Open Thread, That Sinking Feeling

After three consecutive days with temperatures in the 90s, I've got nothing left. I don't have much to say after yesterday's effort anyway. Talk about anything you want today. The floor is yours.

The Big News is the dramatic slowdown of the global economy. I've written frequently about That Sinking Feeling over the last few weeks. I've got little to add today.

Undoubtedly the European economy is contracting.

LONDON, June 21 (Reuters) - The downturn in the euro zone's private sector is becoming entrenched and Chinese factories are finding the going increasingly tough, business surveys showed on Thursday, painting a darker outlook for the world economy.

June was the fifth consecutive month that activity across the euro zone has declined, dragging down heavyweights Germany and France and putting pressure on the European Central Bank to take further action to support the economy...

The euro zone's private sector contracted at its fastest pace since June 2009, when the bloc was mired in a deep recession, according to Markit's Flash Composite Purchasing Managers' Index for June.

A combination of the services and manufacturing sectors which is seen as a guide to growth, the PMI fell to 46.0, slightly better than the fall to 45.5 predicted by economists in a Reuters Poll...

What about China?

Unhealthy data from China, the cornerstone of the oil market, dictated heavy losses for basic resources equities and oil prices. The HSBC China manufacturing PMI fell to 48.1 June, edging down from a final reading of 48.4 in May. It was the eighth straight month of a reading below 50. HSBC's data also pointed to weakness in the months ahead.

[My note: readings below 50 indicate contraction.]

Commodity prices are falling fast. I'll publish my biweekly Saturday Oil Report tomorrow.

Have a good weekend and enjoy the video.

Now, you wouldn't know it, for some of the things I've said over the years, but I like people...

 

Comments

[Andrew Kirk]

105 deg. F. here in Independence, California. Not a cloud in the sky to temper Solar ferocity. Thankfully, the burning of fossil fool keeps me cool. Please keep those kilowatts coming. (Imminent collapse? Oh, well.)

[Read]

Dave:

I'm going to se the open thread to venture a guess as to why you might be losing readers.

Your blog does an excellent job of recording and commenting upon our steady, downward spiral with excellent, factual observations. I think that this sort of blog has diminishing returns because after sufficient evidence is presented for the predicament in which we're in, it all gets somewhat repetitive. How many times do we need to see how the unemployment and GDP numbers get fudged?

I have been following ASPO for 10 years, and it looks as if Campbell, Akellet et al were very prescient about peak oil. So it appears that we are in for a liquid fuels crunch in the near future.

I also think that constantly reporting and commenting upon the stupid policy response and general level of human stupidity affect your writing and makes you appear jaded and cynical. A bit like Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino".

Why not shift a little to focus on actions that we, as individuals might take to ameliorate the situation? Is there anything that we might reasonably do to make life a little better? Or are we merely passengers on this titanic voyage?

I do think the "we are totally fucked" message gets old.

That said, I really need you not to get discouraged or stop writing. What you have to say needs to be said and I'm grateful for your intelligent and thoughtful commentary.

Best wishes.

[Wanooski]

So what do you think we're looking at here Dave? I dunno... I don't see a real "collapse" coming very soon, just industrial society continuing to limp along slowly eating the planet until all that's left is either city, strip mine or landfill/toxic waste dump, which is probably all that the ocean will end up being.
The most of the good compliant worker-consumers don't give a shit, they won't care if there is mass poverty civil unrest, total biosphere collapse.
When push comes to shove they won't care if the protesters/rebels/disenfranchised are walled up in ghettos and concentration camps. They won't care if they only ever get to see whales and lions and elephants in pictures and videos. They won't care if they can only breath outside while wearing respirator masks. They won't care if their nations' armies are committing total genocide in third world countries with valuable resources.
As long as they get their McFood, and the next iPhone and video games, then as far as they care everything is just fine and dandy. They'll sign their online petitions and pretend they are making a difference, or they'll come up with dozens of hundreds of rationalizations why all the terrible things that they are complicit in are perfectly acceptable.

[Mister Roboto]

I've got one. Agree or disagree: Kids today (born after the start of 1996) suck. They just freaking suck.

[James]

I don't know, it wasn't kids born after 1996 that got us into this mess.... But they are plopped right in the middle of it.

[Chris]

Well we can vote for the Green Party come November. I am.

[Dave Cohen]

Re: I think that this sort of blog has diminishing returns because after sufficient evidence is presented for the predicament in which we're in, it all gets somewhat repetitive. How many times do we need to see how the unemployment and GDP numbers get fudged?

Re: I also think that constantly reporting and commenting upon the stupid policy response and general level of human stupidity affect your writing and makes you appear jaded and cynical.

I see. It's my fault. I got a $100 dollar donation the other day. It was the second one I had received from this fellow, and he is very likely someone you have heard of. He is renowned for having a very insightful view of the human prospect.

And do you know what he said to me?

Keep up the difficult and depressing work

And that's all he said. So why don't you keep your "constructive" criticism to yourself?

-- Dave

[spynetkilla]

Hmmm. "We are totally fucked" might seem to get repetitious as a theme, and against our instincts to hear, but it IS the same reality I wake up to every morning. I wish there were some respite from that truth, but here we are.

Comparing Dave to a "You kids get off my lawn" curmudgeon comes from an expectation about how ideas must be framed, marketed, and presented. We expect to be entertained, and in way that will never upset our own preconceived ideas.

With very rare exceptions, books & blogs on the subject of human decline end on a positive note: If we can only regulate the financial industry; If we can only stop global warming; if, if ,if, we only need to gather the facts and take action based on rational decisions.

Real change requires a total shake-up of each individual person's consciousness. In disaster movies, a single catastrophic event brings humanity together, with new priorities understood by all. In reality, our situation is more like slow cancer, and it's unlikely some major event is going to wake people up.

[Shawn]

Dave said: And that's all he said. So why don't you keep your "constructive" criticism to yourself?

I love reading your work, but I cringe at your comments/feedback. Frankly, I think that you are your own worst enemy. Maybe you should take the Kunslter approach and avoid making too many comments on the comments.

[Dave Cohen]

@Shawn

I was making a simple point, which apparently you missed.

The guy who gave me the donation, who knows what I'm trying to do, is being supportive. He even gave me money.

The guy I responded to above thinks ... what? That's he's giving me good advice by telling me, as you just did, that I'm "my own worst enemy"?

I need support on DOTE, not the kind of horseshit you just wrote.

If you don't like my attitude, don't visit here. I'm not about to become idiot-friendly to get more traffic. Nobody is charging you to read this stuff.

-- Dave

[lee]

90 degrees ? You come down to Houston during the summer where it's 95 degrees and 95% humidity. It makes moving to a country like Estonia that has its financial act together and rarely hits 70 like bettter and better each day.

Okay, onto my add for the openthread.

One thing that keeps amazing me is how slow the decline in the US and the world is. We have stock markets hitting their 2009 lows already, food inflation, record people on food stamps, record people not even attempting to work and bank runs and bank holidays in Europe and the world still rolls along without much attention.

I bet if you asked 9 out of 10 people if they knew Greece was handing out food and people were committing suicide, they would be suprised.

Anyone that follows the financial news knows things are a farce and the governments can solve it. I t least expected bigger drops in the stock market as those with money in it, usually are the best in the know and should know its going to drop a lot soon.

It really is unnerving to me that things crumbling down has been so slow, because that means to me that to amount of people that actually put some thought and did more than live day to day and paycheck to paycheck is greater than i would have ever imagined.

[Wanooski]

Don't take shit from those whiners Dave, you keep telling it like it is, and I'll keep checking your blog every day.

[Joy]

Actually, recognition and acceptance of the totality and inevitability of collapse brings a sort of peace of mind. Five days ago I had to take my partner to hospital. The first 24 hours were spent in emergency department waiting for a hospital bed. On hospital day 4, the doctors finally did a scan. A decade ago, the scan would have been done no later than hospital day 2. But, as I told my partner, this is not a bad hospital, not bad doctors and nurses, just a feature of collapse. All of the overworked and underpaid Asian migrant staff were doing the best they could with limited resources. In another few years (or sooner) the scanner will break down and the hospital won't be able to afford a new one, and there will be chronic medication shortages.

As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes" However, it is a lovely calm temperate midwinter day, the birds are singing, the bay is glassy smooth. To use another Kurt Vonnegut phrase, "If this isn't nice, what is?" Kurt saw all the human folly and doom decades ago, and accepted it "without hope and without fear" (Dinesen). Cherishing the nice moments, is all any of us can do.

[T E Cho]

A prediction:

Things are becoming more and more interrelated, and other-reliant ... economically, technologically, political alliances, infrastructure, etc. This will continue.

A trigger event, small or large, will occur - for example similar to the event that started WWI.

A chain reaction of bad-things will occur.

Everyone's focus will shift much more to the short term WTF do I do now? Seeking advice and short term predictions, whats going to happen next?

Dave will be deluged with requests for advice, and questions about more specific , shorter term prognostications.

... What happens next depends on too many random factors to predict ...

(( please forgive the crappy editing - this tablet is tough to type in.))

[Mike Roberts]

Dave, I understand what Read is saying but I, for one, don't want you to stop. This message needs to be drummed in. I would guess that many of the ex-readers are those that have decided to just forget about the mess their country and world is in. I wonder how many of them have acted on the information you've provided. Very few, I expect.

As soon as writers like you stop writing about the truth, then more people can go back to sleep. So don't stop, whatever supposedly well meaning commentators say; we need to stay awake.

[eugene]

Keep on keeping on!! If the blog is too negative, read the ones where all will be well in the end, human ingenuity is endless and magic is the solution to all. I need the contact. All I have where I'm at is "don't worry, be happy". At 71, I'm not worried but if you had the brains of a rabbit, you'd be.

[Christian]

Hey Dave - your work is an endless nightmare most can't comprehend, but I love it! Been reading your blog for over a year. Just because humans aren't much more than bacteria in a petri dish doesn't mean some of us don't understand the bigger picture. Keep it up - please!