The hardest thing about going through a period of profound change is that no one cares to let you know that times have changed and nothing will be the same. Certainly not the talking heads on television, who are often the last to know. You have to figure it out for yourself, if you can. But I'm here to help you.
Dmitry Orlov
Everything is related to energy. Nothing to technology - it's incidental - nothing to military superiority - it's ephemeral and largely imaginary - and certainly nothing to any form of political or cultural self-satisfaction - it's illusory.
There is no substitute for energy
If you run out of it, you can't run your industrial economy with wooden sticks. She just stops. Worse still, the energy sources are not even particularly substitutable for each other. If you run out of gas, you can't switch to coal or dry manure, even if you're up to your neck in it. Modern industry runs on petroleum, natural gas, and coal, in that order, and the substitutions are very limited.
Moreover, the energy must be very cheap. Petroleum has to be the cheapest liquid you can buy - cheaper than milk, cheaper even than bottled water. If energy is not cheap enough, all the energy-intensive industries that depend on it become unprofitable and close down. This is the stage we are at now in most countries of the world. So what happened?
There was a time when the United States produced most of the oil in the world. But West Texas' prolific wells ran out and Saudi Arabia took over as the biggest oil producer. But the United States was not going to let this go and hatched an ingenious plan: Saudi Arabia will sell its oil in printed US dollars, then return most of those dollars to the United States in "investing" in the " debt " American. Every other country that needed oil had to find a way to earn US dollars to buy it, and any US dollars they had left after buying oil had to be used to buy US debt as well, just because. .. "Nice economy you have there!" We wouldn't want anything bad to happen to him, would we? »
Some people did not understand the message (Saddam in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya) and their countries were bombed. And a whole bunch of other defenseless countries were bombed just to scare others. But then Syria, which also refused to receive the message, asked for help from the Russians. The Russians helped Syria, and now no one is afraid of the United States. Meanwhile, the United States has been spoiled with all that free money, has become fat, lazy, degenerate, and weak, and has amassed the biggest pile of "debts" (in quotation marks because there is no question of repaying them one day) of all the history of humanity.
Then came the time when Russia, which is the biggest energy-producing country in the world, decided that it had had enough. Under the old system, Russia exported its resources cheaply, spent 1/3 of the revenue on imports and let 2/3 out of the country, much of which was also used to buy " debt " American. At first it couldn't do anything about it, and so has spent the last decade building its military to such an extent that the US and NATO are afraid to come near it, and its economy to a so much so that it no longer needs a large share of imports, at least not for a few years. And then a stupid thing happened: the United States confiscated Russia's assets in " debt " US, which attracted the attention of all countries of the world, which began to get rid of it - even the Japanese - and dragged the entire financial system into a tailspin.
In the meantime, Russia has started to switch from selling its energy exports in dollars and euros, which then leave the country where they can be confiscated, to selling them in roubles, which remain in the country. Want to buy Russian energy? Well, find out how to earn a few rubles! And if your own anti-Russian sanctions prevent you from doing so, well, la-di-da, whose fault is it? Moreover, given that there is now a worldwide shortage of energy, the Russians asked themselves: Why sell a lot of oil and gas for a little money when you can sell less for more money?
These are not planned developments; they are happening now and in real time. THE “hostile nations” (i.e. the whole of the West) now need rubles to buy Russian natural gas and there are plans to extend this system to oil exports. A few days ago, the Russian Minister of Finance, Anton Siluanov, announced that Russia had no real interest in exporting anything against dollars or euros, since it does not need them, and advised exporters to start using barter instead. Barter isn't very convenient, but if offering dollars (or euros) is only worth a punch in the teeth, that's all that's left.
What kinds of barter deals? Well, for example, there is a very nice, gigantic chemical plant in Germany, the BASF-owned Ludwigshafen chemical complex, which is about to close due to a shortage of its main raw material, natural gas. Russian. This equipment could be crated and shipped to Russia in exchange for certain energy products, fertilizers and other essential supplies that the Germans will need to stay together body and soul through the coming winter. Are anti-Russian sanctions an obstacle? Well, la-di-da again! They are not Russia's problem; someone else has to find a way around them.
Meanwhile, many dead ideas, systems and institutions are piling up in the West. Gone are the Green New Deal (a plan concocted by people who know neither physics nor even arithmetic), the Great Reset, the Build Back Better (whatever that was), the international order based on rules and mutually assured destruction (if you ask, Russia will, but how is it mutual?) And we all stand ready, waiting for the cry of “Timber! » when the debt pyramid in dollars, euros and yen begins to collapse.
The world is also eagerly waiting for a large number of pompous but useless businessmen to disappear from the public eye. Getting rid of that pompous boaster that is Boris Johnson was a good start, but what about Scholz, Macron, Duda, von der Leyen, Zelensky and a host of others? Biden is in a class of his own, because it's clear who the president of the United States is, or even if a president even exists, doesn't matter.
The world has changed, but social reality has not yet caught up with political and physical reality. It's the summer of anticipation. The winter of discontent is to follow. Next spring, we will all be living on a strange and different planet.
Source (s): The Francophone Saker via Sott.fr on the Chalouette track; ))))
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