Daily Inspirational #Wisdom #Quotes - February 28, 2022

Daily Inspirational Wisdom Quotes - 

February 28, 2022

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavour. 

Eleanor Roosevelt

#ARK' Invest Funds Are Looking For #Excuses - Blame the #Efficient #Markets

 

Editor's Comments

Professional Money Managers should know by now that the markets don't always perform or go as planned - if they did then we would not have to pay you guys the BIG bucks and the shoeshine boys would have new jobs. 

 

 

Still, it is fun to watch the top high profile managers scramble and create dramatic stories of witchcraft, voodoo, dark forces or other externalities to explain their bad ideas and poor performance.  For investors this form of Hollywood hyperbole and rhetoric is usually a good sign that it is time to take your losses and head for the higher ground - where performance is consistent and standard deviations are closer to the mean.

 

In the end, it still remains a judgement call depending on your risk appetite and how much you can burn in the fireplace.

 

T A McNeil 

Founder CEO 

First Financial Insights

 

Stock market faces the most ‘massive misallocation’ of ‘capital in the history of mankind,’ says ARK’s Cathie Wood

By 

Mark DeCambre

Catherine Wood, chief executive officer and chief investment officer, ARK Invest

 PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

“The companies that are going to be hurt most by inflation and interest rates—if they are going to be a problem—are those that are in the mature growth category,” she said.

Cathie Wood, the star fund manager and chief executive of ARK Invest, took to CNBC to defend the woeful performance of the manager’s suite of disruptive innovation funds.

Wood told the business network in a Thursday interview that the gravitation of money managers toward benchmarks, rather than taking risk on what she views as potentially game-changing technology in gene editing, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence, among others, was creating a “massive misallocation of capital” in markets that could be the biggest in “the history of mankind.”

“Benchmarks are where they are because of past successes…If we are right, those are the companies that will be disrupted,” she said on CNBC.  

She said “absolutely,” when asked if some of the companies her funds have invested in, which enjoyed nearly parabolic run-ups during the height of the pandemic-fueled worries in 2020, would return to their pandemic heights.

So far in 2022, each of the flagship ARK Innovation’s ARKK, -4.96% 40 holdings had fallen more than 10%. The fund itself has slumped 26% year to date, and lost more than half its value over the past 12 months, FactSet data show.

By comparison, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.68% was down 5% in the year to date, the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.72% was trading 7.4% over the same period, the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -1.23% has declined by 11.5% and the large-capitalization Nasdaq-100 index NDX, -1.14% was off 12.4%, as of Thursday afternoon.

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT

THE #GUARDIAN - #MIT 1972 LIMITS TO #GROWTH SPURS GRAVE #CONCERNS OF #COLLPASE

EDITOR'S COMMENTS

This is a grave prediction that we believe needs no further discourse as the evidence, logic, and mathematics are as straightforward as the last bottle of rum on Earth in a drunkard's cabinet. One day you can guarantee it will be all gone - that's not the issue.

The real issue is when will it be all gone -tonight, tomorrow, or the next day - does it really matter?

For sure the universe will go on without human activities and cognition forever whereas we have to deal with finite constraints that determine our longevity. How long it will all last is open to speculation, but any difference in conclusions is not of relevance nor important.

What will be; will be... 

T A McNeil

CEO Founder

First Financial Insights

YEP, IT'S BLEAK, SAYS AN EXPERT WHO TESTED 1970S END-OF-WORLD PREDICTION

Firefighters in Weed, California rush to tackle a blaze. Research by Herrington affirmed the bleaker scenarios put forward in a landmark 1972 MIT study, The Limits to Growth. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

A controversial MIT study from 1972 forecast the collapse of civilization – and Gaya Herrington is here to deliver the bad news

Sun 25 Jul 2021 07.00 BST

At a UN sustainability meeting several years ago, an economic policy officer came up to Gaya Herrington and introduced himself. Taking her name for a riff on James Lovelock’s earth-as-an-organism Gaia hypothesis, he remarked: “Gaya – that’s not a name, it’s responsibility.”

Herrington, a Dutch sustainability researcher and adviser to the Club of Rome, a Swiss think tank, has made headlines in recent days after she authored a report that appeared to show a controversial 1970s study predicting the collapse of civilization was – apparently – right on time.

Coming amid a cascade of alarming environmental events, from western US and Siberian wildfires to German floods and a report that suggests the Amazon rainforest may no longer be able to perform as a carbon sink, Herrington’s work predicted the collapse could come around 2040 if current trends held.

Research by Herrington, a rising star in efforts to place data analysis at the center of efforts to curb climate breakdown, affirmed the bleaker scenarios put forward in a landmark 1972 MIT study, The Limits to Growth, that presented various outcomes for what could happen when the growth of industrial civilization collided with finite resources.

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IT ALL ENDS IN 2040 -MIT

Daily #Inspirational Wisdom #Quotes - February 25, 2022

 Daily Inspirational Wisdom Quotes

February 25, 2022

See All 2022 Inspirations and Wisdom

The most effective way to do it - is to do it.

- Emilia Earheart

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Limits to #Green #Energy Leading to #Unsustainable #Future - Do the Numbers

Editor's Comments

To be brief, in this post we daringly bring together the critical observations and salient conclusions of three of the planet's top researchers and thinkers. To a large degree, they follow in the path created in 1972 by the researchers from MIT who wrote and published the book 'Limits To Growth.' Over 30 million copies were sold internationally but its thesis, models, and outcomes were sadly not accepted or embraced by the leaders in economics, business, religions, academics, and politics who all generally wanted to maintain a business as usual approach and pursue infinite growth on a finite planet without regard for the dire consequences. Was it just their self-interest and greed?

The consequences and various symptoms of unbridled growth are now abundantly clear and self-evident in terms of overpopulation, complete resource depletion, climate change, ecocide, with a related sixth species extinction, and ultimately economic and civilization collapse.  We were warned but failed to take arms against these crafty, clever, invisible demons of physics, mathematics, and nature. Nor did we pay any concern to their exponential powers and outcomes which is no doubt, as the late Dr. Albert A Bartlett points out is one of the greatest shortcomings of humanity.

As mentioned, this post incorporates the work and research of three leading contemporary thinkers who follow the reasoning of growth limits and the consequential physical shortages - which are sure to lead to hyperinflation causing the collapse of economies and civilizations. There are many nations that are already experiencing these terrible circumstances. Gail Tverberg, Chris Clugston, and Paul Cheferka are the leading forward progressive thinkers whose works we will briefly summarize here.

Along with climate change, ecocide and massive non-vertebrate species extinction Gail points out that we are on course to run out of critical fossil fuel energy sources in less then 50 years (2070)  and that it remains highly unlikely that we can transition to Green Energy renewable sources due to limitations and constraints imposed by storage and intermittency - that make them impractical and unreliable. Moreover, a quantity of fossil fuels will still be needed to operationalize these energy sources.  

Chris Clugston puts another bullet in the 'Green Energy Fairy Tale, by crunching the numbers and concluding that we will run out of the critical NNRs needed to sustain our 300 year-old experiment with the industrial, consumer, military,congressional complex in 2050. In other words, there will be no materials available to build solar panels, wind turbines, hydro plants, and fission or fusion nuclear plants. Without fossil or non-fossil energy sources we cannot sustain economic industrial activity in any form - the writing is hence on the wall.

So in face of all the logic, facts, science, and exponen tial mathematics why did we continue to grow our populations and economies? Was it simple self-interest, power and greed? Paul Chefurka takes us much deeper and asserts that we are despite our cognitive abilities and talents governed by the same laws of the universe as all other species. We are no different than bacteria in a Petri bowl or yeast in that the only choice they have is to grow survive and procreate until the habitat that allows this growth is gone. Entropy is a cruel mistress.

To summarize, we are on a population and economic growth path governed by Entropic laws - de-growthing to a lower state of growth is practically, politically, and economically impossible as asset valuations depend upon going-concern assumptions. Without them asset values will dramatically collapse and so will the the fractional-reserve global banking system; and thus all forms of sovereign and cryptocurrencies without energy and materials required to keep the global economies running.

So what do we do? In this regard, Paul provides us with his analytical wisdom acknowledging that we are dealing with a multi-variable complexity that can produce combinations and permutations of untold outcomes. 

We are in the hands of destiny. 

We are in the hands of finite energy and materials. 

We are in the hands of Entropy.

So, as Paul says, 'eat, drink and be mindful...'

T A McNeil

Founder CEO

First Financial Insights

 

Limits to Green Energy Are Becoming Much Clearer

Posted on February 9, 2022, by Gail Tverberg

Figure 1. Wind, solar and hydro as a share of total energy consumption for selected parts of the world, based on BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy data. Russia+ is Russia and its affiliates in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

We have been told that intermittent electricity from wind and solar, perhaps along with hydroelectric generation (hydro), can be the basis of a green economy. Things are increasingly not working out as planned, however. Natural gas or coal used for balancing the intermittent output of renewables is increasingly high-priced or not available. It is becoming clear that modelers who encouraged the view that a smooth transition to wind, solar, and hydro is possible have missed some important points.

Let’s look at some of the issues: (Provided are the key areas of concern. For the detailed facts and discourse please read Gail's  attached report)

[1] It is becoming clear that intermittent wind and solar cannot be counted on to provide adequate electricity supply when the electrical distribution system needs them.

[2] Adequate storage for electricity is not feasible in any reasonable timeframe. This means that if cold countries are not to “freeze in the dark” during winter, fossil fuel backup is likely to be needed for many years in the future.

[3] After many years of subsidies and mandates, today’s green electricity is only a tiny fraction of what is needed to keep our current economy operating.

[4] Even as a percentage of electricity, rather than total energy, renewables still comprised a relatively small share in 2020.

Figure 2. Wind, solar and hydro as a share of total electricity supply for selected parts of the world, based on BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy data.

[5] Most modelers have not understood that reserve to production ratios greatly overstate the amount of fossil fuels and other minerals that the economy will be able to extract.

.

Figure 3. Reserve to production ratios for several minerals, based on data from BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy.

[6] The world economy seems already to be reaching limits on the extraction of coal and natural gas to be used for balancing electricity provided by intermittent renewables.

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Editor's Added Chart:

To add to the concern and support with facts that the global economy is reaching its limits - the trends in US inflation demonstrate a breakout that is heading towards an even higher rate as the shortage balance between supplies of key energy, agricultural, minerals, and metals (NNRs) and demand is forever widening. In fact, most NNRs are expected to be fully depleted by 2050 according to the research book - Blip - written and researched by Chris Clugston. 

Meaning logically that sustainable renewable green resources are an utter myth because they are reliant upon NNRs to exist and physically create such resources.  Putting 2 and 2 together, we can strongly and rightly conclude that by 2050 we will have very limited sources of energy to sustain human economies and conditions given the almost complete depletion of key resources.

Blip: Humanity's 300 year self-terminating experiment

[7] Conclusion. Modelers and leaders everywhere have had a basic misunderstanding of how the economy operates and what limits we are up against. This misunderstanding has allowed scientists to put together models that are far from the situation we are actually facing.

So where are we heading? What drives us to grow? Why can we not degrowth? What does all this mean?

 Here is Paul Chefurka's summation from his prophetic Paradise Lost (2013) post which gives us practical guidance and insights with something profound to ponder.

Excerpted Paradise Lost  

I have given up speculating on possible outcomes, because they are so inherently unpredictable, at least in detail.  But what I’m discovering about the way life works at a deep level makes me continually less optimistic.  I now think near-term human extinction (say within the next hundred years) has a significantly non-zero probability.

 

Our cybernetic civilization is approaching a "Kardashev Type 0/1 boundary" and I don’t think it's possible for us to make the jump to Type 1.  Like most other people, Kardashev misunderstood the underlying drivers of human behavior, assuming them to be a combination of ingenuity and free will.  We indeed have ingenuity, but only in the direction of growth (and damn the entropic consequences).  We can’t manage preemptive de-growth or even the application of the Precautionary Principle, because as a collective organism humanity doesn't actually have free will (despite what it feels like to us individual humans).  Instead, we exhibit an emergent behavior that is entirely oriented towards growth.

 

I see no purpose in wasting further physical, financial or emotional energy on trying to avoid the inevitable. Given our situation and what I think is its root cause, I generally tell people who see the unfolding crisis and want to make changes in their lives simply to follow their hearts and their personal values. 

 I'm not exactly advising them to “Eat, drink and be merry”, though.  You might think of it more as, “Eat, drink and be mindful.”