There were a number of excellent responses in the comments to the last Martenson Report. Here I will address a few of them in a post, rather than sprinkle my responses throughout the thread, where some may miss them.
There were a lot of excellent responses, and I will try to get to them all here or in the next report.
I wish I could have gotten to these 24 hours ago, but I spent the last two days in Washington DC, on K Street, attending a conference on population and sustainability. I gave a short presentation there, but my highlights were the opportunity to hear Richard Heinberg, William Catton (Overshoot – the 1980 classic), and Dennis Meadows (Limits to Growth), among other notables, give their presentations, and then interact with them during discussion sessions.
So here I am, back in the office and charged up from the new energy that is surging through the various communities of dedicated people addressing facets related to the three Es.
It sounds like you are now saying that you think the risk of systemic collapse is now even higher than it was last fall, and that people should be even more diligent about keeping money out of the bank, preparing for the possibility of a bank holiday, and so forth as you advised last fall. Is that what you meant?
I’m not disagreeing here… Just surprised because I was of the impression previously that you thought we pretty much made it through round one and that all the money printing would [unfortunately for the long run] keep the system propped up for a while. Sounds like you think the “propped up” phase is about to end? Is that the right interpretation of your statement?
Erik
Erik, where last fall I was worried about an imminent banking collapse, my comment today is not so much about systemic collapse, but rather about the perception gulf that exists between the price signals being given by the stock and bond markets and the various fundamental data sources on consumer spending and behaviors.
Imagine it this way, on the one hand we have trillions of dollars being printed and shoved into the small end of the funnel (that is, to Wall Street firms and large financial institutions) even as producers scale back to meet plummeting consumer demand.
by former_user