G7: where is that recession?

19 maja, 2023 By jpd in gospodarstvo

The G7 leaders meet this weekend in Hiroshima, Japan, the site of the first atomic bomb holocaust dropped by American bombers on the city in August 1945, leading to the deaths of at least 100,000 citizens. But the G7 leaders’ main deliberations will not be about that, but instead on how to ‘contain’ China and ‘protect’ Taiwan from Chinese ‘aggression’ through further militarization of the island as a thorn in the side of Chinese leaders. It’s a form of what the British police call ‘kettling’, namely to surround and contain demonstrators in public protests. It is no accident that, with the North American Treaty Organisation (NATO) is now expanding its role into Asia, that Ukrainian leader Zelensky has been invited to address the G7 leaders. As a counter, the Chinese are holding a conference of central Asian states in Xian. Such are the machinations of the intensifying geo-political conflict.

But…

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Ameriški “iraški” načrt za Ukrajino: Nafta in plin za ameriška podjetja ter korupcija kot mazivo

18 maja, 2023 By jpd in gospodarstvo

Kot pravijo, “true American interests are all about oil and arms“. Če ste že pozabili Irak, Libijo in Sirijo, Ukrajinski primer se odvija prav zdaj pred našimi očmi:

As the war in Ukraine drags on, the government is selling off state assets in a big privatization spree.

US fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Halliburton are participating in discussions to take over the Eastern European nation’s oil and gas industry, as Kiev pushes to increase production to replace Russian energy exports.

This comes soon after Ukraine’s Western-backed leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, sent a friendly video message to a US corporate lobby group, thanking companies like BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Starlink, and promising “big business” for others.

In September, Zelensky also symbolically opened the New York Stock Exchange, announcing that his country is “open for business”, offering more than $400 billion in “public-private partnerships, privatization, and private ventures” for US companies.

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The Unpopular Truth about Electricity & Future of Energy

17 maja, 2023 By jpd in gospodarstvo

Odlično predavanje Larsa Schernikaua, ki bi ga morali pogledati vsi, da bi sploh razumeli, kaj pomeni, da bo našo prihodnost poganjala elektrika. Da bi razumeli napačne predpostavke in zavajujoče LCOE izračune, na katerih je zgrajen balon “zelenega prehoda”. Toliko blefa in zavajanja, kot ga je v “električnem zelenem balonu”, težko najdete. Dobro je, da to slišite od strokovnjaka na tem področju.

Ko se Krugman razjezi na svoje: How Biden blew it on debt

17 maja, 2023 By jpd in gospodarstvo 1 komentar

Vsaka država je nesrečna na svoj način in vsaka država ima svoje norce. Le da se z nesrečniki in norci velikih držav, hočeš nočeš, mora ukvarjati ves svet. No, v tem ameriškem šovu med demokrati in republikanci glede meje zadolžitve se zdi, da sta Biden in Yellenova slabo odigrala svoji vlogi.

As soon as Republicans took control of the House last November, it was obvious that they would try to take the economy hostage by refusing to raise the federal debt limit. After all, that’s what they did in 2011 — and hard as it may be to believe, the Tea Party Republicans were sober and sane compared to the MAGA crew. So it was also obvious that the Biden administration needed a strategy to head off the looming crisis.

More and more, however, it looks as if there never was a strategy beyond wishful thinking. I hope that I’m wrong about this — that President Biden will, at the last minute, unveil an effective counter to G.O.P. blackmail. He may even be forced to do so, as I’ll explain in a bit. But right now I have a sick feeling about all of this. What were they thinking? How can they have been caught so off-guard by something that everyone who’s paying attention saw coming?

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Robert Lucas: the rationality of capitalism

16 maja, 2023 By jpd in gospodarstvo

Prispevek Roberta Lucasa (pogostega “infamous gosta” na tem blogu) k ekonomski teoriji:

“Lucas was widely acclaimed because he furthered mainstream theory that markets could work without crises or distortions as long as individuals has sufficient information to make ‘rational decisions’ on their own interests. So the reality of crises and inequalities was due not to capitalist markets but to ‘irrational’ decisions by authorities or unions interfering with markets.

In particular, Lucas attacked the Keynesian ‘aggregate demand’ theory of economies, namely the Keynesian conclusion that total demand could fall below total supply in an economy, leading to periods of high unemployment. Lucas argued that if governments intervened to increase money supply or increase spending to boost aggregate demand, they would distort the ‘rational expectations’ of individuals and only make things worse.”

Njegov vrh triumfa ter kako je končala njegova napoved:

“Given his victory over the Keynesians; given the apparent success of the advanced capitalist economies in the 1990s; and given the neoliberal policies of reduced government ‘interference’ and ‘independent’ central banks, Lucas was confident that harmonious capitalist development was here to stay. In 2003, he made the now infamous statement that “macroeconomics in this original sense has succeeded: Its central problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades.” As Romer remarked it “Using the worldwide loss of output as a metric, the financial crisis of 2008-9 shows that Lucas’s prediction is far more serious failure than the prediction that the Keynesian models got wrong.””

Ampak o mrtvih vse dobro.

Michael Roberts Blog

Robert Lucas has died at the age of 85. Lucas was a leading mainstream neoclassical economist at the University of Chicago – the bastion of neoclassical equilibrium economic theory. In 1995, Lucas received a ‘Nobel prize’ for his theory of ‘rational expectations’. He was regarded by Greg Mankiw, the author of the main mainstream economics textbook used in universities, as “the most influential macroeconomist of the last quarter of the 20th century.”

It is an irony, given the body of his work, that when Lucas started studying economics, he considered himself a “quasi-Marxist” because he reckoned that it was the economic foundation of society that was the driver of history, not the ideas of individuals. The irony is that his main contribution to mainstream economics was eventually to present a theory that economic change was driven by the ‘rational’ action of ‘agents’ i.e, individuals as consumers.

What is ‘rational expectations’…

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Umazanija, v katero so se potopili nemški zeleni

16 maja, 2023 By jpd in gospodarstvo

Nmeški zeleni ne samo, da niso imuni za “bolezni vladajočih” (klientelizem, korupcija, kronizem…), ko enkrat pridejo na oblast, pač pa izgleda, da so zelo dobri v tem. Poročilo iz Nemčije.

The German Greens are in several big crises right now, all directly related to Robert Habeck. First came the legislation to force homeowners to upgrade their oil and gas heating system from January onwards. From next year onwards, it will no longer be legal to instal new gas and oil heaters. And from 2030, all existing ones will have to be replaced by heat pumps. As the sale of Viessmann has demonstrated, this is not a business in which German companies can compete. The legislation, a centre-piece in the government energy transition, effectively amounts to a tax on home owners, something people did not have on the radar screen before.

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Skriti stroški obnovljivih virov energije (2)

15 maja, 2023 By jpd in gospodarstvo

Spet primer iz Velike Britanije, ki OVE vire bazira na vetru, ki je sicer precej bolj izdaten in stabilen vir energije od sonca (piha tudi (predvsem) ob oblačnem vremenu, ponoči in pozimi). Vendar pa veter, podobno kot sonce, prinaša velike skrite stroške. Ljudje preprosto ne razumejo, politiki pa zamolčijo, da večji kot je delež OVE v energetskem miksu, več nadomestnih virov rabimo za nadomestitev izpada energije, ko sonce ne sije in kot veter ne piha, in za izravnanvanje frekvence v omrežju. Za vsak megavat inštalirane moči vetra ali sonca potrebujemo še vsaj en megavat inštalirane moči v plinsko-parne elektrarne (ker so fleksibilne in poceni) ter dodatne zmogljivosti za kratkoročno izravnavanje omrežja. Več kot dodamo zmogljivosti sonca in vetra, več nestabilnosti dodamo omrežju in večji so stroški za njeno ublažitev – ker sistem nikoli ni bil zasnovan za obvladovanje prekinitev dotokov energije. Več kot vlagamo v sonce in veter, večji postaja problem za elektroenergetski sistem in večji račun za njegovo odpravo.

Zato, če smo pošteni, povečana vlaganja v zmogljivosti vetra in sonca zgolj preusmerjajo prepotrebne naložbe stran od zanesljivejših in stroškovno učinkovitejših virov energije. V majhnem obsegu so te investicije v zmogljivosti sonca in vetra koristno dopolnilo, da malce zmanjšamo izpuste CO2 poleti, v velike obsegu ali celo kot glavni vir pa so narodnogospodarsko škodljive (destabilizirajoče, drage in uničujoče za gospodinjstva in industrijo), da o njihovem negativnem vplivu na okolje in socialne razmere v nerazvitih državah (kjer pridobivajo potrebne kovine in minerale) ne govorimo.

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Nonsens forsiranja razogljičenja prek fotovoltaike in baterij

15 maja, 2023 By jpd in gospodarstvo 1 komentar

Tudi iz najnovejših izjav predstavnikov ministrstva za okolje, podnebje in energijo, da NEK2 naj ne bi bil odgovor na manjko električne energije v nasledndjem desetletju, ker je še dve desetletji ne bomo imeli, je zelo očitno, (1) da v vladi aktivno zavlačujejo z odločitvijo glede NEK2 (odločitev o tem potiskajo na referendum šele leta 2027; izgovarjajo se na manjkajoče dokumente, namesto, da bi z JEK skupaj pospešili pripravo dokumentov, ki naj bi menda manjkali), (2) da nimajo nobene rešitve za izpad električne energije iz TEŠ6 leta 2033, in (3) da forsirajo bodisi tehnično povsem neustrezne tehnologije (fotovoltaika in baterije) ali še neobstoječe tehnologije iz vidika potrebno velikega formata (vodik). Na pobude glede izenačitve tehnologij razogljičenja proizvodnje električne energije ne odgovarjajo.

Spodaj je komentar enega izmed državljanov s tehničnim predznanjem, ki je plastično pojasnil, zakaj je forsiranje fotovoltaike in baterijskega shranjevanja poletnih viškov tehnično absolutni nonsens.

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