mexico with a private army. At this point he implicitly tells the banksters: “I am one of yours! We are first! We own the world! welcome me in your arms! I need money!” It may not be conscious, but it is deliberate, at the subconscious level. Otherwise, why the outrage, when Angela Merkel herself flies not just in a common airline, but a low cost one?

However, differently from old Rome, and West County Men friendly England, France and the USA have WRITTEN constitutions. The first words in those Constitutions are the most important. There are six. Three in the USA, three in France. Those are clearly violated. (Could Obama understand that?)

The politicians, who have been in cahoots with the financiers, have been unwilling to turn against their accomplices (politicians get instantaneously punished, at least in financing: Obama, having raised his voice a bit against the financial conspiracy is running at 25% of the funding he got at the same point in 2008, when the banks thought he was in their pocket).

So, what to do? Very simple, having exposed the problem, one can actually roll out a solution. Democracy has to be transparent. Taxes are transparent, at least to the state. There is a reason to hide taxes from the public eye: income is a private matter, and so is spending… As long as they involve only private money.

However, if they involve credit, it is another matter entirely. Credit is the extension to private entities of public money. I will indeed argue that credit, when it involves banks enjoying the Fractional Reserve System, is actually PEOPLE money.

To keep CREDIT FROM THE PEOPLE clean and ethical, make that spending of PEOPLE money, public and transparent.

If not, it’s civilization itself, that will keep on going down the drain.

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BANKING AND INTEREST:

They are different notions. The Islamist civilization evolved a very complex financial system, with most of the characteristics of Western banking… But without charging interest.

What’s a bank? Originally, it was an organization B that pooled otherwise unused capital, and then gave said capital to some other entity C that could make use of it. The capital was lent, and that means, that it was reimbursed slowly, according to the creditor C’s capability.

One may wonder why bank B would lend money.

For doing so, interest was invented. However, after a few generations of free interest rates, the Roman republic observed that interest made the rich richer. Interest was restricted to 10%, then 5%, and finally outlawed interest in 342 BCE (that’s not long after the writing of the Bible’s Old Testament, although at the time Rome knew nothing of the Jews). By contrast, the European Union has allowed recently money changers charge states of the Union interest over 30%.

Otherwise said, today’s Europeans are like the Romans of 26 centuries ago, before the Roman revolution, rather than as enlightened as those of 23 centuries ago… 

Abrahamist faith declared that banks would lend to co-religionists out of the goodness of their heart. Lending money to heathens and miscreants could be done against interest, a supplementary payment or tax, well in line with scripture.

Scripture mercifully envisioned the survival of miscreants, as long as they paid interest. Thus banks, complete with lending against interest, could exist. They were obviously private enterprises.

So far, so good. Then something happened that even the perverse writers of the Bible and Qur’an had not anticipated, even though, their delirium, they generally get all the angles covered.  

The Fractional Reserve System was created. The preceding link, to Wikipedia, does not go in the mathematical details. I have already explained in Fractional Reserve Gouging, and many other essays, that Fractional Reserve Banking (FRB) is intrinsically unjust, and an engine for constructing neo-feudalism.

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The FULL HISTORY OF FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING STARTS WITH ROME:

American Wikipedia, as a faithful servant of New York finance, starts the history of Fractional Reserve Banking, FRB, with the Dutch: New York started as New Amsterdam, and the Netherlands, having been created by… France (to a great extent), then conquered England (!), inventing the highly leverage finance tied into the state that we observe now in the USA.

Immediately after inventing astronomical leverage, the hyperactive Netherlands turned against its creator, mightily arrogant France, the greatest land power… That is why highly leveraged finance had been invented, to start with: to give the Dutch armies power much beyond the tiny size of the Netherlands. That financial power went into an enormous Navy, soon duplicated in England, and the Bank Of England was created to finance it!

In truth it did not dawn on Wikipedia that FBR was a solution to a problem that was in full evidence in imperial Rome. Naturally enough, the solution was found in the Italian republics, a millennium after Rome only partly solved its financial quandary.   

To fully understand FRB, one has to go back to the Third Century of imperial Rome, the Third century of the Principate, which started with the Libyan Septimus Severus, imperator of the Illyricum armies (“Balkans”),  sending back the Praetorian Guard to its barracks, and becoming Princeps in its stead.

So it started well, but it ended with catastrophe: constant coups, “barrack emperors”, a massive plague killing much of the population… And a collapse of the financial system. There was basically not enough currency for the empire’s growing economy.

That was caused by a lack of precious metals. Rome used a three tiered system; copper, silver, gold (China had mostly only copper, making the currency impossible). Rome ran out of silver and gold. Five centuries later, the Franks got the precious metals, lots of silver, in newly conquered Eastern Europe, to feed their free market.

The Roman government reacted in two ways:

1) by creating a notional currency with a fictional relationship to the gold currency they kept on using (the latter was to stay in use in the Imperium Francorum/Romanum through the Middle Ages until 1,000 CE).

2) by setting up a government regulated barter system. That was a further step in the instauration of feudalism. By the way, such a system is basically in force between the West and the feudal lords of the Middle East, as many an enraged Muslim fundamentalist will tell you, while foaming at the mouth).

While doing this, the organization of the empire switched from the Principate to the Dominate (although I give references to Wikipedia, that does not mean I agree with all what’s there; it’s just a rough, and raw idea of the referred notion. In particular that article evoked that the “Western empire formally collapsed in 476 CE” is simply, and formally, false).

The switch to the Dominate corresponded, to some extend to the switch towards a command and control economy (paradoxically, there is no contradiction between the growth of command and control and the growth of plutocracy; plutocracy crowded out the free market, as did the dwindling technological options, due to the faltering of timely technological progress).

After 1,000 CE, as Western Europe, propelled by beans and other scientifico-technological advances, became richer than the Roman world had ever been, more determined efforts were made to reconstitute the Roman republic. The Franks had protected the reconstituted republics, such as Venice (after all the Imperium Francorum was supposed to be a republic, with elected heads of states). So:

3) Banking appeared fully, in an addition to the Roman system (1) money backed by the armed force of the government and 2) mandated state enterprises, above). The Italian republic created government bonds (to pay the armies), and Fractional Reserve Banking.

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FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING AROSE WHEN…

Paper notes representing the precious minerals in the vaults of banks, were themselves traded. It was soon realized that this was identical to the main Roman monetary system of notional currency, and, that, just as in Rome more of these notes could be traded than the precious minerals they represented.  

So, instead of using fake precious coins as Rome did, the Middle Ages switched to promissory notes, paper money, and the like. Before soon, the governments, whose armies protected the bank vaults, came to use those notes as currency.

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MAKING FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING CONSTITUTIONAL:

From the preceding, it is hopefully clear that banks, even private banks are actually STATE enterprises. All they have that is private is who manage and exploit them. But they are on a mandate from the state to create credit, that is, money.

Some will scream as they read this, and tell me that I understand nought. Yet, I do, and they don’t. There is total lack of understanding, true, but it’s on their part.  The only way to have really private banks is with no leverage, whatsover, and no back-up from the state. I would say that, when a big bank uses 97% leverage, it’s at least 97% people owned. (It’s more than 97% because of the back-up of the bank from the state.)

In 2008, the “Fed” would lend 50 billion dollar to Lehman Brothers in the morning. Every morning. The three top guys at Lehman walked away with 5 billion dollars between them, or so. The money was never recovered, nor do the fat cats want us to think of it this way. Your money is their money, end of the story.

Thus I believe that, as banks are actually public enterprises, they ought to be people controlled, instead of being milked by a few individuals who golf with the political chiefs. Instead of having bankers buy politicians, we should have the people, checking them both, under scrupulous laws.

How to do this? Make all and any bank transaction public, and pass laws to insure that any extension of credit from any bank is economically justified. Moreover use the Internet to publish the whole thing, so that everybody can have a look, check, and report to the government, if they spot any deviation between the official reasoning to support some investment, and the reality of what is going on.

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BECAUSE BANKS ARE PEOPLE OWNED, THEY SHOULD BE PEOPLE CONTROLLED. That does not mean they should people managed. Air Traffic control, or the Army are people controlled, but they are not people managed (that was the point that eluded Plato and Socrates!)

The preamble of the Constitution of the USA is very clear. It starts with three words:

“We The PEOPLE”

(yes, in capital letters). It does not start with: we the politicians, we the bankers, we the plutocrats, we the conspirators of the United States of America, we the republicans, we the fat cats of America, we the free marketers (not to be confused with the three musketeers).

The French Constitution starts with “LIBERTY EQUALITY FRATERNITY”, not “Slavery Inequality Inequity”. Actually the Article Two of the French Constitution says the French government is “par le Peuple, pour le Peuple“. It is not a government by the bankers, for the bankers.

The bankers reply that they are somehow uniquely qualified, but their only apparent qualification is the greatest misallocation of capital, ever. And the fact they stayed out of jail or the scaffolds, while doing so, is also unique in history.

All other constitutions are a mix of the French or American ones, that is why fixing France and the USA is key. (Britannia does not know how to write, apparently, so it is hard to know what it is about, and that is why nations around the globe have inspired themselves from the French and American idea, from 1789, to sit down, and write a constitution).

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NO DEMOCRACY, SAYS WALL STREET:

After I wrote a shorter version of the preceding paragraph in the Wall Street Journal’s comments, in an article which exposed president Obama’s love for a fat cat, Mr. Wolf, the head of UBS. Somebody working in the finance industry, John Crocker, replied scathingly that we “you do not understand anything … certainly not banking. If you’d like to think you do … well, what color is the sky in the universe where you live? Banks should be “people controlled”? …  we do not live in a “Democracy” .. we live in a representative republic. And also one that happens to be based on free market principles… In many ways, the US Government is now more of a “criminal enterprise” than any bank has ever been. Only because the government itself decides what is “legal” or not, they will never be arrested. Yeah … bankers cultivate and form relationships with federal politicians … Why? They have to.”

I think the response is pretty telling. Fat cats on Wall Street see, in the preamble of the constitution of the USA: “We The Free market of America Have A Republic Where We Are Represented” Old Geezer Pilot on this site concurred:

“It is not organized crime.

It is not even disorganized crime.

Because during the past 30 years, those banking operations and financial transactions have been made PERFECTLY LEGAL by our Congress. The best politicians money can buy.”

***

IGNORE THE CONSTITUTION, GET CIVIL WAR & NAZISM:

From above, one can see that Congress has strayed from the Constitution. The Constitution is about a “PEOPLE” regime. Unfortunately, when the Constitution of the USA was written, it was not thought to create a Constitutional Court. France has one, so now does Germany. Both courts have come out with interesting decisions the Supreme Court of the USA (SCOTUS) could never have come up with. SCOTUS has traditionally adopted a small role of pseudo Constitutional Court, but was unable to stop the multi-generational march to the American Civil War. That war was absolutely devastating. Scholars have revisited the number of dead. Upwards.

In New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll, the New York Times

For 110 years, the numbers stood as gospel: 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South — by far the greatest toll of any war in American history.

But new research shows that the numbers were far too low. By combing through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York, has recalculated the death toll and increased it by more than 20 percent — to 750,000.

The new figure is already winning acceptance from scholars… A pre-eminent authority on the era, Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia University, said:

“It even further elevates the significance of the Civil War and makes a dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history. It helps you understand, particularly in the South with a much smaller population, what a devastating experience this was.”

Well, it ought to have been a devastating lesson. What was the lesson? That, when one let festers an unconstitutional situation, an infection of civilization by infamy, gangrene sets in.  

However, the leaders of the USA, did not learn their lesson. When American plutocrats ran away with Hitler, Stalin and company, even president Franklin D. Roosevelt did not pay attention to the problem that “We The PEOPLE” was threatened with.

FDR may have talked loudly against Hitler, but he let American banks finance him, Wall Street organize its largest companies. And when it came to stopping Hitler, FDR never stopped encouraging the few fascist French collaborating with Hitler. (As the southern front was opened from Africa, and turned into a disaster for Hitler by Spring 1942, this was of great military import, as Churchill kept on pointing out.)

Companies such as IBM or Ford were allowed to collaborate with the Nazis throughout the war. That means they did not just kill European Jews, French, and the like, but also American GIs, and bomber crews. IBM had the monopoly of computing all over the Reich. That meant that the backbone of any serious organization in Hitlerland, from trains to directing fighters towards Allied aircraft, was Made In America.

What we are confronting now is exactly the same syndrome: banking is grossly violating the spirit of the Constitution, and the political leadership is out there, golfing with the miscreants.

Banking needs to be completely changed. Banking needs to made democratic. It was done with the military, it can be done for the money changers.

Better a look within the machine that fabricates money, rather than letting the crooks have it. Better a look than a crook.

***

NOT ONLY WILD BANKING DEVOURS DEMOCRACY, BUT CIVILIZATION ITSELF:

Yes, banking is devouring civilization. The capability of finding Earth like planets exists. Now. It is just a matter of placing in space a football sized telescope, and making a spectral analysis of small planets. Seeing a lot of methane would be an indicator of life. Seeing oxygen would prove photosynthesis is going on.

NASA and ESA had two such space telescopes, ready to go. NASA had its Terrestrial Planet Finder. Europe had its Darwin telescope. But the money was cut off. Why? Bankers. Not only they steal us, and they make us stupid, but they are making us blind. And they want us NOT to think of the grander poetry of another Earth. If we are too elevated, we may find them too base.

One has also to understand we have only one chance at advanced civilization. This is it. The technological tricks we have been using have depended on accessible oil, gas, and coal, for energy, and accessible metals, thanks to all that accessible energy.

When Rome could not access metals anymore, because they were too deep, and Rome did not have enough energy to get to them, it was a disaster. Roman armies could not build the weapons they needed, from lack of metals. Ultimately, around 660 CE, the Roman emperor decided to strip the metal from all the roofs of Rome, to get the metal needed to fight the Muslims. He went to Rome to oversee the operation.

Our situation would be worse: Rome depended on burning wood. we came to depend upon burning fossils. If the fossils are too deep, or hard to get to, or have been exhausted, we cannot wait for them to regrow. Forests can regrow, not fossils.

We have to use that opportunity we have now, to access higher magic (advanced forms of solar and nuclear energy, including fusion; maybe unanticipated forms such as vacuum energy, plus designing materials atom by atom).

If we do not, the world economy will hit dwindling resources. That could be as early as 2016.

The solution that will then impose itself will be war, and unimaginable forms of exploitation. Think Genghis Khan, with the caveat that Genghis was acting out of a mix of indignation, vengeance, opportunity, and the necessity to keep the 200,000 men Mongol army on a mission. Genghis Khan was not acting out of despair, because he was a cornered rat. Still, he caused terrible wars.

Now we have states, such as Israel, that reason like cornered rats, and fidget with their nuclear weapons, while mumbling about annihilation. Not a good symptom (as Gunter Grass rudely remarked).

In a way, we are threatened to all turn into cornered rats. If we let the bankers eat all the cheese, we sure will.

***

Patrice Ayme

Foolish Parrots, Exploding Gas.

Abstract: Stupidity may be irresistible, but if avoidable, it it is always immoral.

 Are middle class supporters of Obaromcare so naïve, that they betray their own class? Or are they just from the Middle Ages?

 Are CO2 deniers traitors to their fatherland? What is sure is that gas exploitation at the most extreme depth gives an opportunity to the French oil giant Total, after a few quakes, to explode the North Sea. Playing with Pluto, the god of the underground, can be enlightening.

***

FEUDALCARE?

 The Supreme Court Of the U.S. (SCOTUS) asked quite a few question about the ill fated Obaromcare, the Trojan Horse of the health care plutocracy, the pseudo-naïve attempt, by Obama, to implement the Heritage Foundation’s  prescription for the rich to take care of the poor (that was previously installed by Romney, in the state that he governed).

 Basically we have president Obama in the Supreme Court desperately defending Romney’s health care system. Pseudo leftists do not seem to have noticed the irony. Why not vote for Romney directly? Is not Obama himself, saying that Romney knows best?

 The Supreme Court forgot to ask the main question: why do you want to bring back feudalism? Or maybe SCOTUS was careful to forget asking the obvious. The right wingers want money for their lords, so they could not ask. The left wingers want their direct suzerain, Obama of Hawai’i, and other “liberal” lords to be pleased with them, so they did not ask either. They all want feudalism to come back.

 When private people are forced into contract with private entities, that’s called Feudalism. Indeed.

 Why did the French revolution happen? Why was the inventor of chemistry, the gentleman who discovered and named oxygen decapitated? Because he was a Fermier General. Fermiers Generaux were private individuals in charge of taxation. They brought in taxes, paid themselves (handsomely) in passing, and gave the proceeds to the government. They became very wealthy. (Lavoisier used his wealth to found his expensive lab, a sort of private CERN of the 18th century.)

 In the case of Obaromcare, a health tax is raised, and then given directly to private individuals or organizations. So it’s not really a tax, and they don’t call it a tax. It’s not a tax, because taxes are public things. It’s more like a tribute. It goes from the people to the Fermiers Generaux, and stay there.

 In Europe, there are health care taxes. In France those health care taxes go directly to Assurance Maladie, the French Medicare For All, they don’t go to some of the richest people in the world. Taxes are fine: they come from the public, they go to the public.

 But Obaromcare taxes go directly to those American plutocrats Obaromcare was organized around.

 True, the Heritage Foundation wants the time of hyper wealthy lords to come back. Is that good enough a reason, oh people of the pseudo left?  

 Another point: some of the naive have said that, should the individual stop being forced to purchase private (health) insurance, the premiums would skyrocket. The health plutocrats, anxious to enjoy Obaromcare, ASAP, have threatened the populus with that notion, and caused great alarm to their parrots on the, pseudo-left.

 Do the right honorable totally naive people really believe that anything else, except a colossal rise of premiums would happen? Could they show me where in Obaromcare this is excluded?

 Visualize the naivety: if all pay the hyper rich, all will have health insurance, they say, and they contently bleat. Why? Do they really think those who don’t have insurance now can afford it, but prefer to do without it?

 Obama, the objective ally of the health care plutocracy was careful to NOT set-up a public health insurance system to compete with the private health care lords. If he had set-up a tax to force everybody to pay for Medicare, that would have been constitutional: a tax, from the public, to the public. Not a tribute, from the serfs, to their lords.

 Last, and not least: why are so many so called self declared “liberals” goose stepping behind the ultra right wing plutocratic Heritage Foundation?  Do they have only a spinal cord? Or is that a spinal choir?

 Obaromcare would have been constitutional in the Middle Ages. Now we have republics. Paying taxes to the wealthiest is unlawful, in a republic.

 One wishes Obama could have learned some correct history at Punahou. However, I learned from one of his classmates and closest friends that this prestigious private school (tuition more than eighteen thousand dollars), covered all of European history, from the Ancient Greeks to World War Two, in just a year. Obviously no time to explain the socio-economic organization of the European Middle Ages, when the hyper rich took care of the health of the poor.

 This may explain why Obama appears not to know that he re-invented feudalism.

***

 CO2 TERRORISM?

 OK, feudalism we know, nothing new, last time it lasted eight centuries or so. Just a question of time. If it pleases Americans or Saudis to prostrate themselves to great lords, so be it.

 However, the collapse of the biosphere that threatens everybody, is another matter entirely.

 There is grotesque propaganda by the oil plutocrats in the USA that stuffing the atmosphere and ocean exponentially with all sorts of greenhouse poisons does not matter. Most Americans are not inclined to disagree with their masters, so they approve with the drunken enthusiasm of those inclined to please the mighty.

 (Notice the analogy with the blind approval of the simple for Obaromcare, just decried. To please the master, the poodle barks enthusiastically. His force is their force, or so they feel, thus they bark.)

 A question the self described “climate skeptics” have is: how do you know for sure? All right, we are never sure of anything, so it’s a trick question. We all use faith, and that’s the truth. However the faith we use is more or less well founded.

 I am going to fly to Rome, I have faith that the plane is well taken care of, that the pilots are not crazy, and know whatever situation they may encounter.

 The naivety of CO2 deniers knows no bounds. Deliberate naivety is bad faith.

 And the proof of their bad faith? CO2 deniers have been told there was no proof that going from 280 ppm CO2 to 460 ppm of CO2 equivalent gases was certainly a problem. Just don’t eat fish: it’s full of mercury from coal burning. Right. We have the highest rate of CO2 equivalent in more than 30 million years, all of a sudden, and what? We worry?

 The truth about the threat of climate change? Various components of the American defense establishment have “climate change” departments, and have already warned “climate change” is a major security threat to the USA. CIA, Pentagon, name it, they talk not just about climate change, but about the coming wars it will bring. “Climate change” is obviously the greatest security threat.

 So I would dare to propose that CO2 deniers are actually traitors to the fatherland, not just dim witted parrots trained by their greedy plutocratic masters.

***

 WE EXPLODE, YOU BURN:

 Will Total explode (part of) the North Sea? Ten years ago, Total basked in its technological superiority. It succeeded to exploit a very deep and very hot reservoir of “natural gas”, that is methane, CH4, the famous greenhouse gas that burns spontaneously in swamps. The reservoir was below 5,300 meters (3.5 miles) of very complicated rock, at the bottom of the ocean.

 The gas was mixed with acidic CO2, Hydrogen Sulfide, H2S, and light petroleum. The temperature was hundreds of degrees Celsius, the pressure an unbelievable 1,100 bars (one thousand one hundred times atmospheric pressure). Trouble surfaced in recent years: as the gas was extracted, the field imploded slowly, under the enormous pressure of surrounding rock. Quakes struck on the margins of the field. Finally Total, a month ago, started to lose control of an adjoining, disused well.

 So now methane is escaping. The 200 workers abandoned the giant platform, worth 8 billion Euros (more than 10 billion dollars). Sea and air exclusion zones were put in place. So far a strong wind is blowing the heavy methane away. Did I say there was still a flame on top, far above the gas?

 Some people in Aberdeen, Scotland, more than 200 kilometers away, are worried of a fuel air explosion… At the limit, under condition ideal to Pluto, with no wind for a few days, one could imagine a nuclear bomb strength explosion…

 This comes after the Chevron leak off Brazil. There is plenty of fossil fuel. But it’s going to cost too much. First, in environmental damage. Go smell the gas.

***

Patrice Ayme

Peak Cheap Oil Passed.

Expensive Oil Means No Oil.

January 1, 2012

By Patrice Ayme

In nature, for reasons not clear to me, distribution laws often follow “Normal Distributions” (aka “Bell Curves“, because they look like bells cut in half). Henri Poincare’ himself, admitted that he found Normal Distributions mysterious, and that experimentalists believed theorists had established them, whereas theorists believed experimentalists had done so… Poincare’ contributed to probability theory as he did in so many subjects, with his characteristic honesty.

This, (pre-)supposing Normal Distributions, allows to make predictions of a “scientific” character:

1. Suppose the phenomenon at hand satisfies a Bell Curve distribution law.
2. Identify, from know data, the inception of said curve, hence the curve itself.
3. Read out on the graph its extent and peak.

Thus geologist Marion King Hubbert predicted in the 1950s that the US oil production would peak out around 1970. His prediction was verified. He applied his model to world oil production. The model predicted peak oil around 1995.

Due to deep off shores discoveries, a new technology, the peak was displaced to 2005 (as it turned out). However, as the cheap oil was depleted oil prices went up, making it economic, in appearance, to get oil from tar sands, and ever deeper underwater drilling. The cost to the companies did not reflect the true cost to the economy of society at large.

Hydraulic fracking was also used increasingly in the USA as Western oil companies got chased out of the developing world (to be replaced by national oil companies). Texas, and the Bakken formation of North Dakota became targets of extensive fracking.

Fracking in the USA for gas and oil is changing quickly the energy balance of the USA. It has been immensely profitable, for now, for the companies indulging in it, and the production of fossil fuels in the USA has augmented enormously.

Fracking, in the present state of technology, consists into injecting enormous quantities of water charged with various poisons and rock devouring bleach or acid. The poisonous water is injected again and again to break the rock, releasing gas, or oil. And also countless poisons held by Pluto down below, such as radioactive materials (checking for workers for radioactivity is standard when fracking).

Thanks to the personal intervention of Vice President Cheney, CEO and shareholder of Halliburton, in 2005 hydraulic fracturing was exempted by US Congress from any regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

During the period November 2001 to November 2011, the general government inflation index in the USA, CPI-U, grew from 176.7 to 226.23, an increase of about 28%. But, during the same period, the CPI motor fuels index went from 96.1 to 294.049. The same volume of gasoline roughly tripled in price over the last decade. (In Europe, because of enormous energy taxes, and cheaper oil close at hand, the effect has been attenuated; whereas in the USA, my interpretation is that the oil spike played a role in the subprime crisis!)

People have debated whether we passed Peak Oil or not. Maybe not. Why not? Because we have cheated. The enormous exploitation philosophy in the USA, overruling anything else, such as, for example, common sense, has allowed to cheat, by going into fracking and tar sands.

It is likely that the cost of fracking on the environment is going to be catastrophic. It causes even earthquakes. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies will make lots of money, and give off many campaign contributions to their pet politicians, in the country where these corrupt practices are legal, namely the USA.

France, followed now by South Africa, and Russia, has outlawed fracking in its present state of technology, as they fear for their water table. We can have life without gas and oil, but not without water. At least so think the silly French, who should go back to drinking wine, so that they can reason like real Americans.

In any case, Canadian fossil fuel interests are firmly determined to frack and to heat up sands full of tar, to extract fuel. The cost in terms of CO2 pollution and energy is enormous. And it will get bigger: Canada has sold its soul to the fossil fuel burning Satan. But, when one has started with an ethnic cleansing of the French (!) and the Indian natives, one may be forgiven, to stupidly hope, to do the same to the entire planet…

The real currency of economy ought to be energy. As it was in prehistory. Peak CHEAP oil means that it costs more and more to extract fossil fuels, in terms of the only currency which really counts, energy (every word in this sentence was carefully considered).

Actually there is such a notion as EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested). An energy source is exploitable when the EROEI is well above 1. Nuclear energy gets a very positive EROEI (even with any waste disposal!) because its energy density is a million times higher than that of fossil fuels.

Oil production is meeting a ceiling. The most recent graph from the USA government, which I have been unable to copy, as my computer system plus WordPress refuses now to copy any picture (!), and will erase my posts if i try (!!!) shows a pronounced production dip.

It is found in the Nature article (published weeks after the initial version of this essay): “Climate policy: Oil’s tipping point has passed: There is less fossil-fuel production available to us than many people believe. From 2005 onwards, conventional crude-oil production has not risen to match increasing demand. We argue that the oil market has tipped into a new state, similar to a phase transition in physics: production is now ‘inelastic’, unable to respond to rising demand, and this is leading to wild price swings. Other fossil-fuel resources don’t seem capable of making up the difference.”

The reason for this is that fracking’s production falls off quickly, so it’s no long term solution, just a flash in the pan..

The exploitation philosophy has been the ruling philosophy in many Anglo-Saxon lands, ever since it got pushed by the “West Country Men” (circa 1600, the Elizabethan Age) ). Historically the Anglo-Saxon colonies deeply believed that no exploitation of the land, or the peoples, was harsh enough. The assault of the USA against Afghanistan, since July 3, 1979, to jump on the gigantic minerals reserves found by the French there, is an example of this avoir plus grand yeux que grand ventre philosophy (having bigger eyes than stomach philosophy: in Afghanistan, the USA tried to swallow more than it could chew).

One can compare Australia with French held, nickel rich New Caledonia next door: the dumb French forgot to massacre the natives to the exacting Anglo-Saxon standards. Thus, they have had to face an independence movement.

The French ruled New Caledonia archipelago is made of half aboriginal descendants, while the natives were essentially extinguished from Australia. In Australia, up to the 1960s, methods now classified by the United nations as genocide were used.

In any case, the mentality that no exploitation of natural resources is harsh enough has to be thrown into the garbage of history, or reserved to the outer planets. It’s important to be able to diagnose all its ramifications.

In the case of the energy policies of the USA, that country, and the entire planet, is led into a trap. Subsidies to expensive fossil fuels make continuing with a very dangerous form of energy possible. What’s more dangerous than destroying the air we breathe, and the oceans we rule? When the subsidies will run out, the real cost of fossil fuels will show itself to be unbearable. But then new forms of energy will not have been deployed in a timely manner. The rats will be many, but the food short, the air unbreathable…

Historically, it has taken 50 years to fully deploy new energy systems. It is true that going all electric would spare a lot of energy (electric engines are much more efficient, as they do not depend upon a flow between a hot source and a cold sink). Making fossil fuels pay their true cost is another must. Some of the cost is to maintain enormous, and enormously expensive British, French and American military forces to be ready to keep forcefully open the Strait of Ormuz (say). 35% of the world oil passes below the noses of gasoline starved Iranians (don’t ask).

Another example:  Since ever and ever, fossil fuels for air transportation have not been taxed, worldwide. The European Union has decided to fix that, and its new taxation policy for air transportation is going into effect today, January 1, 2012, for all flights flying into Europe.

The USA has protested loudly, threatening economic sanctions. The USA, through Hilary Clinton’s voice box, called the correct pricing of air transportation an attack against the free market.

Apparently we are far from having reached peak impudence!

 

TALK IS CHEAP, ENERGY IS EXPENSIVE.

ENERGY LURES.

 

OVERALL, THE ENERGY PLAN PROPOSED UNDER OBAMA’S GOOD NAME, IS A LURE. IT VIEWS ENERGY AS CHEAP, A SELF CONTRADICTION, AND TAKES SOME SHINY OBJECTS FOR A SERIOUS FOUNDATION. IGNORING WORLDWIDE EXPERIENCE DOES NOT HELP.

***

Abstract and warning: Change of energy policy without hefty energy taxes is no change at all. Be it only because there will be no money to implement change [as was demonstrated this week, when money that should have gone to the energy infrastructure, was directed instead into the usual unrestrained tax cuts of recent years, financed by, well, future taxes, and guaranteed, this time, not to work!].

Very detailed sharp and deep technical arguments show that all too many proposals in the present “Obama” energy plan come very short, while obvious strategies one should embark on as soon as possible, are completely ignored, such as light and high speed rail, efficient short range planes, and a closed nuclear cycle [those suggestions of mine have all in common that they will allow to rebuild American heavy engineering, the indispensable core enforcing an increase of efficient energy usage; it's a deliberate push away from Silicon Valley's gimmicks].

At this point the cultural set-up of Ronald Reagan is still firmly in place: the state is bad, except for a huge military, so let’s destroy the tax base. Modern historians are now realizing that destroying the tax base is exactly how Rome went down. Roman culture was unable to see the increasing errors of its ways, and the simultaneous increasing change in the world. The way out would have been a much stronger state, and that, with Rome, should have started by making energy more expensive, and that should have meant, at the time, by outlawing slavery [as the Franks did later].  

*** 

Overview: Changing energy policy without raising the cost of energy is a lure. Trying to do so would make any change unattractive, and unbearably expensive for the government [yes, there is no contradiction: by taxing energy heavily, the government would acquire the power to change energy procurement, and only then. This tax does not have to be regressive, and would be cheaper in the long run, for all concerned; watch what Europe has done, and is doing much more of]. Change that one does not finance is change that will not happen.  The beauty, though, is that energy change can self finance.

After two days of Obama presidency it was indeed revealed that the hope for increased mass transit funding was slashed down to nearly zero, precisely because it cost money [or to leave some for the silly "recovery plan", also known as money-for-China]. Europe, instead has augmented both energy cost and transportation spending, in the last few months, to react to the crisis, and the work below shows why. This is all the more alarming since the subsidies for inefficient cars and suburbs are enormous (more than 10 times greater).

Making energy more expensive will shift the emotional paradigm regarding wasting energy, and is the best way to increase efficiency. it is not just an economic tool, but a psychological one.

Forgetting to build trains, while talking up hypothetical “hybrids”, makes for a nice couple of mistakes that show that pork is not dead, and that the concept of a correct energy policy has not been the object of tiring brain work. But there are better ways to save energy, than to rest one’s mind.

Besides, the present energy plan, in its haste, forgets to mention aerospace completely, although this is one of the last industrial sectors where the USA is still a leader, and has something to trade with, something that people in other countries want to acquire, and fight the American deficit with. In aerospace, one would not be throwing good money after bad, because it is a sector which is just at a point in time when it is absolutely certain that throwing money at existing technology would give spectacular results. In other words, the conceptual opposite of some potential car technologies the Obama plan pushes.

***

At the end of our personal discourse on energy which follows, we have reproduced the Obama energy plan, with our comments added in italics.

That Obama plan, as it stands, is conspicuous by the absence of the only strategy that is known to work, according both to what common sense says, and what experience shows.

Obama says that he will end programs that do not work. Well, experience, worldwide, shows that the only energy plan that works is a strategy that was adopted long ago by France. As a result, France produces now less than a third of CO2 emission per unit of GDP, relative to the USA. Other methods have not worked [including a few that are still tried in Europe].

That strategy that has been proven to work in France, was then copied successfully by all of Western Europe. It is the policy of the 27 countries of the European Union, and even of a giant energy producer and exporter such as Norway. It is British policy. That policy is now propagating to Eastern Europe [making Ukraine anxious and furious]. So Obama’s energy plan does NOT mention the only strategy that is known to work for a wise energy policy: making ENERGY EXPENSIVE.

One makes energy expensive, first, and then one lets the free markets play in this new, expensive. arena.

TAX ENERGY, OR AT LEAST TAX CARBON, TO PROVIDE A STABLE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT:

Energy prices are not regulated in the USA, preventing energy planning, and RUINING THE MARKET FOR CLEAN ENERGY. Robert Lutz, second of General Motors, a Swiss, said (originally in French): “Now that the price of gas has collapsed, we do not sell one hybrid anymore. Having the price of gasoline up and down every seven months, in wild oscillations, makes us stupid every six months. Franchement, j’en ai marre.” (”Frankly, I had enough”, although it’s much more robust in French). On Swiss TV, he was really angry (it’s OK to be angry in European psychology, because communicating the truth with passion is often viewed as more important than being so cool that nothing goes through). In Europe these energy price oscillations do not happen, because taxes keep energy prices always high, hence predictable (the poor get compensating subsidies).

As a result the USA is ever less efficient, relatively to the competition. This was bound to condemn US industry, in the long term, and it did [because if you stay in bed your entire life, having the easiest of times, you can’t compete].

TAX ENERGY TO PROVIDE REVENUE: That is self explanatory. The poor, and those whose jobs require a lot of energy, get compensating tax breaks in Europe [for example self employed fishermen get a subsidy when fuel gets too expensive].

TAX ENERGY TO MAKE PEOPLE VALUE ENERGY AND REALIZE IT’S PRECIOUS: That, too, is self explanatory. One can sing from the roof top of a big White House that one is going to do this, and one is going to do that, people don’t care, once they have turned off the TV. People will do it when they are forced to do it, because the alternatives are too costly.

Another strange obsession of the Obama plan, and democrats in general, is “plug-in hybrids”. OK, that is better than flying saucers, but Toyota came in with their latest version of their Prius hybrid, and it’s not plug-in. Why? Because Toyota says that battery technology is not advanced enough.

Volkswagen has studied hybrids for years (as other top European car makers). Its conclusion is that they are not the most efficient solution in the present state of technology [Fall 2008]. A problem is that hybrid technology is heavy, and the heavier the car, the less efficient. Volkswagen said that the “Stop and Start” technology introduced in 2003 by its competitor, Peugeot-Citroen, does work and allows to save 15% of energy minimum, and that Volkswagen will deploy that instead [BMW intents to do the same, so does KIA]. Peugeot has been claiming up to 30% savings in city driving with that technology. Peugeot has the highest mileage family car [the 308, with well above 65 mpg].

In any case, it seems unwise that the Obama White House would suggest it knows car technology better than the best car companies in the world [Peugeot has an advanced hybrid diesel project, but just as Renault’s electric car, it is wrapped in secrecy; French car makers have the best overall fleet mileage in the world, causing very strong headaches at gas guzzling Mercedes]. Why not to simply impose CO2 emission maxima? [currently the average per car in the USA is ~ 330 grams per kilometer, whereas the maximum law in the EU is 160 grams, soon to be 130.]

IT IS NOT BECAUSE SOME TOP DEMOCRATS HAVE INVESTED IN HYBRID START-UPS, THAT HYBRIDS ARE GOOD. Verily, it is probable that start-ups in the automotive area will stay side shows. Companies such as Peugeot have existed for nearly three centuries [making other machines], Daimler-Benz and Renault for more than century, and so on. Bid industry is big serious, doing big things. Companies such as Google and Microsoft make a lot of money, true, but it’s mainly from monopoly tricks. In truth, they are highly replaceable: Google is basically a media company, and Microsoft profited handsomely of the work of others [universities, IBM, etc...]. The business success of such ex-start-ups has made many believe that innovative hicks in a garage backed up by wealth, is all it takes to bring progress. This is not true. Sophisticated engineering know-how is acquired by very serious schooling, over many years. The opposite legend was set up by venture capitalists and Wall Street types anxious to prove that wealth thinks. It does not. Science and engineering do. 

When talking about “hybrids” one has to realize that more than half of US electricity is produced by very dirty means [coal, etc…]. That makes plug-in hybrids intrinsically dirty, because the more they will be used, the more coal will be burned. (It is hard to imagine that the presently proposed “clean coal technology” could ever work in practice, except in a few places.)

For politicians to force car makers, or any high tech companies, into the details of a particular technology is a traditional mistake. The role of government should simply be to force the context of the market. For example, as now the Obama plan suggests to do, it would be good to do what has been done in France: big incentives and subsidies to buy efficient cars. In Europe one can buy some BMWs that make 55 mpg, precisely because gas is so expensive, and the CO2 emissions law, so low.

AND WHAT ABOUT TRAINS? That is a total mystery. The Obama administration took the same train as Lincoln, but it deserves better!

All the evidence indicates that Al Gore did not find a train start-up to invest in. How could he? There are only so many companies in the world that know how to make the best trains, and they are all huge, because trains are huge; one is Canadian [Bombardier], one is French, one is German, and then there are the Japanese and now the Chinese [the later two have been known to be, let’s say, more duplicative…].

HIGH SPEED TRAINS ARE A GOOD SOLUTION FOR THE USA: most of the US population is in a few clusters that would fit inside France. Considering that present high speed trains from the French Alstom and the German Siemens can operate at 250 miles per hour, high speed trains could actually replace a lot of plane travel [Europeans already prefer to use high speed rail to planes if the flight is less than four hours, and high speed rail is far from being completely deployed in Europe]. LIGHT RAIL rail will also rejuvenate cities and make urbanization more energy and culturally efficient. The USA used to be covered with light rail: it was bought by car companies, and destroyed, part of the racist and plutocratic plan to turn city centers into lower income, colored zones [a situation that needs to be reverted, ASAP!]

Now of course French and German trains going at 250 miles per hour use technology that the USA does not have. But the USA can license it, and learn to make it [the Japanese high speed trains started long ago by buying three fast French electric engines, and deconstructing them; for the USA in the future I am talking about lawful licensing]. The big US car companies could help make these trains. Europe uses presently 1,000 high speed train sets, and will have much more in the future. That is a lot of work, for a long time to come. And a lot of increased efficiency and comfort, and… power, for the good.

Russia, not just Western Europe,  has embraced that conclusion. The Saint Petersburg to Moscow high speed line will be run with Siemens trains by the end of 2009, with a domestic content of components of 30% [expected to grow to 80% by 2015, as Siemens transfers technology, and Russian industry rise its standards high enough to produce it. Meanwhile the French Alstom got a huge contract for high speed tilting trains going all the way to Helsinski, Finland [tilting trains are more friendly with older tracks]. Russia is developing the engineering and planning background for high speed rail all over, at speeds above 400 kilometers an hour (250 mph). French engineers believe they could reach speeds around 400 miles per hour [aerodynamics has become problem number one].

Some people will feel that I am contradicting myself: first I am against the government singing the praises of hybrids, and apparently planning to finance them, now I am for the government encouraging, and even financing trains. Well, there is no contradiction, it’s comparing apples and supermarkets. Hybrids are like apples, except those particular apples could well not be the best. Trains are like supermarkets: there is lot more there. 

Hybrids, especially plug-in hybrids, are an audacious hope, nothing more. Cars with sophisticated technology, and a much higher mileage, have already been sold in Europe by the millions. So it is not clear that this particular automotive technology, hybrids, will ever work better than its competition [better conventional engines, or electric cars]. Whereas the general concept of railroad technology works, and even better than car technology [as far as efficiency is concerned; e. g., in the present USA, trains are four times more efficient than the best trucks; most of the work done by transportation is done by rail]. So funding trains in general is funding one of these programs that works that Barack was talking about. But we don’t need to try the alternative, doing with neglecting trains: we already did, and even in Europe, and it does not work. Not at all.

Modern trains work so well, that the European Union, under the prodding of some Swiss cantons (!), has basically decided to put all trucks on trains for long range travel, as soon as possible. It’s better for all of Europe and even the world.

Trains would make the USA not just more efficient, but more friendly: instead of piling up in airports for ever, people would take trains; cheaper, and, most often, faster. So families and friends would see each other more often. Trains are more friendly and dignified than the glorified sardine cans in which people fly.

Another interest is that, although a French high speed train was bombed by Al Qaeda, destroying completely a carriage, killing all passengers there, the train then stopped, saving the rest of the passengers [even the biggest jumbo jet would have been pulverized].

Still another interest is that electric trains can be fed by renewable energy [in France more than 90% of the electricity is renewable or closed cycle nuclear; see below]. They do not have to run on hydrocarbons.

SOLAR THERMAL TOWERS and PHOTOVOLTAIC PLANTS in the Western deserts have a great potential, although they will require ugly power lines [which cannot be buried economically, unfortunately, it seems]… Environmental objections to them should be pulverized.

AND WHAT ABOUT MUCH MORE EFFICIENT PLANES? The somewhat ridiculous, but otherwise excellent, Boeing Aircraft company is firing workers, causing great hilarity in Toulouse, France, where Airbus headquarters are located [Airbus will fire nobody]. Airbus’ latest jet, the A380 Super Jumbo [some sitting 840 passengers have been ordered] makes 85 miles per gallon per passenger [with around 500 passengers]. In other words, it is superbly efficient. Both Boeing and Airbus are developing jets that are a bit smaller, which should be even more efficient [the 787 and the A350].

But Airbus does not have the capacity at this point to develop a very efficient successor to the A320, a much smaller jet.

The A320 is the one that ditched on the Hudson river, morphing itself into a water craft, thanks to its excellent pilot who was able to keep the plane flying without stalling at very low speed, thanks in turn to computerized electric controls fed by power from the Auxiliary Power Unit and an emergency RAM turbine. In other words, the Airbus jet did not crash, because it had technology much more advanced than those of its Boeing equivalent, the 737. It was a miracle, but also a warning: European technology is forging ahead, and even squadrons of American geese would not stand in the way. Financing gimmicks from Silicon Valley will not compete with serious European engineering.

To keep the USA leading in aerospace technology, the Obama administration should give money to Boeing to develop such a short range, efficient plane [the French government has started to suggest that they would be pleased if Airbus made some efforts towards a more efficient short range plane, and that they are definitively not pleased that in 20 years the A320 efficiency increased by only 2%, while that of the Super Jumbo jumped enormously].

Thus, thanks to well targeted subsidies, it should be possible to marry harmoniously industry, ecology, and even trade [instead of going into hypocritical legal battles with the French about aerospace subsidies].

There are more than 100 civil nuclear plants in the USA, and something needs to be done about their global obsolescence. In particular about the necessity of switching to a closed nuclear cycle as soon as possible [see below]. Research in other nuclear technologies beckon [Thorium, thermonuclear].

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OBAMA ENERGY PLAN OVERVIEW WITH COMMENTARIES:

Here is the Obama’s “Energy Plan Overview”, as taken from the White House site, January 21, 2008, with my own comments on the right in tilted letters, using capitals if I feel particularly strident. I added numbers on the left, to make the list of Obama’s points clearer:

Obama: 1) Provide Short-term Relief to American Families. Commentary: [Why just short term? In Europe the poor get long term energy subsidies]

Obama: 2) Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation. Commentary: [This is ABSOLUTELY NEEDED! EXCELLENT! A lot of the futures' trading should be restricted to commercial operators, leverage should be so reduced for others, that it could operate the other way]

Obama: 3) Swap Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Cut Prices. Commentary: [This a silly GIMMICK; besides, the word "Strategoi" means general of an army in Greek: that reserve is for extreme emergencies, not to play the markets.]

Obama: 4) Eliminate Our Current Imports from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 Years. Commentary: [It may sound good to the ignorant, but because oil is traded worldwide, it is a bit like saying one will not breathe air from Venezuela and the Middle East within 10 years].

Obama: 5) Increase Fuel Economy Standards. Commentary: [This is historically ineffective; instead, just converge towards European CO2 emissions ASAP; they have been adopted by China, etc...].

Obama: 6) Get 1 Million Plug-In Hybrid Cars on the Road by 2015. Commentary: [This is a TOTALLY UNWARRANTED, UNEXPLAINED STEERING OF A COMPLETELY UNPROVEN, PECULIAR TECHNOLOGY BY GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION; is this pushed by unsavory financial interests? Aside from the fact they will be mostly made by foreign car makers, one million plug-ins will not make a dent: too little and most of US electricity is produced by dirty coal plants.]

Obama: 7) Create a New $7,000 Tax Credit for Purchasing Advanced Vehicles. Commentary: [That very French method was used several times by France, and has now been adopted by Germany; and it has proven effective; but the French subsidies right now are only around $3,000].

Obama: 8] Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Commentary: [These are the Euro CO2 emissions that I talked about above]

Obama: 9) A “Use it or Lose It” Approach to Existing Oil and Gas Leases. Commentary: [Sounds good]

Obama: 10) Promote the Responsible Domestic Production of Oil and Natural Gas. Commentary:[Sounds good]

Obama: 11) Create Millions of New Green Jobs. Commentary: [It sounds good, but it will not happen as fast and as much if energy keeps oscillating in price, and not at all if oil goes down to $20 a barrel, which could happen if the USA does not nationalize its entire financial industry swiftly.]

Obama: 12) Ensure 10 percent of Our Electricity Comes from Renewable Sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025. Commentary: [Does “renewable” include nuclear? in France NUCLEAR FUEL IS RECYCLED AND BURNED AGAIN (instead of being put away as in the USA, with most of its energy unused, and very dangerous and polluting): that makes nuclear energy “renewable”, to a great extent. One calls that the “CLOSED NUCLEAR CYCLE”; the USA should ABANDON ITS “OPEN NUCLEAR CYCLE” which creates a strong nuclear waste problem; actually France transformed US nuclear weapons in fuel that now sits, waiting to be used (!)].

Obama: 13) Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source – Energy Efficiency. Commentary: [That will happen ONLY IF ENERGY IS EXPENSIVE].

Obama: 14) Weatherize One Million Homes Annually. Commentary: [It will work only if energy is expensive]

Obama: 15) Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology. Commentary: [This is an unproven technology; meanwhile half of US electricity is from dirty coal].

Obama: 16) Prioritize the Construction of the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline. Commentary: Natural gas, CH4, is cleaner than any other hydrocarbons.

Obama: 17) Reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions 80 Percent by 2050. Commentary: [That's Euro babble that Europe is moving towards, but the taxes on gas in the United Kingdom are more than six (6!) dollars per gallon...]

Obama: 18] Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. Commentary:[Cap and trade has been tried in Europe, under French leadership, but has encountered various difficulties, including abuse and gaming the system by major corporations].

Obama: 19) Make the U.S. a Leader on Climate Change.

That obsession, to lead again, be the chief again, is, as long as one does not start with a rise energy prices, just inspiring talk, and wishful thinking, soaring above vacuum. Because, without the preliminary rise in energy prices, nearly any single one of the preceding Obama energy points is all too expensive for the deficit laden government to bear.

Americans love to hear that they will “lead”. But, when one does not know how to do something, one learns by following first. Following others in energy policy is smart, ignoring the history of the rest of the world’s experiences is not.

***

Patrice Ayme.

Patriceayme.com

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P/S 1: Rising taxes in a recession, some are sure to say, is folly. Overall, certainly. But irrelevant to the preceding, because rising energy taxes can be made revenue neutral, by lowering other taxes, for example by lowering income taxes on the non-rich [however non-rich is defined; to fight a recession, it could be defined as those who spend less on basic goods and services].

 

P/S 2: Road utilization extracts revenue from the rest of the government’s budget in the amount of 107 billions, the gas tax being too small to repair roads. That’s to rob Peter to pay Car.