90 seconds at 9 am: Strong US economic data; German, Chinese, Australian data better too; but Syria overshadows all; NZ$1 = US$0.779, TWI = 73.5

Lets "sex up" the Syria story. " l know "says the media advisor.  "They are using gas !!!!!!"

Terrible.  Why don't they stick to blowing them up with bombs?  Or shred their bodies with flying hot metal.  Like a civilised nation would do.

It's that iexorable link to the arms selling ,gun toting successive Administrations as...part...of the economy  in the U.S. GBH , as if somehow hand in glove to keep America the freindliest bully in the Trade world.

 They need to focus internaly, to compete, to produce quality, and then use their skills to create steady markets for their produce instead of either having to kill  or threaten someone for someone else (as they see a good sherrif would),  to keep their lines of access stable.

 They can, .....but it would require a massive move away from that seige mentality without a loss of face or respect.

 Post Hiroshima, it is the burden they will bear, to be the bully, enforcer in what can be largely Trade/ Energy based wars, because it was at that moment in time they demonstrated to the world their willingness to do the unthinkable in a world of skirmish wars that came to a sudden standstill, where I'm sure so so many thought ....f*#k they actually did it.

 The spectre of whether or not they'd do it again remains to this day....but as you know there will always be some dick somewhere that wants to prod , probe , just  to really know for sure.

That ,I'm sure would be their biggest mistake not only for them but all of us.

I for one would love to see a disconnect from America's military and America's economy....but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Bwitten should just shut the hell up and concern itself with it's own crappy little mess.

"It is time for us to stop mucking around in the Muslim world"

I believe that strategy was tried in the past and it's called appeasement, didn't go so well.  Ever heard of the expression "all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing". 

Yes the US is flawed but if China or Russia were the dominant power in this world they wouldn't be asking anyone permission or waiting for any conditions to be met.  The US made a mess of Iraq and the Bush administration paid for it at the next election and the new administration is more cautious.  Again, this wouldn't happen if a non-democratic country were the dominant power in the world. Your assumption is that if we, the West, do nothing the rest of the world will do the same and generally behave themselves. 

As for civilians, I see some pretty horrific deaths tolls already, a few cruise missiles to take out artillery and other weapons wouldn't be such a bad idea. 

This CEPR report adds the necessary colour to the latest US housing data releases.

George Friedman makes an interesting point:

This is no longer simply about Syria. The United States has stated a condition that commits it to an intervention. If it does not act when there is a clear violation of the condition, Obama increases the chance of war with other countries like North Korea and Iran. One of the tools the United States can use to shape the behavior of countries like these without going to war is stating conditions that will cause intervention, allowing the other side to avoid crossing the line. If these countries come to believe that the United States is actually bluffing, then the possibility of miscalculation soars.

It doesn't get interesting until the consequences section.

Revelations of accepted US behaviour cannot be stemmed:

But the CIA documents, which sat almost entirely unnoticed in a trove of declassified material at the National Archives in College Park, Md., combined with exclusive interviews with former intelligence officials, reveal new details about the depth of the United States’ knowledge of how and when Iraq employed the deadly agents. They show that senior U.S. officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks. They are tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched. Read more

Actually for context in this case I meant the panic Im witnessing of wanna be first time buyers around me rushing to buy anything before the deadline....even say a leaky home, of which ive actually seen.

regards

Tell you what then lets see your predictions for 5 years, so we have balance, eh?

lets see who's closer.

Otherwise, yes Im more than happy with that happy123.

In terms of housing market prediction by all means, yes please do take note....its not sustainable its tulip mania and it will pop.  Im happy to be held on record for the dawning of the realisation that we cant grow anymore and will shrink as oil output shrinks.

Add in that I also think Bernard's 30% drop prediction is at least 1/2 too small, Ie I think it will be 60% plus from the peak, in fact I wouldnt be gob smacked at 75% from the peak.

regards

That is frigging hilarious Count.

.... I prefer the pictures , rather than an article ....it's  more fun to colour in the pics ....

Mind you , it's helluva hard trying to clean the crayon marks off the computer screen afterwards ...

... they seem to think you missed the boat , man ...

A wise choice.

No problem then, if he walks round Turangi with a flash vest on it will be promptly be removed. 

Steven I do not want to rubbish your entire argument. Obviously for non renewable resources, consumption at any rate, exponential or not, will sooner or later consume the entire resource.

But I am not sure that the sort of growth that developed countries have fits your exponential model. It seems a lot of growth is qualitative not quantitative. I do not eat twice the food calories that my father ate and four times that of my grandfather. And in fact some things I use less of, my car is lighter and more efficient, my house is more energy efficient. I do have some things that my immediate forbears did not have, but they are actually quite small and not that resource demanding -mobile phones, computers, the internet etc.

My workplace is a lot smaller as psychitrict treatments have improved, allowing patients and staff to move out into the community. A definite improvement but not clearly using more energy or resources.

So I think qualitative growth is still possible but quantitative growth may be reaching its limits.

Actually, Hughey, some of us are getting sick of your ideological eyewash.

And I am surprised at a natural Act-type not knowing another. There's less than a class-room full of you, after all.

But the problem you have is that shooting a messenger or two, won't bury the message.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120618-global-resources-stock-check

The Beeb. A well known Malthusian institution - mind you, Malthus was right. Here's what he really said:

“No man can say that he has seen the largest ear of wheat or the largest oak that could ever grow; but he might easily, and with perfect certainty, name a point of magnitude at which they would not arrive. In all these cases therefore, a careful distinction should be made between an unlimited progress, and a progress where the limit is merely undefinied”

You have a problem with that?

Looks like others are feeling the effects of converging contest for resources, coupled with CC;

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-06/parched-texans-impose-water-use-limits-for-fracking-gas-wells.html

Old ideas die with the old. The problem is that we need to speed up the process, given the lack of lead-time left.

PDK,

By the by, the thrust of the Economist article seems to be that demand for oil is reducing rapidly; and that will cause the peak to occur/have occurred. Not that supply is hitting a peak, causing demand to fall out of necessity.

I'm not sure it matters all that much whether it is demand or supply, except that price signals seem to be working well. 

"We could clean up and let nature take charge completely"

That's the whole point. You need grunt to to the 'clean-up', the grunt is in more and more contention, of lesser and lesser quality, and all spoken for currently.

So you won't 'clean up'. Tackling Climate Change meaningfully, could be categorised as 'cleaning up'. We aren't doing it, and are never going to do it, because we won't choose to triage what we're doing, and in the CC case, the infrastructure would be as big as the FF infrastructure - an impossible task.

So more and more, we'll see the likes of Detroit. Yes, Hughey has a point that we may see wider-spaced clusters, but they need to be sustainable. That's quite different from survival adaption in a  Detroit or a Cuba. Those clusters, though, have only one bite at getting it right. Hugheys 'starters' don't cut that mustard. The Transition Towns folk - the classic is Blueskin Resilient Community down here - are probably the closest to where we whould be going. There are a lot there who understand that building an electric car and equipping yourself with solar panels, is a valid use of income and oil-availability - but not the way middle-class western society might somehow maintain itself with a few tweaks.

Mind you, someone like me - who specialises in building infrastructure out of junk - would probably thrive in the ghost-city physically. Just not socially, one suspects. Of course, there goes Auckland within 20 years, you realise that? Yet some folk think it's worth discussing the benefits of hypothetical motorways.

Barbs Christov?   Yes.  I chopped down that cherry tree. (hangs head)

No PDK,  Just a person who strays off your topic from time to time.  has other interests to discuss.  Annoying as you find that to be.