Making Financial Sense of the Coming Energy Crisis

Peak Moment 131: "We are living in historic times", says financial consultant Jim Puplava. As reflected in his weekly Financial Sense Newshour, actually several hour-long podcasts, Jim has been factoring peak oil into his financial picture for several years. In this interview plus excerpts from his presentation at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA) conference in September 2008, Jim talks about the "crisis window" opened by the current 2008 global credit crunch, and deepening over the next several years as oil supply begins its permanent decline. He provides some basic investment guidance for navigating the coming "perfect financial storm," noting that our society will move of necessity from consumption to conservation.
http://www.financialsense.com http://www.aspo-usa.com DVDs of the entire conference can be ordered through ASPO-USA at http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=662327.)

This is the second of a series of Peak Moment Conversations videotaped at ASPO-USA 2008. Coming up: James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, and Randy Udall, energy analyst and co-founder of ASPO-USA. The first was with energy investment banker Matthew Simmons on "Oil and Gas - The Next Meltdown?"

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• peak
• oil
• energy
• economy
• investment
• collapse
• jim
• puplava

[144jr144]

This content is slightly off. One misconception is about inflation: that there is plenty of inflation now. There isn't. Rising prices of fuel and of goods shipped long distances isn't the same as currency inflation or credit inflation. Also, after decades of speculative credit inflation, that bubble has been deflating recently, bringing down prices of credit-dependent markets (such as real estate) in Japan, US, UK, & EU. BTW, I wrote "worth its weight in... oil" (published on Jim's site in '05).

[peakmoment]

@144jr144, this was taped in fall of 2008. However, with the quantitative easing going on -- printing more money to pay the US debt -- inflation seems alive and well. I've understood that the US and the Euro and others are all working to devalue their currencies. I think that's different than the bursting of the credit bubble you mention.

[nemnaisa]

Puplava and his investment group PSF has not done any serious original research on oil. All they rely on is so-called research written by other energy agencies such as IEA, resulting in his prediction on oil price and macro pictures being totally off base, causing tremendous lost in his client's wealth. The public must be informed of Puplava's past record on inaccurate macro economic forecast and ill advising his clients on wrong investment strategy.

[peakmoment]

In the last six months I've listened to Pulava he has also interviewed Matt Simmons and Chris Nelder on Peak Oil, and they both did an excellent job.

I think a lot of investors, not just Jim's, have been whanged by the volatility in oil prices. Last summer the huge selling off of assets by big institutions needing to stay solvent was a major contributor to the precipitous drop in oil prices. I think it surprised almost everybody, because it didn't reflect the fundamentals (supply & demand).

[144jr144]

@believeyouwould

By the way, boom and bust preceded 1913 even in North America. As for your critique of The Fed, are you condemning them, like with contempt? Governments influence the behavior of many people at the direction of a few. That's just what they do. That governing governors could be biased in accord with their own interests is evidence of nothing special. Governing happens by parents, churches, governments and other associations that do not call themselves governments or influencers

[144jr144]

@peakmoment re "pay US debt"

if by "US Debt," you mean the unfunded liabilities that the US government has promised to pay to it's citizens like in social security payments, consider that the USSR and the Confederacy and the Mayan Empire made lots of promises and kept several but not all. Insurance companies like AIG keep SOME of their promises. When the US Military was "negotiating" with native americans... or with mexican nationals during the mexican-american war, SOME promises were kept.

[144jr144]

@pm re "what is pay the US debt?"

If by "US debt" you mean the bonds of the US treasury, remember 1933. The underwriters of the US treasury's debt are the US CITIZENS which legally includes all corporations. In 1933, ownership of gold coins by US CITIZENS was criminalized, constituting a huge confiscation. Consider what the USSR and other places did re debt: they "socialized" private property, like actual cars and buildings and mineral rights and water rights.

[144jr144]

@pm Hi. If $1 trillion of debt disappears in bankruptcy court quickly, which it can, that deflating of prior credit inflation is huge. Remember, currency is simply a financial contract. It symbolically represents some external capacity to do work. Oil (among other things) is the actual capacity to do work. Money is quite secondary. Considering that governments can be swamps of propaganda and incompetence, who cares what governments attempt to do? Deflation is here. What is "pay the US debt?"

[pohjalo]

and now it´s 78/bbl.

[hoser4]

You are aware that we are in the least active solar cycle in recorded history, right? The last time something like this happened, England experienced a mini-ice age. All things considered, we should be in an ice age right now, but yet, our polar caps are melting, California is desertifying with all the droughts, ocean currents changing, etc. How ironic, that our CO2 levels just might be helping to keep this atmosphere in a temperate state.

[believeyouwould]

The atmosphere left to it's own devices absent man made electromagnetic intervention is certainly stable. Solar cycles are THE reason for the latest global warming. Humans on this planet are criminally ignorant of their home planets natural occurrences throughout the ages. It's an inconvenient truth that humans are deliberately susceptible to nonsensical mainstream media mind control. It's beyond pathetic. So pay your New World Order tax increases when they inevitably arise as the bankers laugh.

[peakmoment]

Regardless of the sources -- including possbily the many technologies you list, as well as carbon emissions and livestock flatulence -- the bottom line is to look at what's happening in the physical world. Ice caps melting, rising CO2 levels, and more extreme weather patterns (not just warming) are indicators that the atmospheric geology is no longer in a stable state. And human activity can change that, if it's not too late.