Chris Martenson's Blog

[Note: This is a recent Martenson Insider post which I am making public. A couple of members thought this topic deservbed wider attention and conversation and I agreed.  Thanks go to MikeP for the title change idea.] 

The NYT had an editorial this past weekend (Feb 6, 2010) that trotted out some dangerous mistruths about the deficit and framed the issue as a left vs. right political game.

I hardly know where to start, but I will note that we've had massive accumulations of new debts under every single administration since the early 1980s, and that it hasn't seemed to matter which party has controlled which branches of government.  One could be forgiven for suspecting that, when it comes to deficit spending, there aren't two parties, but only one.

The real truth is that we have a culture of reckless spending in DC that transcends either or both parties, and I always lose a bit of trust in those who attempt to paint it otherwise.  This is simply not a partisan issue.  read more »

A new Martenson Report is ready for enrolled members.

Link On The Other Hand...

Executive Summary

• Recent economic news comes in three flavors: good, bad, and ugly.
• GDP, retail sales, and manufacturing surveys point up.
• Petroleum use has dropped to the same level it was at in the late 1990s, pointing down.
• State sales tax receipts, unemployment, and the federal budget deficit are ugly.
• The current expansionary track of monetary printing and deficit spending will continue until something external forces a contraction.

Today we are experiencing many confusing and conflicting signals in the economy.  Perhaps conflicting signals are normal at a major turning point, and therefore we might be tempted to believe that we are about to embark on another vigorous leg of economic expansion.

Here we'll explore these conflicting signals and see what we can make of them.  read more »

Wow.

Last night, more than 400 people packed into a sold-out opera hall for a 3-hour lecture and Q&A session, while quite a few were turned away for lack of space.

The energy was incredible: focused, positive, scared, calm, determined, & eager.  It was all there. 

When I originally asked how many in the crowd had seen the Crash Course, nearly 3/4ths of the hands went up.  Clearly, something is going on out here.  The organizers of the event, Cooper and Bob and a local group dedicated to sustainability (FOCUS), did an incredible job with the logistics, and, obviously, patiently setting the stage over the past several months.  Kudos!

This event was extremely gratifying to me, because it showed that big ideas, even ones that would be labeled as "not happy ones" by our culture, have a secure and growing place in people's lives.  read more »

Last night (Tuesday, January 26th, 2010) I gave a talk to a sold-out audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. The crowd was excellent, and I was thrilled to have the chance to deliver our message at this venue.

I say ‘our message’ because so many of you helped to shape the talk, and, most importantly, practically forbade me from doing anything but delivering a no-holds-barred message.  So that’s what I did.

Here are a couple of observations.  Five years ago I was delivering a version of this message in the basement community room in a local bank in Brattleboro, VT to very small audiences.  Yesterday, a half hour before the talk began, there were ~30 people waiting in a side room for a small chance at one standby ticket.

Five years ago, the audiences were all ‘of an age.’  Now they include many more younger people and represent a much broader cross section of society, beliefs, professions, and income levels.

My impression is that the tide is shifting, powerfully, and yesterday’s response proved to me that ideas matter, that people care, and that getting our collective act together is a rapidly-ascending priority for a growing group of people.  Whoever says that there's no interest anymore in big ideas is flat-out wrong. 

So thank you to everyone that came, and, if you couldn’t make it in, I’m sorry, and I hope that we get a chance to meet soon elsewhere.  If you can make it to the Sonora event, tomorrow night (Thursday, 6-9:30), I’d love to see you there.

Below is the speech I gave (not an exact transcript, but very close).  read more »

Chris is busy gearing up for his talk tonight at the Commonwealth Club, so we wanted to take a moment to remind our greater Bay Area readers of Chris's public talk on Thursday, January 28th at 6:30PM the Sonora Opera Hall in Sonora, CA.   read more »

At first I thought a recent Washington Post article regarding 'earnings' at the Federal Reserve was a joke.  But it appeared in the business section, and there weren't any "gotcha!" retractions the next day, so I assume it was meant to be serious.

For those who understand the very simple idea that the Federal Reserve prints Federal Reserve Notes (or their electronic equivalent) out of thin air, the concept of 'earnings' on those same thin-air money units is intellectually challenging.

Here's the article:  read more »

A new Martenson Report is ready for enrolled members.

Link:  Year of the Tiger

Executive Summary

• China is pursuing an active policy of resource mercantilism.
• China appears to be strategically preparing for resource scarcity.
• China's auto sales have surpassed those of the US.
• This year China also edged out Germany as the top exporter.
• As China's economy expands, its energy use increases.
• The US should be stewarding its remaining resources and transitioning deliberately to a very different economic model, but instead we are wasting both time and resources.

No, this report has nothing to do with golfing.  In the Chinese calendar, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger.  read more »

Well, now that the returns are in, we can declare this past decade, 'the Aughts,' to be a lost decade.  There's an important story contained in the data from the Aughts, and it exposes the foundations of our current economic crisis.

Forget about subprime mortgages and regulatory failures; those were merely stage props in a very large theatrical production.  The plot line was the massive accumulation of credit across all sectors of society and an associated failure to save and invest.

Under the careless watch of Greenspan and then Bernanke, the total amount of debt in the US doubled from $26 trillion at the beginning of 2000 to $52 trillion at the end of 2009.  read more »

Two of the primary goals of this site are reaching new people with our message and providing more and richer information and communication with our existing members.  Toward both of those ends, I am excited to announce that we are taking our first steps into the world of Twitter.

A new Martenson Report is ready for enrolled members.

Link:  2010 and Beyond

Executive Summary

• This is not a normal recession, and it will not follow predictable patterns.
• Tax data does not support the assertion that consumer spending has essentially remained unchanged.
• Housing market recovery is being delayed by government programs.
• Households and small businesses are shedding debt, and big businesses are only adding a little, leaving government responsible for most of the new debt.
• We need to become serious about our real needs and stop frittering away time and capital.

I am going to be peering ahead with my views for 2010 and beyond in a multi-part series, beginning with the big picture before moving into individual ideas and suggestions.  read more »