Saudis Double Russia Crude Imports As It Prepares For BRICS Inclusion

  The world is being reconfigured as we speak. 

  Initially, the Covid-19 pandemic was instigated to reflate a financial market standing on its last leg. The financial part worked, trillions of dollars, Euros, Yens and Yuans were added to the market, delaying the reckoning. The economic part was unplanned and consequently dreadfully executed, resulting in the current stagflation. As for the social consequences, they were misunderstood and catastrophic as we are seeing now.  

  But the real story is hegemony: Who controls the world.

  The goal of the Ukraine war was clearly to break Russia. But the country has proved far more resilient than expected. 

  Now with the help of China, the Russians are restructuring the world. This is an extraordinary endeavor. A total economic war with the West.

  This is why we are on the edge of World War 3 and will stay there for as long as it takes in a fragile balance which can be shattered any moment...

Saudis Double Russia Crude Imports As It Prepares For BRICS Inclusion

Saudi Arabia has a thirst for heavily discounted Russian diesel and other fuel products banned by many countries in the West.

The world's largest oil exporter more than doubled the amount of Russian fuel oil in the second quarter to supply power generation stations to meet surging cooling demand this summer and allow the kingdom's crude exports to increase.

Western sanctions forced Russia to discount fuel oils on spot markets, which has increased demand in the East, not just from the Saudis but also from China and India. 

Energy trade data provided by Reuters shows Saudis imported 647,000 tons (48,000 barrels per day) of fuel oils from Russia in the second quarter -- up from 320,000 tons in the same quarter last year. 

The surge in the Russia-Saudi energy trade (also detailed in "Middle East Ramps Up Imports Of Shunned Russian Fuels") comes as BRICS International Forum President Purnima Anand told Russian newspaper Izvestia that Saudis are planning to join. That would boost multilateral cooperation between BRICS, including Saudis, meaning they wouldn't cave to the US demands to restrict Russian energy imports. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has unleashed a barrage of financial sanctions against Russia to isolate it from the global trading system to reduce trading revenue -- all of which have backfired -- and allowed Moscow to reap record oil revenues. 

President Biden will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) without Saudi King Salman on Friday (the same day Anand announced Saudis are preparing to apply for membership). It's expected that no public announcements on increasing oil supply will be made, according to Bloomberg sources. 

Biden's meeting with MbS appears to be a waste of time and more for optics. The fundamental point behind the meeting to increase crude production won't transpire into anything meaningful. Biden needs to work on expanding the capacity of refined oil products, such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, though much of that is out of his control and will take years. 

The point is that Saudis need cheap Russian fuel oils and plan to join an expanding economic club that will distance themselves from Western countries and aligns them more with Russia and China. The rise of BRICS and the possible inclusion of Saudis would outline the US' waning control over the international order.

"The Damage Could Be Huge": Chinese Banks Tumble, Swept Up In Mortgage Nonpayment Scandal As Borrowers Revolt

 At this stage of our gigantic ponzy, the only question left to be answered is what breaks first. China by the nature of its real estate market is a prime contender as noted several times over the last few years. 20% of 60 trillion dollar invested in empty apartments is a lot of worthless assets. Investing in an empty flat in an unfinished tower in a faraway city was all very fine as long as someone was willing to buy it from you. Now you're left with your "tulip bulb" and you still need to water it so that it can blossom uselessly next year for everyone to see what a fool you were. 

 Xi Jinping is walking on a tightrope, high above the ground. This is the real reason why the risk of war with Taiwan is so high. Internal politics trumps geo-strategy, every time.

"The Damage Could Be Huge": Chinese Banks Tumble, Swept Up In Mortgage Nonpayment Scandal As Borrowers Revolt

On Friday, shares of China’s banks extended their slide to a two-year low amid fears widespread mortgage non-payments would spark contagion within the banking sector (see "China On Verge Of Violent Debt Jubilee As "Disgruntled" Homebuyers Refuse To Pay Their Mortgages") even after the local banking and insurance regulator said it will maintain continuity and stability of financing policies for the real estate sector.

China Central Television said on its WeChat page that the regulator will guide financial institutions to participate in risk disposals based on market conditions, after researcher China Real Estate Information Corp. reported that home buyers had stopped mortgage payments on at least 100 projects in more than 50 cities as of Wednesday, spurring concerns that the quality of home loans is in rapid decline and could culminate in a 2007-like credit/housing bubble blow up.

Still, as Bloomberg Markets Live reporter Ye Xie writes, the grassroots movement of Chinese homebuyers boycotting mortgage payments isn’t exactly akin to the US subprime crisis of 2008.  That said, no matter what Beijing does to address the latest chapter in China’s housing crisis drama, banks are likely to share the burden.

In the wake of a surging number of homebuyers who refuse to pay mortgages on construction projects that have stalled, China’s banking regulators said Thursday that they are coordinating with other agencies to support local governments in working to ensure the delivery of housing units. Separately, Bloomberg reported that policy makers held emergency meetings with banks to discuss the issue amid concern that it may worsen.

The boycotts raise the risk of mortgage defaults, a new set of troubles for banks that are already squeezed by exposure to ailing property developers. Mortgages make up almost 20% of total bank loans outstanding, amounting to about 39 trillion yuan ($5.8 trillion).

In a rather panicked note from Morgan Stanley economist Zhipeng Cai (available to pro subscribers), he addresses the topic of widespread mortgage nonpayment and writes that "we estimate 188mn sqm (1.7mn units) are at risk. We expect local governments will be urged to help completion, but a national bazooka solution remains difficult in near term."

His warning: "Non-linearity is the key to watch."

To others, however, such as Xie, this is an exaggeration. According to the Bloomberg reporter, "it’s reasonable to argue that this is unlikely the start of something as bad as the US subprime crisis. Unlike lending to developers, mortgages have been regarded as the safest assets on banks’ balance sheets, as Betty Wang, an economist at ANZ, pointed out. Mortgage defaults have been rare, and rising home prices over the years have increased the value of banks’ collateral."

Some data: the average non-performing mortgage-loan ratio of the six largest banks, which accounted for 68% of China’s total home loans, was only 0.38% in 2021, compared with an NPL ratio of 2.73% for developers, according to Wang’s calculations.

Of course, all of this assumes that the current mortgage-boycott movement can be quickly nipped in the bud. If not, the potential damage could be huge. Nomura’s economist Lu Ting and his colleagues estimated that about 4.4 trillion yuan worth of mortgages made between the end of 2020 and March of 2022 may be tied to those home projects that have been stalled or slow in being built.

Understandably, Chinese banks have gotten hammered in recent days. The CSI bank index fell more than 4% over the past two days to the lowest since March 2020. Their price-to-book ratio has dropped to an all-time low of 0.61, suggesting investors believe a significant part of the banking system’s assets are impaired.

At the same time, the CSI 300 Financials Index slipped as much as 1.2% on Friday, and is set for an 11th session of declines. Of course, the worse it gets, the more likely Beijing will have no choice but to unleash a powerful releveraging bazooka, even if it has to do so kicking and screaming.

Indeed, as Xie correctly concludes, "the government is likely to step in sooner rather than later as the mortgage boycotts start to undermine social stability. Either banks have to chip in to provide cheap funds for developers to complete projects, or they have to allow homebuyers to delay their payments. Neither is an attractive option."

What is the worst case scenario? Here we go back to the "non-linearity kicking in" case suggested by Morgan Stanley:

Home-buyer confidence weakens further from a low starting point, leading to further deterioration in property sales. This may force more developers, even relatively strong ones today, to suspend unfinished projects, furthering the downtrend. In the meantime, housing prices may continue to fall, exacerbating the downward spiral. Furthermore, the stress in the housing sector could spread to the broader economy, given the extensive inter-sector linkages, while being magnified by the financial system.

In short: a self-reinforcing downward cascade which ends in either a historical crash of the world's largest asset...

... or a state bailout. Here are the two most likely policy responses according to Morgan Stanley:

• Damage control: Local governments will likely be called upon to mobilize resources on a by-project basis, possibly with the help of SOEs and LGFVs, to kick-start suspended projects, signaling to the public that housing completion is the over-arching priority. SOE developers may be encouraged to conduct M&A activities, taking over stalled projects.
• Reining in systemic risk beyond the near term: Policy makers will likely need to send a clear and strong signal that they stand ready to be the "rescuer of the last resort" to rein in systemic risks. Plausible moves include more meaningful demand stimulus, more explicit guarantees on quality developers, or (less likely) a TARP-like program. Translation: a massive firehose of liquidity and credit is about to be unleashed.

One final though: similar to crypto lenders which generously handed out 20% DeFi interest until it all blew up spectacularly in one giant, cross-linked ponzi scheme, so China's 5%+ mortgage rates had been an extremely lucrative business for banks. It's now payback time.

The great recycling LIE (what really happens to plastic)

 Plastic is probably one of the worst polluting product currently used in the world because of the sheer quantities produced. A much worse and more urgent problem than CO2 or energy production as can be seen below. It will take 30 years and trillions of dollars to change our energy system. We could solve our plastic problem in less than 10 years at a fraction of that cost by creating biodegradable plastics. But that would reduce profits for powerful companies so it won't happen. When you understand this, you also understand that most of what you are being told is little more than manipulation.   

 As a diver, I would love to see less plastic in the sea, on the beaches and more generally in our lives. Understanding the problem with plastic which is over focusing on production and use, not cycle would change drastically our society. The great discovery of capitalism is also the one the least talked about for obvious reasons: Externalizing costs. Taking everything into consideration is more complex, far more expensive and less profitable. But it is also much more green and ecological. It is in fact what generations before us used to do. But the subject has been deflected into a green utopia which doesn't touch profits or vested interests. Almost a religion where you can't even question the dogma. And while we fight dragons and CO2, long before the warming apocalypse, we be done destroying the forests (palm oil), polluting the seas (plastics) and create a consumer suburban life which is THE unsustainable part of our society.        

 

Redacted (Video News - 19')

 Redacted is a new and interesting News channel if you are interested in hearing a different story than the main stream media.

 

"Take The Tragedy In Sri Lanka And Multiply By Ten": The Fed Just Lobbed A Financial Nuke That Will Obliterate The Global Economy

 But is there really a choice now? Developing countries will be sent under the bus with rising interest rates just when food and energy prices explode. Sri Lanka is but a few months ahead of the curve!

By Larry McDonald, author of the Bear Traps Report

We are living in a period of mass “Jonestown” economic delusion. Just twenty months ago – central bankers were offering to buy nearly every junk bond known to mankind, dramatically distorting the “true cost of capital.” All the way from crypto to emerging markets – it was a moral hazard overdose. Everyone on earth was borrowing money at fantasy-land bond yields.

Now, the Fed is promising endless rate hikes and $1T of balance sheet reduction onto a planet with emerging market and Euro-zone credit markets in flames.

Listen, all I have is an economics degree from the University of Massachusetts, but after having spent the last 20 years trading bonds professionally and embarking on a 20k feet deep autopsy on the largest bank failure of all time – from my seat the current Fed agenda is sheer madness and will be outed very soon.

The true cost of capital was distorted for so long, we now have hundreds of academics– clueless to the underlying serpent inside global markets. When the 6 foot seven, Paul Volcker walked the halls of the Marriner S. Eccles Building of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, our planet embraced about $200T LESS debt than we are staring down the barrel at today. 

In 2021, global debt reached a record $303T, according to the Institute of International Finance, a global financial industry association. This is a FURTHER jump from record global debt in 2019 of $226T, as reported by the IMF in its Global Debt Database. Volcker was jacking rates into a planet with about $200T LESS debt. Please call out the risk management imbeciles that make any reference of Powell to Volcker.

Many economists in 2022 are highly delusional – a very dangerous group indeed. When you hike rates aggressively with a strong dollar you multiply interest rate risk, which was already off the charts coming from such a low 2020 base in terms of yield – it's a convexity nightmare. Interest rate hikes today - hand in hand with a strong U.S. Dollar - carry 100x the destructive power than the Carter – Reagan era.

At the same time, you add lighter fluid on to the credit risk fire in emerging markets with a raging greenback. Global banks have to mark to market most of these assets. If global rates reset higher and stay at elevated levels, the sovereign debt pile is in gave danger. The response to Lehman and Covid crisis squared (see above) has left a mathematically unsustainable bill for follow on generations. The Fed CANNOT hike rates aggressively into this mess without blowing up the global economy. We are talking about mass - Jonestown delusion on steroids.

Then Covid-19 placed a colossal leverage cocktail on top. Emerging and frontier market countries currently owe the IMF over $100B. U.S. central banking policy + a  strong USD is vaporizing this capital as we speak.

A dollar screaming higher with agricultural commodities – priced globally in dollars - is a colossal tax on emerging market countries – clueless academics at the Fed are exporting inflation into countries that can least afford it. Emerging – and
frontier market countries owe the IMF over $100B – U.S. central banking policy – strong USD, is vaporizing this capital.

A quarter-trillion dollars of distressed debt is threatening to drag the developing world into a historic cascade of defaults. The number of developing nations trading distressed has doubled, with El Salvador, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia and Pakistan appearing particularly vulnerable. With the low-income countries, debt risks and debt crises are not hypothetical - try buying oil in USD in an EM currency. A fifth — or about 17% — of the $1.4 trillion emerging-market sovereigns have outstanding in external debt denominated in dollars, euros or yen, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Academics at the Fed are exporting inflation into countries that can least afford it – decimating communities all over the planet. The tragedies are piling up. While given cover from their well-placed collection of pawns, tough guy Powell is playing his Volcker act – right out of a scene in a poor man's poker game. In terms of who ́s actually running the show – emerging market bonds are plunging 10 points a week and Powell wants you to think he's got pocket Kings.

Truth is, the global credit risk dynamic has the Aces, and the Fed is looking down at pocket 2s, if that. The IMF has total lending capacity near $1T, Powell is currently wiping out 10% of that. Ultimately, this lost tribe will be coming back, “hat in hand” - yet again to the U.S. taxpayer.

So now we have global bank balance sheets, stressed by $20T to $30T in mark to market losses from Equities, Treasuries, European government bonds, Crypto, Private equity and Venture capital – in the middle of the worst emerging market credit crisis in decades. All after just 150bps of rate hikes from the Fed? Hello?? Anyone home? There are A LOT of bonds that look like this! Oh – by the way – Egypt owes the IMF $13B, the Fed just lit these liabilities on fire.

If the Fed keeps its policy path promises, take the tragedy in Sri Lanka and multiply it by ten across the globe over the next six months. Check-mate FOMC.

Blain: The Immediate Threat Is Inflation, But... what about China?

  I agree! As we have warned many times over the last two years, the Chinese bubble is gigantic. People expect that somehow the Chinese Central Bank will find a way to solve the problem. But what unknown weapon do the Chinese have that Western bankers know nothing about? Just asking...

Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,

“ All that glitters is not gold…”

The immediate threat is inflation – how could a strong CPI print destablise markets, but inflation is also a question of what shocks are still to come, and investing accordingly. What if a big No-see-Em shock is still to come – a Chinese financial crisis?

Markets are all about risk – What do we know, and what do we not? That’s easy – we know what we care to learn about the past, what we think we know about today, but about tomorrow we are just making informed guesses.

Today the big front and centre issue is inflation. Does it get worse or better, and for how long?

Take a look at any inflation chart and it will typically shows a series of sharp, short-lived spikes – which makes sense: something triggers inflation, it is addressed and the economy adapts, the price shock is normalised as the economy learns to cope with the new normal.

The immediate critical risk is another new shock; that a stronger than expected US CPI (inflation) report triggers major wobbles across markets by raising expectations of aggressive central banking rate tightening – that’s given some impetus by the comments of Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey who said :“bringing inflation down to the 2% target is our job, no ifs or buts”. The market expects a 50 bp Bank hike in early August – there is little else left in the Bank’s armoury.

The market is split on where the inflation threat goes from here:

• There are naysayers who say trying to address the multiple inflation shocks now hitting global markets with recession inducing monetary tightening is just daft.

• There are others who say it’s all the fault of the overly-easy monetary experimentation of artificially low-rates and QE of the last 14 years: inflation everywhere is a monetary phenomenon. (Inflation is very real and it has enormous socio-economic consequences.)

• There are some market watchers who believe inflation already peaked, and June will mark a high for this inflationary spike as the economy successfully adapts and digests the Ukraine energy shock and the end of pandemic supply chain crisis. They argue there is significant resilience built in that will ease tensions.

• There are others, including myself, who believe inflation could yet spike higher, and could remain persistently higher for longer than central bank dot-plots suggest. The energy crisis is not over – and could get substantially worse if Putin does not reopen the gas valves to Europe (currently closed for “maintenance”) later this month. Coronavirus lockdowns in China remain a threat to keep supply chains malfunctioning, and growing wage-inflation as industrial unrest ferments across Europe is going to hit hard in Q3/4 as recession bites.

What’s a fund manager to do? Inflation hurts earnings – as this current earnings season will no-doubt show. Interest rate rises will hit stock returns, balance sheets and prices. One argument is to buy stocks in the expectation the economy will adapt while strong fundamentals re-establish themselves.

On Monday there was a fascinating intervention on the inflation conundrum for asset managers from retired bond king Bill Gross – reminding us bonds diminish risk but lower returns.. “Jim Cramer famously says there’s always a bull market somewhere but I’m straining to find one now.” Gross goes on to say investors should mitigate the pain, accept its happening and “12 month Treasuries at 2.7% are better than your money market fund and any other alternatives!” He has a point – although others say this is time to buy duration to up the return to 3%!

On the other hand, maybe there is more pain to come? Maybe it will be Europe where Euro parity to the dollar is doing precious little to boost economies heading into a new recession, where energy security is perilous, and politics looks a-dither.

And, there are growing signs all is not well in China..

There is a widely held view Paramount Leader Chairman Xi feels so secure, and the distracted west looks so riven, it’s time for a quick operation to seize Taiwan. Maybe not – the Chinese, who share tactical doctrines with the now discredited Russian steamroller, look embarrassed by its shortcomings. For all its’ military posturing and new weapons, the Chinese are not an “outward bound” empire – historically, they prefer to internalise. The spectacular growth of China over the last 30 years has come from the internal control and expansion of its domestic economy, initially through exports and now through domestic consumption.

That’s bound to have created internal tensions – which can be seen in terms of inequality, environmental damage, and the limitations on internal freedoms – all of which we know..

But, over the last 2 years of Covid, China has effectively sequestered itself from the global economy. We think we understand how it works, but in reality… do we?  Look at how dramatically and swiftly Hong Kong has been spun from being the premier western entrepot into a kow-towing domestic city.

China is big and it matters. It is like and unlike the west. It has multiple growth problems and demographics that will trigger whole new issues the West has yet to adapt to. The Covid lockdowns, understanding of the Party and government, and now bursting economic bubbles and what looks like a developing banking crisis – I’m beginning to wonder if the Middle Kingdom is more trouble than we think? If so it will have enormous global consequences – it could be a massive No-See-Um that could destabilise the global economy.

I’ve been reading up on the Chinese Banking riots in Henan Province. The fact Chinese protestors wanting money back from local banks following a run were set upon is hardly unusual – the immediate suspicion is corrupt local politicians were protecting themselves. But there are two aspects to the story to consider:

• The first is Chinese Surveillance Capitalism: clamping down on reporting, using unidentified security personal to beat up and break up protestors, and local officials manipulating Covid “personal health codes” to ping protestors as likely Covid carriers takes state-control to a new level. Observers are not surprised – they saw the mandatory health codes as a way in which Government could control the masses. If surveillance capitalism is so established – why is party corruption still such an issue?

• The second is the scale of the domestic banking problem. Is it really just a local, one province problem? What are we not seeing? Could it be the whole Chinese banking system is teetering?

The official line is it’s a local banking problem caused by criminality, presenting the line “local gangsters” have been systematically looting some small banks after “capturing” them up to a decade ago – which sounds like bad regulation and incompetent bank inspection. But runs on banks and lines of people asking for their money back is very 2007.

I am convinced much of the UK banking crisis following the run on Northern Rock that year would have been avoided if the Bank of England had stepped in to provide liquidity earlier. It was when the plentiful liquidity that supported bank property and corporate lending suddenly dried up as it became clear just how unbalanced that lending was that the global financial crisis was triggered.

Let me ask a rhetorical question: Is it possible China’s well known hot property bubble, it’s corporate borrowing binge, plus the high degree of corruption within the system, is fuelling a very real banking crisis in China? Is China about to suffer its’ very own internalised version of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008? How much worse will it be made by the ongoing Covid bogey being used to keep the economy under control? Are Covid Lockdowns being used to disguise the scale of a massive Chinese financial crisis?

Just asking…

 

"You say you want a re-vo-lu-tion?" Europe on the brink!

 All is not well on the old continent. 

 Tomorrow, July 14, 2022 is the 233 anniversary of the French revolution. We may have another one in the not so distant future, or worse!

 The clouds are gathering fast: 

 Nonsense energy policies which outcome will necessarily be a catastrophe with or without Russian gas. Just sooner without!

  A debt bubble on the verge of imploding. 

 20 million+ Africans waiting on the other side of the Mediterranean sea. Starvation in the Autumn will probably motivate quite a few to take their chance. 

 Inflation well over 10% in some countries but with interest rates stuck at 1 or 2% due to the cost of an astronomical public debt. 

 Green policies which are not necessarily absurd by themselves but which will exacerbate the pain on a system already buckling under the stress of a recession. 

 And then of course the ghost on the horizon with war in Ukraine lingering without much negotiations going on. 

 It is as if the four horsemen were getting ready to ride once again. Something we would all have thought unimaginable just two short years ago. And here we are, in this Summer of 2022, staring at the abyss. Why on earth can't we learn from history?

The new energies are not working as advertized!

 The reason is the same as why you can't keep your computer more than 10 years. It's computerized with fragile parts all over the place and therefore can't last. The more we replace old rugged equipment we new computerized machinery, the more the replacement cycle accelerates and the more fragile our society becomes. This is not a curse, just reality. We should have strived to fight this trend and "build to last", this would have been "green". The consumer society did not allow that. Worse, now that we are facing a real crisis, it mandates an acceleration of this mad technological replacement cycles. We are committing energy suicide. (See the article of Jul11 by Chris Martenson which explains this perfectly.)

It’s Not Working

Post by Jim Kunstler

 

This summer’s weather is perfect now in the Hudson Valley: warm, sunny days for primping the garden and cool nights that invite deep sleep. Zucchini and cukes are coming on, along with currants, gooseberries, blueberries. Unseen underground, the potatoes swell. The chickens range happily over their daily smorgasbord of bugs. At midnight, fireflies blink in the orchard. On the human side, though — commerce, culture, and politics — nothing works. At least not here in America. Sigh….

The solar electric I installed on the house nine years ago is down. It’s supposed to feed that monster called the grid. Since April, I noticed that the electric bill is creeping up way beyond the usual seventeen bucks that the electric company charges home solar producers for the privilege of feeding their system — which, let’s face it, has a downside for them because the intermittency of so-called alt-energy disorders their operations.

It’s counter-intuitive. Many people, I’m sure, assume that the more solar units feeding the grid, the better. Strangely, not so. Electric companies work much better when the production and flow of current is absolutely predictable and under their control — like, when they decide to fire up the natgas on generator number three or tune down the hydro turbines. It’s much harder to run the system with little dribs and drabs of electricity trickling in from hither and yon. But alt-energy is good PR for the government, so they do whatever they can to promote or even compel its use.

I got a whopping folio of tax breaks and subsidies from the state and federal government when I decided to put solar electric on my house in 2013, though it finally still cost a lot: $35-K. I had intimations of living through a chaotic period of history, and the decision was consistent with my general theory of history, which is that things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time. Getting a home solar electric rig seemed like a good idea.

So, last week, after considerable hassle with my solar company setting up an appointment for a techie to visit and evaluate the problem here, the guy came up (at $150-an-hour) and informed me that my charge controller was shot. The charge controller processes all those chaotic watts coming from the solar panels on the roof into an orderly parade of electrons. He also told me that my back-up batteries — for running critical loads like the well-pump during grid outages — were at the end of their design life. Subtext: you have to get new batteries.

There are four big ones in a cabinet under the blown charge controller and the inverter (for turning direct current into alternating current that is the standard for running things). The techie had some bad news, though. New building codes forbid his company from replacing the kind of batteries I have, which are standard “sealed cell” lead-acid batteries. Some bullshit about off-gassing flammable fumes. Now the government requires lithium batteries, which would cost me sixteen-thousand dollars ($16-K) more to replace than new lead-acid batteries.

Now, it’s theoretically possible for me to replace the less-expensive lead-acid batteries — they’re still manufactured and sold — but the catch is: I’m on my own getting them and installing them. I’m in the middle of that learning-curve right now. These particular batteries cost about $850-each for the four of them, plus a hefty charge for “drop-shipping” about three hundred pounds of lead and plastic. I will almost certainly go that way, though. A new charge controller will run about $2-K. All together, replacing these components represents a big chunk of change.

At the risk of sounding like some kind of pussy, I confess that this whole business of repairing my solar electric system has put me into a welter of anxiety and fury. I am trapped in the cage of sunk costs, a.k.a. the psychology of previous investment. Not only do I have $35-K (in higher-value 2013 dollars!) tied up in all this equipment — the solar panels themselves, the wall of electronic devices, the conduit, control panels, and digital read-outs — but now I have to dump thousands more into it after only nine years. It pisses me off because I should have known better. I walked with eyes wide shut into the pit of techno-narcissism.

The hyper-complexity of a home solar-electric system is extreme. There are hundreds of little integrated components that can blow, all of it adding up to a case of guaranteed fragility. There are no easy fixes or duct-tape work-arounds for any of it. I can’t make any replacement parts in my garage. They come from faraway factories via supply lines that get sketchier every day on trucks that don’t operate profitably at $6.50-a-gallon diesel fuel.

In a low-grade epiphany while going through this ordeal last week, I realized that back in 2013, instead of getting the solar electric system, I could have bought the Rolls Royce of home generators and buried a 500-gallon fuel tank outside the garage, and had a manual water pump piggy-backed onto the well, and maybe even purchased a fine, wood-fired cookstove — and had enough money left over for a two-week vacation in the South-of-France. Silly me.

Of course, these travails with my home solar electric system are a metaphor for the complexity and fragility that is, all of a sudden this year, causing the operations of Western Civ to fly to pieces. My investment in solar was as dumb as what the entire nation of Germany did in attempting to run itself on “green energy.” (Not to mention their more recent dumb-ass decision to forego imports of Russian natgas in order to please the geniuses at Tony Blinken’s State Department, the dumb bunnies.)

Of course, even when I get the solar electric back up-and-running again, something else is sure to go wrong. And in another ten years, the solar panels will be at least half-dead. So, if you’re reading this personal lamentation, consider bending toward simplicity. Wish I had.

Egypt's New Capital is an Ozymandian Nightmare (Video - 14')

  Egypt is a country months away from starvation which lack oil and more ominously water. And here is their latest pharaohnic project. This is beyond insane! 

 

Dr Chris Martenson Explains Why Economic Collapse is Inevitable (Video - 21')

 Energy, energy, energy!

 If you do not understand that the source of our prosperity is cheap energy as seems to be the case of Western Governments currently, then collapse is inevitable!