[pana_burda]

One script, two plays. ( 4 mins video )

[Denny]

I think its entirely possible that the crash could be a planned event.

It is not normal for the president and his cabinet to express fear and panic. But, for a three weeks now, that is what we have seen. Contrast that with the words from the U.S. administration at the time of the 1929 crash. Its almost as if Bush, Paulson and Bernanke are promoting panic.

It is of interest that the U.S. dollar has actually strengthened through this, in terms of other currencies, and hard commodities have deteriorated in value.

I can see in the longer run, its inevitable that inflation will take its toll, that the hard assets will retain real value, whereas a dollar has an uncertain value. Most of the Fed actions over the past few years, being more gradual in nature, have only served to cause money to flock to the hard commodities.

But, if they now use fear, and recessionary fear, they know that most of us will revert to the comfort level of the greenback with all the negatives we are being confronted with. Some of the the elite, such as Warren Buffett, may even be taking this opportunity to buy in on the cheap. Its a well known phenomenon of the market place, especially in stocks, that in times of panic, its the big guy who buys in while the little guy is fleeing the market.

[Zardoz]

Do you believe that the crash is planned?

Key word here being "believe", of course.

Man, we just have to think that there's guidance, form, and direction to everything, don't we? We're compelled to feel that somehow all events are being controlled.

We can't handle the truth: We live in a maelstrom of chaos. Very little of anything is under anybody's control. Evolution happens randomly. Events spin out of control. The course of history can be radically diverted by any random event or development, at any time, for any reason, or for no good reason whatsoever.

The uncertainty of it all is way more than we can handle, so we dream up all sorts of belief systems and conspiracy theories to counter it. We convince ourselves that forces are at work to guide things because we can't emotionally deal with the concept of chaos.

No. Nobody planned this. Nobody is in charge. Nobody has any control over it.

That's the worst thing about it, and the idea of such a concept is so deeply frightening to most of us that we adopt beliefs in conspiracies like we adopt beliefs in religions.

[mos6507]

Do you believe that the crash is planned?

Key word here being "believe", of course. Man, we just have to think that there's guidance, form, and direction to everything, don't we? We're compelled to feel that somehow all events are being controlled.
We can't handle the truth: We live in a maelstrom of chaos. Very little of anything is under anybody's control. Evolution happens randomly. Events spin out of control. The course of history can be radically diverted by any random event or development, at any time, for any reason, or for no good reason whatsoever.
The uncertainty of it all is way more than we can handle, so we dream up all sorts of belief systems and conspiracy theories to counter it. We convince ourselves that forces are at work to guide things because we can't emotionally deal with the concept of chaos.
No. Nobody planned this. Nobody is in charge. Nobody has any control over it.
That's the worst thing about it, and the idea of such a concept is so deeply frightening to most of us that we adopt beliefs in conspiracies like we adopt beliefs in religions.

I will bookmark this post and refer to it often. It's a masterpiece.

[jupiters_release]

Do you believe that the crash is planned?

Key word here being "believe", of course. Man, we just have to think that there's guidance, form, and direction to everything, don't we? We're compelled to feel that somehow all events are being controlled.
We can't handle the truth: We live in a maelstrom of chaos. Very little of anything is under anybody's control. Evolution happens randomly. Events spin out of control. The course of history can be radically diverted by any random event or development, at any time, for any reason, or for no good reason whatsoever.
The uncertainty of it all is way more than we can handle, so we dream up all sorts of belief systems and conspiracy theories to counter it. We convince ourselves that forces are at work to guide things because we can't emotionally deal with the concept of chaos.
No. Nobody planned this. Nobody is in charge. Nobody has any control over it.
That's the worst thing about it, and the idea of such a concept is so deeply frightening to most of us that we adopt beliefs in conspiracies like we adopt beliefs in religions.

I will bookmark this post and refer to it often. It's a masterpiece.

Locations: Los Angeles and Boston = mixture of ignorance, cognitive dissonance, indifference, and/or failure of intelligence.

Patterns and forms are heavier than chaos within the wasteland and nihilism of industrial society, and we can never really create beauty until we witness ourselves in this fabric.

[oswald622]

blah blah blah...The uncertainty of it all is way more than we can handle, so we dream up all sorts of belief systems and conspiracy theories to counter it. We convince ourselves that forces are at work to guide things because we can't emotionally deal with the concept of chaos.
blah blah some more... That's the worst thing about it, and the idea of such a concept is so deeply frightening to most of us that we adopt beliefs in conspiracies like we adopt beliefs in religions.

This is probably the most effective kind of ad hominem argument in existence: it's so annoying, so patronizing and so self-righteous that only the best-disciplined and most self-controlled interlocutors can control their anger impulses and craft reasonable responses.

The truth of the matter is that only those individuals possessing sizable admixtures of both ignorance and arrogance can fail to entertain opposing hypotheses without dismissing them out of hand.

The uncertainty of it all is way more than they can handle, so they dream up all sorts of belief systems and delusional theories to counter it - such as that only they have the testicular fortitude and strength of mind to accept reality.

(What pomp and grandeur they must occupy in their own minds - everyone else is a mere weakling! And yet this false confidence clearly betrays a desperate need for self-assurance.)

They convince themselves that psychological forces are at work to guide opposing and alternative lines of reasoning because they can't emotionally deal with the concept of 'being wrong'.

That's the worst thing about it, and the idea of such a concept is so deeply frightening to most of them that they adopt beliefs in self-serving pop psychology like they adopt beliefs in general - on the basis of nothing more than platitudes and assertions made without support!

[Blueberry]

The ideas of chaos and conspiracy are not mutually exlusive.

For instance, why did Schwarzeneger meet with Ken Lay before he was nominated for the Republican governorship in CA?

Ken Lay's employees had been ordering power plants under CA's newly privatized system to close -- creating rolling black outs, high energy prices (and amazing profits!!) -- oh, and also a little problem with the constituents for democratic G. Davis.

There is such a thing as chaos in the system. Maybe the system is chaos, I don't know if that is the fundamental "ground" of everything but it sounds pretty close to it to me.

But the fact remains that within our systems that are perhaps ultimately governed by chaos, oportunists will try to sway things to their own advantage, ie Bush invading Iraq with certain expectations.

There are some very clever and educated oportunists who band together and try to sway things in choas to their personal favor -- using any legal or illegal means necessary -- including changing laws to make things legal or exploiting loopholes in the laws. These same people try to keep their actions hidden or disguised for the same reason.

Conspiracy is all around us, we all conspire in chaos on some level, I believe, depending on how the definition is read.

Sometimes it is successful, sometimes it is not -- sometimes we find out about it, sometimes we don't.

[mos6507]

Patterns and forms are heavier than chaos within the wasteland and nihilism of industrial society, and we can never really create beauty until we witness ourselves in this fabric.

Why don't you go join Golem if you want to play the whole schizophrenic-who-thinks-he's-a-sage game?

[Zardoz]

blah blah blah... blah blah some more...

This is probably the most effective kind of ad hominem argument in existence: it's so annoying, so patronizing and so self-righteous that only the best-disciplined and most self-controlled interlocutors can control their anger impulses and craft reasonable responses.

Sorry to have upset you so much. Just ignore me. Please feel free to desperately believe anything that makes you feel better.

[CrudeAwakening]

The ideas of chaos and conspiracy are not mutually exlusive.

For instance, why did Schwarzeneger meet with Ken Lay before he was nominated for the Republican governorship in CA?

Ken Lay's employees had been ordering power plants under CA's newly privatized system to close -- creating rolling black outs, high energy prices (and amazing profits!!) -- oh, and also a little problem with the constituents for democratic G. Davis.

There is such a thing as chaos in the system. Maybe the system is chaos, I don't know if that is the fundamental "ground" of everything but it sounds pretty close to it to me.

But the fact remains that within our systems that are perhaps ultimately governed by chaos, oportunists will try to sway things to their own advantage, ie Bush invading Iraq with certain expectations.

There are some very clever and educated oportunists who band together and try to sway things in choas to their personal favor -- using any legal or illegal means necessary -- including changing laws to make things legal or exploiting loopholes in the laws. These same people try to keep their actions hidden or disguised for the same reason.

Conspiracy is all around us, we all conspire in chaos on some level, I believe, depending on how the definition is read.

Sometimes it is successful, sometimes it is not -- sometimes we find out about it, sometimes we don't.

Well said. The belief that "conspiracies never happen" is just as ridiculous as the belief that "it's always a conspiracy".

[species8742]

When it makes tons of money
I guarantee you there is always a conspiracy

next:

[pedalling_faster]

lots of people saw this coming 5 years ago. that is, knew it was inevitable that the housing market would peak, and that an economy dependent on using your house as an ATM was bound for decline. and that Peak Oil would begin sucking $$ out of the US economy.

i didn't know how credit derivatives worked 5 years ago, i didn't know that the leveraged market meant banks would take real estate onto their books when borrowers were unable to re-pay loans.

i think a lot of people knew that something like this would happen yes. that's a little different than "planned", i think the US government is trying to do a lot to slow the perceived slowdown of the economy.

[alokin]

Now it is quite sure that the economy melts down first and PO hits later. Did your preps change? Some month ago everyone thought that we soon won't be able to buy petrol but the crude price went unexpectedly down.
That tells me that any kind of predictions are more like possible scenarios and the economic crisis made things only more complicated.
We may buy heaps of food , because everyone told that it will be very expensive only to find out that with the stop of producing biofuels that food remains cheap. Others have stocked up petrol only to find that they spent twice the price on their stocks than it is worth now.

Anyhow, I stockpiled a bit of food as one can live without petrol but not without food.

Did you change your preps because of the low crude price and the financial crisis?

[IslandCrow]

Short answer: NO

Longer answer: As I have planned for PO I have been aware that not only is the JIT system going to come under strain (and so the need for localised production and store of goods), but that also my income would come under stress. So in planning for PO I have concentrated on things that would both save energy and/or would allow me to live on a lower income. This covers things like planting fruit trees and berry bushes as well as insulation and replacing oil heating with ground heat exchange.

Of course with the financial crisis I have reevaluated what I am doing, but at this stage there are few changes I can make to my plans, although I will bring forward some of the spending if I am able (most of these are projects to improve the house, but we can live with it if they are not done).

The idea was stated many times, when I first joined these forums, "One of the main effects of Peak Oil will be a financial crisis".

[alokin]

As petrol is cheap right now, my PO dream of riding my bike safely on our roads won't come true very soon. Cycling was always thought as a part of the prep and with cheap petrol this seems to be something less important.

Maybe the financial crash part of PO, I was never interested in because I am not interested in finance and have the savings genes inhereted -hence never had a problem with finance.

[TreebeardsUncle]

PO and over-leveraging are both due to excessive consumption.

Basically the economy in the US depends on borrowing to burn fossil fuels to create garbage. In that process money is taken from the public to line the pockets of executives via excessive compensation. Then it is funneled into off-shore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and in Switzerland. The Republicans call that patriotism.

Clearly the thing to do (which I did substantially) was to buy oil stocks the last few years in the fall and winter, sell then in the spring and early summer, sit out the third quarters and then buy back again the following fall. By making repeated seasonal plays in oil and avoiding the rides down in summer and early fall as well as buying in during the crash preceding the recession, one can gain capital appreciation even as residential prices decline.

This crash will not be that big deal in the long run. The banks have been shored up. The worst is past. Expect the various inflationary movies (rate cuts, capital injections, mbs buy-backs, loan and deposit guranties) to lead to a big run-up in commodities starting late next spring.

g

Last Friday morning and this morning were great times to buy RIG, DO, ESV, HP, NOV, SII, CAM, CLB, ATW, etc.

G

[alokin]

I am not d'accord what you're telling about the economy, there is just too much depth in you rotten country, but this phrase

borrowing to burn fossil fuels to create garbage.

is excellent.

[patience]

IslandCrow,

+1 My thinking exactly.

A friend of mine summed up our thinking well, saying we should invest in things that are productive, such as gardening, grain production, and tools, and also invest in things that lower our future expenses.

In our case that means to take our all-electric home off grid, reduce our driving costs, produce more of our own food with less outside inputs, and work toward getting our shop business off grid. None of these things change much if a financial meltdown comes ahead of fuel shortages.

What has changed is putting more effort into spending vs saving decisions. We decided to work hard this year to implement our plans for garden irrigation (due to more dry weather in late summer), more garden area, and getting our PV system fully implemented and maxxed out, due to prospects of grid overload in the US and to save on the electric bill. Wood heat will help a great deal for both saving electric cost, and for possible outages.

My wife could retire and draw Social Security now, but it would cut our income a lot. She is waiting to see how the economics play out before deciding to retire. I will start to draw SS in December, and continue to work part time in our shop business, and hope to save the SS money. Our spending was always frugal, but is now more so.

[Ludi]

No change here. For me, prepping for PO is/was prepping for financial hard times.

[sittinguy]

It's almost the same thing, but I wish I would have held on to a little more of my cash, that I bought silver with. I only have a couple grand in cash now, I want more on hand. And I really REALLY am going to pay off my house by this time next year. I need to own it. And I am so close to the end.
Oh yeh, and alot of popcorn.