Deutsche Bank led the bankers’ charge against Scottish independence, claiming that an independent Scotland would enter “a great depression” that would blight generations of Scots. This dire prediction was made by Chief Economist David Folkerts-Landau, who owns several personal homes with a value of tens of millions and is a friend of the Camerons.
Deutsche Bank was the central pivot of the LIBOR fixing scandal. In the great banking crash it wrote off 92 billion dollars of junk assets that Folkerts-Landau had failed to notice was a liability. Today its share price has fallen even below the 2008 levels it reached after that write-off, and the German Finance Minister has just announced his full confidence in the bank and that there is nothing to worry about. Deutsche Bank shares have fallen 40% in a month.
Who the crooks and shysters at Deutsche Bank think they are to tell an entire nation of hard working and talented people that they are inadequate is beyond me. As for Scotland, this week a new natural gas facility came into production which by itself can supply all of Scotland’s natural gas needs for the next sixty years.
Deutsche Bank, feel my schadenfreude. No matter how badly we do post independence, was cannot possibly be as economically incompetent as you.
Doubtless Folkerts-Landau has a lifestyle and finances well-protected from the fate of the bank he has been skimming for decades. Should banks actually start collapsing again, I shall advocate immediate revolution as the only possible ethical stance if the politicians again move to bail them out with ordinary taxpayers’ money.
When we ALL get local solar etc, And focus on sustainable farming to supply most of local need, then we could make some real change.
This needs local organising and campaigns. It won’t and never has come from the top, as with democracy, it never happens that way.
Craig, I don’t have the figures to hand at the moment, but will just say that if you now drive across Belgium or Germany you will see a huge number of solar panels.
I live in France, which is probably only second to Japan when it comes to nuclear energy, yet in the last decade there’s been a similar shift towards renewables.
France, of course, has been in a state of emergency since last November’s terrorist attacks in Paris. Hollande & Co are now trying to write these emergency measures permanently into French law. In the English language there’s not many links I can give about it all, so you’ll have to put up with the World Socialist Party (but everything they say is true)…
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/09/etur-f09.html
Washington Post: U.S. officials: Russian airstrikes have changed ‘calculus completely’ in Syria
Only people can do democracy. Or it ain’t democracy.
It is people who stick to a moral imperative, and stir others, like refusing to relinquish a seat on a buss.
Politicians generally can’t or don’t. As they have no moral canter. Trying to gain “power”. etc.
There are various versions around of Pastor Niemoeller’s poem, but myself I believe the version that begins “First they came for the Communists…”, because that is in fact what happened. The very evening of the Reichstag Fire, almost all the leaders of the German Communist Party were arrested.
Thank you for your response Craig.
Even if such improvements weren’t subject to the law of diminishing returns, if we could somehow get to 100% efficiency, we would still be faced with a growing population, and a situation where any politician or political party that didn’t promise economic growth would be unelectable.
I do agree that it is possible to eke out further supplies of hydrocarbons from depleted sources, but to do so itself requires energy.
The relationship between energy extracted and the energy required to extract it and turn it into a useful energy source is known as EROEI. Energy Return On Energy Expended.
Light, sweet crude, from shallow land based wells has a huge EROEI. Squeezing the last percentile from the bottom of a deep offshore barrel requires a larger input of energy, and the EROEI is correspondingly smaller. When more energy is required to extract the fuel than we can extract from it, it becomes useless as an energy source, but long before that point is reached, it becomes economically a non-starter.
I don’t have the sources in front of me, but off the top of my head, I seem to recall that the EROEI tipping point for economic extraction is somewhere around 8. People have to make a profit after all. The rigs have to be built from steel that itself has to be produced from iron ore that has to be mined, etc. Workers have to be paid. Investors have to be paid off.
I had a look around on the web, and found references to the Culzean Gas Field. The articles I found came from the end of August 2015, so that’s pretty much contemporary. Is that what you’re talking about?
If so, it’s expected to come onstream in 2019, and to produce for around 16 years. At it’s peak, it could produce enough energy to supply around 5% of the UK’s energy needs.
I don’t know how much of the UK’s energy needs are exclusively Scottish. With 8.3% of the population, and a similar culture, devoting the output of the Culzean field could, using the numbers given, supply around 60% of Scotland’s energy needs for around a quarter of the time you stated. So overall, your figures seem a tad optimistic.
In fact, lists of the Communists to arrest had been prepared nearly a year earlier, in 1932, while Papen was Chancellor. The lists then had also included Nazi leaders. Those names were struck off the lists in 1933, and various Socialists, liberals, and other people the Nazis didn’t like were added. Both times the lists were prepared under the supervision of Rudolf Diels, who by the time of the Reichstag Fire had become head of the new Gestapo
“People have to make a profit after all”
Industrial “civilization” is a plague on the planet. And in peoples minds.
Your numbers and calculations and “reform” is nonsense, all you want is your important positions. 2 cars, an expensive house and privileges over others for your “good deeds” .
Why lie to people. they have to do it themselves.
“Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.”
― Hayao Miyazaki
Paul,
I did not say it could meet all of Scotland’s energy needs. I said it could meet all of its natural gas consumption.
Goodnight all.
Night John
No, maybe not gas turbines Craig, how about a little re- jigging of engineering and focus on other turbines, driven by sea currents. Some say they don’t have to be made from steel, but steel is cheap, design and efficiency are the key.
Show the Canaries how its done, be positive, NCFC are close to suffocating after loosing to Villa.
you wrote this about DB,
“Who the crooks and shysters at Deutsche Bank think they are to tell an entire nation of hard working and talented people that they are inadequate is beyond me.”
Heissen Dank Craig, hiyyyee hawwww, it had to be said.
Poor sad exploitative sicko’s who can’t do without their daily fix of derivatives, ganging up with other libor fixers to bring down countries economies, wreck life’s, futures, for years; small tiny worlds full of ambition and sustainable logic, taken away, because bankers in their remote castles relied on last ditch gambles, on spread betting, win or loose, black or red, anything to get out of their self generated mud.
Some ‘enhanced’ their daily hunt for profits by making themselves feel above it, using cocaine to feel good about their losses, hey, I worked for 16 hrs. solid…..
the evidence is out there…
My apologies Craig. I was imprecise. In fact, the sources I found about the Culzean gas field relate figures about gas use, not energy use. Scotland is one of the best places in the world to take advantage of natural sustainable non fossil energy sources.
However, rather than Culzean being able to provide 60% of Scotland’s energy needs for about 16 years (using anticpated peak flow data) it can provide, as you rightly point out, around 60% of Scotland’s gas needs (using anticipated peak flow data) for around 16 years.
Note that most of that time, before and after the peak of supply, will be at less than the peak.
Here are my sources.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/north-sea-gets-huge-boost-with-culzean-gas-field-1-3873432
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-34105349
http://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/culzean-gas-field-north-sea/
http://www.maerskoil.com/media/newsroom/pages/culzean.aspx
“An independent Scotland stuck in the EU is not an independent Scotland.”
.
Nonsense.
An independent Scotland outwith Westminster can decide whether to remain in the EU.
That will be our choice rather than the choice of Mittle England.
As things stand, most people living in Scotland will want to stay in the EU.
RoS: “I couldn’t have put it better myself, well said Craig.”
Very magnanimous of you there, RoS, particularly since you have yet to pen an original thought here (or anywhere else that we know of). But keep the ever-so-slightly revised cut&pastes coming! 😉
It’s hard nowadays to set an example that seems larger than the example set being a tool of industrial civilisation, which you have to be to some extent to reach many people.
But Miyazaki cleans out his local river. And doesn’t use nuclear power at the studio (campaigns against it in fact) .
Naa, something needs to wake people from englands deep sleep, with such low quality people, where fucked and people should know it. I’m sure most would act better knowing it.
And it’s not a wealth problem so much as how most have come to see ‘wealth’ ie, aiming to possess lots of money.
You think this will change ? Do you do actual tangible work in the community that helps people? “Give up” your time, (most see it that way, and it speaks to a far grater issue i’m afraid).
“Nonsense.
An independent Scotland outwith Westminster can decide whether to remain in the EU.
That will be our choice rather than the choice of Mittle England.
As things stand, most people living in Scotland will want to stay in the EU.”
As they did back in 1975 at the last referendum along with the rest of Britain.
The SNP however were very much against staying in Europe and campaigned against it, predicting that if Britain stayed in Europe against the wishes of Scotland it would mean the break up of the union.
How times have changed, or maybe they haven’t.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not exactly wise is it?
Look for the root cause not the symptoms!!!!!!!!
What is causing the the problems, what is the root of all evil?
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Very true the first batch of people that Nazi system deemed undesirable were the communists, that comprehensively were arrested and incarcerated with a huge effort through various SIS within the Reich to identify index and incarcerate or kept under a regime of surveillance. The comprehensive indexes and files of the SS Reichssicherheitshauptamt were sequestrated by the MI5 and used extensively in UK and Europe in the post war years.
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The fractional reserve banking system and the Rothschild model of banksterism have brought about a surreal situation in which the total world output for 2007 was at $63.4 trillion yet at the same time the total debt due to the various phoney baloney scams and ponzi schemes were at more that 4.3 quadrillion which is a gearing of more than 67 an unsustainable and impossible state of affairs.
Therefore the never ending debt that is not probable to be paid in the near light years has brought about the rationalisation of the huge sums that in turn is being passed onto the we the people through the many con tricks including the “quantitative easing” that is the continuation of the helicopter Ben and his polices of printing money like never before to keep the market operational.
Fact that in UK the existence of the markets has none or very little effect on we the people is often lost in the echo chamber of the “market reports”. Although the efforts to make good the gambling debts of the banksters our services and our national assets are being removed or liquidated to pay these banksters gambling debts.
“Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not exactly wise is it?”
Except there is nothing precious about it. These romantic dreams are cursed nightmares in reality.
Unlike Aaron Bastani, I want the dark hardwood forests of Europe and my native land back.
But no need for the greasepaint, unless one likes that kind of thing. 🙂
This is O/T but thought to bring a smile to the faces first thing in the morning;
al saud morality police has arrested a cartoon mascot for showing too much skin and bundled the offending chap wearing the costume into a police car and whisked him off to be punished for the decadent dog that he is this is the immoral mascot
the fate of the chap is unclear as yet, whether he will be lashed or crucified remains to be seen!
In the other news that you will not be told;
The town of Al Rubue in the south of Petrolistan has been captured by the Yemeni resistance forces whilst the dreams of the most excellent princes and king of the al saud pederasts of sending troops to Syria are fast melting away into the sands of the desert and there is plenty of that;
Good night all
Thanks Fedup.
Night
PS if your browser started giving you warnings and scaring the crap out of you, go to the address bar and delete the “S” in the HTTPS, and make it in to http!
That should let you see the picture without the worries of compromising your security.
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That dream can come true too, once the damn banksterism comes to an end!!
Life is the most precious and most sacrosanct, be it forests or human beings.
“Who the crooks and shysters at Deutsche Bank think they are to tell an entire nation of hard working and talented people that they are inadequate is beyond me.”
They didn’t – although Craig did attach an even worse label to a majority of them.
Our Greece expert, Noddy, is staying very quiet about Deutsche bank.
I started a new contract in Stoke yesterday. Usual greetings from PC Plod.
Are they friends?
Bort, Fred re Deutsche Bank : derivatives exposure.
Yes Fred, you are right: estimated German GDP for 2016 is €3 point 573 trillion (and not €3573 trillion).
Now, if Deutsche Bank exposure were really €55 trillion, the claim that this exposure was 20 times German GDP would be roughly correct.
However, it is impossible that the exposure could be that high; the €55 BILLION given in Bort’s link seems more realistic and is therefore not likely to be a misprint.
Hence the “twenty times German GDP” claim appears to be complete rubbish. One wonders what the authors of the article were playing at.
Giyane
“I started a new contract in Stoke yesterday. Usual greetings from PC Plod.
Are they friends?”
__________________
Which might mean you’ll remain mercifully absent from here for a while?
BTW, PC Plod’s the one with the moustache, I don’t sport one. That’s how you can tell us apart. 🙂 Have a nice day!
Bail-outs are SO last year. Bail-ins are the new Black. As of 1 Jan this year bail-ins became law meaning that when the bank goes tits up creditors will have to stump up the moolah. And depositors, but not the small fry like me who don’t have anything above the deposit guarantee. Interesting redefinition of a bank, though. Most people think if you give a bank money it still belongs to you but now it appears they can confiscate it if they get into trouble. There’s also talk of negative interest rates which will mean them charging you a fee to look after your money, but what are they looking after? Just digits.
http://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/2016/01/04/eu-enters-brave-new-world-of-bank-bail-ins/
KOWN
Have you noticed that Hugo Dixon concludes his piece by saying “Bail-ins are right in principle”?
What is your opinion – bail-ins or bail-outs?