Shell kijkt vooruit >> naar de subsidiepot voor duurzame energie, terwijl nog vele jaren lang veruit de belangrijkste bezigheid olie- en gaswinning zal blijven

Schreef gisteren al over de topgraaier van Exxon Darren Woods deze hufter vindt de draai van collega oliemaffialeden naar duurzame energie een vorm van 'greenwashing'*, ofwel een mooi beeld scheppen voor het wereldtoneel, terwijl het niets voorstelt. Te zot voor woorden dat iemand die niets doet commentaar heeft op anderen, ook al heeft Darren in feite gelijk.

Echter waar Woods niet aan heeft gedacht is het feit dat er met duurzame energie een hele bak subsidie is te halen en wat dat betreft is hij dus een hele slechte CEO. Inderdaad er is met duurzame energie vele miljarden aan subsidie binnen te slepen, niet voor niets dat Shell en nog een paar andere oliereuzen zich op duurzame energiemarkt hebben gestort.

Malcolm Harris, de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel kijkt verder dan de neus lang is en stelt dat ook de oliemaatschappijen die zich nu op de alternatieve energiemarkt storten, tegelijkertijd zoveel mogelijk fossiele brandstoffen uit de grond willen halen, dat is voor deze bedrijven zelfs het allerbelangrijkste doel voor de komende jaren, immers er zijn enorme winsten te maken en dat is men voorlopig niet van plan op te geven..... Ofwel firma's als Shell proberen de wereld duidelijk te maken dat men op het goede pad is, terwijl de werkelijkheid er totaal anders uitziet.... De werkelijkheid laat dan ook zien dat er jaar op jaar meer fossiele brandstof worden uitgestoten, waar politici hun doorzichtige valse beloften doen dat we teruggaan naar de uitstoot van 1990....**

Lees het uitstekende artikel van Harris en geeft het door! Jaarlijks worden er meer fossiele brandstoffen gebruikt, waardoor de uitstoot met het jaar groeit, terwijl een groot aantal westerse politici zich voordoen als begaan met de klimaatverandering en dan m.n. de negatieve gevolgen daarvan, zoals de immer groeiende weergerelateerde rampen, neem de maandenlange bosbranden in Australië, of de steeds vaker optredende orkanen, die ook aan sterkte winnen (waar men in de Filipijnen eertijds sprak over het orkaanseizoen, vinden deze nu het jaarrond plaats.....***)

In het artikel besteedt Harris ook aandacht aan het stelen van grondstoffen in arme landen door de grote oliemaatschappijen, zoals Exxon Guyana op een gigantische manier heeft belazerd en waar onervaren politici akkoord gingen met ronduit diefstal.... (al moet je niet vergeten dat grote bedrijven als Exxon, Shell en Unilever politici in die landen omkopen, het is dan ook in het belang van grote bedrijven dat de corruptie in die landen in stand wordt gehouden.....)

Het artikel van Harris werd eerder gepubliceerd op de Intellingencer, ik werd erop gewezen door een mail van Unearthed (Greenpeace):

Shell Is Looking Forward

The fossil-fuel companies expect to profit from climate change. I went to a private planning meeting and took notes.

By Malcolm Harris

We think democracy is better,” said the jet-fuel salesperson. “But is it? In terms of outcomes?”

In a conference room overlooking the gray Thames, a group of young corporate types tried to imagine how the world could save itself, how the international community could balance the need for growth with our precarious ecological situation. For the purposes of our speculative scenarios, everything except for carbon was supposed to be up in the air, and democracy’s track record is mixed.

A graph from Chinese social media showing how many trees the country is planting — a patriotic retort to the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg — had a real effect on the room. Combine that with the Chinese state-led investment in clean-energy technology and infrastructure and everyone admired how the world’s largest source of fossil-fuel emissions was going about transition. That’s what the salesperson meant by “outcomes”: decarbonization.

Regional experts from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East–North Africa also entertained the democracy question, pointing to Iraqi disillusionment with voting and economic growth in Rwanda under Paul Kagame (“He’s technically a dictator, but it’s working”). The China expert said the average regional Communist Party official is probably more accountable for his or her performance than the average U.K. member of Parliament, a claim no one in the room full of Brits seemed to find objectionable. The moderator didn’t pose the question to me, the American expert, presumably because our national sense of democratic entitlement is inviolable.

Actually, the moderator didn’t ask me any questions during the plenary that followed our regional-perspectives panel, either. That might have had something to do with my talk, which included bullet points like “Green growth is a myth” and “Your corporate existence is incompatible with a livable future for cohorts that are already born.” But I didn’t get that impression, not really. I was repeatedly asked to be honest, and everyone was really nice about it. Everyone was really nice in general.

Since 2017, when I published a book about American millennials, I’ve had the occasional cold call from corporations to come talk about my work, all but one of which I’ve turned down. But last fall, the Shell Scenarios team — as in Royal Dutch Shell, one of the biggest oil companies in the world — offered me £2,000 in exchange for a 15-minute talk and my participation in a group exercise. Its internal corporate think tank was holding a daylong conference about how generational change would affect the hopefulness projected in what the company calls the “Sky Scenario,” which it describes as “a technically possible but challenging pathway for society to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.” I’m not a climate expert, but apparently I qualify as a generational whisperer, at least to Shell, and to talk to me about global warming, the giant energy conglomerate wanted to fly me to London from Philadelphia, business class. I warned them that I couldn’t keep their money and asked if I’d need to sign an NDA. When they said no, I saw an opportunity to report on the oil company, undercover while in plain sight, without technically lying to anyone. It was too good to pass up. I said yes, then I emailed my editor.

The October 2019 workshop, it turned out, was timely. Fossil-fuel divestment used to be a fringe, college-campus concern, but over the past year, it has become increasingly in vogue in the world’s financial centers, including Davos, where it recently dominated conversation at the World Economic Forum (WEF). In December, a couple of months after the Shell workshop, the Bank of England proposed a new climate stress test to measure the resiliency of its banks in the face of warming — a move echoing that of Christine Lagarde of the European Central Bank and reportedly being considered by the chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. Germany announced major coal phaseouts in January with coal-fired power generation scheduled to halt by 2038 at the latest. In a much-celebrated letter the same month, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, declared an about-face on fossil fuels, saying climate change was now a “defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects.” The entire country of Finland proclaimed it would go carbon neutral by 2035. Even the investor cartoon Jim Cramer, of Mad Money, got in on divestment, tweeting, “I am taking a hard pass on anything fossil.” Now ExxonMobil is down $184 billion-with-a-b since its 2014 peak.

From a certain vantage, the momentum looks almost definitive, as though nothing could stand in the way of a renewable future. But unlike coal, oil and gas companies are still definitely profitable, even investable, and more oil and gas are being produced, and used, every year — which helps explain why carbon emissions keep rising too. There’s little doubt that fossil-fuels are, culturally speaking, on the wrong side of history. But there is still a lot more money to extract from those wells, and the fossil-fuel businesses are intent on extracting as much as they can. It’s not necessarily such a bad time to be an oil and gas company, in other words, but it is a bad time to look like one. These companies aren’t planning for a future without oil and gas, at least not anytime soon, but they want the public to think of them as part of a climate solution. In reality, they’re a problem trying to avoid being solved.

Few organizations have been paying as much attention to global warming for as long as the companies that have helped cause it. Journalists at the Dutch publication The Correspondent tracked down an educational video Shell released in 1991 called “Climate of Concern,” which warned, “Global warming is not yet certain, but many think that to wait for final proof would be irresponsible. Action now is seen as the only safe insurance.” There’s good evidence Exxon knew a decade earlier. But not only did these companies continue exploiting their reserves, not only did they explore for new sources and develop new modes of extraction, like fracking, but they funded politicians and groups that claimed not to believe in global warming, agents that have worked to delay the same action they knew was “our only safe insurance.” So far, the oil and gas companies’ calculations — that delay would make them money and that they could avoid consequences for misleading the public — have been spot on. But denial-backed delay is no longer sufficient, it seems. They’re now hoping to leverage their incumbency, and fossil-fuel wealth, to lay claim to the world’s clean-energy future as well. To do that, they’ll have to persuade young people to forget who caused climate change in the first place, or at least to let bygones be bygones. And if they can transition their corporate profiles from fossil fuel to green energy without missing a profitable quarter, that wouldn’t be a repudiation of their delay strategy; it would be a vindication.

Of course, to judge by the advertisements, the transition to renewables has already happened. British Petroleum is now a solar-energy company called BP, ExxonMobil brews giant swimming pools of cool green-algae fuel, and Shell maintains mountain canyons lined with wind turbines floating in fog. All these initiatives actually do exist, though they are a tiny fraction of each company’s budget; so far, the main product of Exxon’s algae program seems to be propaganda. Right now, these companies have to convince governments and their publics to let them run out the clock with fossil fuels, and they’ve decided the best way to do that is to appear to be an essential partner for whatever’s coming next. I was ostensibly there to help plan the timing.

Organizers broke the conference up into three parts: first, a panel on polling and millennial politics; then the regional-perspectives panel; and finally, a collaborative exercise in which “deductive” and “inductive” groups imagined different paths to 2050. By gathering millennial employees from throughout the company, along with experts on the cohort and senior management, the strategies team surely hoped to infuse the firm’s leadership with a drip of youth consciousness, the way some oligarchs are rumored to inject themselves with young people’s blood. It’s supposed to help them stay agile. Other than the eight outside experts, there were a couple dozen people from Shell, ranging from HR specialists in their 20s to senior global executives (mostly Gen X and boomers). Staffers quoted me the figure “90,000 employees” (roughly the size of the company as a whole) a few times when explaining that virtually none of them knew one another.

Some of the most revealing insights came the night before the sessions at a group dinner at a minor Gordon Ramsay restaurant. The venue had two party spaces, and it wasn’t immediately clear where we were supposed to go, but when someone suggested putting up a sign rather than having wait staff direct the party one by one, the younger Shell employees grimaced. “Extinction Rebellion,” one said, less than half-joking. The climate-protest group has a major presence in the city with flyers and volunteers everywhere. “XR” targeted Shell locally in April 2019, smashing windows at the company’s London headquarters. In the U.K., it has succeeded at creating an ambient sense of fear or at least shame. We gathered in the mezzanine dining area and milled around doing introductions, and I asked young workers from the far-flung corners of the Shell empire, “Oh, what’s that like?” I tried to remember not to talk like a reporter.

When they called us to the table for dinner, I was lucky enough to be seated next to one of the senior Shell participants, Steven Fries, the firm’s chief economist. We met over arancini, the likes of which you might find at an upscale food court in a baseball stadium. Based in Shell’s global headquarters in the Hague, Fries pronounces his words with a precision that defies accent; even after speaking with him, his colleagues didn’t realize he’s an American until he told them. Like many people who studied economics at elite Western institutions between 1975 and 1986 would, he blames the lack of affordable housing in London on too much government regulation, which is why his support for big public investments to transition society away from oil and gas surprised me. That is, until I realized that, in his mind, those big public investments would be going to energy companies. When the proverbial light bulb went on above my head, he gave me a look that seemed to say, “Come on, man. What do you think we’re doing here?”

In the corporate sector, there’s still faith at the top that economic incentives and profit-seeking behavior can manage the crisis that capitalism has wrought. In such thinking, climate change is like a redux of the hole in the ozone layer: potentially bad but solvable with the tools on hand and without real changes to our lifestyles. Fries estimates that we’ll be able to cost-effectively fill two-thirds of world energy demand with clean sources within 20 years. (That’s ten years more optimistic than the optimistic scenario of the International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization mandated to propagate optimistic scenarios about renewable-energy transition.) Even if that kind of turnaround is unrealistic, the Shell plan isn’t so different from the mainstream climate left’s agenda. A recent paper from Stanford professor and renewable advocate Mark Z. Jacobson calls for $73 trillion in spending to transition most of the world’s power grids no later than 2050, and he and his co-authors figure it’ll pay for itself in energy savings alone within a decade. In the analysis of Jacobson and other Green New Deal supporters, how many of those trillions end up going to Shell is largely beside the point. But for Shell, that’s the whole ball game.
In the meantime, I asked Fries, if Shell is serious about transition, then couldn’t it voluntarily speed it up by leaving some of its wells fallow, constraining oil output and thereby driving the price relative to renewables higher, faster? Sure, it would have to take some losses in the short term, but we’re talking about the future of the planet here. He dismissed the idea, telling me it’s important not to artificially withhold supply, which would introduce price shocks that could turn public opinion against environmentalist policy. Besides, it would only end up sending money to the Saudis anyway.

“We’re going to get as much out of [oil and gas] for as long as we can,” he said.
“That’s an extremely frightening thing for you to say,” I said.
“It doesn’t mean every drop,” he said, failing to reassure me.

Shell would apparently prefer us not to think about how to reduce carbon emissions by raising the costs of fossil-fuel development. Which makes sense: No matter their green branding, fossil-fuel companies do not want their projects rendered uneconomic. Instead, they want to talk about how their new projects can be rendered economic faster. Even planned production from existing fossil-fuel infrastructure, it’s been estimated, will push the planet past the Paris targets, and Shell is still “exploring” for new oil deposits to exploit. “In terms of emissions, it’s one of the cleanest ways to go,” a Shell employee in deepwater strategy seated across from me explained about deepwater drilling as compared with other kinds of drilling. “Of course, when you put it in your car and burn it, it’s oil, but,” he said, trailing off. Although the slice of revenue energy firms derive from fossil fuels is by all accounts scheduled to shrink, Shell foresees a sizable enduring demand. No one has viable plans for a battery-powered container ship, and the world’s militaries aren’t about to give up jet fighters pending the development of an electric model. Not to mention that all this clean technology requires a lot of energy in advance for manufacturing.
 
Deepwater wells operate on a ten-year schedule, I’m told, so my dinner companion doesn’t expect the ones he’s looking at now off the coast of Brazil to even yield product until the 2030s, at which point it will take more time just to earn back the initial investment and even longer to turn a profit.

In February, Shell announced the purchase of a 50 percent operating stake in three deepwater blocks off Colombia’s Caribbean coast under an agreement with Colombian state-controlled Ecopetrol. And Shell’s not the only one looking in the water off South America: In January, based on exploration in late 2019, Exxon revised its estimate upward for its blocks off Guyana, from 6 billion barrels of recoverable crude to 8 billion. (A week later, the nonprofit watchdog Global Witness released a report estimating that Exxon’s 2016 agreement with the country, negotiated with inexperienced government counterparts, had deprived the Guyanese people of $55 billion compared with international contract norms.) Fossil-fuel companies claim they’ve got one eye on 2050, but they’ve clearly got the other on next week. “If these activities are positive, these discoveries could be developed and potentially be a substantial increase in gas supply in the medium term,” a Shell spokesperson said of the Colombian offshore blocks, as if that would be a good thing.

But if short- and medium-term profit considerations are still driving plenty of decision-making at Shell and the other energy companies, employees are trying to think ahead when it comes to their careers. During the cocktail hour before dinner, I met a geoscientist who has been attempting his own transition (to the finance side of the business), preparing to move from the declining subsurface field to clean tech. I asked how he got involved in oil exploration in the first place. A little embarrassed, he told me he liked rocks as a kid. When he graduated from college, he saw two career paths: the energy sector or academia, where he would just be training others for the energy sector anyway. He said he was worried about the next generation of Earth-science students, who are graduating into a shrinking industry. Maybe they’ll be mining asteroids, suggested the deepwater strategist.

According to the geoscientist, one of the ways Shell incorporates climate change into its calculations is that when it looks to develop a new fuel source, it tries to figure out how much it’ll be able to sell it off for when the company transitions out of fossil energy — when the reputational costs start to exceed the returns. Whoever buys it will almost certainly continue extracting but at a lower cost of production, maybe because it has better technology or, more likely, because it cuts corners on labor and safety. What this means: Unregulated fossil-fuel production might come to look a lot like the narcotics trade, with its brutal criminal organizations that thrive in conjunction with corrupt state elements regardless of international agreements. The problem is that once reserves are discovered, there’s no way to undiscover them. “We don’t plan to lose money,” the geoscientist turned finance analyst said, and he meant it in the most general way.

The whole session was conducted under “Chatham House Rule,” which means participants are allowed to repeat what they hear but not who said it. The idea behind the rule is that it creates circumstances under which subordinates can speak freely to higher-ups about the company without endangering their career path. (As an American reporter, I am ignoring the rule when I see fit, having technically never agreed to anything.) The deepwater strategist put it to the test, prodding the senior executive Fries about the generational implications of green regulation. Was Fries, he wondered, going to help pay for the new electric car he’ll have to buy if the internal-combustion vehicle he just saved up enough to purchase is banned?

At a pub after dinner, away from the executives, the deepwater strategist confessed that he often thinks about what he’ll have to tell his child someday about the job he’s doing now. “I don’t have any kids, but, yeah,” the geoscientist agreed. He didn’t know how to describe the people to whom he owes an explanation, but he knows they’re out there.

The biggest gap in politics right now is generational, the Harvard polling expert told us. “This is a two-thirds generation in a 50-50 country,” he said, meaning that millennials are much more reliably progressive than the country as a whole. This makes sense. Young people are fearful, they have little trust in institutions, and they’re dealing with high levels of stress and anxiety. This has led to generational tension, especially around the existential challenge of climate change. One of the session’s recurring themes was that millennials and Gen-Zers have a stronger moral and ethical drive than their elders, and they expect us to use our values to help force companies to do the right thing. But Shell doesn’t seem to fear attacks on its brand from consumers, since most of its business is with other companies, and even when it comes to customers, most people don’t make choices about where to buy gas based on the relative climate villainy of the respective oil companies. On top of which, its product is not very recognizably branded. “Jet fuel is jet fuel,” I was told. Instead, it’s worried about being left behind by the curve of social change, that if it doesn’t become more than an oil company, it’ll stagnate, wither, and eventually die.

We were tasked with trying to come up with ways Shell could see what’s coming, and participants began by imagining various ways Shell would feel this “rise of a new ethics,” as one of the experts called it: millennial politicians forcing harsher regulations, millennial investors divesting from fossil fuels, millennial potential recruits who don’t want to be embarrassed about their work, and millennial protesters who push everyone else. Shell strategists used the phrase “long march through the institutions” — coined by the German communist Rudi Dutschke for the ’60s student movement — to describe the way they expect left-wing climate radicals to become part of the Establishment.

Lees verder

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*   Zie: 'Exxon 'topman' vindt klimaatdoelen najagen een onzinnige bezigheid'

** Waarschijnlijk zal e.e.a pas worden bereikt als de mensheid door bijvoorbeeld een enorme pandemie wordt getroffen, zo is het Coronavirus nu al verantwoordelijk voor een enorme vermindering van uitstoot, een vermindering zo groot dat politici zich de oren van de kop zouden moeten schamen dat er zo weinig is bereikt terwijl er al zoveel overleg is geweest op de vele klimaattoppen (waar die toppen zelf ook al een fikse aanjager zijn van de klimaatverandering...)... Politici die nog steeds oliemaatschappijen laten plaatsnemen aan de onderhandelingstafels en dat voor meer dan 90% van de tijd, terwijl milieuorganbisaties blij mogen zijn als ze 6% van de tijd mee mogen doen aan de onderhandelingen.....

*** Deze bosbranden moeten gevolgen hebben voor de rest van onze kleine aarde, als je ziet dat de 'rookwolk' van die bosbranden zo groot was als een fiks deel van Europa.....

Zie ook:
'Australië: film 'Dirty Power: Burnt Country' maakt gehakt van regeringsbeleid en media misinformatie' 

'Australië: steenkoollobby werkt samen met de regering nog veel meer bosbranden in de hand'

'Groot Barrièrerif voor 60% verbleekt'

'Brekend Coronanieuws: koningshuis vraagt om overheidssteun: Shell keert aanmerkelijk minder dividend uit op de aandelenportefeuille' 

'Shell scherpt klimaatdoelen aan, ofwel greenwashing op 'topniveau'' 

'Groot Barrièrerif voor 60% verbleekt' 

'Houtstook professioneel en voor huishoudens moet worden verboden' 

'Australië: steenkoollobby werkt samen met de regering nog veel meer bosbranden in de hand' 

'CDA wenst geen EU 'green deal' en 'klimaatambassadeur' de Boer weet niet waar hij over spreekt'   

'Frits Böttcher een 'klimaatsceptische wetenschapper' die zich liet betalen door o.a. Shell, KLM en AkzoNobel' 

'Siemens heeft lak aan de klimaatverandering en haar slachtoffers' 

'Australië slaat alarm over koraalriffen........ AUW!!!' en zie wat het rif betreft ook:
'Australische autoriteit geeft toestemming voor dumpen van 1 miljoen ton giftig havenslib in Groot Barrièrerif (Werelderfgoed)'

'De bosbranden in Australië zullen hun weerslag op de hele wereld hebben' 

'Schildpad animatievideo over plastic- en olievervuiling oceanen >> door makers: Wallace and Gromit >> Greenpeace Nederland laat het alweer afweten'

'10.000 dromedarissen worden in Australië afgeschoten vanwege droogte'

'Australische bosbranden: 500 miljoen dieren dood en een rookpluim die groter is dan Europa'

'Greenpeace stelt dat de klimaatverandering is te stoppen ha! ha! ha! ha!' (en zie de links in dat bericht over de klimaatverandering enz.)

'Australië staat in brand terwijl de regering milieuactivisten straft voor het zich uitspreken tegen de oorzaken van de klimaatverandering' 

'Scott Morrison (premier Australië) moest bezoek aan door bosbrand getroffen gebied afbreken en vertrok met de staart tussen de benen'
 
'Australië staat olieboringen toe in de Grote Australische Bocht, inclusief seismische ontploffingen' 

'Duitsland stelt CO2  belasting op € 25,-- in plaats van € 10,-- >> heibel in de deelstaten' (terwijl die € 25,-- per ton CO2 een veel te lage belasting is...)

'Remco de Boer ('klimaatambassadeur') wil de Nederlandse kolencentrales openhouden'

'Filipijnen geen orkaanseizoen, maar het jaarrond tropische cyclonen'

'BP stelt in milieuplan dat een olieramp op zee goed is voor de lokale economie..........'

'Australië geeft toestemming tot uitbaten enorm grote kolenmijn'

'Redt het Groot Barrièrerif, zet uw handtekening a.u.b.!'

'Het Groot Barrièrerif, dreigt te worden gesloopt voor een grote kolenhaven........'

'Australië heeft VN gedwongen een passage uit een klimaatrapportage te verwijderen...........'

'Leard Forest: grootste kolenmijn ooit dreigt gerealiseerd te worden in dit vele duizenden jaren oude Australisch bos......... '

'Australië exporteert dagelijks één miljoen ton steenkool, dit i.h.k.v. de klimaatverandering en de afgelopen klimaattop........' (daar wordt jaarlijks nog eens 10 miljoen ton aan toegevoegd....)

'Coca-Cola betaalt wetenschappers om haar producten te promoten en voor weerleggen kritiek......'

'Shell, ExxonMobil en andere oliemaatschappijen gaan 180 miljard dollar investeren in plasticproductie.........'

'Bas Heijne weet, geenszins 'onbehagelijk', niet wat te denken van de klimaatverandering....... OEI!!!'

'ExxonMobil vervolgd voor 'misleiding...' Nou zeg maar het op grote schaal bedonderen van de kluit!!'

'Shell was al in 1989 overtuigd van klimaatverandering.............'

'Exxon lobbyist (politicus) dagvaardt milieugroepen voor kennis bij Exxon over klimaatverandering.......' (ongelofelijk ook.....)

De grootste diefstal uit de geschiedenis van de mens: inflatie

Ben bepaald geen fan van Bill Bonner, echter het volgende artikel van zijn hand bevat (althans zeker voor mij) aardige gezichtspunten op het financiële beleid in de VS als instrument om dollars bij te kunnen drukken en daarmee de waarde van de dollar te verminderen. Zo zou de huidige dollar volgens Bonner in vergelijking met die van 1971 nog maar 3 dollarcent waard zijn......

Eén en ander is het gevolg van de 'nieuwe dollar' die in 1971 onder 'tricky dick' Nixon werd geïntroduceerd en waarbij de Fed de macht kreeg om (fiks) dollars bij te drukken en daarmee de inflatie te voeden........ Het grootste deel van het volk in de VS begreep niet waarom hun geld destijds zo snel in waarde verminderde en gaven de schuld aan de arabieren (vanwege de hoge olieprijs), echter de energiecrisis van de 70 er jaren bracht alleen de prijs terug op het niveau van voor de grote dollar diefstal in 1971* >> de OPEC besloot minder olie te produceren, waarop de prijzen stegen naar het niveau van voor 1971...... Zie in het artikel hieronder hoe de inflatie zelfs met dubbele cijfers groeide...... (het is een studie waard om te zien wat het effect van de nieuwe dollar en de infaltie in de VS was op de Nederlandse economie en die van de ons omringende landen....)

Inflatie is zoals Bonner zegt inderdaad een instrument om mensen nog meer belasting te laten betalen, waar de winsten daarvan in de VS vooral naar de superrijken stromen...... Terwijl 50% van de onderlaag in de VS sinds 1999 30% armer is geworden, stijgen de inkomens van de welgestelden jaar op jaar......

Vergeet bij dit alles niet dat ook in de EU, ofwel bij de Europese Centrale Bank (ECB) de geldpersen al jaren overuren maken....... Een zaak die in feite de 'EU maatschappij' steeds verder ontwricht.......

Lees het artikel van Bonner, overigens onderdeel uit een soort 'dagboek', waar je de link naar het vervolg van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, onder dat artikel terugvindt. Mocht je het interessant vinden dit 'dagboek' te volgen, neem dan het adres van Bonner & Partners of van Money and Markets over en houdt de boel in de gaten, dit artikel nam ik over van Money and Markets:

Bonner: The Feds and the Biggest Money Heist In History

Posted by Bonner & Partners | Jan 28, 2020 | News

Inflation is always and everywhere a rip-off. – Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND — The nice thing about inflation, at least from the feds’ point of view, is that it doesn’t leave fingerprints.

Today’s dollar, for example, is worth only three cents of the pre-1971 dollar. But who dunnit? Who stole 97 cents out of every dollar?

New-Buck Scam

People thought the switch to a new buck in 1971 was just a “technical” move. Still do. But there was a big difference. The old dollar was a killjoy. The feds just couldn’t have much fun with it. But the new one was like an inflatable sex toy — it would go along with anything.

And when the first wave of consumer price inflation hit in the ’70s, few people understood what had happened. They thought the Arabs had pulled a fast one. But as we saw last week (catch up here and here), the First Oil Shock only returned the real price to where it had been before the feds’ funny-money printing began.

Investors didn’t notice their pockets were being picked either. In new dollars, the Dow barely moved throughout the ’70s. But it lost 92% of its real value.

And still today, only you… and we… seem to realize how the Federal Reserve’s money printing and ultralow interest rate policies (from 2009 to 2015) put $20-some trillion into the pockets of the richest people in the country.

Most people got nothing from it. And relatively, the poor got poorer as the rich got richer. 
The bottom 50% of the population are actually 30% poorer today than they were in 1999 — even using the feds’ phony inflation calculator.

But does anyone blame the real culprits? Nope. They blame the Mexicans and the Chinese. 

Do they vote for someone who pledges to end inflation? Or someone who calls for more of it?

It doesn’t matter whether the inflation goes into the capital markets or the consumer economy… it works the same way, like a thief in the night. And now underway is probably the biggest heist in history…

Like a Street Mugging

Milton Friedman was wrong about inflation. It is “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” said he. But that misses the point of it. A shooting star is a phenomenon. So is irritable bowel syndrome; nobody is sure what causes it.

But inflation is no more a “phenomenon” than a street mugging; it is done for a reason, to transfer wealth from some people to other people. It’s a way for the feds — and their clients, cronies, and hangers-on — to get more than taxpayers are willing to give them.

If they tried to support their boondoggles and jackass programs by direct taxation alone, there would soon be mobs gathered in the Capitol, with pitch bubbling and rails at-the-ready.

But inflation?

Here at the Diary, we guess about a great number of things — always trying to connect the dots. We’ve been at it for so long, we’ve probably been wrong about most everything. We’ll get to the rest in due course.

But one thing we’re probably not wrong about is inflation. And when the Fed announced at its December 2015 meeting that it would stop inflating and “normalize” its monetary policy, we knew it was BS. Why?

With its ultralow interest rates and its quantitative easing (QE) programs, the Fed created a hothouse atmosphere. The QE program alone gave some $3.6 trillion in new money to big investors.

It was as if a very rich person in a small town bid on all the houses that came up for sale. 
Prices rose. Everyone thought he had gotten richer. But take away the reckless buyer, and the market would quickly adjust to normal supply and demand pressures. Prices would fall back to “normal.”

Falling prices would cause the “wealth effect” to reverse into a “negative wealth effect.” The economy would go into recession.

Keep the Heat On

Either you keep feeding warm air into the hothouse… or the orchids die. Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, and now Powell — have all kept the heat on.

The last Fed chief to turn off the heat was the recently deceased Paul Volcker. He saw the “Inflate-or-Die” trap. To escape it in 1980, he raised the Fed’s key rate to 20%, cut off the hot air, and opened the windows, causing the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression.

Naturally, politicians, economists, and the press howled and whined. A mob even burned Volcker in effigy on the Capitol steps. But inflation quickly fell, from nearly 14% in 1980 to only 3.2% in 1983.

Years before, another great Fed chief, William McChesney Martin, explained why a good central banker is more likely to be branded a villain than a hero:

In the field of monetary and credit policy, precautionary action to prevent inflationary excesses is bound to have some onerous effects… Those who have the task of making such policy don’t expect you to applaud.

Tough Love

It’s been 40 years since Volcker’s tough love. Since then U.S. federal debt has gone from under $1 trillion to $23 trillion.

The Dow, too, went from under 1,000 to over 29,000. And the people willing to support an honest central banker — traditional fiscal conservatives and Ronald Reagan — have disappeared.

As for the old conservatives, they went AWOL when Republicans realized that, in a funny-money world, “deficits don’t matter.”

William McChesney Martin died in 1998. (He was replaced at the Fed in 1970 when he resisted the new-money plotters.) Paul Volcker died late last year.

Today, Fed jefes are willing to go along with the gag, and are described by the popular press as “saving the world” (Greenspan), or “heroes” with “the courage to act” (Bernanke).

And the current U.S. president is not worried about curbing inflation. He wants more of it. Here’s the commander in chief commenting on the Fed’s brief fling with prudence:

It was a killer when they raised the rate. It was just a big mistake. And they admit to it. They admit to it. I was right. I don’t wanna be right, but I was right.

More to come…

Regards,
Bill

• This article was originally published by Bonner & Partners. You can learn more about Bill and Bill Bonner’s Diary right here.

Zie ook het vervolg van dit artikel: 'Bonner: How Paper Money Became the Means for Modern Inflation'
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*  In Wikipedia spreekt men bij de eerste oliecrisis in 1973 over 'een politieke actie van de arabieren gericht tegen het westen', terwijl de olieprijs in dollars werd en wordt weergegeven, ofwel de arabieren kregen inderdaad veel minder voor hun olie, daar de inflatie destijds zelfs met dubbele cijfers groeide, zie het artikel hierboven..... Wikipedia......
Door de inflatie van de 'petrodollar' (ofwel de olieprijs in dollars), was de prijs van olie op een veel lager niveau gekomen, waarop de arabieren het westen maar vooral de VS 'de bel aanbonden' en begonnen met de vermindering van de olieproductie, zodat de prijs omhoog ging. De olieprijs werd overigens vanaf 1971 in dollars weergegeven. (al werd ook voor die tijd vooral naar de VS gekeken wat betreft de olieprijs, daar het land eerst de grootste olieleverancier was en later tot de grootste olieproducerende landen bleef behoren)

Trumps handelsoorlog en het ontstaan van een corporatieve fascistische staat

Door de economische aanval van Trump op China komt het neofascisme op in de politiek van de VS, waar noch het congres, noch de rechterlijke macht ook maar enige interesse tonen om de presidentiële macht in te perken. De schrijver van het CounterPunch artikel dat hieronder is opgenomen, Anthony Dimaggio, stelt dat 'Trumps unieke vorm van neofascisme eerst naar de voorgrond trad toen Trump de media onderuithaalde en beschuldigde van verraad...... Ben het wat dat betreft niet met Dimaggio eens, immers de VS was al onder Obama op weg om een politiestaat te worden en toonde wat dat betreft al kenmerken van fascisme, neem alleen al de militarisering van de politie en de inzet op totale controle van de burgers, iets dat zich hier overigens ook voltrekt al is het op een wat langzamer manier...... 

Wat betreft de massamedia in de VS (en elders in het westen) moet ik zeggen dat deze inderdaad onbetrouwbaar zijn, al is het op een andere manier dan Trump bedoelt, neem de berichtgeving voorafgaand en tijdens de illegale oorlogen van de VS tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië en dan gaat het alleen over deze eeuw..... Toch moet ik toegeven dat veel stemmingmakerij tegen Trump niet echt van een geweldig niveau was, om het maar voorzichtig te stellen....

Uiteraard zijn de handelsoorlog en de woorden die Trump daarbij gebruikt van een uitgesproken fascistoïde karakter, zo noemt hij de Chinese leider Xi Jinping een vijand van de VS..... Eén van de middelen die hij gebruikt, of beter misbruikt is de International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) uit 1977, waarmee men drugssmokkelaars en terroristen te lijf kan gaan en in uitzonderlijke situaties een misdadig regime kan isoleren, echter niet om onenigheid over onderlinge handel te beslechten.....

Overigens laten de leugens van Trump over Latijns-Amerikaanse vluchtelingen niets aan de verbeelding over, ronduit fascistische leugens...... Gisteren liet Trump nog weten dat de 'US Space Force' de VS het machtigste land in de ruimte moet maken, waar hij zelfs stelde dat de VS zich het recht zal voorbehouden om satellieten van VS onwelgevallige landen te vernietigen..... (BBC World Service radio bracht dit bericht afgelopen nacht)

Trump doet in feite wat eerder fascistische regimes deden die uit waren op expansie* en meer macht: landen valselijk beschuldigen om daarna een poging te doen met behulp van de CIA een gewelddadige opstand op te starten in zo'n land, met de opzet het regime ten val te brengen...... Als dat niet lukt blijft altijd de mogelijkheid over een dergelijk land binnen te vallen en daarmee heeft de VS al een heel lange ervaring........ Nu hoeft de VS niet per se een land binnen te vallen om een VS gezind regime te installeren, zo heeft ook Trump bedacht: een handelsoorlog en economische oorlogvoering kunnen al veel in gang zetten (zelfs een roep om regime verandering uit ontevredenheid bij het volk), al lukt dat gelukkig niet altijd, zie Syrië,Venezuela en Iran. Helaas vallen door deze economische terreur wel veel mensenlevens, zo heeft de economische oorlog tegen Venezuela al aan meer dan 40.000 mensen het leven gekost, mensen die in feite zijn vermoord door de VS......

Dan nog dit: het neoliberalisme dat ook in de EU hoogtij viert, is niets anders dan een vorm van fascisme, dit nog naast het feit dat een aantal EU landen in feite al fascistisch worden geregeerd, neem Hongarije, Polen en Roemenië (gelukkig zijn de fascistische Oostenrijkse en Italiaanse regering gevallen).......

Dimaggio heeft verder een uitstekend artikel geschreven over wat ik de 'fascistische Trump doctrine' zou willen noemen. Wel verontrustend als je bedenkt dat de VS afgeladen is met kernwapens, waarover Trump zich afvroeg waarom ze niet gebruikt worden 'als we ze toch hebben......' 

AUGUST 28, 2019

Trump’s Trade War and the Emerging Corporatist-Fascist State

by ANTHONY DIMAGGIO

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

President Donald Trump’s fit over China speaks to the rise of neofascism in American politics, at a time when neither Congress nor the courts are showing any interest in rolling back presidential power. Trump’s unique brand of neofascism first emerged in the form of his attempt to crack down on journalistic critics for “treason,” and via the onset of his white ethno-nationalist, which he declared via a “state of emergency” that allowed him to criminalize immigrants in “concentration camp”-style detainment settings, and to confiscate taxpayer funds to build a wall with Mexico that was never authorized by Congress. This nascent fascism is quickly morphing into full-blown fascism, via Trump’s efforts to dictate the rules of investment to U.S. corporations, and in relation to his emerging trade war with China.

In late August, Trump announced he would intensify the trade war against China, with the imposition of an additional 5 percent duty on $250 billion in Chinese goods, reaching a 30 percent tax by October 1st, coupled with a 15 percent tax – over his previous 10 percent planned rate – on another $300 billion of imports, to take effect on September 1st. The major controversy is not Trump’s saber rattling with China, but his attempt to unilaterally require that American corporations no longer do business in China. As Trump announcedon Twitter, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing our companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” This “order” was political in motivation, in line with Trump’s “America First” agenda, and as reflected in his announcement that “We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far better off without them.”

For those who would defend the neofascist in chief for making merely “tongue and cheek” comments by “ordering” U.S. corporations around, the president was having none of it. He elaborated via Twitter that his mandate to American corporations was permissible under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977, a law the New York Times reports “has been used mainly to target terrorists” and “drug traffickers,” and “originally meant to enable a president to isolate criminal regimes, not sever economic ties with a major trading partner over a tariff dispute.” In a sign of just how much further Trump has come from the authoritarian politics of the Bush-“war on terror” years, George W. Bush’s former international economic advisor warned that “Any invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in these circumstances and for these purposes would be an abuse… The act is intended to address extraordinary national security threats and true national emergencies, not fits of presidential pique.” But Trump was not deterred. In relation to his “emergency” powers, he claimed: “For all the Fake News Reporters that don’t have a clue as to what the law is relative to Presidential powers, China, etc, try looking at the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Case closed!”

It should be no surprise that Trump sees this as a “case closed” issue of presidential authority, considering his longstanding contempt for the rule of law, and his routine dismissal of the courts and Congress, both of which he has shown little interest in consulting with regard to his presidential acts and orders. This president believes in ruling by decree, and he isn’t going to let inconvenient obstacles like Constitutionalism and judicial or Congressional oversight get in his way.

A closer look at the 1977 law that Trump cites reveals that it does, in fact, grant presidents the power to regulate foreign commerce in times of emergency. But the law is not what the president claims it to be. It allows the executive to “prohibit” the “importation or exportation” of goods and “any transactions in foreign exchange” “in which any foreign country or national thereof has any interest,” during periods of “unusual and extraordinary threat,” as related to national security and the economy.

The key point of emphasis here is that this power exists during periods of “unusual and extraordinary threat,” which would not under any rational interpretation include simple trade disputes between competing heads of state. Nor would it include trade disputes occurring under an economy which Trump himself heralded last week as “strong and good,” and commentedwithin the last month that it is the “best it has ever been.”

Trump would have his cake and eat it too, speaking out of both sides of his mouth by declaring a national economic emergency on the one hand, while celebrating the nation’s economic vitality and growth on the other. But make no mistake: he realizes there is a very real danger of an emerging recession as a result of his escalating trade war with China. The problem is that he is too arrogant and vain to ever admit that rising economic instability is a result of his own actions, and to reverse course to avoid a possible recession.

In his growing desperation and in response to a self-imposed “crisis,” Trump has taken to demonizing domestic political figures. Consider, for example, his attack the head of the Federal Reserve (FED), Jay Powell, after he refused to immediately lower interest rates to pull the economy back from further volatility, following numerous hits to the stock market due to the onset of Trump’s trade war. Trump hyper-ventilated on Twitter, asking: “who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” following Powell’s announcement that the Federal Reserve was limited in its powers to stimulate the economy due to the uncertainty and volatility imposed by Trump’s trade war.

The risk of a declining economy to Trump’s political future shouldn’t be dismissed. A president with a 40 percent approval rating cannot afford to lose much by way of public support if he hopes to be re-elected in 2020. And a full-blown economic recession will almost certainly mean a significant decline in Trump’s already tenuous job approval, likely putting him out of reach of a second term if economic conditions continue to deteriorate in late 2019 and 2020. Despite Trump’s bloviating about enemies at home and abroad, the ultimate irony in this case is that he is his own worst enemy, and an emerging recession, if it does come, will be of his own making.

Recent political events do suggest that the United States is entering a state of emergency, although it is not one that’s driven by an economic downturn. Rather, the cancer that afflicts the nation is neofascism. By neofascism, I am referring specifically to a system of politics that is marked by extreme nationalism, racism and xenophobia, authoritarian contempt for the rule of law, and most recently, to active government efforts to impose new “rules of the game” on the capitalist economy, contrary to “free market” neoliberal principles. This final aspect of fascism – call it corporatist fascism, was popularized in Nazi Germany under the Third Reich, and places government at the helm in terms of making major investment decisions for private corporations.

U.S. capitalism has long been marked by an authoritarian organizational structure, via corporate hierarchies that exercise power at the expense of working Americans having a say in the workplace, while deterring unionism and democracy in the workplace. But corporatist neofascism, of the variety that Trump seeks to introduce, goes beyond anything we have seen in modern history. Government has historically been the junior partner in reinforcing the plutocratic power of the business class over politics. It is not, under “free market” capitalism, a legitimate guiding force when it comes to dictating the terms of investment to business and the private sector.

Most Americans are reluctant to apply the term “fascism” to Trump’s politics because of longstanding aversion to the notion that the U.S. could ever become a fascist nation.

The “It Can’t Happen Here” ethos was well understood more than 80 years ago by novelist Sinclair Lewis, meaning that Americans have historically been blind to the neofascistic elements of politics unfolding before their very eyes. But ultimately, the “fascism-not-fascism” dichotomy is extremely problematic, dangerous, and self-defeating for those who still value principles of democracy and limited government. If Americans wait to discuss the “is it fascism?” question until after a neofascist state has been fully institutionalized, that debate will be merely academic, and utterly meaningless. The time to discuss a fascist threat is as it is emerging, not after it has been implemented.

Time is growing short for those who would reel in Trump’s runaway neofascistic policies, and in terms of reestablishing the rule of law. Congress has it within its authority to countermand Trump’s efforts to impose corporatist-neofascism on the U.S. economy. The very emergency law that Trump cites states that “the president, in every possible instance, shall consult with the Congress before exercising any of the authorities granted” in the emergency law, and that he must “consult regularly with the Congress so long as such authorities are exercised.” He must provide regular updates to the legislative branch on how such emergency powers are being used. Which means that Congress is at liberty to reverse the “state of emergency” Trump has declared by determining that he has abused his political powers by pursuing an authoritarian, self-aggrandizing policy that grants the president unprecedented authority to impose a corporatist-neofascist regime.

Congress should immediately begin impeachment proceedings, under the grounds that Trump is unfit to be commander in chief, following his recent claim that he is God’s “chosen one” with regard to dictating trade policy, and his efforts to claim dictatorial emergency powers in relation to managing his trade war with China. Since, Trump’s neofascist politics have received little pushback thus far, there is growing concern that his recent trade actions will only further empower the president moving forward. There is little standing in this president’s way, short of legislative or judicial action, as he seeks to destroy what remains of the “checks and balances” system under the U.S. Constitution. Short of impeachment or a national strike and mass protests across the country, Trump’s neofascist politics are likely to intensify in the future.

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More articles by: ANTHONY DIMAGGIO

Anthony DiMaggio is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University. He holds a PhD in political communication, and is the author of the newly released: The Politics of Persuasion: Economic Policy and Media Bias in the Modern Era (Paperback, 2018), and Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media, and U.S. Foreign Policy After 9/11 (Paperback: 2016). He can be reached at: anthonydimaggio612@gmail.com

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* Over expansie gesproken: het psychopathische beest Trump bood Denemarken onlangs aan om Groenland te kopen, te belachelijk voor woorden, echter deze mafkloot was zo pissig over de afwijzing door Denemarken, dat hij een gepland bezoek heeft afgezegd........