On Peak Oil: Could long term economic recovery be limited to available and/or affordable energy supplies?

Branson warns that oil crunch: Energy crisis threatens to be more serious than credit crunch

Sir Richard Branson and fellow leading businessmen will warn ministers this week that the world is running out of oil and faces an oil crunch within five years.

…Other British executives who will support the warning include Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish and Southern Energy group, and Brian Souter, chief executive of transport operator Stagecoach.

Their call for urgent government action comes amid a wider debate on the issue and follows allegations by insiders at the International Energy Agency that the organization had deliberately underplayed the threat of so-called "peak oil" to avoid panic on the stock markets.

…The issue came up at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos where Thierry Desmarest, chief executive of the Total oil company in France, also broke ranks. The world could struggle to produce more than 95m barrels of oil a day in future, he said – 10% above present levels. "The problem of peak oil remains."

Chris Skrebowski, an independent oil consultant who prepared parts of the peak oil report for Branson and others, said that only recession is holding back a crisis…Skrebowski believes that Britain is particularly vulnerable because it has gone from being a net exporter of oil, gas and coal to being an importer, and is becoming increasingly exposed to competition for supplies.

The question of peak oil came to centre stage last November when a whistleblower told the Guardian the figures provided by the IEA – and used by the UK and US governments for much of their planning scenarios – were inaccurate.

"The IEA in 2005 was predicting that oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030, although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," said the IEA source. "The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this."

Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk

If 2008 was the first year the billions of people in China, India, Russia and the Middle East consumed more oil than the millions in the US, what should happen when demand exceeds supply?

The world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered.

 

…is this something you should be worried about?

 

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Via The Oil Drum

Peak Quotes

Two fundamentally different stories have been enacted

…during the lifetime of man.

 

One began... some two or three million years ago by the Leavers,

and is still being enacted by them today, as successfully as ever.

 

The other began to be enacted here some ten or twelve thousand years ago

by the Takers,

and is apparently about to end in catastrophe.

 

Ishmael, a wise fictional gorilla

 

We are in the first age since the dawn of civilization

in which people have dared to think it practicable

to make the benefits of civilization available to the whole human race.

 

Arnold Toynbee

 

The greatest shortcoming of the human race

is our inability to understand the exponential function.

 

Dr Albert Bartlett

 

The major advances in civilization

 are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

 

Alfred North Whitehead

 

All progress

is based upon the universal innate desire on the part of every organism

to live beyond its income.

 

Samuel Butler

If credit peaksdoes employment, globalization and peace?

 We have lent a huge amount of money to the US

so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets

 

Frankly speaking, I do have some worries

 

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao

 

US Insists China Fears Over Debt Unfounded

The Wall Street Journal

 

If Executive Order 6102, signed on April 5, 1933

let the Federal Reserve confiscate gold for $20.67 per troy ounce

and the government raised the price to $35 not long after

 

did the US government devalue the dollar by 41%?

 

The Gold Reserve Act of 1934…

changed the value of the dollar in gold

from $20.67 to $35 per ounce

 

This price remained until August 15, 1971

when President Richard Nixon

announced that the United States

 would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value

thus abandoning the gold standard for foreign exchange

 

Wikipedia

Have the leaders of most emerging economies

essentially been stealing their citizens’ savings

by lending money to developed economies

to keep currency exchange rates relatively low

to encourage more sales of manufactured goods?

 

If global central bank foreign exchange reserves more than tripled

as the US dollar fell by ~50% since 2000

did Americans buy manufactured goods from foreign nations

with IOUs that are now worth about half as much?

 

Who is the largest holder of US Treasury debt?

 

What could happen

if a generation of underemployed, underpaid

educated and indebted young adults

become disillusioned by their elders’ financial mismanagement

and seek to identify and punish those responsible?

Stephen Hawking on Aliens and Resource Depletion

Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking…suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

…Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said.

…The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

…a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

…Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

The Sunday Times

"All our current claims systems, the credit outstanding, including government debt, our pension expectations, our savings, our hopes and dreams, are mostly focused on a "there will be more tomorrow" mentality."

"Should this "more" disappear as a possibility, we will likely not just see small implications,
but rather a disruptive destruction of both perceived wealth and security,
accompanied by the shattering of hopes and dreams,
the perception alone which might cause further trouble in our highly complex societies.
 
Choosing to go forward to a world with different aspirations than growth
might have some unexpected positive surprises.
 
But one could argue the worst will happen
if we run into such a world completely unprepared.
 
This is why we urgently need policymakers to face the risk of "no-growth,"
to understand possible implications and to work on transition approaches.
 
I am personally as worried about the risk accompanying awareness of "no more growth"
in the foreseeable future than I am about the reality of no growth."
 
Nate Hagens

"Global copper output growth still far behind demand"

"Some of the world's top copper miners
raised production by 4 percent last quarter
...suggesting growth may fail to meet booming global demand.

 ...Looking to 2011,
increased economic activity is expected to boost end-user demand
for the metal much faster than production,
pushing the global market deeper into deficit of
about 400,000 tonnes.

...With few new projects expected in 2011,
incremental increases in supply
to offset any shortfalls at other projects
are limited and should continue to lag demand..."

Chris Kelly

Why is China restricting rare earth metals?

"Rare Earth in BlackBerry to Prius Underscores Alarm Over Supply

Rare-earth elements help give BlackBerrys their buzz, Toyota Priuses their battery power, and computer hard drives their spin.

The rare earths, a group of 17 metals including neodymium, lanthanum, cerium and europium, also have industrial and national-security uses, such as in petroleum refining, fiber- optics transmission, and military radar and missile-guidance systems.

The range of uses explains why U.S. lawmakers, officials in Japan and Germany and manufacturers of components that need these materials say they are alarmed by steps taken by China, which provides 97 percent of the world’s supply, to reduce exports by about three-quarters.

Components made with rare earths are so ubiquitous that they aren’t easily replaced, according to Jack Lifton, founder of Technology Metals Research LLC in Detroit, which advises investors in specialty metals. “Without anyone noticing, the rare-earth magnets have become overwhelmingly essential,” he said yesterday.

Rare-earth magnets account for 80 percent of the market for “permanent” magnets that retain their charge, up from zero in 1980, he said. They are in electric motors, small earphones and mobile phones. When a BlackBerry vibrates, a high-powered magnet made with neodymium is at work converting electrical power into mechanical energy.

“They are pervasive in our technology, especially in miniaturization of electronics,” Lifton said.

Automakers relying on neodymium-iron-boron magnets, used in power-steering equipment, “are concerned about long-term access to under-the-hood magnets because they import them from China and Japan,” Lifton said in a phone interview.

...While the elements aren’t as rare in nature as the name implies, they are difficult to find in profitable concentrations, expensive for Western producers to extract and often laced with radioactive elements. China has come to dominate the market because it has been able to produce the elements more cheaply and with fewer environmental restrictions than its competitors.

Japan, the largest importer of Chinese rare-earth materials, has said China halted shipments to Japanese users last month after a collision in disputed waters between a Chinese trawler and the Japanese Coast Guard led to the fishing- boat captain’s detention. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku said Oct. 20 that the import situation “hadn’t changed” weeks after the captain’s release.

Chinese Delays

China said this week that it hasn’t suspended shipments to the U.S. and Europe, as reported on Oct. 20 by the New York Times. Chinese customs officials are delaying shipments by various means, such as imposing extra inspections, according to industry participants who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concern about Chinese reaction.

China’s 72 percent reduction in export quotas for the second half of this year, which it announced in July, and the customs delays since then are driving up prices.

...Prices have climbed sevenfold in the last six months for cerium oxide, which is used for polishing semiconductors, and other elements have more than doubled...

China accounts for about 36 percent of global rare-earth reserves, the largest share, and the U.S. is second, with 13 percent, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

...Makers of catalysts for the oil-refining industry are among the major users of rare earths in the U.S....lanthanum, used to break down heavy crude into light crude...

Lanthanum also is used for nickel-metal hydride batteries that power hybrid cars...

...Commercial and military airplanes also use samarium-cobalt magnets for power generation...

...Neodymium-based magnets also are used in wind turbines..."

Gopal Ratnam

World Trade War 2010

"China to Halt Some Exports to U.S.

China, which has been blocking shipments of crucial minerals to Japan for the last month, has now quietly halted shipments of those materials to the United States and Europe, three industry officials said on Tuesday.

The Chinese action, involving rare earth minerals that are crucial to manufacturing many advanced products, seems certain to further intensify already rising trade and currency tensions with the West.

...“The embargo is expanding” beyond Japan, said one of the three rare earth industry officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity for fear of business retaliation by Chinese authorities.

They said Chinese customs officials imposed the broader restrictions on Monday morning, hours after a top Chinese official summoned international news media Sunday night to denounce United States trade actions.

China mines 95 percent of the world’s rare earth elements, which have broad commercial and military applications, and are vital to the manufacture of products as diverse as cellphones, large wind turbines and guided missiles. Any curtailment of Chinese supplies of rare earths is likely to be greeted with alarm in Western capitals, particularly because Western companies are believed to keep much smaller stockpiles of rare earths than Japanese companies.

China experts said on Tuesday that Beijing’s assertive stance on rare earths might also signal the ascendance of economic nationalists, noting that the Central Committee of the Communist Party convened over the weekend.

...Industry executives said there had been no signal from Beijing of how long rare earth shipments intended for the West would be held by Chinese customs officials.

...Word of the blocked shipments emerged from industry executives on Tuesday after an official China newspaper reported earlier in the day that Beijing planned next year to further reduce its annual export quota for rare earths.

The signals of a tougher Chinese trade stance come after American trade officials announced on Friday that they would investigate whether China was violating World Trade Organization rules by subsidizing its clean energy exports and limiting clean energy imports. The inquiry includes whether China’s steady reductions in rare earth export quotas since 2005, along with steep export taxes on rare earths, are illegal attempts to force multinational companies to produce more of their high-technology goods in China.

Despite a widely confirmed suspension of rare earth shipments from China to Japan, now nearly a month old, Beijing has continued to deny that any embargo exists.

Industry executives and analysts have interpreted that official denial as a way to wield an undeclared trade weapon without creating a policy trail that could make it easier for other countries to bring a case against China at the World Trade Organization.

So far, China seems to be taking a similar approach in expanding the embargo to the West.

Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said on Tuesday that the Chinese government was putting new restrictions on the mining, processing and export of rare earths to protect the environment. But he said that China was not violating any W.T.O. rules in doing so and that it was not imposing an embargo or trying to use rare earths as a bargaining chip.

“With stricter export mechanism gradually in place, outbound shipments to other countries might understandably begin to feel the effect,” Mr. Wang said in an e-mail. “But I don’t see any link between China’s reasonable rare earth export control policy and the irrational U.S. decision of protectionist nature to investigate China’s clean energy industries.”

...The Chinese government office that oversees rare earth policy...has emerged as a bastion of economic nationalism.

...China reduced in July its export quota for rare earths for the second half of the year by 72 percent. Exporters had only six weeks’ of quotas left when China imposed its unannounced embargo on shipments to Japan.

China is preparing further reductions of up to 30 percent in its 2011 quotas compared with quotas issued in 2010..."

Keith Bradsher
New York Times

Russian Wheat Export Ban = Riots in Mozambique?

The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change…
…so, in a month's time,
a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen,
or maybe one that wasn't going to happen does.

Ian Stewart
The Mathematics of Chaos

"U.N. Raises Concerns as Global Food Prices Jump
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

With memories still fresh of food riots set off by spiking prices just two years ago, agricultural experts on Friday cast a wary eye on the steep rise in the cost of wheat prompted by a Russian export ban and the questions looming over harvests in other parts of the world because of drought or flooding.

Food prices rose 5 percent globally during August, according to the United Nations, spurred mostly by the higher cost of wheat, and the first signs of unrest erupted as 10 people died in Mozambique during clashes ignited partly by a 30 percent leap in the cost of bread.

If too many Gazelles relative to water and grass lead to fewer Gazelles,
do fewer Gazelles  =  fewer Cheetahs?

...It is an issue not limited to Russia alone. Harvest forecasts in Germany and Canada are clouded by wet weather and flooding, while crops in Argentina will suffer from drought, as could Australia’s, according to agricultural experts. The bump in prices because of the uncertainty about future supplies means the poor in some areas of the world will face higher bread prices in the coming months.

If water was money and grass was credit
and Cheetahs and Gazelles were people,
who would be who?

Food prices are still some 30 percent below the 2008 levels, Mr. Abbassian said, when a tripling in the price of rice among other staples led to food riots in about a dozen countries and helped topple at least one government.

Did shortages of arable land and food
coincide with many Rwandan Hutus eliminating many Tutsis?

...In June, Russia was predicting a loss of just a few million metric tons due to hot weather, but by August it announced it would lose about one-fifth of its crop. Wheat prices more than doubled in that period.

...In early August, Russia announced an export ban that it would review at the end of the year, but Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin announced Thursday that the ban on grain exports would extend into 2011. The price of wheat jumped again, and that has had a spillover effect into other grains like corn and soybeans. The forecast for the global rice harvest has also dropped, although it is still expected to be higher than in 2009 and should be a record...

Only seven meals separate civilization from potential anarchy.

Josette Sheeran
UN World Food Program

 

...After two days of rioting set off by price increases for bread and utilities like electricity and water, the streets in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, were largely calm on Friday.

...Price increases have been much sharper in Mozambique than in most of the world because the government kept prices artificially low before elections last year...

What could happen if there’s enough food but some can’t afford it,
or governments can’t provide it?

As with any commodity, questions of wheat shortages spur speculation and hoarding, and experts suggest both are at play...

 

But the world also has to come to grips with changing weather patterns due to climate change, argued Prof. Per Pinstrup-Anderson, an expert in international agriculture at Cornell University.

You're captives of a civilizational system
that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world
 in order to live.

Daniel Quinn
Postulated correlations between  population growth
and natural resource consumption

“We are going to have much bigger fluctuations in weather and therefore the food supply than we had in the past, so we are going to have to learn how to cope with fluctuating food prices,” Professor Pinstrup-Anderson said."

New York Times

How many need and/or want how much of what,
where is half way, who’s got what’s left, who gets cut off when,
who will compete with who for what’s left,
and how is who most likely to win?

Has Globalization Peaked?

 …If historians look back on today's severe downturn
with its crumbling markets, rising unemployment and massive government interventions
 they could well be busy analyzing how globalization,
 the spread of trade, finance, technology
and the movement of people around the world went into reverse…

…For generations, the deficits that we have run this past decade
and the trillions of dollars we are spending
now mean we will be highly dependent on foreign loans
from China, Japan and other parts of the world…

In every case, employment has been plummeting.

…So far popular demonstrations against government policies have taken place
in the UK, France, Greece, Russia  and throughout Eastern Europe
and the governments of Iceland and Latvia have fallen over the crisis.

…In the 1930s, when capital flows and trade among countries collapsed
and every country went its own way, world growth went into a ditch,
political ties among nations deteriorated, nationalism and populism combined
to create fascist governments in Europe and Asia and a world war took place.

 It took at least a generation for globalization to get back on track.

Jeffrey E Garten
Yale School of Management
Held economic and foreign-policy posts
 in the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Clinton administrations

If financial markets are mirrors of mass psychology, and many simultaneously experience anxiety, depression, stress, emotional instability, unresolved grief, unemployment, homelessness academic problems, career burnout, sleep disorders loss of confidence and self-esteem along with feeling deceived, what does the recovery process of a nervous breakdown involve?

Not Good: "BP faces setback in containment dome for oil spill"

BP faces setback in containment dome for oil spill

Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said hydrates, mainly crystallized methane frozen from the crushing pressure of the ocean and low temperatures, clogged up the opening at the top of the giant funnel after it landed on the sea floor one mile below the surface.

The 100-ton cofferdam has been set aside from the well head as officials attempt to remove the hydrates and figure out a way to solve the setback.

At a press conference, Suttles said BP is studying ways to heat the area to prevent hydrates from forming on the funnel.

Steve Gelsi
MarketWatch

If credit peaks does employment, globalization and peace?

To avoid the shortcomings of sovereign credit currencies
acting as reserve currencies,
we need to create an ... international reserve currency
that can maintain the long-term stability of its value.

People's Bank of China

If US dollars became redeemable only for themselves in 1971,
why are most international financial transactions
still denominated in American currency?

What would happen if international financial transactions
become denominated in assets other than US dollars
and Federal Reserve Note supplies exceed demand?

If one day the world's largest oil producers
demanded euros for their barrels,
it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike.

Bill O'Grady

How could fiscal 2009’s reported Federal Deficit be only $1.42 trillion if Total Debt increased by more than $1.88 trillion?

Date                    9/30/2008                         9/30/2009

 

Value                    $10,024,725,000,000            $11,909,828,000,000

 

 

 

 

How could the national debt have increased

 by considerably more than...the "deficit"?

  

Simple.

  

Just call the money borrowed from the Social Security trust fund

an "intragovernmental transfer,"

and exclude it from the calculation of the deficit.

 

 Corporate managers have gone to jail for less book cooking than that.

  

John Steele Gordon

A Short History of the National Debt

Wall Street Journal

On Iran: If credit peaks, does employment, globalization and peace?

US raises stakes on Iran by sending in ships and missiles: Pentagon says Patriot shield will deter strike on American allies in the Gulf

Tension between the US and Iran heightened dramatically today with the disclosure that Barack Obama is deploying a missile shield to protect

American allies in the Gulf from attack by Tehran.

The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to four countries – Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait – and keeping two ships in the

Gulf capable of shooting down Iranian missiles. Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia develop a force to protect its oil installations.

...The chief of the US central command, General David Petraeus, said in a speech 10 days ago that countries in the region are concerned about Tehran's

military ambitions and the prospect of it becoming a dominant power in the Gulf: "Iran is clearly seen as a very serious threat by those on the other side of the Gulf front."

Petraeus said the US is keeping cruisers equipped with advanced anti-missile systems in the Gulf at all times to act as a buffer between Iran and the Gulf states.

...The director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, met the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and other senior officials in Jerusalem last week to discuss Iran.

...Tony Blair, Middle East envoy on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU, continually referred to what he described as the Iranian threat during his evidence at the Chilcot inquiry last Friday. Textual analysis now shows that he mentioned Iran 58 times.

Besides the new missile deployment, Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia to create a 30,000-strong force to protect oil installations and other infrastructure, as well as expanded joint exercises between the US and military forces in the region.

Chris McGreal
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 January 2010

If credit peaks does employment, globalization and peace?

To avoid the shortcomings of sovereign credit currencies

acting as reserve currencies,

we need to create an ... international reserve currency

that can maintain the long-term stability of its value.

 

People's Bank of China

 

If US dollars became redeemable only for themselves in 1971,

why are most international financial transactions

still denominated in American currency?

 

What would happen if international financial transactions

become denominated in assets other than US dollars

and Federal Reserve Note supplies exceed demand?

 

If one day the world's largest oil producers

 demanded euros for their barrels,

it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike.

 

Bill O'Grady

If water was money and grass was credit, and Cheetahs and Gazelles were people, who would be who?

Current world population    6.8 billion

 

Net growth per day      218,030

 

2040 Forecast    9 billion

 

Census Bureau

 

There are probably already too many people on the planet.

 

We need to continue to decrease the growth rate

 of the global population.

 

The planet can't support many more people.

 

Dr Nina Fedoroff

National Medal of Science Laureate

Professor of Molecular Biology

Science and Technology Advisor

 to the US Secretary of State since 2007

 

If Gazelles need water and grass

and Cheetahs need water and Gazelles

and an abundance of sustenance leads to more Gazelles,

should more Gazelles and water lead to more Cheetahs?

 

If too many Gazelles relative to water and grass lead to fewer Gazelles,

do fewer Gazelles  =  fewer Cheetahs?

 

Population, when unchecked,

increases in a geometrical ratio.

 

Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.

 

Thomas Robert Malthus

Suggested populations could increase faster than food supplies

Peak Gold Production?

Global gold production is in terminal decline despite record prices and herculean efforts by mining companies to discover fresh sources…

 

…global output has been falling by roughly 1m ounces a year since the start of the decade. Total mine supply has dropped by 10pc as ore quality erodes…

 

…Ore grades have fallen from around 12 grams per tonne in 1950 to nearer 3 grams in the US, Canada, and Australia. South Africa's output has halved since peaking in 1970.

 

…India's central bank [recently purchased] up half of the gold being sold by the International Monetary Fund. It is the latest sign that the rising powers of Asia and the commodity bloc are growing wary of Western paper money and debt.

 

China has quietly doubled holdings to 1,054 tonnes …

 

...exploration budgets tripled since the start of the decade with stubbornly disappointing results so far.

 

Output fell a further 14pc in South Africa last year…

 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

http://www.telegraph.co.uk, 11 Nov 2009

Cuba freezes assets of foreign businesses

Cuba orders extreme measures to cut energy use

 

Cuba has ordered all state enterprises to adopt "extreme measures" to cut energy usage through the end of the year…

 

In documents seen by Reuters, government officials have been warned that the island is facing a "critical" energy shortage that requires the closing of non-essential factories and workshops and the shutting down of air conditioners and refrigerators not needed to preserve food and medicine.

 

Cuba has cut government spending and slashed imports after being hit hard by the global financial crisis and the cost of recovering from three hurricanes that struck last year.

 

All provincial governments and most state-run offices and factories, which encompasses 90 percent of Cuba's economic activity, were ordered in June to reduce energy use by a minimum of 12 percent or face mandatory electricity cuts.

 

…Cuba was consuming more fuel than the government had money to pay for.

 

…Cuba has been grappling with the global economic downturn, which has slashed revenues from key exports, dried up credit and reduced foreign investment.

 

…the government has cut spending, slashed imports, suspended many debt payments and frozen bank accounts of foreign businesses. It reported last week that trade was down 36 percent so far this year due mainly to a more than 30 percent reduction in imports.

 

Marc Frank

Reuters 11 Nov 2009 21:58:49 GMT

If the US was a net creditor nation after WWIIwhy does America owe the rest of the worldmuch more than any foreign entities ever owed us?

Foreigners' net ownership of our national wealth...

will leave us paying ever-increasing dividends and interest to the world

 rather than being a net receiver of them as in the past

 

We have entered the world of negative compounding

 goodbye pleasure, hello pain

 

Warren Buffett