My name is Chris Martenson. I think the next twenty years are going to look very different from the last twenty. I want you to understand why.
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My primary goal is to position you for a positive tomorrow by taking appropriate action today. I built this site to help you stay informed, protect wealth, build resilience into your life and community, and connect with other concerned citizens. Hope to see you back here often.
Guest Post: The Two Keys to Understanding China's Housing Bubble 
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by Charles Hugh Smith
This post is one in a series from respected guest commentators while Chris is on vacation with his family & working on his new book. Chris returns next week; enjoy the fresh perspective in the meantime.
The Mainstream Media in the U.S. has presented two basic approaches to understanding China's real estate bubble:
- There is no bubble in Chinese real estate, as demand for housing is so vast it will soak up all the tens of millions of flats that have been built in the past decade
- It is a bubble and it's fueled by the same dynamic as the bubble that expanded and popped in the U.S. and elsewhere: easy credit and speculative lending encouraged by government policy.
Guest Post: A Short History of Economic Philosophy
by Richard Heinberg
This article ran for our enrolled users last week and is one in a series from respected guest commentators while Chris is vacationing with his family and working on his new book. Enjoy the fresh perspective.
The mainstream theoretical tools now commonly available to central bankers and government economic managers are worse than useless for addressing current global economic and environmental crises. This sweeping statement is amply borne out, not only by ongoing economic data but also by the history of the economic ideas that have shaped the modern world. That history is of course complex, but it can be summarized briefly to some advantage.
While economic philosophy can be traced back at least as far as Aristotle (382-322 BC), little of real substance was added to the discussion during the next two thousand years.
- richardheinberg's blog
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Daily Digest 9/2 - Bernanke And Deflation, Economists Question Growth Figures, Military Warns Of Oil Crisis
- What Bernanke Doesn't Understand About Deflation
- The Fourth Turning: Skies Darkening
- A Termite-Riddled House: Treasury Bonds
- Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis
- Economists Question 8.8% Q1 GDP Growth Number
- Ben “Willy-Nilly” Bernanke
- America Adds $210 Billion In Gross Debt In August, Rolls $620 Billion In Bills And Notes
- New Zealand Budget almost shock-proof: IMF
- Power Shortages Plague MENA
- Morning Update/Market Thread 9/1
- Russian oil exchange the way of the future
- Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis
- Delays Plague Solar Energy On Fed Lands
Own the Crash Course Special Edition Set with Presenter’s Pack (NTSC or PAL)
- DailyDigest's blog
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Growth and the Upcoming Iranian War 
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Monday, July 12, 2010
Executive Summary
- A war with Iran seems likely before the US elections in November.
- The US has committed an act of war in deciding to embargo Iranian fuel shipments and international financial activities.
- The "urgency for dealing with Iran" is driven more by oil competition than military crisis.
- The US militarily occupies or diplomatically controls every strategically-located oil producer in the Middle East except for Iran.
- The most probable explanation for the sudden concern about Iran is likely centered over energy and the 'requirement' of growth that our economic and financial systems demand.
- Seeking militarily-secured access to oil halfway around the world is a weak strategy.
- An Iranian war has the potential to severely disrupt developed economies due to another wild oil-price spike.
These days I am troubled by the renewed beating of the Iranian war drums by the West and Israel. Troubled, in part, because the world economy needs a war with Iran right now like it needs a hole in the head. Or perhaps I should say a hole in the barrel, because the most likely immediate outcome of an Iranian war would be a diminution of oil traversing out of the Persian Gulf and a gigantic leap in the price of oil.
Both would add terrible stresses to the global financial system at this particular moment.
The last time I wrote about the urgent beating of the Iranian war drums was in December of 2009. Then, too, we saw a near-perfect coordination of the media in breathlessly "reporting" whatever the US and Israeli military elements wanted communicated. Basically it boiled down to something like this: "THE US MUST IMMEDIATELY DEAL WITH THIS URGENT THREAT RIGHT NOW - NO WAITING - IT IS THAT SERIOUS!!!" Sorry for shouting there, but that's how it came across to me before it all, oddly and quietly, slipped off of the headlines and out of our collective consciousness, until just recently.
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Second Leg of the Housing Decline Set To Begin (or Why Economists Are Dangerous To Your Wealth)
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Monday, June 28, 2010
Executive Summary
- Housing data is weak and just took a turn for the worse
- Stimulus efforts were essential to keep housing propped up
- The stimulus has ended
- QE and stock market prices are correlated
- What’s coming next
- What you should do
We bought our house in November of 2009. This will turn out to have been a very bad financial decision. We’ll be underwater on that purchase for a very long time; maybe forever (or until Bernanke’s great experiment takes the final turn towards massive currency destruction and inflation; whichever comes first).
Of course, we bought it knowing that. Our decision to buy centered on our valuing time more than money. What I mean by this is that all of the changes that we are now fully engaged in around our house, ranging from insulating to installing solar panels to putting in a fruit orchard, all take time. Time became more important to us than money, and so we bought.
But for every nation dealing with the after-effects of a housing bubble, what matters is that house prices start to climb again. Of course, the housing bubble was just a symptom of the larger and far more damaging credit bubble, but housing is a useful indicator for where we are in the larger credit-bubble story.
Because of its importance to both the bubble’s bursting and its eventual repair, I track housing for signs of true recovery.
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