Beyond The Rational Chris Laird The past two years or so, I have come to notice a definite angst...Among, people who are informed that.... things are not good. Not good at all. I mean, take Steven Roach from Morgan Stanley. This man is completely in this state of mind. He is no slouch either. Why is he so alarmed???? What I'm going to talk about is the sense among people who do have some insight into history, that... things are not quite what they seem, and really, the future is not,.. bright or even neutral. I have thought of writing this piece, for a while but have, well drawn back a little... wondering if it will be received well... but hey... we don't all live forever do we? Have you ever felt, and I'm not choosing to say this for effect, it is really what I believe... Have you ever felt recently, in the past two years that there are dire times coming? And I mean like soon? Like a few years away? Ok so maybe it's ten years away, if you're alive then, does it matter whether its two years or ten years? I remember ten years ago like it was yesterday. The times we live in are like that, its almost like a dream, so fast, daily news jags, new trends and all kinds of dire things coming down the pike...technology speeding events at the speed of light...we have never been in a world like this even 10 years ago. And PLEASE don't yack to me that the y2k scare was nonsense. Hell, I WORKED on it! DO you think maybe 200000 engineers worked for 4 years for nothing? LOL. So the problem was mostly solved! OK one bullet is dodged. I worked on one sensitive database that could not be brought forward due to the Y2K bug issue. It was brought forward and I solved it, and I don't mind telling you about it because I'm telling you these things are VERY REAL. Its not all hype. Read my GE article Technical Financial Meltdowns. For example... the oil peak, well, if you have followed it at all... and know how important cheap energy is to our world, then you know if it gets a little crazy... how bad things can get. What does it take to get things a little crazy? Just enough price hikes to start hurting every energy sensitive part of the economy, the airlines, the gold mining industry, the trucking industry.... the aluminum plants so energy dependent with their arc furnaces... the steel industry... Japan, which imports like 99 percent of its energy needs.... and this is all just energy... What about food? The costs of shipping and processing it is more than the cost of the food probably. The fertilizers based on ammonia, all have some cost base, and if they rise, and they are a BIG part of the cost of food world wide....and its derived from natural gas, then, well, all those marginal farms won't be in business.... Our whole world has been created on the paradigm of cheap energy.... alternative fuels? they don't have the energy density of oil. Period. Check it out. It's all less by a factor of ten. We are not going to replace the cheap energy of oil without something like fusion energy, which is decades off at least, since there are no working reactors that can sustain a reaction for more than a few microseconds..... They need an entire power plant using oil just to kick-start those muthers. They use megawatts. Let me break the tone a little to get to the point. We can use ALL THE RATIONAL TOOLS WE WANT to look at the world now... and you know what? Unless you start thinking beyond what has transpired recently, and I mean like the last ten or 50 years, and start looking at what it means to lose cheap energy, to lose the US political and economic leadership, to look at Europe not really coming together like the dreamers wanted, but rather going into fragmentation, based on free markets verses deeply entrenched socialism.... And China, taking the place of the Soviet Union as the new communistic boogieman.. but worse because they have a vital capitalistic machine back of it..... Friends, forget all of your ideas of what this world was even ten years ago. In times of great change, like those preceding world war 1 and world war 2, the great powers were totally out of it, looking backwards for their future strategies, and now is not any different.. All globalism is doing is making the US and the West deficient and debt ridden, and the East, particularly China, a great industrial power.... and it is showing little sign of slowing... when our government realizes the error, it's too late. If we could have a depression now, right now, that might save us.... I can't help it, this message makes me outside the pack, and I just sing it. I'm not stupid, but I do think outside the usual commentary. I see the changing times and so do others. But my whole focus is looking for changing paradigms. That makes me different. Now, all this means is that, when you start planning your economic future, you had better not be using the thinking of the past. Think about what I just said. These are times of historic change that are setting up the stage for the next world order...(not the new world order) the next one. I do hope that you are all not thinking that things are going to go on like they have in the last 20 years.... Now then, when I read financial articles that say, we will muddle through, the US is resilient, we'll work it out, we always have... You know, I kinda get, well, irritated. Because I am totally sure things are already changed now, and have just to reveal their true face, in the soon to come future. Well, you ask, give me specifics! Don't just talk generically. OK, I will give you a couple but that is not my purpose in this article. The purpose in this article is to give you a 'spiritual feeling' of what our times are now. IE the spirit or the "truth" of what times we are really entering. But for instance: China is gaining ground so fast that they have industrialized to a modern automated manufacturing state in less than 10 years, to the point it took the US 100 years to achieve. No less thanks to all those US companies sending their jobs and technology overseas in the search for a lousy year or two's profit, after which they'll all be jettisoned right out of Asia, and licking their wounds...LOL! And for instance, Europe is fragmenting, after trying to get 25 totally disparate cultures including TURKEY for crying out loud, together under one constitution, and now France and Italy are rebelling and others... the Euro is deeply wounded by a credibility gap friends. The US has a weak dollar, but at least is politically more or less stable! Why do you think the dollar is rising still? Because of our outrageous trade gap? or Federal budget deficit???? No, it is because we are the ONLY stable western power with a viable currency, weak as it is. Politics overrides monetary weakness to a great extent. Really, what I am talking about is thinking that is more visceral and BEYOND THE RATIONAL. In the past, we could think only in terms of financial metrics like trade deficits.. and other measurements, and of course these will continue to greatly influence events. But the-- visceral beyond the rational animalistic forces-- are what are calling the tune right now in the world currency markets, and thusly the par excellence market gold. Just some thoughts. I thought to write this in the months past and have some even stronger views... but I'll put those out when I think people will be able to take it in. I have a newsletter coming up right soon. You can sign up for a very reasonable fee for a subscription, and it will be a weekly. You can leave your email to be notified when its up. It will be at prudentsquirrel.com. I also suggest you read my last article, The Unwinding if you haven't already, to get an idea of my editorial focus. Chris Laird, editor www.prudentsquirrel.com June 29, 2005
