Re: [Marxism] "Peak Oil": the US-China Economic Downturns Factored In?

["rrubinelli" <rrubinelli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some thoughts: maybe random, maybe interconnected.

.  The 120 million boe/day is an extrapolation based on about a 2%
average annual rate of growth in demand over the next fifteen years.
Maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't. It certainly is not going to happen
evenly.

 Keep in mind that b.o.e. per dollar of GDP has declined in the US since
1980, while percentage of imported oil has grown to 60% of all
consumption.

Petroleum plays its black gold role in transportation where it fuels 98%
of internal and international trade.  And in the US, biggest petroleum
consumers?  #1 (with a bullet) the US Navy.  #2 Care to guess?  How
about the Union Pacific Railroad?  Correct.

US military overall consumes nearly 4.7 million barrels/day of petroleum
products.  Suppose we say all of Europe, West and East devotes another 6
million/day to its military-- that's 13% of world consumption right
there that could be "diverted" to other purposes-- yea and they will
beat their swords into ploughshares, and convert their napalm into
plastics.

As far as Greenspan engineering a big recession-- the price of oil can
do that all by itself as it proved in the "double dip" recession of
1980-1982.  FRB ratcheted up interest rates to be sure, and it's
tempting to see Volcker, cigar in
hand/mouth, saying "Fuck this goddam overinvestment in fixed capital.
We need to deploy a little interest rate arson to the economy"-- who
knows, he might have actually said that-- but it was just that
overinvestment that oil prices torched.

And then we get the oil price break in 1986 that put hammer to the
Soviet economy while the deteriorating relations between city and
countryside inside the USSR played the anvil.   (Aside.  I think the
remarks of Mark Jones reproduced by JF are pretty interesting in that
he, MJ, seems to leave out the role played by the collapse in world oil
prices at the same time as fSU was "opening up" to the world markets to
try and patch up that particular discontinuity through hard currency
transactions.  Caught between this hammer and that anvil the fSU
attempted to compensate through increased production,with coincident
reduced maintenance, repair, exploration, and conservation of oil fields
and apparatus.  And doesn't that sound familiar?  Doesn't it sound like
somebody, corporate or individual, trying to beat the devil in hell?
Doesn't it sound like someone creating his own "special zones?"  His own
maquilladoras? Doesn't it sound like somebody going out of business? ).

Can there, will there be, a big recession?  Damn, I was sure there would
be one right after Bush was reconfirmed, excuse me, born again as the
Big Greeter.

So I wouldn't pretend to know.  But two or three things I do know--
number 1 (with a bullet) is that if the recession does occur it will not
be the result of approaching oil depletion.   and number 2 is that the
oil depletionists will absolutely claim it is.

rr

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 5:40 PM
Subject: [Marxism] "Peak Oil": the US-China Economic Downturns Factored
In?




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