What this world desperately needs is a long term plan to deal with its shrinking net-energy-per-capita ratio. This metric will someday turn into a complete sinking negative that will, in turn, utterly ruin all of our capital markets.
Lower to no growth equals a vastly reduced set of market expectations. These, in turn, will mean vastly lowered prices for paper financial "assets." Whether these prices will be measured in deflated or inflated dollars remains to be seen.
Each day we are confronted with evidence that humans around the globe are incapable of planning ahead with even a tiny bit of prudence, let alone actually changing any of their behaviors for their collective future benefit.
As we know, all that matters to the Fed, seemingly, is that the stock market does not decline. Each time it does, they dutifully trot out another Fed official to hint that maybe, possibly, but certainly if trouble arrives, they will inject more money printed out of thin air into the system in order to keep the status quo teetering along.
Each day, various fiscal and monetary officials the world over fret about economic growth. Most don't realize that they're wishing for not just any old sort of growth, but exponential growth. As long as we are selling more houses, hiring more people, consuming more energy, and making more products this time period than last, all will be well.
Or at least all will be better, they tell themselves.
Never mind that such growth cannot be sustained forever. Not that these officials seem to realize this limitation. It's only a few bloggers and micro institutions out there who make any noises about the illogical and mathematical failure built into that ideology.
Short Attention Spans
So perhaps it's not all that surprising that 'consumers,' as they are derisively referred to, have the same mindset — which essentially boils down to doing whatever makes sense today, regardless of the recent past or probable future.
More evidence of this came today in the form of vehicle sales data for the US:
Best October in a decade for U.S. auto sales
Nov 3, 2014
DETROIT, Nov 3 (Reuters) – Automakers reported their strongest U.S. October sales in a decade on Monday on strong demand for brawny pickup trucks and roomy SUVs, but top-seller General Motors Co missed expectations.
by lesphelps