Petrodollar recycling

    William R. Clark, Petrodollar warfare, 2005 
    David Spiro's book, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony
    F. William Engdahl, A Century of War, 1992, 2004

    // if you have one view [perspective, orientation] of reality
    // and someone presents a potentially credible view of a different reality
    // if you connect and fill in some of the missing the dots
    // the following could be subversive to reality
    // for others, this reality is a no brainer
    // the conventional view is that something is either right or wrong
    // is there a contradiction between this reality and the other reality 
    // can both realities be right
    //  and wrong? 
    // how can something be both right and wrong,
    //  at the same time, at different time, in different context,
    //  in the same context, at the same position, at different location,
    //  with different boundary [territory], with the same boundary [territory] 
    // how can something be neither right nor wrong,
    //  or right at all time (in all context with no exception to the rule)
    //  or wrong at all time (in all context with no exception to the rule)
    //  or never right (in any context with no exception to the rule)
    //  or never wrong (in any context with no exception to the rule)
    //     right at some time, and wrong at some other time 

William R. Clark, Petrodollar warfare, 2005                                 [ ]

p.20  (pdf - page 41/289)
David Spiro's book, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony

pp.20-21  (pdf - page 41/289)
   In typical understatement Spiro noted that, “clearly something more than the laws of supply and demand ... resulted in 70 percent of all Saudi assets in the United States being held in a New York Fed account.”42


p.21  (pdf - page 42/289)
   In May 1973, with the dramatic fall of the dollar still vivid, a
   group of 84 of the world's top financial and political insiders met
   at Saltsjobaden, Sweden, the seclude island resort of the Swedish
   Wallenberg banking family. This gathering of [the] Bilderberg
   group heard an American participant, Walter Levy, outline a ‘scenario’
   for an imminent 400 percent increase in OPEC petroleum
   revenues. The purpose of the secret Saltsjobaden meeting WAS NOT
   TO PREVENT THE EXPECTED OIL PRICE SHOCK, BUT RATHER TO PLAN HOW TO MANAGE
   THE ABOUT-TO-BE-CREATED FLOOD OF OIL DOLLARS, a process US Secretary
   of State Kissinger later called ‘recycling the petrodollar flows.’
   [emphasis added]

                       -- F. William Engdahl, A Century of War43

p.21  (pdf - page 42/289)
   Engdahl's remarkable book, A Century of War, chronicled how certain geopolitical events mirrored a “scenario” discussed during a May 1973 Bilderberg meeting. Apparently powerful banking interests sought to “manage” the monetary dollars flows that were premised upon what the group envisioned as “huge increases” in the price of oil from the Middle East. The minutes of this Bilderberg meeting included projections of OPEC oil prices increasing by 400 percent.44
   In 1974 US Assistant Treasury Secretary Bennett and David Mulford of the London-based Eurobond firm of White Weld & Co. set about the mechanism to handle the surplus OPEC petrodollars.45  Kissinger, Bennett, and Mulford helped orchestrate the secret financial arrangement with SAMA that creatively transformed the high oil prices of 1973-1974 to the direct benefit of the US Federal Reserve Banks and the Bank of England.


p.22  (pdf - page 43/289)
   Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC producers deposited their surplus dollars in US and UK banks, which then took these OPEC petrodollars and re-lent them as Eurodollar bonds or loans, to governments of developing countries desperate to borrow dollars to finance their oil imports. While beneficials to the US- and UK-based financial centers, the buildup of these petrodollar debts  by the late 1970s facilitated the basis for the developing world's debt crisis of the early 1980s. Hundreds of billions of dollars were recycled between OPEC, the London and New York banks, and back to developing countries.


p.22  (pdf - page 43/289)
   In The Dollar Crisis, Richard Duncan attributed the 1974 petrodollar recycling mechanism to the “first boom-and-bust crisis of the post-Bretton Woods era.”46

   (Petrodollar warfare : oil, Iraq and the future of the dollar, William R. Clark, 2005, )
<-------------------------------------------------------------------------->
   William R. Clark

   A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth
   by William Clark 
      Original Essay January 2003
        -Revised March 2003
        -Post-war Commentary January 2004
   https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html
   https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html

   Background on Hydrocarbons and US Geostrategy
<-------------------------------------------------------------------------->
 
George Soros, The new paradigm for financial markets, 2008                  [ ]

p.108   Vietnam war
        August 15, 1971, suspended
        August 11, 1971
p.110   explosion of international credit between 1973 and 1979
        first oil shock, recycling of petro-dollar,
        Euro-dollar market
p.113   England 1974 (1973-1979)
p.114   Collective System of Lending
p.116   The international lending spree of the 1970s
        turned into the international banking crisis in 1982

   (The new paradigm for financial markets : the credit crisis of 2008 and what it means / George Soros., 1. financial crises──united states., 2. united states──economic policy., 3. united states──economic conditions──21st century., 4. credit──united states., HB3722.S673  2008, 332.0973──dc22, 2008, ) 
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->
  4:49
  Olivia Munn in 'Newsroom' ; Season 1 , Ep. 2
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6ycC_LAl1c
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6ycC_LAl1c
  https://youtu.be/j6ycC_LAl1c?t=20
  https://youtu.be/j6ycC_LAl1c?t=20
  pesman5
  Published on Jul 4, 2012
  “what's the difference between a corporation and a person?  
   Have you ever held the door open for someone?  Yes.  
   Did you ask them for money first?  No.  
   That's the difference.” 


  2:49
  Epic Email Fail
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLl_QCu_rRI
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLl_QCu_rRI
  jillhbaudhaan
  Published on Aug 16, 2012
  Mackenzie cheated on Will, but everyone thinks Will cheated on   Mackenzie. Mackenzie tries to correct this misunderstanding by sending an email.

    4:45
  The Newsroom - Sloan & Mac Economic Lesson
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc74p4mENuI
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc74p4mENuI
  luz lorenz
  Published on Sep 8, 2013

  https://bechdeltest.com/
  1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it
  2. Who talk to each other
  3. About something besides a man

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Colin Campbell (geologist)

"But this peak has no real great significance, it is the perception and the vision of the long decline that comes into sight on the other side of the peak. That's really what matters." (speaking on the peak oil phenomenon, from End of Oil (2005))

"It's quite a simple theory and one that any beer drinker understands. The glass starts full and ends empty and the faster you drink it the quicker it's gone." (on peak oil, in 2007) [7]

"Banks had been lending more than they had on deposit assuming that tomorrow's growth was collateral for today's debt but failing to see that growth depends on growing, cheap, oil-based energy...So in short, Peak Oil means that debt goes bad." (speaking on the 2008 crash at the New Energy Era Form, 8 May 2012)

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_J._Campbell
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

"The Control of Oil," by Dr. John M. Blair

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394494709/
Bert Ruiz (Reviewer)
August 28, 2003
Format: Hardcover
"The Control of Oil," by Dr. John M. Blair is a brilliant look at how the price of crude oil was determined by giant petroleum companies (the seven sisters) and a dozen members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Blair traces the history of these controls and explains how they recklessly triggered the 1970's global energy crisis.
This 1976 publication is a classic. To this end, Blair spent thirty-two years in the federal government. He started in 1938 as an author of monographs for pre-World War II investigations. Early on, he made his name focusing on the sizable concentrations of economic power in the oil industry by the Rockefeller family and family foundation. Afterwards he spent nearly a decade with the Federal Trade Commission as an Assistant Chief Economist and finally Blair spent fourteen years as Chief Economist of the Senate Subcommittee on Anti-trust and Monopoly. What makes this book truly special is the author's enormous access to critical government information.
Blair describes the oil industry's principal tax preferences, which worked to the advantage of the major companies and against smaller nonintegrated companies that could have favorably altered the availability and price of oil to consumers. The author also goes into great detail to reveal how the "Arab Embargo" that set the stage for the massive oil price explosion of October 1973 - January 1974 had little impact on supply and that in reality there was no crude oil shortfall. Ultimately, Blair emphasizes the need for developing alternate energy sources in the future.
This book had its genesis in a special 1973 Ford Foundation Energy Policy Project. The final result is a groundbreaking examination of the dramatic profits of oil companies.

Bert Ruiz
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->
  
  POLITICS
  MARCH/APRIL 2003 ISSUE
  The Thirty-Year Itch
  Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis ([see "The Control of Oil," by Dr. John M. Blair ]), Washington’s hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf’s oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance.
  BY ROBERT DREYFUSS

  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2003/03/thirty-year-itch

  Ibrahim Oweiss, a Middle East specialist at Georgetown University who coined the term “petrodollar” and has also been a consultant to Occidental and BP, has been closely watching the cautious maneuvering by the companies. 
  Anne Joyce, an editor at the Washington-based Middle East Policy Council who has spoken privately to top Exxon officials, says it’s clear that most oil-industry executives “are afraid” of what a war in the Persian Gulf could mean in the long term — especially if tensions in the region spiral out of control. 
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

“Petrodollar Warfare : oil, Iraq and the future of the dollar”
by William R. Clark

William R. Clark, original online essay,
Internet essay, 2003, “censored” news storied
escalating expense of Vietnam war

   domestic peak oil production in the lower 48 U.S. states in 1970s
Bretton Woods Gold Exchange

Vietnam war, military operations in Southwest Asia

June 25, 1950:  North Korea invades South Korea
Jan.     1959:  Communists begin large-scale operations against South Vietnam
         1960-1975  Vietnam War ($518 billion)
    ([ U.S. domestic peak oil production in 1970s - during Vietnam war ])
    source: Heritage foundation calculations based on defense budget data
            and defense GDP deflator used in the U.S. office of management
            and budget, historical tables, budget of the United States
            government, fiscal year 2011 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. government
            printing office, 2010),pp. 47-55, table 3.1, and pp.210-211,
            table 10.1, at ... .

Charles de Gaulle
November 1967, US gold in exchange for their dollar reserves, so better to get their gold out at a high price
August 11, 1971
wage-price freezes in late 1971

David Spiros, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony

G-10/BIS (bank of international settlements)
  Austria, Switzerland
  Germany (mark), France (franc), UK (poundsterling),
  Japan (yen), Canada (Canadian dollar), US (US dollar),
  governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA)
1974, New York and London banking interests,
“petrodollar recyling”, Saudi government, US Treasury bills, 70 per cent of all Saudi assets, New York Fed account
the petro dollar phase, petro dollar recycling, vigoriously implemented, 1970s,

   Oil price shocks of 1973-1974 and 1979 [OPEC], and the end of cheap oil

“surplus petrodollars”, new process of monetary petrodollar recycling was initiated
powerful banking interests
London-based Eurobond firm of White Weld & Co.
“managed the recycling of petrodollar flows”
petrodollar debts, 1970s, developing world's
debt crisis of the early 1980s
OPEC, London and New York banks,
International Monetary Fund (IMF),

   1974 petrodollar recycling mechanism, “first boom-and-bust crisis of the post-Bretton Woods era”
   August 1982 Mexico, default on repaying,
   Eurodollar loans

Joseph Nye, “soft power”

   unified Europe and Europan Monetary Union
   underlying economic reasons for the 2003 Iraq war

2003 invasion of Iraq is the first major proxy battle in the new, third phase of securing American dominance.

   (“Petrodollar Warfare : oil, Iraq and the future of the dollar”, by William R. Clark)
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

38:15
#astrobum #documentary
The World In 2050 [The Real Future Of Earth] – Full BBC Documentary 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeEYaX82jSE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeEYaX82jSE
Astrobum
Published on Apr 30, 2017
Can you imagine our world in 2050? By mid-century there will likely be 9 billion people on the planet, consuming ever more resources and leading ever more technologically complex lives. What will our cities be like? How will we eat in the future of Earth? Will global warming trigger catastrophic changes, or will we be able to engineer our way out of the world climate crisis?

In the future world demographic changes will certainly be dramatic. Rockefeller University mathematical biologist Joel Cohen says it's likely that by 2050 the majority of the people in the world and USA will live in urban areas of the earth, and will have a significantly higher average age than people today.

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. BBC Documentary 2018. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

George Soros, The new paradigm for financial markets, 2008                  [ ]

p.107   Bretton Woods institutions
p.108   Vietnam war
        August 15, 1971, suspended
p.108  
        oil and gold stocks,
        switch sterling, or premium dollars
p.108   European Common Market
p.108   interest equalization tax
        15 percent surcharge on the purchase of
        foreign securities abroad
p.109   1972, report entitled “The Case for Growth Banks”
p.110   explosion of international credit between 1973 and 1979
        first oil shock, recycling of petro-dollar,
        Euro-dollar market
p.113   England 1974 (1973-1979)
p.113
p.114   Collective System of Lending
p.116   The international lending spree of the 1970s
        turned into the international banking crisis in 1982
p.116   with the spreading of risk, more risk could be taken

p.95
GLOBALIZATION

   The globalization of financial markets was a very successful market fundamentalist project.  If financial capital is free to move about, it becomes difficult for any state to tax it or to regulate it because it can move somewhere else.  This puts financial capital into a privileged position. Government often have to pay more heed to the requirements of international capital than to the aspirations of their own people.  That is why the globalization of financial markets served the objectives of the market fundamentalists so well.  The process started with the recycling of petro-dollars in the aftermath of the 1973 oil shock, but it accelerated during the Reagan-Thatcher years.

   (The new paradigm for financial markets : the credit crisis of 2008 and what it means / George Soros., 1. financial crises──united states., 2. united states──economic policy., 3. united states──economic conditions──21st century., 4. credit──united states., HB3722.S673  2008, 332.0973──dc22, 2008, ) 
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966                                     [ ]

Ivar Kreuger sells worthless and fraudulent securities

    The end of financial capitalism may well be
dated at the collapse of the gold standard in
Britain in September 1931, but, on the personal
side, it must be dated at the suicide of its most
spectacular individual, the "Match King," Ivar
Kreuger, in Paris in April 1932.
    Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932), after several years'
experience as an engineer in America and South
Africa, set up in Stockholm in 1911 the contracting
firm of Kreuger & Toll. By 1918 this firm was a
financial company with a capital of 12 million
kronor, and chiefly interested in the Swedish Match
Company, a holding company organized by Kreuger.
Within a decade, Kreuger had control of over 150
match companies in 43 countries. The securities of
these firms were controlled through a Delaware
corporation (called International Match Company).
This holding company sold millions of dollars of
securities with no voting rights, while control
was exercised through a small bloc of voting stock
held by Kreuger & Toll. By granting loans to the
governments of various countries, Kreuger obtained
match monopolies which brought in substantial sums.
In all, 330 million pound was lent to governments
in this way, including $75 million to France and
$125 million to Germany. In return Kreuger obtained
control of 80% of the world's match industry, most
of Europe's paper and wood-pulp production, 14
telephone and telegraph companies in six countries,
a considerable part of the farm-mortgage systems
of Sweden, France, and Germany, eight iron-ore
mines, and numerous other enterprises, including
a considerable group of banks and newspapers in
various countries. The whole system was financed
in a sumptuous fashion by selling worthless and
fraudulent securities to investors through the most
prominent investment bankers of the world. In all,
about $750 million in such securities was sold,
about 1/3 in the United States. The respected Lee,
Higginson, and Company of Boston sold $150 million
of these securities to 600 banks and brokers
without making any investigation into their value
or honesty and received about $6 million in fees
for doing so. The money thus raised by Kreuger was
used to advance loans to various countries, to pay
interest and dividends on securities issued
previously, and to finance the further exploits of
Mr. Kreuger. As examples of these exploits, we
might mention that Kreuger & Toll paid dividends of
25% from 1919 to 1928 and 30% after 1929, mostly
from capital; Swedish Match Company usually paid
15% (per cent) dividends. This was done in order
to persuade the investing public to buy more of
Kreuger's securities and thus keep the system
going. In order to encourage this public,
prospectuses were falsified, letters were forged,
and the stock market was manipulated at heavy cost.
Bonds were issued against the same security
several times over. Most brazen of all, bonds were
issued against the receipts of the match monopolies
of Italy and Spain. Although Kreuger possessed
neither of these, he carried them on his books for
$80 million and had bonds forged by himself to
substantiate the claim. The long-drawn out
depression of 1929-1933 made it impossible to keep
the system afloat, although Kreuger avoided no
degree of corruption and deceit in his efforts to
do so. In March 1932 a note for $11 million from
International Telephone and Telegraph fell due, and
Kreuger, unable to meet it, killed himself. He left
claims against his estate of $700 million, while
his personal debts were $179 million with assets of
$18 million
   (Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: a history of the world in our time, first published in 1966, second printing 1974,  )
  <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

    Bernie Madoff
    <look-up the story of Bernie Madoff>

 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

“Petrodollar Warfare : oil, Iraq and the future of the dollar”
by William R. Clark

William R. Clark, original online essay,
Internet essay, 2003, “censored” news storied
F. William Engdahl, A Century of War
Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over
Colin Campbell
Richard Heiberg, Powerdown
Stephen Roach, economist
Richard Duncan, world bank analyst
[Paul?] O'Neill, The Price of Loyalty
Michael Klare, Resource Wars
Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman, TRW
Eu/Franco-German alliance
F. William Engdahl, online essay, “The American Century? Iraq and the Hidden Euro-dollar Wars”
global industrial production
Bretton Woods Monetary Conference 1944-1945
Carroll, New Hampshire
World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Bretton Woods currency structure
Marshall Plan
Treaty of Rome 1958
Western Europe, Japan, South Korea
Bilderberg group
Europe and United States
escalating expense of Vietnam war

   domestic peak oil production in the lower 48 U.S. states in 1970s
Bretton Woods Gold Exchange

Vietnam war, military operations in Southwest Asia
Charles de Gaulle
November 1967, US gold in exchange for their dollar reserves, so better to get their gold out at a high price
August 11, 1971
wage-price freezes in late 1971
large international banks
David Spiros, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony
G-10/BIS (bank of international settlements)
  Austria, Switzerland
  Germany (mark), France (franc), UK (poundsterling),
  Japan (yen), Canada (Canadian dollar), US (US dollar),
  governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA)
1974, New York and London banking interests,
“petrodollar recyling”, Saudi government, US Treasury bills, 70 per cent of all Saudi assets, New York Fed account

market-based adjustment

the petro dollar phase, petro dollar recycling, vigoriously implemented, 1970s,

   Oil price shocks of 1973-1974 and 1979, and of cheap oil

“surplus petrodollars”, new process of monetary petrodollar recycling was initiated
powerful banking interests
London-based Eurobond firm of White Weld & Co.
“managed the recycling of petrodollar flows”
petrodollar debts, 1970s, developing world's
debt crisis of the early 1980s
OPEC, London and New York banks,
International Monetary Fund (IMF),
developing countries
Richard Duncan, The Dollar Crisis

   1974 petrodollar recycling mechanism, “first boom-and-bust crisis of the post-Bretton Woods era”
   August 1982 Mexico, default on repaying,
   Eurodollar loans

US interest rates in 1979, Paul Volcker
US Federal Reserve
IMF Washington Consensus
this system prevented economic independence from developing nations in our hemisphere
exports of cars, electronics, and other goods (Japan)
dollar, German mark, yen
Joseph Nye, “soft power”

   unified Europe and Europan Monetary Union
   underlying economic reasons for the 2003 Iraq war

2003 invasion of Iraq is the first major proxy battle in the new, third phase of securing American dominance.

According to page 28 of Clark’s book (William R. Clark, “Petrodollar warfare”):
       On September 24, 2000, Saddam Hussein allegedly “emerged from a meeting of his government and proclaimed that Iraq would soon transition its oil export transactions to the euro currency.”

On page 31, Clark adds:

      “CNN ran a very short article on its website on October 30, 2000, but after this one-day news cycle, the issue of Iraq’s switch to a petroeuro essentially disappeared from all five of the corporate-owned media outlets.”

      Was America’s goal to bring “democracy” to Iraq actually a guise for making an example of Iraq for threatening the petrodollar system? I don’t claim to know. However, the more that you consider the data, the more compelling the argument becomes.

“The hidden hand of American hegemony : petrodollar recycling and international markets” (Cornell studies in political economy)
David E. Spiro
208 pages
September 9, 1999

   “Petrodollar Warfare : oil, Iraq and the future of the dollar”, by William R. Clark
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

 Petrodollar recycling in a nutshell :

   The US Federal Reserve (United States central bank) prints hundreds of billions (symbolically and physically), under the authority of the US Congress, who in theory answer to The People.  In practice, the US Congress ... .   
   The American oil companies borrow the Federal Reserve ‘fiat money’ from the  investment banks (often associated with Wall Street) to buy crude oil from Saudi Arabia. The payment for the oil is in US dollar (USD currency). The Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority (SAMA) takes majority of the US dollar payment (no longer a payment, it is Saudi Arabia's money) and, invest it in US Treasury Bond, essentially giving the US Dollar back to The Americans, completing the petrodollar cycle; majority of US Treasury Bond is actually purchased by two countries, China and Japan, not Saudi Arabia. The Saudi used the rest of the US dollar (originally started out as payment for oil) to exchange them for Americans arms, munitions, US-based asset, and other goods/ services in The Marketplace (international). 
  The cycle of the US dollar in exchange for crude oil :

    US <---                         crude oil <--- Saudia Arabia  
    US ---> US dollar                         ---> Saudia Arabia  

    US <---        US dollar <--- Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority (SAMA)
    US ---> US Treasury Bond ---> Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority (SAMA)

    US <---                         US dollar <--- Saudia Arabia
    US ---> arms, munition, military hardware ---> Saudia Arabia

   This is also the why the US can have such a high trade deficit with other trading nations; they are holding on to US dollars to trade with The Americans and, to buy crude oil. 

      “Trade currencies are used as a temporary way to keep score in the balance of trade, while reserve currencies come with deep pools of investable assets used to store wealth.”, p.256, James Rickards, The death of money, 2014.

   The US purchase crude oil from Saudi Arabia, enabling the Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority (SAMA) (Saudi Arabia central bank) to invest in US Treasury bond. The question you gotta ask is, what is the US purchasing from Japan and China, to enable Chinese and Japanese central banks to invest in US Treasury bond.  And the question you might want to ask next is, if they are buying  American debt, who is buying up their debt, or who is purchasing Saudi Arabia, Chinese, and Japanese treasury bill.  

    US <---                         ????? ??? <--- China and Japan  
    US ---> US dollar                         ---> China and Japan  

    US <---        US dollar <--- Chinese and Japanese central banks
    US ---> US Treasury Bond ---> Chinese and Japanese central banks

   Saudi Arabia, China and Japan are three different examples. However, if you were to replace Saudi Arabia, China, or Japan with any other country, the principle and the question still apply. What is The Americans getting from that country to enable their central bank to invest their dollar currency (USD) in US Treasury bill.  So when US has a trade deficit [I am not tell you the complete story on this] with a country like China and Japan, where do you think Chinese and Japanese central banks put their excess US currency (USD)?  Yes, both the Chinese and the Japanese purchase US Treasury bond directly from the Federal Reserve (US central bank).  They exchange their US Dollar for US Treasury bond, thus completing the cycle.  

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize"
      ── Voltaire <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, Mankind at the turning point, 1974     [ ]
William R. Clark, Petrodollar warfare, 2005                      [ ]
Vaclav Smil, Transforming the 20th century, 2006                 [ ]

Jeremy Grantham, Quarterly Letter - Third Quarter 2014           [ ]
James Rickards, The death of money, 2014                         [ ]
Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio Explains the Power of Not Knowing, 2015  [ ]
<-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, Mankind at the turning point, 1974     [ ]

1973
p.178
(see Table III C-1).*
                        Table III C-1
                                            Cost in U.S. Dollar
                                                        Technical
Energy source                           capital cost    unit cost

Persian Gulf                              100-300       0.10-0.20
Nigeria                                   600-800       0.40-0.60
Venezuela                                 700-1000      0.40-0.60
North Sea                                2500-4000      0.90-2.00
Large deep-sea reservoirs                over 3000?     2.00-?
New U.S. reservoirs (not too remote)     3000-4000      2.00-2.50
Easy part of Alberta tar sands           3000-5000      2.00-3.00
High-grade oil shales                    3000-7000      3.00-4.50
Gas synthesized from coal                5000-8000      3.00-6.00
Liquid synthesized from coal             6000-8000      3.00-6.00
Liquid natural gas (landed)              6000-9000      3.00-6.00

* A. B. Looius, "Energy Resources," paper at the UN symposium on population, resources, and environment, Stockholm, 1973.

 (Mankind at the turning point, Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, The Second Report to The Club of Rome, 1974, p.178)
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

    1938
    Fossils
    By Eileen R. Meyer
    Insects, feathers, shells, and bones
    Silent secrets cast in stone
    Tiny foot prints from a bird
    Stories shared without word!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

History of the abiogenic hypothesis

The abiogenic hypothesis is usually traced to the early part of the 19th century. At the time, the chemical nature of petroleum was not known.
Alexander von Humboldt was the first to propose an inorganic abiogenic hypothesis for petroleum formation after he observed petroleum springs in the Bay of Cumaux (Cumaná) on the northeast coast of Venezuela.[7] In 1804 he is quoted as saying, "petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie." Abraham Gottlob Werner and the proponents of neptunism in the 18th century believed basaltic sills to be solidified oils or bitumen. While these notions have been proven unfounded(??), the basic idea that petroleum is associated with magmatism persisted. Other prominent proponents of what would become the abiogenic hypothesis included Mendeleev[8] and Berthelot.

Nikolai Alexandrovitch Kudryavtsev (Russian geologist)
Russian geologist Nikolai Alexandrovitch Kudryavtsev proposed the modern abiotic hypothesis of petroleum in 1951. On the basis of his analysis of the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada, he concluded that no "source rocks" could form the enormous volume of hydrocarbons, and that therefore the most plausible explanation is abiotic deep petroleum. However, humic coals have since been proposed for the source rocks.[9] Kudryavtsev's work was continued by Petr N. Kropotkin, Vladimir B. Porfir'ev, Emmanuil B. Chekaliuk, Vladilen A. Krayushkin, Georgi E. Boyko, Georgi I. Voitov, Grygori N. Dolenko, Iona V. Greenberg, Nikolai S. Beskrovny, and Victor F. Linetsky.
Astronomer Thomas Gold was the most prominent proponent of the abiogenic hypothesis in the West until his death in 2004.[1] More recently, Jack Kenney of Gas Resources Corporation has come to prominence.
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

NOAM CHOMSKY:
        “Strategic reasons. I mean, economic and strategic, which are impossible to distinguish. But since the Second World War, I'll quote the State Department, the Middle East oil producing regions have been regarded, I'll quote the words, "a stupendous source of strategic power." George Kennan, State Department, head of the planning section said control, not access, control over the Middle East oil gives us "veto power" over what our rivals might do, other industrial powers. You control the spigot, have your hand on the spigot, you have a lot of world control. It's not even access to oil. The first, roughly, 30 years after the Second World War, the U.S. was - North America was the major oil producer. It wasn't using Middle East oil, never the less we had to keep an iron hand of control on Middle East oil and if the U.S. were to go to solar energy, they'd still want to control Middle East oil because that's a lever of world control. Everyone understands it but we're not allowed to think about it.”
   <look-up the source of this Chomsky's quote>

(1) economic and strategic, impossible to distinguish

(2) the Middle East oil producing regions have been "a stupendous source of strategic power."
     ――George Kennan, State Department, head of the planning section

(3) control over the Middle East oil gives [the U.S.] "veto power" over what our rivals might do, other industrial powers. You control the spigot, have your hand on the spigot, you have a lot of world control.

(4) roughly, 30 years after the Second World War, the U.S. was ―― North America was the major oil producer. It wasn't using Middle East oil, never the less we had to keep an iron hand of control on Middle East oil and if the U.S. were to go to solar energy, they'd still want to control Middle East oil because that's a lever of world control.

(5) Everyone understands it but we're not allowed to think about it.
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

William R. Clark, Petrodollar warfare, 2005                                 [ ]

(pdf - page 8/289)
“We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth.”
                                                   ── Voltaire, 1785

p.115  (pdf - page 136/289)
There were only two credible reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

       -- John Chapman, “The Real Reasons Bush Went to War”,
                             the Guardian (UK), July 2004  88


p.120  (pdf - page 141/289)
Secret, unilateral US agreements with Saudi Arabia in 1974 thwarted movement toward a basket of multiple currencies for international oil trades.

p.120  (pdf - page 141/289)
   For the past 30 years the US Federal Reserve has printed hundreds of billions of oil-backed petrodollars, which US consumers provide to other nations by purchasing imported goods. Then those nations use these dollars to purchase oil/ energy from OPEC producers. These billions of surplus petrodollars are recycled from OPEC and invested back into the US via Treasury bills or other dollar-denominated assets, such as US stocks, bonds, and real estate.

p.120  (pdf - page 141/289)
“crude oil markers”

p.151  (pdf - page 172/289)
oil pricing standard, or oil “marker” as it is known in the industry.

p.151  (pdf - page 172/289)
New York's Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX)
London's International Petroleum Exchange (IPE)
Atlanta-based InterContinental Exchange (X.IEX), which owns London IPE and the NYMEX

p.151  (pdf - page 172/289)
The current oil markers are US denominated: the West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI), UK Brent crude, and UAE Dubai crude.

   (Petrodollar warfare : oil, Iraq and the future of the dollar, William R. Clark, 2005, )
 <-------------------------------------------------------------------------->

William R. Clark, Petrodollar warfare, 2005                                 [ ]

p.20  (pdf - page 41/289)
David Spiro's book, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony

pp.20-21  (pdf - page 41/289)
   In typical understatement Spiro noted that, “clearly something more than the laws of supply and demand ... resulted in 70 percent of all Saudi assets in the United States being held in a New York Fed account.”42


p.21  (pdf - page 42/289)
   In May 1973, with the dramatic fall of the dollar still vivid, a
   group of 84 of the world's top financial and political insiders met
   at Saltsjobaden, Sweden, the seclude island resort of the Swedish
   Wallenberg banking family. This gathering of [the] Bilderberg
   group heard an American participant, Walter Levy, outline a ‘scenario’
   for an imminent 400 percent increase in OPEC petroleum
   revenues. The purpose of the secret Saltsjobaden meeting WAS NOT
   TO PREVENT THE EXPECTED OIL PRICE SHOCK, BUT RATHER TO PLAN HOW TO MANAGE
   THE ABOUT-TO-BE-CREATED FLOOD OF OIL DOLLARS, a process US Secretary
   of State Kissinger later called ‘recycling the petrodollar flows.’
   [emphasis added]

                       -- F. William Engdahl, A Century of War43

p.21  (pdf - page 42/289)
   Engdahl's remarkable book, A Century of War, chronicled how certain geopolitical events mirrored a “scenario” discussed during a May 1973 Bilderberg meeting. Apparently powerful banking interests sought to “manage” the monetary dollars flows that were premised upon what the group envisioned as “huge increases” in the price of oil from the Middle East. The minutes of this Bilderberg meeting included projections of OPEC oil prices increasing by 400 percent.44
   In 1974 US Assistant Treasury Secretary Bennett and David Mulford of the London-based Eurobond firm of White Weld & Co. set about the mechanism to handle the surplus OPEC petrodollars.45  Kissinger, Bennett, and Mulford helped orchestrate the secret financial arrangement with SAMA that creatively transformed the high oil prices of 1973-1974 to the direct benefit of the US Federal Reserve Banks and the Bank of England.


p.22  (pdf - page 43/289)
   Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC producers deposited their surplus dollars in US and UK banks, which then took these OPEC petrodollars and re-lent them as Eurodollar bonds or loans, to governments of developing countries desperate to borrow dollars to finance their oil imports. While beneficials to the US- and UK-based financial centers, the buildup of these petrodollar debts  by the late 1970s facilitated the basis for the developing world's debt crisis of the early 1980s. Hundreds of billions of dollars were recycled between OPEN, the London and New York banks, and back to developing countries.


p.22  (pdf - page 43/289)
   In The Dollar Crisis, Richard Duncan attributed the 1974 petrodollar recycling mechanism to the “first boom-and-bust crisis of the post-Bretton Woods era.”46

   (Petrodollar warfare : oil, Iraq and the future of the dollar, William R. Clark, 2005, )
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Vaclav Smil, Transforming the 20th century, 2006                            [ ]

p.34
Modern high-energy societies require high power densities in order to supply their cities (where most people now live), industries (where concentrated mass production is the norm), and transportation (only high-energy-density fuels are easily portable).

p.156
As a result, most food systems will easily claim at least twice as much energy as is used in food production. And in North America the combination of excessive processing and packaging, long distribution trucking to supermarkets, ubiquitous refrigeration, automatic dishwashing, and electricity-powered cooking appliances raises that multiple even higher. Even after excluding the energy cost of food-related car trips, Steinhart and Steinhart (1974) calculated that in 1970 energy use in the U.S. food system added up to almost 13% of the country's primary energy consumption, almost exactly four (4) times the direct and indirect energy use in farm production. The processing industry, refrigeration, and home cooking each consumed more fuels and electricity than did the U.S. farms.

p.206
Few things can illustrate better the U.S. SUV mania than the fact that it became quite normal to use machines with power in excess of 100 kW and with the mass approaching four tonnes (Chevrolet Suburban weights 3.9 t) to carry a single person in order to buy a small carton of milk from a nearby convenience store.

p.207
   The often-cited defense of the decision to drive these ridiculously oversized vehicles is that they provide greater safety, but that myth was shattered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study that analyzed the U.S. automotive fatalities between 1995 and 2000 and found that their high center of gravity makes midsize SUVs nine times more likely to be involved in fatal rollover crashes than are passenger cars (NHTSA 2003). Because they are classified as light trucks, these vehicles were exempt from CAFE standards, and fuel efficiency of many models was well below 20 mpg, with the worst ones rating less than 15 mpg.

pp.256-257
   Expanded transportation became a leading contributor to environmental degradation, mainly because of automotive and airplane emission and the effects of transportation infrastructure on the reordering of inhabited space; it also remained a major cause of accidental death and injuries, and as its intensity grew even its most cherished benefits, speed and saving of time, declined. New means of communication and new ways of disseminating and processing information──from inexpensive printed matter to multifaceted capabilities of computers──can obviously be tools of both formal and informal education and expanded knowledge and more subtle understanding of complex realities. They can be also valuable repositories of historical records, collective memories, and cultural accomplishments, as well as foundations needed for informed decision making. But during the 20th century these powerful technical means were often used as the tools of propaganda and misinformation, were deployed as agents of deliberate forgetting and mass control, and were found to be ideal choices to debase cultural standards and to weaken social structures.

p.263
   Road construction was one of the 20th century's most remarkable, most massive, and hence also most destructive enterprises.

p.265
Many studies demonstrated that new roads brought only temporary time savings before they, too, became clogged or encouraged longer drives for the same pattern of activities.

p.265
A succinct counterintuitive perspective on what had since become a global phenomenon was skillfully presented by Ivan Illich (1926-2002), a Catholic priest and an unorthodox thinker. Illich's approach was one of comprehensive accounting, and his effectiveness was in subverting the illusion of ever-speedier travel:

  The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a day a year to his
  car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it
  and searches for it. He earns money to put down on it and to meet
  the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance,
  taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the
  road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into
  account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time
  spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching au-
  tomobile commercials .... The model American puts in 1,600 hours to
  get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. (Illich 1974:18-19)

  By the end of the 20th century, this situation got considerably worse. Increasing cost of cars meant that cash purchases nearly disappeared and interest charges became extended over periods of several years; growing numbers of families with more cars than people meant higher outlays for vehicles that spent all but a few hours a week just standing in garages or driveways; insurance premiums and repair bills of accidentally damaged cars soared; growing traffic congestion reduced the speeds in every major urban area; semipermanent rush hours led to a spreading phenomenon of road rage; car thefts increased the cost of policing and recovery.

p.273
One thing that its expansion did not do (despite repeated predictions of electronic telecommuting) is to make any real dent in the frequency of transportation: in fact, the intensity of travel increased concurrently withe pervasiveness of affordable communication.

   (Smil, Vaclav., Transforming the 20th century: technical innovation and their consequences / Vaclav Smil., 1. technological innovation ── history ── 20th century, 2006, )
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Jeremy Grantham, Quarterly Letter - Third Quarter 2014                      [ ]

The beginning of the end of the fossil fuel revolution
(From golden goose to cooked goose)

General Thesis

The quality of modern life owes almost everything to the existence of fossil fuels, a massive store of dense energy that for 200 years had become steadily cheaper as a fraction of income. Under that stimulus, the global economy grew ever larger, more complex, and more inter-related and, I believe, more fragile. Then around the year 2000 the costs of finding oil start to rise over 10% a year, and with the global economy growing at only 4% oil starts to fall behind in affordability. Oil has a leading role in the cost structure of agriculture and extractive industries, including coal, and dominates transportation. Because of that its affordability seems to determine economic progress far more than coal or natural gas. As its cost of extraction rises, other parts of the complex economic system have to be sacrificed to retain the ability to acquire sufficient oil. In those conditions, economic growth rates have to fall, and if oil costs continue to rise the trade-offs become more and more painful. Our complex system has been trained by experience to deal with steady growth. Now it must deal with slowing growth and one day it may face contraction. In this changed world we can only guess how robust the stressed system will be. We may hope it will be tough but quite possibly it will be brittle. At the extreme it might even threaten the viability of our current economic system.

... [...] ...

Unfortunately, this target is hindered by the fossil fuel industries, which actively oppose incentives for alternatives.

... [...] ...

(Those who assume the key factor in our growth was the steam engine miss the point: without coal, the steam engine would have just hurtled us toward the depletion of wood far faster than was already happening. The Industrial Revolution was based on coal as the source of energy and the steam engine as the original way to exploit that energy as the efficiency level rose from 1% to 35% over the steam engine's first 100 years.)

Thus we owe almost everything we have had in the way of scientific and economic progress and the growth of the world's food supplies and population to fossil fuels. And not simply to the availability of these fuels, BUT MORE PRECISELY TO THE AVAILABILITY OF THOSE FOSSIL RESOURCES THAT COULD BE CAPTURED EXTREMELY CHEAPLY.

... [...] ...

The efficiency of energy usage increases at about 1.5% a year, but if the price of finding and delivering oil continues to rise at a faster rate than that, then the squeeze on global rates will continue to tighten.

... [...] ...

What is needed is a continuing steady drop in the cost of alternatives for another 20 or more years before the surplus they offer has any chance of equaling our old, 1950-2000 fossil fuel surplus. Fortunately, a continued steady decline in the cost of wind power is likely, and a rapid decline in solar and energy storage costs is almost a certainty.

The challenge for our economy is to speed up this energy transition and to try and minimize, in the interim, the damage to our global economy and, possibly more importantly, to the actual viability of several poor countries, which suffer under the combined impact of rising fuel costs and their associated rising food costs. In some critical cases like Syria and Sudan, these cost increases are exacerbated by rapidly worsening climate extremes.

Even if we can make the transition to renewable electric power smoothly, other challenges to reducing carbon emissions remain, especially in transportation, which is where the great majority of the rest of oil goes.

... [...] ...

First, let us quickly admit that U.S. fracking is a very large herring.

... [...] ...

Nor is the leakage of methane (natural gas) from the drill and pipeline operations seriously monitored despite the fact that methane is over 86 times as potent a greenhouse gas, ast a 20-year horizon, as CO2 is.

... [...] ...

The aggregate financial results allow for the possibility that fracking costs have been underestimated by corporations and understated in the press.

... [...] ...

This data surely raises a strong likelihood that falling affordability of oil dominates our energy equation and poses a serious threat to income and wealth generation. At the very least the data is compatible with the thesis.

... [...] ...

But we will, I'm sure, eventually remove oil demand for surface transportation. As we do so, it will give our environment some breathing room - some more time for us to deal with the remaining important uses for oil and gas such as chemical feedstock, air and sea transportation, and road surfacing, which uses will take many decades to completely replace.

... [...] ...

Not only did the mainstream absolutely not see the financial crisis approaching, but it marginalized the work of Hyman Minsky, who did. More to the point, the economic mainstream has totally missed the significance of the limits on growth posed by finite resources and again marginalized the work of Kenneth Boulding and Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and the writers of the original The Limits to Growth, 3 who did.

... [...] ...

Meanwhile, they try to define all of our problems in monetary, debt, and interest rate language, ignoring the real world of people and things.

... [...] ...

I had suggested originally that temporary drops in commodity prices could be caused by China growing less than expected or by weather for farming improving after several monstrously bad years. Both of these events occurred this year. However it has always been oil that matters most, for oil is half the value of traded commodities and almost half of the cost structure of the rest.

... [...] ...

iron ore, bauxite, potash, phosphorus, crude oil

... [...] ...

The End of Normal, by James Galbraith

... [...] ...

five commodities: copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten.

... [...] ...
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   GMO_QtlyLetter_3Q14_full.pdf
     third quarter 2014
     < dead or missing link >
     < https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_QGelltdb4fNEVJMm9hYThpUjQ >
     < https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_QGelltdb4fNEVJMm9hYThpUjQ >
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James Rickards, The death of money, 2014                                    [ ]

One of your biggest fear is that something happens today, and when we do the autopsy we find that two weeks ago we had it, [but] we didn't know because it was buried in something else that wasn't getting processed.

                                       B. "Buzzy" Krongard
                                    CIA executive director
                                         September 1, 2001



China's shadow banking sector has become a potential source of systemic financial risk .... To some extent, this is fundamentally a Ponzi scheme.

                                                 Xiao Gang
                                   Chairman, Bank of China
                                              October 2012

p.256
Trade currencies are used as a temporary way to keep score in the balance of trade, while reserve currencies come with deep pools of investable assets used to store wealth.

p.260
   In summary, the Federal Reserve prefers inflation because it erases government debt, reduces the debt-to-GDP ratio, props up the banks, and can be taxed. Deflation may help consumers and workers, but it hurts the Treasury and the banks and its firmly opposed by the Fed. This explains Alan Greenspan's extraordinary low-interest-rate policies in 2002 and Ben Bernanke's zero-rate policy beginning in 2008. From the Fed's perspective, aiding the economy and reducing unemployment are incidental by-products of the drive to inflate. The consequence of these deflationary dynamics is that the government must have inflation, <italic begin> and the Fed must cause it. <italic end>

p.260
When the data show a trend toward inflation, the Fed will allow the trend to continue in the hope that nominal growth will become self-sustaining. This will cause inflation to take on a life of its own through behavioral feedback loop not included in Fed models.

p.278
   The answer is that central banks, principally the Federal Reserve, do want inflation, but they want it to be orderly rather than disorderly. They want the inflation to come in small doses so that it goes unnoticed.

pp.278-279
Inflation of 3 percent per year is barely noticed, but if it persists for 20 years, it cuts the value of the national debt almost in half. This kind of slow, steady inflation is the central banks'goal.

   (The death of money : the coming collapse of the international monetary system, James Rickards, 2014, ) 
<-------------------------------------------------------------------------->
   GMO_QtlyLetter_1Q14_FullVersion.pdf
     first quarter 2014
     < dead or missing link >
     < https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_QGelltdb4fUXBtWFdxYVZ6cjA >
     < https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_QGelltdb4fUXBtWFdxYVZ6cjA > 
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Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio Explains the Power of Not Knowing, 2015             [ ]

Bridgewater's Ray Dalio
 Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VWO)
http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/blogarticle/3433519/blog/bridgewaters-ray-dalio-explains-the-power-of-not-knowing.html

Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio Explains the Power of Not Knowing
By Raymond Dalio March 06, 2015 at 1:00 PM EST

To make money in the markets, you have to think independently and be humble. You have to be an independent thinker because you can’t make money agreeing with the consensus view, which is already embedded in the price. Yet whenever you’re betting against the consensus, there’s a significant probability you’re going to be wrong, so you have to be humble.

Early in my career I learned this lesson the hard way — through some very painful bad bets. The biggest of these mistakes occurred in 1981–’82, when I became convinced that the U.S. economy was about to fall into a depression. My research had led me to believe that, with the Federal Reserve’s tight money policy and lots of debt outstanding, there would be a global wave of debt defaults, and if the Fed tried to handle it by printing money, inflation would accelerate. I was so certain that a depression was coming that I proclaimed it in newspaper columns, on TV, even in testimony to Congress. When Mexico defaulted on its debt in August 1982, I was sure I was right. Boy, was I wrong. What I’d considered improbable was exactly what happened: Fed chairman Paul Volcker’s move to lower interest rates and make money and credit available helped jump-start a bull market in stocks and the U.S. economy’s greatest ever noninflationary growth period.

This episode taught me the importance of always fearing being wrong, no matter how confident I am that I’m right. As a result, I began seeking out the smartest people I could find who disagreed with me so that I could understand their reasoning. Only after I fully grasped their points of view could I decide to reject or accept them. By doing this again and again over the years, not only have I increased my chances of being right, but I have also learned a huge amount.

There’s an art to this process of seeking out thoughtful disagreement. People who are successful at it realize that there is always some probability they might be wrong and that it’s worth the effort to consider what others are saying — not simply the others’ conclusions, but the reasoning behind them — to be assured that they aren’t making a mistake themselves. They approach disagreement with curiosity, not antagonism, and are what I call “open-minded and assertive at the same time.” This means that they possess the ability to calmly take in what other people are thinking rather than block it out, and to clearly lay out the reasons why they haven’t reached the same conclusion. They are able to listen carefully and objectively to the reasoning behind differing opinions.

When most people hear me describe this approach, they typically say, “No problem, I’m open-minded!” But what they really mean is that they’re open to being wrong. True open-mindedness is an entirely different mind-set. It is a process of being intensely worried about being wrong and asking questions instead of defending a position. It demands that you get over your ego-driven desire to have whatever answer you happen to have in your head be right. Instead, you need to actively question all of your opinions and seek out the reasoning behind alternative points of view.

This approach comes to life at Bridgewater in our weekly research meetings, in which our experts on various areas openly disagree with one another and explore the pros and cons of alternative views. This is the fastest way to get a good education and enhance decision-making. When everyone agrees and their reasoning makes sense to me, I’m usually in good shape to make a decision. When people continue to disagree and I can’t make sense of their reasoning, I know I need to ask more probing questions or get more triangulation from other experts before deciding.

I want to emphasize that following this process doesn’t mean blindly accepting the conclusions of others or adopting rule by referendum. Our CIOs are ultimately responsible for our investment decision-making. But we all make better decisions by maintaining an independent view and the conflicting possibilities in our minds simultaneously, and then trying to resolve the differences. We’re always in the place of holding an opinion and simultaneously stress-testing the hell out of it.

Operating this way just seems like common sense to me. After all, when two people disagree, logic demands that one of them must be wrong. Why wouldn’t you want to make sure that that person isn’t you?

Raymond Dalio is founder, chairman and co-CIO of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund firm. 
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On energy projection (energy consumption patterns)
Steve Coll, Private empire : exxonmobil an american power, 2013              [ ]

p.304  2030 and beyond
Oil and gas were here to stay, Exxon-Mobil's economists and planners had concluded; fossil fuels would be central to global economics and security until 2030 and beyond.

p.306  Exxon's forecasters
   It turned out that in 1980, Exxon's forecasters had been half right and half wrong about the future. They had correctly predicted, within 1 percent, the total amount of energy the world would consume in 2000--a remarkable feat.

p.306  steady-as-you-go & available supply
The answer, he said, was to manage on a “steady-as-you-go basis and try to make sure the fundamentals are right.” Rather than forecasting price, Raymond decided to concentrate instead on predicting volumes--the amount of oil and other energy sources global consumers would demand over time, and also the amount of available supply.5

p.307  3 percent per year until 2030
Historically, ExxonMobile's analysts believed, the pace of a country's economic growth typically explained about two thirds of its changes in energy consumption; population changes explained only about one third. Economic activity, in other words, not the number of people, would be the most important factor in future energy demand. When they added up all of their individual country predictions, ExxonMobil's analysts concluded that the world's economy would grow on average by about 3 percent per year until 2030.6

p.308  transportation sector
   The transportation sector--cars, pickup trucks, heavy trucks, airplanes, ships, and trains--was the most important factor in the global market for liquid oil. Three quarters of the roughly 20 million barrels of oil the United States consumed each day was as transportation fuel; the rest went to industrial uses, such as the manufacture of plastics. Virtually no oil went to generate electricity--coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear energy provided the main sources of electric power generation.
   ...; unless all-electric cars and vehicles spread very rapidly in the United States, windmill construction, whatever its pace, would have little impact on the amount of foreign oil the United States consumed.

p.309
     Titanic changes in the patterns of energy use over decades would be required to create even modest changes in fuel consumption patterns.

pp.310-311
...; they predicted, therefore, that CO2 emissions would rise by an additional 30 percent worldwide between 2005 and 2030.

   (Private empire : exxonmobil an american power / by steve coll., 1. exxon corporation, 2. exxon mobil corporation, 3. petroleum industry and trade--political aspects--united states, 4. corporate power--united states, 5. big business--united states, ) 
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  Bạch Hổ oil field (White Tiger oilfield)
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%A1ch_H%E1%BB%95_oil_field
  Mobil struck oil in the Bạch Hổ field in February 1975, shortly before the Fall of Saigon.[7] It was later developed by the joint Vietnamese-Russian entity Vietsovpetro in the 1980s and 1990s.[3]

“The effects of this decision not to call up the reserves were significant: the depth of American involvement was concealed from the public until about 1967; and in time the need for forces in Vietnam brought on a disintegration of US forces in Europe and the United States.  ... ... ...  Twenty-two years ago the last American involved in the war ignominiously left Vietnam from the roof of our embassy in Saigon. Shortly before, the CIA station chief sent a final message: "It has been a long and hard fight and we have lost. The severity of the defeat and the circumstances of it would seem to call for a reassessment of the policies which have characterized our participation here. Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat. Saigon signing off." McMaster has done his part to help us learn from history.” (Reviewed by Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard, USA Ret., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Vermont, and author of The War Managers., Autumn 1997)
      Book Reviews by three contributors of Dereliction of Duty by H. R. McMaster, 1997.  From Parameters, Autumn 1997, pp. 162-81.
https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/articles/97autumn/autrev.htm 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia#Energy
Energy production in Malaysia is largely based on oil and natural gas, owing to Malaysia's oil reserves and natural gas reserves, which is the fourth largest in Asia-Pacific after China, India and Vietnam.[201]

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronas

PETRONAS, short for Petroliam Nasional Berhad (National Petroleum Limited), is a Malaysian oil and gas company that was founded on 17 August 1974. Wholly owned by the Government of Malaysia, the corporation is vested with the entire oil and gas resources in Malaysia and is entrusted with the responsibility of developing and adding value to these resources. Petronas is ranked among Fortune Global 500's largest corporations in the world. Fortune ranks Petronas as the 75th largest company in the world in 2013. Fortune also ranks Petronas as the 8th most profitable company in the world and the most profitable in Asia.[4][5][6] 
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   William R. Clark

   A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth
   by William Clark 
      Original Essay January 2003
        -Revised March 2003
        -Post-war Commentary January 2004
   https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html
   https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html 

   Background on Hydrocarbons and US Geostrategy

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Simmons#Death 
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Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on the Spoils of War
Dec 12 2016
http://www.econtalk.org/bruce-bueno-de-mesquita-on-the-spoils-of-war/

There is a fascinating and depressing positive correlation between the reputation of an American president and the number of people dying in wars while that president is in office. Political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of NYU and co-author of The Spoils of War talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how presidents go to war. Bueno de Mesquita argues that the decision of how and when to go to war is made in self-interested ways rather than in consideration of what is best for the nation. 

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