The theme of this year's Agora Financial Investment Symposium is "View From the Peak." The title alludes to Peak Oil, as well as peak everything else.
We have 6.5 billion people on Earth, with more arriving every day. A fortunate few hundred million of us already live in the developed world. And now several billion other souls are working their way out of poverty, and that takes resources.
So the world demand for everything (energy, steel, cement, food, water, you name it) is rising. And that demand is bumping up against physical limits of resources and/or the ability of mankind to extract those resources. As the saying goes, "Whoops!"
So the "View From the Peak" analogy is also to mountain climbing. The most dangerous part of any mountain climb is not necessarily climbing uphill. It's often the descent.
On the way down, there is this sense that you understand the mountain, because you climbed it. But going down a mountain is quite a bit different than going up. So beware the false sense of understanding and security as things start to unwind.
On the energy front, we've seen several days of declining prices. Oil has led the way, falling from about $146 to $126. Coal and natural gas sold down, as well, as did many energy companies and service firms.
So we've seen quite a tumble, led by declining oil. But then again, oil had quite a run-up. I've said before that oil was climbing too far, too fast. And over the past few weeks, oil tested the $150 mark. But like Gen. Pickett at Gettysburg, this charge to $150 failed.
What seems pretty clear is that at $140, a lot of things in this world just don't work anymore. Airlines are, obviously, one business not built around highly priced oil. Worldwide, 24 airlines have gone bankrupt so far this year.
But there are other parts of the transport system, the food system and the economy that are cratering with the oil run-up.
Sure, a lot of things don't work well even with oil at $130, $120 or $110. But that's not the point. It seems that above $140, the developing world just stops developing. We saw pain at $100 and above. We were beginning to see true demand destruction above $140. So oil pulled back, and perhaps for a while.
I should add that the recent rally in financials pulled a lot of money out of oil.
Last week, the U.S. monetary authorities made a fateful decision. Rather than let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fail, or take these two horribly mismanaged firms over via receivership, the U.S. Fed and Treasury Department, essentially, nationalized the bad risks and socialized the losses. This is going to come back to haunt and hurt us, like a guy with a chain saw on Halloween night.
And despite the oil pullback, crude petroleum is still double the price of what it was just two years ago. So we are living with a 100% increase in the nominal oil price.
The oil run-up was not all just insatiable demand meeting flat supply. I've discussed this in other articles. The U.S. dollar has been mismanaged for decades, and thus we live in chronically inflationary times. And couple this with the horrid shenanigans of Wall Street and the overall U.S. banking system in this modern era. Ugh!
Remember how some people used to dismiss the fact that the U.S. was deindustrializing? Remember how some people used to praise the so- called "service economy"? They would say things like, "The U.S. capital markets are the most efficient in the world."
To which we now reply, "Oh, really?"
How could the U.S. banking and finance system ever have gotten so bad? Don't we have regulators who are supposed to look over the shoulders of the bankers? Don't they teach people how to be careful in business schools? Heck, here at Agora Financial, we've been writing about the looming implosion for several years. It's not like it was some state secret.
So now we are at the moment of decision. How many billions of dollars does the U.S. banking system have to lose? OK, how many tens of billions? Hundreds of billions? When you add in the toxic derivative instruments, it adds up to trillions of dollars. And it looks like the nation is on the hook for a lot of it.
Where can things go from here, what with all that worthless paper floating around?
At this stage, I can only re-emphasize that you ought to own some precious metals. Own gold or silver coins or bars, ETFs or small- or large-cap shares. But own something. It may well be the only way you can preserve your savings and purchasing power over the long haul.
Byron King
for The Daily Reckoning Australia
P.S. to get The Daily Reckoning direct to your inbox sign up to our free e-mail newsletter or if you prefer to use RSS, subscribe to the Daily Reckoning RSS feed.
Related Articles:
- Peak Oil: Supply Data Doesn’t Lie
- Peak Oil, Peak Food and Peak Everything Else
- Peak Oil – The Risks
- Peak Oil: What’s Next
- Peak Oil – The Rewards
About the Author
Byron King currently serves as an attorney in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1981 and is a cum laude graduate of Harvard University. Byron is also co-editor of Outstanding Investments.
Comment by Graham Reinders on 26 July 2008:
It has been postulated that $100 oil is the level that will actually throw the US out of bed. Any higher price only shortens the time.
$140 truly seems the critical level for imminent failure. The present drop to only $125 means that there will still be a big upside on the next bounce. $150 this time is very plausible.
Prof Antal Fekete maintains that the only possible solution which could still be made to work is a return to the Gold Standard.
This is not going to happen, so I fear the US and World economic system will not recover. With Peak Oil, all the old financial solutions become meaningless. Even the Quick-fixes now being fluffed could not stave off the results of a declining finite oil supply.
Lets look at a best case scenario. I am a retired Baby-Boomer, Statistically I could live for another 20 years. The present oil mayhem, even if this is not PO, the graphs indicate that in my lifetime I am still going to see (4.5%)per year oil supply decline, which will be very ugly.
My children may yet curse my generation for creating hell on earth for them.
The part I find interesting is that all the High-testosterone bucks are still "investing" in future events, using the very mechanism which has clearly proven a failure since our grandparents started investing, 50 years ago in their future.
GM "was" America and soon will be no more. My father's shares are all but worthless.
Once Peak Population is reached the word "investing" will disappear, it will be like investing in houses in Central Europe just before the Plague hit. Buy one get three free.
As they say in the classics,"These are interesting times" and we may be the lucky ones who see it all unravel.
Graham
Comment by Jonathan Callahan on 26 July 2008:
I've always enjoyed Byron's historical perspective and focus on Oil Industry, Peak Oil, Peak Energy, etc. Understanding the historical evolution of these issues is just as important as understanding the current situation.
It's very important for folks to educate themselves and would encourage everyone to look at the actual historical data regarding oil production and consumption. A new on-line tool -- the Energy Export Databrowser -- is available that makes it easy for users to plot historical production, consumption, import and export charts for all the major oil producing regions.
After looking at a few charts one begins to appreciate concepts like "Peak Production" (look at Norway, UK) and the "Export Land Model" (look at Indonesia, Malaysia) in a much more visceral way. It's true that a picture is worth a thousand words and this databrowser allows you to generates hundreds of different graphics covering oil, natural gas & coal and the money spent on them.
The databrowser uses data from the 2008 version of British Petroleum's Statistical Review, considered by many to be the energy industry's premier historical dataset.
So listen to Byron but also educate yourselves. A detailed understanding of the historical development of energy resources on a national and regional basis will empower you to make intelligent decisions about the likely direction of prices and availability going forward.