Global Digest's Comments
While the sudden rapid switch to renewable energy sources is a good trend for obvious and various reasons , it is not a cure-all by any means. Why? Simply because we are also depleting the non-renewables needed to create renewable energy sources, exponentially. That too is unsustainable and cannot go on forever, thereby defining the real essence of our human predicament.
Shortly after his publication, my grandmother figured out that Keynes was wrong, over 60 years ago , when she metaphorically stated , without the eloquence of mathematical reflection - " you cannot draw blood (resources) from a stone (earth)"
The math is right, but more importantly, so was grandma's now famous analytical observation.
Fossil fuels have become an economic liability—for both consumers and energy companies.
Deborah Lawrence had been watching a once-empty parking lot near Midland-Odessa, Texas, fill up with idled drilling rigs usually at work plumbing for oil in the nearby Permian Basin. In January she noticed 10 rigs, then 17 a few weeks later. As winter turned to spring, the number climbed to 35.
That trend has continued across the country. By the end of July, the nationwide rig count had slipped 54 percent since the same time a year ago, indicating distress in the oil and gas industry. The most obvious culprit is the precipitous drop in crude prices. But the trouble goes deeper, as Lawrence knows—and she isn’t just a casual observer. Lawrence is a former Wall Street financial consultant who now runs the Energy Policy Forum, helping to identify and analyze trends in the industry.
Right now, our fossil-fueled energy path has us on a roller-coaster ride and we are plunging, white knuckled. Production in the United States from the exploitation of shale oil (or tight oil), which accounts for 45 percent of the country’s oil production, will take a hit if prices continue to remain well below the $100 mark. Tens of thousands of jobs have already been cut, and some debt-laden companies may go belly up.
A plume of orange muck from a large mine waste spill in Colorado has drifted about 55 miles downriver and is closing in on New Mexico, prompting communities to take precautions until the sludge passes.
Bees are still dying at unacceptable rates, especially in Florida, Oklahoma and several states bordering the Great Lakes, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, a research collaborative supported by the USDA. Last month, Ohio State University’s Honey Bee Update noted that losses among the state’s beekeepers over the past winter were as high as 80 percent.
Oregon has taken less of a hit. Researchers say innovative beekeepers will be critical to helping bees bounce back.
Low-income residents who wanted to follow the wealthy to the suburbs would have had a difficult time. Many wealthy suburbs passed zoning ordinances that prohibited the construction of affordable-housing units or the construction of apartment buildings in general. Some mandated that houses all be detached, or are a minimum size, which essentially makes them too expensive for low-income families.
To return from Europe to the United States, as I did recently, is to be struck by the crumbling infrastructure, the paucity of public spaces, the conspicuous waste (of food and energy above all), the dirtiness of cities and the acuteness of their poverty. It is also to be overwhelmed by the volume and vital clamor of American life, the challenging interaction, the bracing intermingling of Americans of all stripes, the strident individualism. Europe is more organized, America more alive. Europe purrs; even its hardship seems somehow muted. America revs. The differences can feel violent.
Keynesian Fallacy and Collapse
One of the first posts of this blog describes the potential for a Keynesian economic collapsedue to persistent policy application, over decades, of the Keynesian fallacy. The fallacy originated from simple mathematical errors in Keynes’ General Theory which have never been corrected. Instead, they have been perpetuated in basic economic textbooks and form the foundation of government macroeconomic policy.
It is now so important to point out this fallacy that it is worthwhile repeating the argument and its refutation as simply and clearly as possible. On page 115 of the General Theory, Keynes (1936) wrote (suppressing inessential subscript symbols):
For 
, where 
and 
are the increments of consumption and investment; so that we can write 
, where 
is equal to the marginal propensity to consume.
, where and are the increments of consumption and investment; so that we can write , where is equal to the marginal propensity to consume.
Let us call k the investment multiplier. It tells us that, when there is an increment of aggregate investment, income will increase by an amount which is k times the increment of investment.
Spelling out the mathematics more clearly, we note that from the national accounting identity, involving national income, consumption and investment respectively (click headline for more):
